Women’s basketball has exploded in the last few years, in large part because the NBA is finally seeing it as a money-maker on par with the men’s pro-League. Same with women’s soccer.
A lot of this has to do with sports, as a broad category of entertainment, still producing the kind of returns that legacy media - movies, tv serials, live music - struggle to replicate. A lot more has to do with women as an “untapped” demographic for the sports media industry. And then the pivot to Streaming means you get extra value from a continuous fresh series of live events with relatively low production costs (just like with reality TV).
I might argue that the trans-panic around women’s sports is a direct consequence of this huge new effort to commodify the franchise. Trans-rights runs up against the specter of performance enhancing drugs in athletics, giving both state officials and league owners an excuse to aggressively regulate and censor their athletes.
The concern-trolling over it was. Abuse continues to be rampant in professional (and amateur) athletics. Reporting tends to either fixate on the Bad Countries Cheating or explode into a “Last year’s players cheated! This won’t happen again!” moral panic after too many high profile athletes start succumbing to symptoms of chronic misuse.
Trans-athletes (and maliciously accused cis-athletes) get swept up in both. You’re either “cheating” by having the wrong set of chromosomes or you’re accused of cheating because you don’t look Trad enough.
I know that they found Lance Armstrong was cheating simply because everyone else in the Tour De France was too and they knew it wasn’t possible for him to have won fairly if they cheated and still lost. So they mass-reported him for dosing, testing him to “prove” he wasn’t, and found he was.
I hate people with no self-awareness. Like if you’re cheating too, don’t say shit.
I know that they found Lance Armstrong was cheating simply because everyone else in the Tour De France was too and they knew it wasn’t possible for him to have won fairly if they cheated and still lost.
I believe he was able to disguise some of his performance enhancement behind his chemotherapy, which is why he so drastically improved after coming back from testicular cancer.
I hate people with no self-awareness. Like if you’re cheating too, don’t say shit.
No point in staying silent if you still lose. Time to throw the front-runner under the bus and make way for the rest of the cheats.
Reminder: No one gave the slightest fuck about women’s sports until the masses realized transpeople weren’t just a “funny joke” in a 80’s sex comedy.
Women’s basketball has exploded in the last few years, in large part because the NBA is finally seeing it as a money-maker on par with the men’s pro-League. Same with women’s soccer.
A lot of this has to do with sports, as a broad category of entertainment, still producing the kind of returns that legacy media - movies, tv serials, live music - struggle to replicate. A lot more has to do with women as an “untapped” demographic for the sports media industry. And then the pivot to Streaming means you get extra value from a continuous fresh series of live events with relatively low production costs (just like with reality TV).
I might argue that the trans-panic around women’s sports is a direct consequence of this huge new effort to commodify the franchise. Trans-rights runs up against the specter of performance enhancing drugs in athletics, giving both state officials and league owners an excuse to aggressively regulate and censor their athletes.
Wait… “Performance enhancing drugs” was a sham?
The concern-trolling over it was. Abuse continues to be rampant in professional (and amateur) athletics. Reporting tends to either fixate on the Bad Countries Cheating or explode into a “Last year’s players cheated! This won’t happen again!” moral panic after too many high profile athletes start succumbing to symptoms of chronic misuse.
Trans-athletes (and maliciously accused cis-athletes) get swept up in both. You’re either “cheating” by having the wrong set of chromosomes or you’re accused of cheating because you don’t look Trad enough.
I know that they found Lance Armstrong was cheating simply because everyone else in the Tour De France was too and they knew it wasn’t possible for him to have won fairly if they cheated and still lost. So they mass-reported him for dosing, testing him to “prove” he wasn’t, and found he was.
I hate people with no self-awareness. Like if you’re cheating too, don’t say shit.
I believe he was able to disguise some of his performance enhancement behind his chemotherapy, which is why he so drastically improved after coming back from testicular cancer.
No point in staying silent if you still lose. Time to throw the front-runner under the bus and make way for the rest of the cheats.