Kavitha A. Davidson, Columnist

Blaming the Woman on the Sidelines

Whenever a controversy involves a woman in sports, blame systematically shifts away from the male party and his own agency to the woman whose sex supposedly provides her an inherent advantage yet prevents her from understanding just how sports are supposed to work.

January 31, 2014 at 11:03 PM UTC

By Kavitha A. Davidson

Kavitha A. Davidson is a former Bloomberg View columnist.

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Sports on Earth's Gwen Knapp had a great column this week about the backlash against Erin Andrews for her handling of Richard Sherman's postgame interview after the Seattle Seahawks' win over the San Francisco 49ers. Knapp rightfully calls out critics who implied that Andrews' feminine wiles goaded Sherman into his overblown emotional response -- a sports-media twist on the trope that beautiful women naturally bring out the worst impulses in men, who are biologically incapable of controlling themselves around the fairer sex.

Whenever a controversy involves a woman in sports in any capacity -- from Ines Sainz's treatment by the 2010 New York Jets to the apparent "wussification" of the athletic world -- blame systematically shifts away from the male party and his own agency to the woman whose sex supposedly provides her an inherent advantage (news to me) yet prevents her from understanding just how sports are supposed to work.