It's 2015, Not 1915, Right? Female Reporters Barred From Locker Room By AN Usher.

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
Cramp said:
I hope he doesn't get fired either. Are people calling for him to be fired? Like you said, he made a mistake, was corrected and the relevant people apologised. The tweets did not call this person out by name - but just drew attention to another way that women have to make extra effort to be taken seriously in an arena that no one would question a man. Were they wrong to do that? Seems like a good thing to me.

And calling him an "old geezer"? Was that also a good thing?

Regardless, this was a lone incident; there's nothing to indicate otherwise. So the tweets are not drawing attention to an ongoing issue, just to a singular mistake by one "old geezer" at one game.
 

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 4, 2006
Messages
11,629
Reaction score
4,103
Location
CBUS
I think the reporters and camera crew (if it's television reporting) learn how to politely avert their eyes and the camera, just like we avert it from nose hair. They're sticking the microphone in the player's faces, after all.

And the image of questioning a player's one-eyed buddy ("So, Peter/Willy/Richard/John Thomas, what were you and your two little pals thinking when the ball slammed into your protective cup?) is giving me hopeless giggles now.

I remember the whole subject of female sports reporters being allowed in locker rooms was a big issue in the 80s, but I assumed it had been settled.

Yes it was and yes, it was sorta/kinda settled in 1990 after the NFL got it's willy caught in its zipper when a reporter named Lisa Olson had a too-close for comfort encounter with a player named Zeke Mowatt.

Paul Tagliabue, commissioner of the National Football League, yesterday fined Zeke Mowatt of the New England Patriots $12,500, two other players $5,000 each and the team $50,000 for a locker-room incident that the league found to have included conduct degrading to a female reporter.


Lisa Olson, a reporter for The Boston Herald, had charged that several Patriot players -- Mowatt chief among them -- had sexually abused her verbally and otherwise taunted her Sept. 17 while she was attempting to conduct an interview with Maurice Hurst, a Patriot cornerback.


A 60-page report on the incident compiled by Philip Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor who acted as a special counsel for Tagliabue, concluded that Olson was "degraded and humiliated," primarily by Mowatt, Michael Timpson and Robert Perryman. Timpson was fined $5,000, as was Perryman, who is now a Dallas Cowboy.

The report said that Mowatt told Bruce Armstrong, a Patriot offensive lineman: "Look at her. She's just watching. I'm going to tell her about herself." It added that Mowatt, naked, walked in front of Olson and onto a scale and "purposely displayed himself to her in a suggestive way," and that Perryman later did the same while her back was turned.

Sexual humiliation and harassment in a NFL locker room? That's unpossible!

Fast forward to 2013 and here we go again.

It's important to Ines Sainz that she isn't blamed for what happened three years ago Wednesday.

You probably remember the headlines. A New York Jets assistant coach purposely overthrew balls in her direction on a practice field, to watch her jump. Later, half-dressed players in the Jets locker room catcalled her, yelling, "Chica bonita!" like teenage boys on a street corner.


Although the resulting flurry of unwanted attention was annoying to Sainz, the Spanish-language TV reporter stresses in a telephone interview from Azteca America offices in Mexico City that she was not offended by the players' behavior. The next day, in fact, Sainz walked into the NFL offices on Park Avenue and signed all the papers league investigators asked her to. She signed one that said she was telling the truth, and then wrote out her own her version of events, signing the bottom of that one, too.


"I spoke to many lawyers there, and I said explained that I didn't feel uncomfortable and I'm pretty sure it wasn't sexual harassment," Sainz said.


Sainz was wearing her work outfit of jeans and a white blouse to interview Mark Sanchez that day, a uniform that suited her entertainment-focused network but didn't dovetail with American standards of business attire. Had she maintained that she was made to feel uncomfortable, as she initially tweeted in Spanish from the locker room, the backlash from elements of the fan base and the media might have been worse. Victim-blaming can be harsh, so it's understandable to try to avoid the victim's role altogether.

Other reporters, talking among themselves, quietly said they were uncomfortable -- particularly as nose tackle Kris Jenkins roared, "This is our locker room!" to anyone who tried to dampen the hijinks. But Sainz is the one who found herself in the spotlight, and, despite her efforts, she found it hard to defend her professionalism in a culture with different rules and customs.


"When you are away from home and they don't know your work, it's very hard to defend your work," Sainz said. "I'm used to having my work speak for me. ... [People] think you're the kind of person who takes advantage of a situation and not a professional reporter. It was a very difficult experience for me."

If the conditions of the job for a reporter on the sports beat means they may have to be exposed to male--or female--genitalia at times, that's what they have to deal with. Some teams still keep reporters out of the locker room and make the players available at a post-game press conference.

That's a reasonable compromise, but some reporters want the immediacy of access which comes from sticking a microphone under the mouth of a naked man coming out of the shower while his microphone is poking you in the leg.

Anywhere a male reporter can go a female reporter should go as well--and vice-versa. If women make some athletes and ushers uncomfortable, what about all the gay reporters who have been able to access the locker rooms forever and a day?
 

Cramp

Pain in the writing wrist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 5, 2012
Messages
688
Reaction score
72
Location
UK
i imagine there is an ongoing issue of the dismissal of women in sport's journalism. And it's not like it has to be happening to this one journalist - the tweets must be taken in context of the industry. One voice speaking up to create a record that can be used as part of a wider story.

It is not difficult to find people who are very dismissive of stories of sexism because they see it as "just one incident, it hardly indicates anything." The point is, is that everything is just one incident until it is linked up with another just one incident, and so on. But if people are told that they shouldn't speak up about their incident, there is nothing to link towards, and ongoing issues can't be identified.
 

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
i imagine there is an ongoing issue of the dismissal of women in sport's journalism. And it's not like it has to be happening to this one journalist - the tweets must be taken in context of the industry. One voice speaking up to create a record that can be used as part of a wider story.
Locker room access for reporters is a settled thing. There's no wider story on denying access because the policies are in place. There are other issues, of course, as NT's links note. But access? No. Again, the policies are there. This one guy apparently was unaware. He was corrected on the scene.
It is not difficult to find people who are very dismissive of stories of sexism because they see it as "just one incident, it hardly indicates anything." The point is, is that everything is just one incident until it is linked up with another just one incident, and so on. But if people are told that they shouldn't speak up about their incident, there is nothing to link towards, and ongoing issues can't be identified.
I think there's a huge gulf between sexist policies/sexist decisions by people in authority and a mistake by a low-level temp worker.

And again, no one is saying don't speak up. The reporters spoke up, the usher was corrected.

ETA: And nothing to say about the "old geezer" crack?
 
Last edited:

Cramp

Pain in the writing wrist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 5, 2012
Messages
688
Reaction score
72
Location
UK
Geezer means different things based on location so I don't want to comment on that. Otherwise the words are just descriptive - an old man who is out of touch (as he must be if he thinks women reporters can't go into the locker room).

And this:

robeiae said:
They got in. No harm was done. Nothing to see here, move along.

But no. Time to be outraged because some poor schmuck made a mistake.


Sounds a lot like you would have preferred that no one said anything about this. And is probably quite a standard refrain groups who are used to being quiet hear when they do start speaking about the things they face: "Just move on already."
 

Amadan

Banned
Joined
Apr 27, 2010
Messages
8,649
Reaction score
1,623
Geezer means different things based on location so I don't want to comment on that. Otherwise the words are just descriptive - an old man who is out of touch (as he must be if he thinks women reporters can't go into the locker room).

And this:



Sounds a lot like you would have preferred that no one said anything about this. And is probably quite a standard refrain groups who are used to being quiet hear when they do start speaking about the things they face: "Just move on already."[/COLOR]

There's an ironic contrast between your first statement and your last. I'm guessing you wouldn't be willing to shrug off a vaguely sexist label as "just descriptive."
 

dolores haze

international guttersnipe
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 18, 2007
Messages
4,952
Reaction score
3,937
Location
far from the madding crowd
I'm really confused. What the heck are *any* reporters, male or female, doing in a locker room?

I had an ongoing years-long argument with my ex-husband over how ridiculous I felt it was to allow reporters into the locker room. So damn intrusive. What's wrong with getting cleaned up, dressed, and then doing a press conference? His argument always involved wanting to see the team immediately after the win. No waiting. None. Or something.
 

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
Geezer means different things based on location so I don't want to comment on that. Otherwise the words are just descriptive - an old man who is out of touch (as he must be if he thinks women reporters can't go into the locker room).
In the U.S. it's an insulting term (though friends can use it--as they can most other insults--in a playful way). But either way, disparaging him because of his age was not nice.

Sounds a lot like you would have preferred that no one said anything about this. And is probably quite a standard refrain groups who are used to being quiet hear when they do start speaking about the things they face: "Just move on already."
True enough, I think CBS Sports making it into a story was pathetic, given the actual specifics of it. Again, it was a misinformed action of a single person.

Note this line from the story:
Something like this happening in 2015 is beyond bizarre. Not that it's "weird" so much as "unacceptable," but it's just bizarre someone with would possess such a mentality.
What a bunch of crap. We're talking about locker rooms here. The division of men's and women's locker rooms still persists. Not everyone follows sports. And not everyone who does follow sports pays attention to post-game interviews, knows that both men and women are in the locker rooms now conducting these interviews. Someone who is well-educated and/or who regularly follows current events? Sure. It's fair to expect them to know this has changed. But there are a lot of people who are outside of these groupings. Many of them are poorly educated, have limited means, and are in fact poor. And that is--in my experience--where many of the stadium workers are coming from. He didn't know. But there's nothing bizarre about him not knowing, imo. Now he does know.
 

Cramp

Pain in the writing wrist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 5, 2012
Messages
688
Reaction score
72
Location
UK
I'll come out and say it - they shouldn't have called him a geezer. It was not useful. It didn't want to address the point when robeiae first brought it up because it felt like a way of derailing from the point. It seems rather common in such discussions that people will start examining the people involved for any missteps they may have made.

I also don't know how insulting "geezer" is in America - if you were feeling frustrated and thwarted and unfairly vexed by someone would you think it was crossing the line to use it? I don't know. To me it is a very tame and understandable show of annoyance (which is not to say people should be ageist).
 

Jcomp

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
5,352
Reaction score
1,422
What a bunch of crap. We're talking about locker rooms here. The division of men's and women's locker rooms still persists. Not everyone follows sports. And not everyone who does follow sports pays attention to post-game interviews, knows that both men and women are in the locker rooms now conducting these interviews. Someone who is well-educated and/or who regularly follows current events? Sure. It's fair to expect them to know this has changed. But there are a lot of people who are outside of these groupings. Many of them are poorly educated, have limited means, and are in fact poor. And that is--in my experience--where many of the stadium workers are coming from. He didn't know. But there's nothing bizarre about him not knowing, imo. Now he does know.

Yeah, there are lots of issues women reporters have had to deal with in sports, whether in locker rooms or on sidelines or in the broadcast booth, but this is a HUGE non-story.
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
I don't know anything about the usher in question - and I don't see any reason to assume he's seasonal, temp, or otherwise. Yes, football is seasonal, but arena work isn't. Arenas book events (concerts, other sports, random shit) all year long. Plenty of people who work these jobs, at the arenas I'm familiar with anyway, have them for ages. Mostly, again in my experience, they're not equal either. Someone patrolling the stairwell for smokers isn't necessarily interchangeable with someone tasked with working the door on a dressing or locker room.

...If the conditions of the job for a reporter on the sports beat means they may have to be exposed to male--or female--genitalia at times, that's what they have to deal with. Some teams still keep reporters out of the locker room and make the players available at a post-game press conference.

That's a reasonable compromise, but some reporters want the immediacy of access which comes from sticking a microphone under the mouth of a naked man coming out of the shower while his microphone is poking you in the leg.

Anywhere a male reporter can go a female reporter should go as well--and vice-versa. If women make some athletes and ushers uncomfortable, what about all the gay reporters who have been able to access the locker rooms forever and a day?

What teams are those? Keeping the room off-limits is against the rules in the leagues I know about. Also, locker-room access has a purpose.

I'm really confused. What the heck are *any* reporters, male or female, doing in a locker room?

Working.
I had an ongoing years-long argument with my ex-husband over how ridiculous I felt it was to allow reporters into the locker room. So damn intrusive. What's wrong with getting cleaned up, dressed, and then doing a press conference? His argument always involved wanting to see the team immediately after the win. No waiting. None. Or something.

There are several reasons reporters have locker-room access.

Many, many events push up against deadline. This totally depends on the publication, and town, but in many big cities, games end very close to deadline. Reporters, especially ones working the beat, need to get in, get some quotes, head back upstairs, insert them and file. There isn't time to wait around, and there's really not time to not get what you need.

Not getting what you need is more possible if people escape. This is another reason for access. It's much harder for players to ditch the media if the media is in the locker room. It still happens, obviously, but if the reporters are sitting in an anteroom waiting, it's easier by far.

It's also much easier to access various people and get something everyone else doesn't have in the locker room. If reporters had to wait for players to come out to an anteroom, they'd likely get those players, everyone would have the same exact quotes, and getting stuff from other players would be harder, as see above deadlines and escape. As it is now, if someone wants to go talk to a tertiary player while other reporters are hanging around the star, that reporter can get something no one else has.

In playoff or other big games, when the scrum is too large to really operate within a locker room, players are brought out to a tabled press conference. At that type of thing, reporters can ask for other people to be brought out, but it's hit or miss and everyone will still have the same quotes - which means anything different is usually gotten at practice, in the locker room. Those table conferences are also known beforehand, so people work with it, and teams move people out quickly.

There are actual rules about these things, btw, which are hammered out between the unions and the leagues. Stuff like locker rooms must be open no more than X minutes post game, for X amount of time at least, X number of players shall be made available at least, etc., etc. Playoffs have specific rules, as does every league, but most operate in a similar general fashion.
 

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
I don't know anything about the usher in question - and I don't see any reason to assume he's seasonal, temp, or otherwise. Yes, football is seasonal, but arena work isn't. Arenas book events (concerts ,other sports, random shit) all year long.
Arenas contract with temp agencies to supply ushers, security, etc. for events. Depending on the specifics of contracts, some events may have to supply their own (which they do through temp agencies). Either way, what you get are temp workers making low hourly wages. Sure, ones that are consistent keep getting the gigs, but it's still temp work, still seasonal when it comes to sporting games.

Here's a better story:

http://www.indystar.com/story/sport...aguars-locker-room-after-colts-game/73355356/

Graham Watson of Yahoo Sports, Joey Chandler of the Tuscaloosa News and the Tulsa World’s Katie McInerney were not allowed to enter the locker room by someone they described as an usher.
“At first we thought we had the wrong door,” Watson said. “He said, ‘I’m not sure you’re allowed back there.’”
Chandler added: “He said, ‘I’m sure you know how guys are, I’m just warning you.’”
According to Watson and Chandler, after the man stopped them, he started asking people if they were allowed in the locker room, delaying their entry for two to three minutes. Someone with the Jaguars eventually told him they were allowed in, according to the women.
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
Arenas contract with temp agencies to supply ushers, security, etc. for events. Depending on the specifics of contracts, some events may have to supply their own (which they do through temp agencies). Either way, what you get are temp workers making low hourly wages. Sure, ones that are consistent keep getting the gigs, but it's still temp work, still seasonal when it comes to sporting games.

Here's a better story:

http://www.indystar.com/story/sport...aguars-locker-room-after-colts-game/73355356/

That may be true for some, but it's not a universal. There are arenas that employ people for those positions directly.
 

shortstorymachinist

The score is still Q to 12!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
2,169
Reaction score
1,293
Location
Japan
I have to say I'm not seeing the big deal. According to one tweet, the usher said it was because, "You know how guys are," which to me suggests two possible rationales:

1) Guys are shy and don't like women seeing them naked/in various states of undress.
2) Guys often harass women, especially guys with all their buddies hopped up on adrenaline and testosterone.

I'll take door number two. It was sexist and undermined them as professionals in their field, but I don't think it was intentionally disrespectful. Even if he was misguided, it seems to me he had the reporters' interest in mind. Let's not crucify someone who is perhaps out of touch with the times and makes a mistake, not when there are so many people out there being purposefully malicious.
 

JimmyB27

Hoopy frood
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 29, 2005
Messages
5,623
Reaction score
925
Age
42
Location
In the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable e
Website
destinydeceived.wordpress.com
I had an ongoing years-long argument with my ex-husband over how ridiculous I felt it was to allow reporters into the locker room. So damn intrusive. What's wrong with getting cleaned up, dressed, and then doing a press conference? His argument always involved wanting to see the team immediately after the win. No waiting. None. Or something.
I'm not a big sports fan, but I think here it's common practice to grab the players for a quick soundbite as they come off the pitch, and then the press conference after. (And as a non-sports fan, whenever I see it, it always sounds like this)
Still sounds weird to me.
 

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
Still sounds weird to me.
I think so, too. But you know, this is--or was--primarily an NFL/NBA thing for a long time, two sports leagues that were built around television. I think it started because it allowed the broadcasters to do a quick recap of the game and then work in some interviews before the broadcast ended. A few sports in the U.S. don't allow locker room access at all. Some allow the teams to decide (like the NCAA, I think). Others allow it, but not immediately after the game ends. Me, I think it's stupid to allow it at all.

That said, there's no doubt that if it's allowed, it has to be allowed for both sexes.
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
I think so, too. But you know, this is--or was--primarily an NFL/NBA thing for a long time, two sports leagues that were built around television.

No, it was not. Reporters have been in locker rooms forever, and it has nothing to do with television or the NFL or NBA. I don't know if one league was first, but there were reporters in baseball locker rooms before television was a thing.

I think it started because it allowed the broadcasters to do a quick recap of the game and then work in some interviews before the broadcast ended.

Again, no. It started because that's where players are after a game and papers have deadlines.

A few sports in the U.S. don't allow locker room access at all. Some allow the teams to decide (like the NCAA, I think). Others allow it, but not immediately after the game ends. Me, I think it's stupid to allow it at all.

Which sports? If you mean like golf or tennis, there are specific access rules for those, because all players aren't there or doing the same thing at the same time. Serena Williams may have just won a match but there could be a dozen other players prepping.

All four major sports have, as I outlined in the above post, access governed by rules. No league I know of allows teams to decide; it'd be chaos, and there'd be an uproar from the unions. The NCAA doesn't do locker room for championship play. I don't know what they do otherwise, but the time frame they have to get players and coaches to the anteroom is extremely short in championship play, because of the above issues. I don't know what they do practice-wise either - as I mentioned, there's also locker-room access after practice.
 

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
No, it was not. Reporters have been in locker rooms forever, and it has nothing to do with television or the NFL or NBA. I don't know if one league was first, but there were reporters in baseball locker rooms before television was a thing.



Again, no. It started because that's where players are after a game and papers have deadlines.
Okay, I'll take your word for it, though I don't know that the access before the time of television was immediate and standard policy. Do you?

There's an obvious dichotomy with European football, though. And I'm pretty sure Europe has had newspapers as long as the U.S.

Which sports? If you mean like golf or tennis, there are specific access rules for those, because all players aren't there or doing the same thing at the same time. Serena Williams may have just won a match but there could be a dozen other players prepping.

All four major sports have, as I outlined in the above post, access governed by rules. No league I know of allows teams to decide; it'd be chaos, and there'd be an uproar from the unions. The NCAA doesn't do locker room for championship play. I don't know what they do otherwise, but the time frame they have to get players and coaches to the anteroom is extremely short in championship play, because of the above issues. I don't know what they do practice-wise either - as I mentioned, there's also locker-room access after practice.
The women's soccer league doesn't allow locker room access. MLS allows it, but not immediately after the game. 15 minutes? I think that's the right number.

Regardless, this is all neither here nor there. Locker room access for the media isn't some sort of right. And I still think it's stupid.
 

cornflake

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
16,171
Reaction score
3,734
Okay, I'll take your word for it, though I don't know that the access before the time of television was immediate and standard policy. Do you?

Yeah. Deadlines.

There's an obvious dichotomy with European football, though. And I'm pretty sure Europe has had newspapers as long as the U.S.

I don't know how they work it at all, whether it's similar or not, though I don't think gametimes run similarly.

The women's soccer league doesn't allow locker room access. MLS allows it, but not immediately after the game. 15 minutes? I think that's the right number.

No league I know of has immediate lockerroom access. There's a women's soccer league?

Regardless, this is all neither here nor there. Locker room access for the media isn't some sort of right. And I still think it's stupid.

Well, yeah, it kind of is a right. It's in the rules agreed to by the leagues. It can obviously be changed, but not just off the cuff.
 

robeiae

Touch and go
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2005
Messages
46,262
Reaction score
9,912
Location
on the Seven Bridges Road
Website
thepondsofhappenstance.com
FYI, here's a far more significant--imo--incident, when it comes to women working in the world of men's sports:

Former softball player Jessica Mendoza has been working as an analyst for the women's softball world series (she's quite good, too) and this year, she moved over to baseball on ESPN. First college, then MLB. Two days ago, she called the AL wild card game, between the Yanks and Astros.

Some shitburger with a radio show in Atlanta named Mike Bell unloaded on her and ESPN, because you know, women: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...om&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial

Here's a turkey running off at the mouth, intentionally saying sexist things about someone else, and with a platform to reach a lot of people. A worthy target, imo.
 

ElaineA

All about that action, boss.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 17, 2013
Messages
8,555
Reaction score
8,433
Location
The Seattle suburbs
Website
www.reneedominick.com
Oh man, I spent Tuesday night and all day yesterday fuming about this unbelievable [deleted for decency sake]. I can't get started again. :mad:

I admit, I live in a lefty place. I'm just not exposed to a lot of people who outwardly express that women have a "place" and that they better stay off the MEN-ONLY playground. Seeing the comment sections of the various articles I read yesterday made me feel extremely naive. And grateful.

Hey, Mike Bell?? Anchorman was making fun of guys like you. It's called irony.