A Gender Primer for Stephen A. Smith + Sports Talk Nation by Stephane Dunn

A Gender Primer for Stephen A. Smith + Sports Talk Nationby Stephane Dunn | @DrStephaneDunn | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
“. . . Sorry this is absolutely rigged for money. . . Or ratings . . . I won’t be silent.” -- Ayesha Curry on Twitter 
The finals are over. Lebron and the Cavs are in the annals of great sports history and in the after glow, a lot of the drama that defined the 2016 finals is already receding from cultural memory. But the Stephen A Smith - Ayesha Curry tweet duel is way too instructive to be lost in the shadow of an epic finals series and filed away. It perfectly highlighted the ongoing gender politics integral to American sports. Smith embodies contemporary sports media to a tee where a guy’s tell-it-like-I-see-it mouthiness, word play skills, or incredible nerviness can get nicely rewarded with a fat contract from ESPN and celebrity status.
Smith had been there before we know–catching public heat over his inappropriate gendered commentaries. In his 2014 public musings about the Ray Rice abuse scandal, Smith suggested that the responsibility for not ending up knocked out in an elevator was partly on the woman to not provoke unjustifiable abuse in the first place. Women skewered him publicly and ESPN was forced to slap one of its favorite sons on the wrist.
Following Ayesha Curry’s post Game 6 tweet, he schooled her for talking aloud and too much about her husband’s job instead of being a good, quiet trophy wife and egregiously did so by focusing on Curry and Savannah James's looks and differing demeanors:
As beautiful as everyone wants to say Ayesha Curry is, and she is, Savannah is something special. I’m here to tell you something right now. Ain’t a man alive, particularly a black man, that’s going to look at LeBron James’s wife and not say that that woman ain’t gorgeous. Well, she’s wonderful inside and out. She sits there. She doesn’t bring any attention to herself. She never tweets and goes out there and calls out the league and stuff like that. And nobody, nobody is more scrutinized than her husband.
Clearly, Smith could use a basic gender primer to temper what’s threatening to become a bona fide pattern:
* Women’s looks should not be the focus of sports reporting and commentating. It's actually possible to critique their words and their play, if athletes, without mixing in personalized comments about how pretty you think they are or aren't.
* Comparing women’s physical attributes or estimating their wifely worthiness is a no all the time.
* Before commentating publicly about any sensitive matters that come up in sports nation, say rape or domestic violence, check and deconstruct your male privilege then comment publicly if done successfully. If not, better to take note, analyze, and not speak.
And yet, despite his notable gender blunders, Smith shouldn't be tagged as the face of sexism in sports media. Smith was the standout of a moment [again], but he was manifesting the long-standing nature of men's sports talk. Remember morning radio host Don Imus in 2007? Imus called the ladies of the Rutgers basketball team "nappy headed hos" putting on full display how deeply sexist [and racist] commentary flows along with sports chatter.
Drive along listening to sports radio shows regularly as I do and you’ll discover that women's looks come up pretty frequently – be they athletes or the significant other or date of an athlete or just someone who makes the news of the day, say just by being captured on camera cheering at a game. Too often male hosts offer their extra 'expertise’ like self-appointed beauty contest judges and casually deem the woman of focus a ‘dog’ or a beauty thereby validating their heterosexual masculine sports cred. Why do they presume to be the beholders of beauty for listeners and use their public professional platforms as if they’re at home watching a game, kicking back and talking smack with their closest guy crew? Unchecked Male privilege.
Whether it’s Steph Curry’s mom or his wife, Lebron’s wife, or the girlfriend of a college athlete, Serena Williams or another female athlete, women’s looks become fodder to be discussed and dissected as freely as a game. That’s the true patriarchal nature of American sports culture. It’s reinforced on guy=beer=girl commercials during the big televised football or basketball games and during those same games as the women by and large ‘work’ on their feet on the sidelines or on the margins of the field while the ‘real’ sports guy experts sit literally on high in their best suits. Smith even had the nerve to put Savannah James in the mess when she has exercised her right not to be on social media letting it all hang out.
In a world where we have 24-7 access to be public and many of us are, we can get dangerously close to presuming that not weighing in on social media is the equivalent of being silent, of not having a voice. But social media need not be selected the sole primary or legitimate way to speak; the choice to not speak via social media should not be read as passivity or silence – or the measure of being a ‘good’ person, woman or wife or not.
But of course, Smith thought nothing of interrogating Ayesha Curry's ‘rigged’ game charge - which was okay to interrogate – by contrasting her to Savannah James and evaluating their value in terms of several qualities that traditional American sexism historically favors for measuring ‘true’ respectable womanhood –supposed heterosexual attractiveness, respectable behavior, and adherence to the gender status quo.
Evaluating women in terms of their bodies, perceived level of physical beauty, or how they choose to wear their roles as romantic or life partners is as tacky and outdated as half-naked, ad-carrying girls in the ring at a boxing match.
Yeah, I said it. You may tweet me.
Perhaps Stephen A. and colleagues could meditate on that before picking up the mike.
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Stephane Dunn is a writer and professor at Morehouse College.  Publications, include the 2008 book Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (U of Illinois) and a number of articles in mediums such as Ebony.com, The Atlantic, The Root.com, the AJC, and others.