Because women struggle with complicated things like numbers, the only way to get them interested in sports is to tell them stories about how nice athletes are to their wives. At least, that’s what Men’s Health magazine argued last night in a piece for which it has since apologized.
In a now-deleted tweet on Monday night, the magazine advertised “How to talk about sports with women” using an image of a woman wagging a big foam finger. As the sub-headline of the piece itself explains, “The things that interest you are unlikely to interest her, but you can still make a connection; here’s how.”
The article seems to be entirely built for the purposes of trolling; it clocks in at under 100 words of text, and argues that women couldn’t possibly be interested in sports for sports’ sake. Rather, they are just in it to hear about what sensitive men play the game:
Not all women share your passion for sports, in case you hadn’t noticed. The reason? They need story lines.
“Most women don’t care about stats,” says Andrei Markovits, Ph.D., coauthor of Sportista: Female Fandom in the United States. So while you’re enthusing about Dominic Moore’s scoring record, she’d rather hear about how he supported his wife’s battle with cancer — and even took a season off from the NHL at the height of his career. Treat your heroes as people and not just players on a field, and you’ll suck her in.
Just don’t expect her to wear the foam finger.
Readers expressed their outrage at the sexist generalizations in the comments section of the piece. “Stop publishing condescending, misogynistic crap as click-bait,” wrote one, while another, a woman who writes for a hockey publication added, “Dominic Moore’s scoring record- not very good. Look, a girl knew that!” Many others agreed, chiming in that the piece was “the dumbest thing I’ve read about women and sports EVER” and “grossly offensive.”
“Oh yeah, and I don’t have a foam finger,” wrote one commenter. “I have foam bear claws!”
In a series of two tweets, the magazine apologized for the story, saying that it “missed the mark and the negative feedback is justified.”
Apologies for our “talk sports with her” story. It missed the mark and the negative feedback is justified. We've deleted it. [part 1]
— Men's Health Mag (@MensHealthMag) October 7, 2014
It wasn’t meant to suggest that women are in any way inferior to men, in sports, or anything else. But … we’re sorry that it did. [part 2]
— Men's Health Mag (@MensHealthMag) October 7, 2014
Men’s Health claimed to have deleted the story wholesale, but it is still available here.