TW: this article contains reference to sexual abuse and harassment
Perusing BBC sport this evening I find myself incensed.
Not only is there just one singular article covering women’s sport featured on their home page, but it’s about the threats Jenni Hermoso has received since Luis Rubiales’ resignation in the fallout from his behaviour at the World Cup final. Hermoso herself has remained remarkably composed, but this revisitation of kiss-gate pokes a stinging feeling of resentment in me.
It’s probably a feeling I suppress often, but this time I give it airtime for a moment. It’s the same kind of irritation I get watching men train and finish faster, move further, lift heavier, despite the fact that I’m right here training my hardest too.
It’s symptomatic of a darker ever-burning feeling of anger when I’m reminded of my difference, the freakness that is being female in a world owned by men.
The recent influx of ‘feminine rage’ edits on my tiktok FYP showing me women in films screaming, crying, throwing things, has, rather than affording relief, demonstrated only the romanticisation of what I feel. In its attempt to show that women too, are angry and full of burning, destructive rage, the effect is a disappointing one – once more we are concerned with how they look, rather than the power of the destruction itself.
And those who would suggest that this rage can be channelled into something like sport – glazing over the fact that in lieu of sightliness women must of course be useful – seem to have failed to notice that women aren’t often forgiven for getting angry in such a setting.
It gets me thinking about the place of female rage in sport.
It gets me looking at a ‘Serena Williams RAGING at umpires compilation’, in which the majority of the altercations are, albeit heated, merely conversations, mostly in which the tennis star is insulted by an assault on her character. Underneath are streams of comments lamenting anyone’s decision to call her a role model, with one user states: “Wow!! You can take the girl out of the ghetto but you could never take the ghetto out of the girl”.
A top comment underneath a compilation of ‘CRAZY angry moments Roger Federer smashing rackets 2018’ reads: “WOW. He literally obliterated the whole racket in one smash. Strength!!!”
A quick comparative google along the lines of sport and anger for men and women shows a similar picture. A Forbes magazine interpretation of research illustrating aggression is routinely associated with lower skill athletes in young men, suggests that this is ‘strategic’. On the other hand a witch hunt has emerged in the last few years for the cause of why women are becoming so abhorrently violent in sports. I believe that the endurance of pain and the inheritance of a pervasive anger are two of the essential parts of the female condition, but their expression in sport, as in life, is hissed at.
And despite the fact the public consciousness seems to think that being an angry woman is unforgivable, there is cause for and traces of our rage everywhere.
The rabbit hole I was falling down made me revisit a beloved friend and teammate of mine’s 2020 petition to review the HRR dress code which got women in trousers allowed into the Steward’s area for the first time. Scrolling through the various reasons for signing along the lines of “get with the times”, I find a long comment of quotes about violence against women enacted through dress codes, and even a bibliography of related and helpful works.
This crying stab in the dark of an obscured corner of the internet makes my heart ache, and leads to another rabbit hole, sexual assault in the world of rowing, for which I, disappointingly, inevitably, find the well-worn stories of predatory coaches whose red flags were dismissed, or whose cover-ups on behalf of athletes were never punished.
Reading the words of a coach known for abusiveness and yet still celebrated, to an athlete sexually assaulted by another athlete – “you’re no angel anyway” – is another piece of the picture which for me, disappointingly, inevitably, makes me angry.
My relationship with my rage is unsurprisingly an extremely fraught one. It is both productive and destructive. As a coach it frustrates me when women and girls cannot access that ruthlessness, are too frightened to push themselves just slightly beyond that realm of comfort and control, where their cheeks flush and they sweat, where they seem unladylike and unbeautiful. As an athlete I am routinely encouraged not to be emotional, not to narrativise every effort I make into a grand exertion of passion. To be more clinical, less of a drama queen, less human.
And yet paddling to the startline on the Saturday of Henley Royal this summer, a drunken spectator in a blazer shouted numbers as we passed; he was rating each seat of the boat out of ten. It buzzed in the back of my mind like an agitated wasp until we crossed the finish line first about half an hour later.
How can I not be angry? And how can I be taken seriously if I am angry? It’s another, familiar, routine Catch 22.
I have seen on numerous rowing teams the success of women which feeds on the resentment bred by comparison with and belittlement by men. Our rage is the product of a culture that tells us we cannot do sport properly, cannot be as good as men, are not being proper women, that sees the opportunity, in the valuing and comparison of our bodies, to sexualise and even abuse those bodies. And then the internalisation of that rage produces results which ratify the institutions that spawned such a culture.
Maybe the place for female rage is in sport.
If I could have yelled something back at the blazered drunkard maybe it would have made laughing onlookers sit up straight and he wouldn’t have harassed the next female crew coming down for one of the biggest races of their sporting career.
Maybe if we stop whispering behind our hands about the feisty girl’s tantrum or meltdown, we can create the opportunity for women to voice a need for change and we will win medals without the knot of resentment in our throat.
As Heidi Stevens writes: “Maybe, eventually, that won’t be a fire we rush to put out. Maybe, eventually, we’ll let it burn down the old way and make room for the new”.
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