I’m 34 years old. I have two post-graduate degrees. I am an adult with a job and a home and the stack of bills I pay to prove it. Yesterday, I wrote a piece in defense of the UConn women’s basketball team’s historic dominance entitled “Fuck This Shit: No, YOU’RE Boring.”
Then I was lectured like a child.
Readers of this website labeled my work “vulgar,” “vile,” and one commenter advised me to “write like an adult.”
Since A Dime Back’s inception in 2012, we have run dozens off pieces featuring profanity. “Fuck This Shit” even had three previous iterations under my byline where I tackled whatever sports topic I found offensive that day.
Well, I found the responses to my previous column offensive so… fuck this shit.
I can’t help but notice that this piece, one about women’s basketball written by a women, is the first one to garner commentary on the presence of profanity.
I wondered how these people respond to the language of other, far more popular sports websites. Do they feel the need to scold the writers there for their use of swear words? Do they call them vulgar?
Over the past few days, we’ve witnessed the double-standard that accompanies women’s basketball coverage in the media. That double-standard also applies to women who dare to speak their minds on the subject.
It is never appropriate to tell a woman how she should speak. It’s patronizing and condescending, and I have a hard time believing these people would do the same if the writer were a man in his 30s.
As my friend Ally Auriemma says, don’t “police our mouths.” That’s not your place. If you’re not interested in reading stories featuring my byline, don’t.
If, on the other hand, you enjoy reading unique and edgy UConn coverage in the same conversational style in which normal adults speak, look forward to a future edition of Fuck This Shit coming your way soon.
