College football fans show their ignorance and misogyny on Twitter

With their ad hominem attacks on Beth Mowins during the Auburn-Texas A&M game, football fans demonstrated abject misogyny all over Twitter on Saturday.

On Saturday, Beth Mowins was assigned play-by-play duties for Auburn‘s trip to Texas A&M. College football fans immediately took to Twitter to rail against the choice. Few, if any, of the attacks offered any substantive critiques. Instead, the bulk of the tweets against Mowins did nothing more than rant about her voice.

Apparently some people can’t tolerate a female voice on their college football broadcasts. Many insinuated that her voice is a put-on rather than her natural speaking voice, implying that a woman must fake her way into the broadcast booth.

Some even went so far as to inveigh her intelligence.

You would think the end of the world was nigh, the way that some fans can’t seem to handle a woman doing play-by-play. In many cases, her appointment to the broadcast booth is played off as nothing more than a political stunt.

At the root of it all is the simple fact that some (mostly) men cannot stomach women getting opportunities beyond serving as sideline eye candy. The attacks offer nothing more to back up their claims than personal opinion. And that opinion helps reveal the ignorance and misogyny that continue to pervade college football fan bases.

The insinuation that Mowins is somehow less informed than other commentators has no basis in reality. None of the misogynistic comments on Twitter offered any substantiation for their claims about incorrect or incomplete play calling.

Instead, it brought a bevy of “sorry, not sorry” sexism writ large. None were more glaring than this commenter, who tried to preface the sexism by saying it wasn’t sexism — then made two incredibly sexist comments in 140 characters.

Merely saying that something isn’t sexist doesn’t write off the sexism, and the misogyny was dripping throughout Twitter this morning. The novelty of a woman calling a football game has brought detractors out of the woodwork, inclined to attack that which is unfamiliar simply because it is unfamiliar.

And instead of offering any semblance of legitimate critique, they instead veer toward ad hominem attacks in an attempt to belittle and cut down Mowins. But this line of reasoning says far more about the lingering misogyny among football fans than it does about Mowins herself.

Thankfully, not everyone was inclined to drift toward public displays of sexism. The criticism of Mowins was disproportionately proffered by men, while many women seemed to enjoy hearing a female voice on the air for a change.

https://twitter.com/jacbryan5455/status/926842570675802114

https://twitter.com/braves_fan8/status/926842619929473025

And, thankfully, not all men were inclined to drift toward misogynistic undertones and overtones in their comments.

If you have a legitimate critique, by all means provide it. Twitter is always a tough venue to voice displeasure, given the abbreviated nature of the system. But when your sexism, ignorance, and misogyny comes out loud and clear even in short 140-character bursts, you should probably rethink your own priorities in life.

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There are always plenty of football games throughout each time slot on Saturdays. And if you’re going to mute your television, you should probably also mute your fingertips from speaking out on social media lest you reveal your own latent prejudices loud and clear.