Words Are No Longer Enough. The Sports Industry Needs To Act.

I could not sleep a wink Friday night.

If you think this is emotional, it is. I am angry and disheartened. It is difficult to accept that the industry you work for, does not care about you. Even though this does not apply to the organization that I work for, I am not isolated from this issue in our broader industry.

Not being a CIS Gender male* in this industry is a battle. I learned this on my first day in the industry. I had a couple of interesting encounters even before I had an email address. Thankfully I met a lot more good people on that day, including the male CEO and COO. I learned a lot from both, I respect them tremendously, and look up to them to this day.

Within my first 2 weeks, and after attending a social gathering (with mostly people whom I didn’t work with directly), I decided to not participate in most outings from that point forward. I made really good friends with several of my peers, female and male, and we would frequently socialize, but I’d avoid “networking” with more senior people…senior men…within the organization. This definitely had an impact on how I was perceived within certain groups: not friendly. I was not going to put myself in an uncomfortable situation, so that some guy that I did not respect anyway would think I am friendly.

The problem is that the people you don’t respect, sometimes have power.

I don’t have the horror stories that many women have, the worse that happened to me was to get my a** grabbed at a holiday party. There are women in this industry who are sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, and have to put up with many degrading experiences just to keep their livelihood. I know women who were told that they can’t be in a certain role, because they are women. ?We have been called “distractions” on live TV, “skirts” and much worse. The harassment women in sports media face is on display on social media. We are supposed to smile, have an attitude that men don’t find “Intimidating”, dress a certain way, have a certain look, fend off harassment AND do our jobs. There are many women who leave this industry every year because of their experience and we are worse off for it.

Most days, I would tell you that things are better now. We now have female team presidents, executives and employees, and we are trying to hire a more diverse set of candidates in the industry. Teams, leagues and other sport organizations will tell you that this is a focus. Yet I look around and see players with history of domestic violence getting hired by a new team, teams that are not willing to temporarily suspend a player accused of the most horrendous sexual assault case (until the league stepped in), new coaches getting hired with a history of domestic violence, an alternate Olympian who is facing sexual misconduct accusations still making it to the Olympics despite his team's protest (he is just being kept separate from the rest of the team), and a player with a sex crime on his record getting drafted.

We can say whatever we want, form as many committees as we want, and issue as many statements as we can, give awards and hold events and discussions till we are blue in the face. But our actions is what matters. How do we expect to attract more women to this industry and retain them once they get here, when we frequently send the message that their harassment and violence against them does not matter?

I am tired of all the talk. “As a father and a brother”, “girl dad”, “empowering women”, and all the rest. We do not need to be empowered, we need to be respected and treated equally. We need to be listened to, we need to know that we have value, that we are important and that our safety matters. Just because you, another man, is buddy with a guy and think he is a good guy, or that he has a daughter, does not mean YOU understand our experience. Even when you are an ally.

Accountability is not a half-hearted apology, it is not statements with no change in behavior, it is not committees and meetings. We need to change our behavior as an industry, and it can’t just be up to the women in the industry, it can’t be just my organization, or a few teams and companies.

It needs to be every single one of us. And it needs to start now!

* Important to note that my experience is as a CIS gender female. It’s what I know, I also know that the experience of other genders is worse.