Men’s Health recently published a small article entitled “The Secret to Talking Sports with Any Woman”. If you’d like to read it, search for it because I refuse to give it any more visibility.
As the title suggests, the article tries to give men advice on talking sports with women.
What I have a hard time understanding is why, in 2014, would anyone suggest for ANY reason that men treat women differently. And let’s not even talk about the fact that this suggestion was made by a woman.
"They need story lines."
Yes, of course there are women who don’t care about statistics. But I know men like that as well. You know what they have in common? They’re not sports fans who like statistics, and guess what? THAT’S OK.
Want to know the REAL secret to talking sports with women? If your significant other isn’t a stats fan and doesn’t share your passion the same way, or at all, how about you get to know them enough in order to find out what their passion is?
Both men and women would be much more appreciative of their partners’ effort to understand them better than some half-hearted attempt to have a self-serving discussion about their “love of the game”.
That’s another thing. Fans who “love the game” aren’t really all that hung up on statistics anyway.
Were Red Sox fans happier that they beat someone after being down 3-0 in a series, losing game 3 by a score of 19-8? Or were they happier to defeat their nemesis, the New York Yankees, on their way to a World Series victory?
Ask any fan of the San Francisco 49ers if they remember how many yards Joe Montana passed for in Superbowl XVI. Most will remember “The Catch”.
Even better, does anyone remember how many points Pittsburgh Penguins’ star Mario Lemieux won the scoring title by in 1992-93? Doubtful, but everyone remembers that he won it despite taking several weeks off to undergo cancer treatments for Hodgkin’s disease.
"Treat your heroes as people and not just players on a field, and you’ll suck her in."
The reason we love sports, and especially hockey, is because of the drama and unpredictability. Because of the characters and their storylines. Sometimes, stats help tell a story. But most of the time they’re a secondary headline easily forgotten as the years go by.
So why should we imply that men treat women differently than other sports fans?
It’s time we demanded more from publications like Men’s Health. If they really wanted to help men live “healthier”, they would give them advice on how to eliminate the sort of macho, sexist attitudes that have turned some women off of the sports that we love.
I say let’s have enough respect for their intelligence to let them decide what they want to follow, and more importantly why. If they enjoy the same sports we do, it’s likely that it’ll be for the same reasons anyway.
If we truly want to build a more compassionate and caring world, let’s start seeing everyone as equals and stop finding reasons to treat people differently. Let’s accept that some people will not like what we like, will not pray when we pray and will not cheer when we cheer.
Tolerance isn’t good enough anymore. Let’s demand acceptance.