"I Hope Your Boyfriend Beats You": Men Read the 'Mean' Tweets Sent to Female Sportswriters
Online, Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro are punished 24 hours a day, seven days a week for an unforgivable offense-writing about sports while being female. For these sins, egg-headed Twitter users like to fill their mentions with threats of sexual assault, graphic harassment, and bodily harm.
As Jezebel reports, DiCaro is an anchor on 670 The Score, a Chicago sports radio station, and contributes to several online sports outlets. Spain writes for espnW and regularly appears on SportsCenter and ESPN radio. Both have covered allegations of sexual assault and rape in sports, for which they've received threats like this one:
"Hopefully this skank Julie DiCaro is Bill Cosby's next victim. That would be classic." or "I hope you get raped again," which someone tweeted at DiCaro, who is a rape survivor.
Collaborating with the podcast Just Not Sports, the women produced a video in which everyday men were invited to participate in a riff on "Mean Tweets" about local reporters. Instead, DiCaro and Spain had them read out loud just a fraction of the comments they get online.
"This is why we don't hire any females unless we need, um," a participant recites, pausing. "Unless we need our c**** sucked or our food cooked."
When someone has to tell Spain that he hopes "your boyfriend beats you," he hastily apologizes. Others shift in their seats, clearly distressed.
DiCaro and Spain have launched the hashtag #MoreThanMean to draw attention to the abuse and hope the action will force Twitter to take issues of harassment on the platform more seriously.
"I get told all the time that 'Twitter isn't real life,'" DiCaro told Jezebel. "But it IS real life. It's MY life, specifically. And when people fire this shit off without thinking about it for more than a second, they affect MY LIFE."
So, yes, the video is upsetting and horrifying. Which is exactly why we all need to watch it, start to finish. The hopeful news is all is not lost. As DiCaro pointed out, the men in this video are evidently and clearly good. We need more of 'em.
