What about the Ice Girls or whatever they’re called? They’re starting to pop up all over the place. There are cheerleaders in more and more games you see as well.

While we’re having a discussion about sexism in hockey (or anywhere for that matter) – just remember that women themselves largely enable this behaviour willingly. Not to blame women per se – but it’s also not right to assume it’s the evil cockocracy that made it this way.

May would argue that girls ‘become’ this way because of social convention and pressures but I think most parents would assure you there’s a natural affinity in girls (like those in boys), and one of those affinities is wanting to be beautiful. Do we tacitly approve this valuation in situations like this show? Of course we do. Is that a problem? I don’t know.

However – if tomorrow, we instituted a ban on all women besides the most oatmeal-plain on TV tomorrow, does anyone think girls will stop beautifying themselves, for men or for themselves? I would wager a lot of money that they would not.

The one thing I’d like to see, in general though, is a little more classiness. Being beautiful, wanting to be beautiful, is always going to remain. It’s the bimbos who add nothing other than their looks or sexual suggestiveness that devalue women. If there are no women presenters who understand hockey and would add value – then don’t add women.

But hey, sex sells, and sales are what it’s about for most people in the end… :P

Maybe it’s our fault as the fans for expecting or wanting the NHL to be ahead of the curve….oh wait, no, no it’s not our fault.

Is it our fault. No. Should we be surprised that a group that is run by men (the NHL/NHLPA) and a sports network, also predominately run by men, is so off the mark in their representation of women in hockey? I’d also say no.

Remember, this is the same league that thought turning every teams jersey pink was a good way to market the game to women.

I would have handed out those jerseys for free

They were personalized, the names for the players were on the back

They were, there were logos of the team on the shoulder.

What were the “Assistant Captains” for, if not to hand out these jerseys?

I suppose so but I would say tendency is going the opposite way

I wouldn’t say Alyonka was being used as a prop. It wasn’t like she was in some unnamed location just rattling off tweets, she is a newbie at TSN who got a chance to show off her skills in a low importance setting while hanging out with some of the best hockey players in the world. I mean would you give a fairly unrecognized reporter the job of hosting the All-Star draft? I wouldn’t no matter what their gender.

I like women. I like the concept of a woman. I like to take that concept and reduce it to an object. Then I take those objects and put them in my videos.

- Reggie Watts The NHL

Considering the lack of any dialogue on the subject outside of a few articles that pop up from time to time it feels like it’ll never happen.

I wonder what it’ll take for it to become the forefront issue in sports.

notice our language here too. The “girls”. Funny how we talk about the “mens” game, but never the “boys.” How is it that for women we’re using the juvenile form? Not that you made this choice deliberately, it’s encoded into our normal speech patterns about these things. But it constantly reinforces some pretty nasty implicit assumptions about who’s serious and who’s not.

(footnote, Sir Alex Ferguson really does talk about his Man United players as “boys” – it’s actually quite jarring when you first here it).

Isn’t his nickname ‘Zoolander’?

Remember, it’s the beautiful princess and the ugly step sister.

You saw some of those tweets right?

it’s not that I think we do value women for little else. it’s that the way we treat women is to imply that we value them for little else. collectively, it’s the “just stand there and look pretty, darlin’” attitude that’s a problem.

Man, you just keep going off as though this that and the other thing were “fact,” and I wonder whether you’ve even got any internal filters on at this point.

For starters, you say stuff like “…women are simply not as strong nor as durable as men.” How about taking five seconds and thinking about that. “Durable” is an interesting word. Are you sure you want to say they’re less durable?

Or your opening quote up top, “men rank women’s beauty consistently both within and across cultures.” Is that a fact? Really? Do you really want to tell me that large versus small breasts, being slim versus plump, tall versus short, is standards across human cultures as well as over time?

And really irritating phrases in response to Naomi Wolf’s book, like “It isn’t.” Or, “In reality, it’s the exact opposite.” There’s just no doubt in your own opinion, is there?

And then, all this ignorant jabber about the “freedom to compete in the marketplace.” #1, I doubt that you have God’s own first clue what a functioning marketplace involves.. the conditions required to create such a marketplace… what marketplace failures look like… the entire ranges of human activity societies have struggled to keep competition out of…. and even, ohhhh, maybe the role of forces beyond competition when it comes to human development.

However. Do go on. Maybe you’d like to send your thoughts on a postcard to Naomi when you’re done here. I’m sure she’ll be as thrilled to hear them as we were.

I think she kinda looks like a pigeon

Did you mean: men are men and women should clean the house

Have you seen Fabio lately?

yes. that’s the problem. the problem is that old bald men AREN’T being treated like sex objects.

Interestingly enough, fat bald men ARE given prominent jobs as TV sports commentators. Can you name any unattractive (or old) female sports personalities?

isn’t the ova added, not just an “a”? For example Bobby Holik has a sister who was a professional tennis player (she actually stood in for him when he was drafted) and her last name is Holikova.

I’ve typed a response to this whole issue now because I want to put my two copper in, but I keep deleting it because it’s very difficult to communicate. That being said, I’m just going to text dump below. If you’re offended, please respond so but try to pose why it is. We’ll learn something from each other perhaps.

The problem is that for those of us who don’t see ourselves as -ist, and I don’t say sexist particularly because this same theme seems to apply over many discriminatory topics that end in -ist, it sometimes feels like we’re being badgered about these issues while wondering what the true solution is ourselves. But, if we don’t necessarily agree with the deceleration of something as a representation of -ist, we become labeled as -ists ourselves.

Let’s try to analyze the problem so we can be sure we’re on the same page: The All-Star event featured mostly men, which is expected because most of the participants are players and it’s a mens-only league. But even shoving them to the side, we most had other men in the forerunning roles. It was, as I recall: James Duthie hosting, Roenick and Jonesy commenting, Pierre interviewing, Liam whatshisname trying to keep Roenick on track. So about five guys. There were only three women involved, 2 of which had the job of “Carry shirts while wearing tight pants” and the other read tweets.

So, by a sheer numbers/function game is there a discrepancy? Yes. But this in and of itself isn’t proof of “Sexism”, what is needed to prove that it show that women are systemically denied opportunities, and I want to focus on that word “Deny”. To me, it’s an active word. It requires someone to be actively seeking to prevent something.

Why that focus? Because the playing field isn’t level and it’s not necessarily sexist that it isn’t. As other posters have pointed out, how many of these folks are ex-players. Of the men, two or 40%. The others included an ex-scout/coach/GM with two stanley cup rings. So they have those connections that women have not traditionally had, simply due to not being able to play directly in the NHL, and prior sexism in that role.

That’s where things get iffy for me. The response usually then, seems to be “We need to do something to remove that gap!” … What precisely? This is where the argument fails, because it requires that people who may not have ever expressed or believe in a concept of an -ism have their options limited to try and fix a gap that, to me, stems from a lack of interested parties. This lack of interest may be due to prior sexism, but forcing the hand doesn’t make us progress, it in my opinion leads to regression.

I’ll give a corollary: There is a a company I’m aware of where people have at times wondered about our lack of racial diversity. One of the reasons for this lack of diversity company-wide is that theirof our locations is in a town in the Central Northern US that’s pretty much of German or Scandinavian descent, and so about as pale as someone who only stops playing NHL 11 long enough to get NHL 12. Simply put, if you hired exactly correlating to the town makeup, it’s 95% homogenous. Yet pressure has been put on to correct that. In response, wisely, they looked at their recruiting and changed to try and make sure their nets were cast as wide as possible.

But will this fix the problem? No, because it would still lead to an imbalance. And it’s an industry where you NEED to be involved long-term to truly understand it and advance within it.

So, you have to work your way up from the bottom, but your pool is limited. By sheer odds, as people make it through the competition to the top and the numbers whittle down, it could get even worse up top. But people still want this “fixed.” What solution is available that doesn’t hurt someone else? Bring in people from outside the company in more diverse areas? Then that limits the spots that can be won internally and leaves people feeling they’re on the outs if they’ve come up locally because that position has to have external fulfillment to ensure balance. Bring in more folks at a ground level? Then you’re utilizing the same active discrimination in hiring.

My point, and I apologize for the rambling and word dump, is that I have to ask how do you fix this problem, given the imbalance of the playing field due to the league itself being male-only for biological incompatibility reasons, without discriminating against individual men? Not the gender as a whole, but the individual? It’s more than difficult.

And to add on to that, you have this tendency to point it out. People like myself question what can be done or if it’s enough of a problem to justify the discrimination necessary to correct it, and some folks (Not saying anyone here, I purposefully didn’t go through ALL of the comments to try and avoid forming a bias, but it’s happened to me many times in my life.) label you as an offender because you don’t agree with the nature of or solution to the problem.

Another corollary to the issue using race, a much more oft-discussed topic in Philly though gender awareness seems to be growing: During my college years we had a discussion on racial equity surrounding banking. The onus was a story where a local bank was going to move it’s branch out of a neighborhood of a particular ethnicity. The neighborhood got an injunction to stop this because it was the only bank around, and they would be otherwise forced to use check cashing locations that charge more interest. This was the inequality, they argued, that other majority ethnic groups had easy access to their pay that didn’t take a chunk of it, whereas they were not only forced to deal with less pay, but they got to keep less of it.

The banks counter-argument? Our policies agree that the fees charged by those check cashing places are predatory, so we can’t charge them. BUT, there are no accounts open there that we can make any money on. If we stay open, we’re going to continue to lose money.

The injunction stood at the time, and I argued on the banks side. Yes, there is an inequality problem, but should that bank and it’s employees be forced to assume the responsibility personally, trading lost wages, lost raises and lost profits to right this wrong? Will that even fix the problem? The response to my argument could be summarized as: There is a problem of inequal resources, but you disagree as to why and the solution, therefore you’re a racist.

That’s why so many people, I feel, are reluctant to address these issues. How are we to stop the “objectification of women” if a PART, not the whole, but a part of that basis of why that happens is simply finding attractive people, well.. attractive? Should Kane have to completely swallow his human emotions and never utter a comment like that? Should the network have to censor a moment of honest human feeling, making these players seem even more Kessel-bot like? Do we have to force people out to put others in to balance the scales, and is that fair to them?

But most of all, anytime these things are argued on a broader scale than a couch or, perhaps, a blog, in other words if I was to pose those same questions in the paragraph above in say a national media address to say “Are we approaching fixing a mutually agreed upon problem the right way?” I would be branded.

THAT, more than anything, has to change before we can fix these issues, because that branding breeds resentment, contempt and causes people to fall back on nastier ways.

nah, I was just messin with ya.