The Sporting Life

November 1990
Musings 1991

When the above news item [article, “Club pays hookers to entertain refs”] appeared in the Tampa Tribune, Oct. 31, 1990, my somewhat uncouth mind generated a few idle questions and cynical musings:

[Quoted from article:] “You have to look after your guests properly.” Properly? Improperly is more to the point, is it not?

A Henny Youngman one-liner: “A playgirl is a girl that’s game – everybody’s.”

This item gives wider meaning to “sports”, does it not? The connection is not new, but seldom so publicly acknowledged.

Will not every soccer referee have a suspicious wife? She may socc him.

When the marching band parades on the football field at the half, will part of the brass section be replaced by strumpets?

Are we going to be a bit embarrassed to use such familiar words in sports as tailback, relief pitcher, safeties, split end, bullpen, clipping, touchback, welcome to the pros, putting the story to bed?

[Quoted from article:] “[It] happens everywhere”: Are there referees who have been blackmailed into “bad” calls because they were filmed on a “good” night with a call girl?

Ala Aesop, the moral is don’t bet on sports events unless you have an inside tip on who was the designated hitter (the night before).

Quite aside from such trifling comments, did it ever occur to you that the prostitute is blamed, but not the customer? One reads of many prostitutes being arrested, but how often is her customer nabbed by the law? Once in a while, but infrequently, in a raid on a brothel the customer's names are published. But when are they jailed or fined? I give you an iron law of cause and effect – if there were no customers, there would be no prostitutes.

There have always been prostitutes; there have always been customers. Whether one attributes prostitution to inescapable, rascally biological male impulses, or some inevitable social or cultural condition, why blame the woman who sells, more than the man who buys? But society does blame the woman. Why? You may think of more and sounder reasons and causes, but consider (historically and currently):

Law-givers and law-enforcers have been male.
Moral exhorters and moral condemners (clergy, mostly) have been male.
History has been written by males.
Power has been wielded by males – church, state, home, occupation, media.
Women have been considered subordinate creatures in law and government. Do you not consider it both astonishing and revealing that in this U.S.A., “land of the free,” women had no vote until 1920, a year in the lifetime of many of us?

Things are changing – “You’ve come a long way, baby.” But the very phrasing of that condescending cliche indicates there’s a much longer distance to go.

So don’t come to me cursing a hooker unless you are equally profane about the buyer of her body and her dignity.