Don't Call Me a "Woman Sports Journalist"

By Soraya McDonald
Black College Wire

I am not a "woman sports journalist." I loathe being described that way. I'm a sports journalist. That's it. My vagina does not precede my job title.

Photo credit: Atlanta Falcons "... he was sort of a throwback Mike Vick."

I didn't want to write this particular column because I felt the subject was clich�d, and that I would be giving importance to something that has no business being an issue. But the sad truth is that it is an issue, and three weeks into the school year, one that has become unavoidable for me.

When people ask me about my career aspirations, I tell them that I have a fierce love of football, and that I'm a sportswriter. After voicing the way I plan to spend a good majority of my life earning money, I generally receive two responses.

The misogynist male response is filled with amusement and dismissal: "Oh really? What do you know about football? You just want to be in the locker room, don't you?"

Yeeaaah, that's what it is.

I'm never sure how to address that comment or the ignorance that surrounds it. I'm not John Madden, but I have confidence in my ability to analyze a football game; I've been watching ever since I was 3 years old. Some people sing; others prefer to spend their lives doing research in quantum physics. Since I can't play, I write about football.

As for the post-game locker room, do all women who cover sports somehow become oversexed fiends? It amazes me that some men think women are shallow enough to spend three hours taking game notes for a few minutes in a sweat-funky room filled with loud, obnoxious men, just to sneak a peek at their unmentionables.

The same woman could just as easily purchase a subscription to Playgirl and save herself the odor and the 500-word article due at the end of the game.

Then there is the prissy female response, marked by a perplexed expression and a noticeable absence of words: "Oh. You like football? Why? It's the cute guys, right?"

"I didn't grow up loving Randall Cunningham because I thought he was cute..."

I didn't grow up loving Randall Cunningham because I thought he was cute. Cunningham, who spent 16 seasons in the NFL, was my idol because he was an immensely talented quarterback, sort of a throwback Mike Vick, if you will.

Devoid of sons, my father decided that that wasn't going to stop him from having fun. He taught my sister and me how to play well. My father keeps a football in the trunk of his car to this day. Whenever we stopped somewhere on a road trip growing up, he used to take out the football, and we would launch passes to each other across whatever parking lot we happened to be at, ignoring wide-eyed admiration or frowns of passers-by.

My point is this: It's about time that we become less gender-specific and more open-minded. Create a new paradigm.

I love my job, and my passion for it has nothing to do with my gender. It has to do with the triumph I feel when I know that I've just created a bangin' page layout, or the little sting I feel each time I look down from a press box wishing I could be on the field playing. As a journalist, I get to meet incredible people -- not just athletes and coaches, but other writers whose skills I hope one day to possess.

Being a journalist, sports or otherwise, makes you see the world from an entirely different perspective. When you have the privilege, and you gain people's trust, you also understand.

Label me if you must, but at least don't leave anything out. I am Soraya McDonald, the "black-Dutch-Suriname-Jewish-woman sportswriter."

Just know that I prefer "sportswriter."

Soraya McDonald is a student at Howard University who writes for The Hilltop.

Posted Sept. 17, 2003