Pedram “Peddy PPI” RahmanianSpeech 7; Intercultural Communications

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Gladiators, Gazelles, and Groupies Summery

The article Gladiators, Gazelles, and Groupies, Basketball Love and Loathing, by

JULIANNE MALVEAUX, different issues have been raised, about the success between

men and women, especially within African Americans, in the American society! These

issues encompass sports, women’s sexuality and politics.

The author speaks about her feminist view, professional basketball and the way it

reinforces gender stereotypes… “Men play, women watch. Men at the center, women at

the periphery… Men making millions, women scheming to get to some of the millions

through their sex and sexuality.” There are those exceptional women, also, who have

made it to the professional level of the sport. But as stated, ” Broader access to quality

education must be a societal mandate; encouraging young African American men to

focus on higher education is critical to our nation’s fullest development.” The very

violent speech to pump up the players during practice may have been a reason Latrell

Sprewell choked one of his coaches. But also in Values of the Game, former New Jersey

senator and 2000 presidential candidate Bill Bradley describes the game as one of

passion, discipline, selflessness, respect, perspective, courage, and other virtues.

Michael Jordan, for example, passed on the opportunity to make a real difference

in the 1990 North Carolina Senate race between the former Charlotte mayor and

Democratic candidate, the African American architect Harvey Gantt, and the ultra

conservative and racially manipulative Republican senator Jesse Helms, preferring to

save his endorsements for Nike. “Women might possess the dynamic athleticism of the

tennis-playing Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, or she might have the ethereal beauty

of a Halle Berry. In either case, her product identification would solely be connected with

“women’s” products—hair, beauty, and women’s sports items. The commercial heavy

lifting has been left to the big boys, or to one big boy in particular, Michael Jordan.” But

women sports don’t have as many fans as men sports… and “Women? Always seen,

never heard.” There is little that women can do, in the realm of sport, capitalism, and

imagery, to gain the same access that men have.

While women should not, perhaps, ask men to walk away from arenas in which

they can dominate, they must ask themselves why there is no equivalent space for them;

why the basketball tenet that men play, women watch, reverberates in so many other

sectors of our society.