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.