Losing My Perspicacity May 10, 2024

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I’m just back from a week in San Diego, where I spent a good amount of time on the beach with my nose stuffed in a book and a Mai Tai in my hand, which is why I still have that particular cocktail on the brain. Five stars, highly recommend, no notes. I would be lying if I said I was “happy” to be back, but here I am anyway and, to be fair, I did miss my dogs. By the way, what are you guys reading these days? I’ve run through most of my Kindle, and I’m always looking for something new and interesting.

Let’s get into today’s news, where I want to know what the WTA is doing to pressure Saudi Arabia on women’s rights, the NHL’s new Utah team needs a name, Sally Jenkins makes me feel seen, and Houston lets down sexual assault survivors in a big way. Here we go:

Women’s sports should be saying ‘no’ to Saudi Arabia

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re undoubtedly aware of Saudia Arabia’s attempt to “sportswash” its way into the good graces of Westerners, seeking to improve its reputation on the world stage by investing heavily in sports leagues and events. I initially thought the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — which the CIA laid firmly at the feet of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman — would be enough to put pro sports off of the Saudis for good, but golfers flocking to take LIV’s blood money quickly proved me wrong. And if you haven’t seen the 2021 documentary The Dissident about Khashoggi’s murder, I can’t recommend it enough.

WWE, of course, has been holding shows in Saudi Arabia since 2014 as part of Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom’s social and economic “reform” program, though “reform” seems like a pretty generous term for what’s happening there. For the first several years, women wrestlers were not allowed to compete, and women weren’t allowed in the audience until 2018.

In 2019, WWE’s Crown Jewel had its first-ever women’s match, which featured Natalya and Lacey Evans, on the condition that they were covered from head to toe, resulting in long t-shirts over body suits that hid their bodies from their necks on down. These kinds of things are always hailed as huge steps for women, but it’s difficult for me to see women being told they have to conceal their bodies as progress.

It became clear pretty quickly after the mass defection to LIV that murdering a dissident journalist wasn’t a deal breaker for many in the sports world, but surely women’s pro sports wouldn’t consider holding events in Saudi Arabia, whose record on women’s rights Amnesty International has described as “abysmal.” Right? RIGHT?

If you aren’t up to speed on how women are restricted in Saudi Arabia, here’s a quick primer from Amnesty International. 

In 2023, FIFA was forced to reverse course, following a backlash from players, after the federation agreed to a Visit Saudi sponsorship for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Even so, Saudi Arabia has expressed strong interest in hosting the women’s 2035 tournament, and it’s difficult to imagine FIFA saying no to all that money indefinitely, especially as only seven of the 37 members of the FIFA Council are women. Funny, that.

Then, in April, the Women’s Tennis Association chose Riyadh to host the WTA Finals from 2024 to 2026. That possibly inspired tennis greats Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert to write an Op-Ed in the Washington Post trying to head off a partnership between the WTA and the Saudis:

That’s what I was thinking about this week when I learned that Saudi Arabia had sentenced 29-year-old fitness instructor Manahel al-Otaibi to 11 years in prison for her feminist advocacy and her clothing. al-Otaibi was sentenced during a “secret hearing” before the Kingdom’s Specialized Criminal Court in early January, but the decision was only revealed to the public on April 30, following a request for information about her confinement from the United Nations. Saudi authorities have called al-Otaibi’s actions “terrorist offenses.”

Both Amnesty International and the London-based Saudi rights organization ALQST have called for al-Otaibi’s immediate release:

al-Otaibi was reportedly “disappeared” by the Saudi government from November of 2023 to April of 2024, physically and psychologically abused following her arrest, and told her family she suffered a broken leg and is being held in solitary confinement. According to Amnesty International, al-Otaibi’s arrest comes at a time when Saudi officials are cracking down on free expression both online and on the streets, particularly among women:

Moreover, in an attempt to lure more women’s sporting events to the Kingdom, the Saudis have made a lot of noise about relaxing the dress code for female tourists, but those “relaxed” rules don’t apply to the women who are Saudi residents. The Kingdom tried to declare “feminism” to be “extremist thinking” in 2019, but was eventually forced to back down on that claim and publicly clarify that feminism was not a crime. It’s as if Saudi officials keep saying the quiet part out loud, then have to scurry to say, “That’s not what we meant!” whenever the rest of the world raises its eyebrows. It’s clear that’s exactly what they meant.

While no one can deny that funding has always been a major problem for women’s pro sports, and it goes without saying that the Saudis have lots of money that they’re willing to throw at any sports league that will take it, shouldn’t there be a line somewhere that women’s sports refuse to cross? After all, the WTA is the organization that pulled its events out of China after the disappearance of Peng Shuai in 2021. Do the women being harmed have to be famous pro athletes in order for the WTA to care? Is women being imprisoned for expressing dissatisfaction with misogynist Saudi laws not enough? Is the WTA really going to bring dozens of women to Riyadh and put on a tennis tournament while the women who actually live and work in the Kingdom are being tossed into prison as terrorists for expressing feminist views? Where is the line if that’s not it?

I contacted the WTA for comment, but as of the time this newsletter was published, I had not heard back. If the organization does respond, I’ll update this section online with their statement.

Over the past few years, we’ve heard a lot about the rise of women’s sports fans, their buying power, and their influence. This seems like a good time for fans of women’s pro sports, and especially fans of women’s tennis, to make a lot of noise.

You can add your name to Amnesty International’s call for the Saudis to release al-Otaibi and others here.

On a lighter note…

Utah’s NHL expansion team is officially looking for a name, and there’s an online poll where fans can vote. You can click through the link below to see all the names.

The initial list is 20 teams long, and fans are encouraged to vote for four teams in this first round of voting, which ends May 22. Some of the suggestions (Utah Hive, Utah Swarm — are bees a big thing in Utah? — Utah Blast, Utah Ice, Utah HC(?)) are pretty bland. (Aren’t we trying to live up to a name like the Seattle Kraken?) But some of the others are actually pretty good — Utah Freeze, Utah Black Diamonds, Utah Squall, and my personal favorite: The Utah Yeti. Wouldn’t you love to go to a Yeti-Kraken game? Which mythical beast would prevail at hockey? The one from the ocean (meh) or the one that purportedly lives in snow and ice? “Sasquatch” is also a word that used to get tossed around a bit in describing the old-timey enforcers, so the name not only has ties to Utah, it has ties to hockey!

Anyone can vote in this thing (though you do have to give a name and email), so even if you don’t like the NHL, you should feel free to cast a few ballots in favor of creativity and good team names.

Sally Jenkins nails it, as usual

I only briefly touched on the Netflix Roast of Tom Brady here, but after several days of thinking about it, I wanted to take a minute to expand on my thoughts. I didn’t watch much of it, but I did catch a lot of clips that were being shared online. What struck me was how a) lame and b) sexist many of the jokes were, and what was supposed to be a rost of Tom too often wound up sounding like a roast of Brady’s ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen or the mother of his first child, Bridget Moynahan. I think it’s worth pointing out that, of all the slut-shaming the roasters did of the mothers of Brady’s children, the only person Brady jumped up to defend was Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

But have no fear, Sally Jenkins was all over it at WaPo:

I find Tom Brady to be inherently unlikeable, partly because of his purchase of a yacht shortly after he got a million-dollar PPP loan during COVID, partly because of his enabling of Antonio Brown, and partly because I have never understood the hero worship he inspires in grown men, including those in the media. And I felt like Jenkins was seeing into my soul on this one:

And shots at the women in his life, who he did nothing to defend.

While I’ve already been accused of being “a miserable person” who “wouldn’t know a joke if it slapped me across the face” by a contingent of extremely online men, I'm glad I wasn’t alone in finding the whole thing extremely off-putting. And while there are plenty of of-color (and sometimes even sexist) jokes that I will laugh my ass off at, the Roast jokes were just juvenile and distinctly unfunny.

Tom Brady strikes me as the kind of guy who would throw all the women in his life under the bus if it meant another Super Bowl ring. Tell me some more about what a great "#GirlDad he is.

Houston, we have a huge problem

I don’t think there’s been a story written about sexual assault in the last 20 years that hasn’t resulted in someone asking “Why didn’t she/he go to the police?” We’ve gotten to the point where going to the police is seen as the first hurdle in a woman’s proving that she was, really, sexually assaulted, no matter what harm the police do, and without regard for a victim’s trauma.

As I’ve written about in this newsletter before, Olivia Benson is the fantasy projection of the cop who handles your sexual assault case, not the reality of the police presence victims actually get. After all, Houston has a Special Victims Unit, too. Imagine how it feels to have survived a sexual assault, named your assailant (most rapes are perpetrated between people who know each other), lived through re-telling the story of your trauma over and over and over, only to have the police toss your case into a pile and let it languish there. But that’s exactly what the Houston Police did.

Here’s what one of the victims said about the process:

This is why women don’t go to the police. This is what rape culture looks like.

By the way, the Houston Police Chief who presided over this mess (nearly 250,000 active criminal cases were “suspended” and assigned a “lack of personnel” code) retired abruptly on Tuesday. Ya think?

Have a great Friday and a great weekend, and if you like the newsletter, please tell a friend! If you want to get LMP in your inbox every morning, you can upgrade to a paid subscription below. See you all on Monday.