Over the past few years, I do not think it is ridiculous to say that there has been a surge in the popularity of women’s sports. From Caitlyn Clark and Paige Bueckers leading the WNBA to record highs in revenue, to Trinity Rodman signing a record-setting contract with the NWSL, everywhere you looked, it seemed like you had to take cover from shards of the broken glass ceiling.
This carried over to the 2026 Olympics in Italy, too, with the women on Team USA earning more golds and total medals than the men. Yet, when I open The Athletic (the sports division of the New York Times), the top story is about men? And their misogyny? What is that about?
Yes, if you have been keeping up with the sports world recently, you know that the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team is under fire for laughing at a joke from President Donald Trump at the expense of the women’s team.
“I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team. You do know that…I do believe I probably would be impeached.” Those are the exact words spoken by the leader of the free world to the hockey team in a video from after the match, in reference to bringing the team to the White House. This was followed up with laughter from the team.
Look, if I have to spell out to you why this is problematic, I probably could not convince you it is. This culture of inherent misogyny, and a “women in sport are inherently less” attitude has plagued the sports world forever. Men did not need an entire civil rights law in order to give them a fair playing field in the world of sports (Title IX). Although at this point I am not surprised at anything the President does, for him and the male athletes to put the women down while they are at the top of the world is shameful. Now, the team has the audacity to portray themselves as the victims.
“People are so negative out there, and they are trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing,” Jack Hughes, a player on the men’s team, told reporters outside a Miami nightclub late Monday night (via The Athletic).
The general public is not making something out of nothing; the general public is finally calling the “boys club” out on their anti-women rhetoric, and they are upset they cannot make fun of women anymore. Gosh, is there anything woke has not ruined? Now, of course, nothing will come of this, because the NHL is not going to do anything to their star players, and if anything else the President has done has not moved the needle, this certainly will not.
But this needs to be a wake-up call for everyone who is not a misogynist. When people still make fun of women’s sports like they are some joke, and that becomes normalized (“Wow. The ratings will be…unimaginably low,” wrote a comment on an article about ESPN’s new women’s sports programming), that is an issue. Even at Floyd Central, our girls’ basketball team has had a better record than the boys’ team the past three years, and even made it to semi-state this year, yet the student section was a ghost town for nearly all their games.
The idea that women’s sports are just something to gloss over is not right, and this hockey situation is a prime example of why that misogynistic culture is still alive and being perpetrated throughout all levels of sports, even with male athletes.