Over at With Leather earlier Friday, Brandon Stroud (full disclosure: my friend) took issue with The Sporting News’ Greg Couch. Here’s the backstory: a week ago, a man was arrested for allegedly stalking Serena Williams. On Thursday, Williams posted this as her Twitter profile image for a brief time before removing it:
Serena Williams Accused Of ‘Hypocrisy’ For... What, Exactly?
And this is what Couch had to say about it:
And just like that, Serena Williams’ sex(y) new Twitter avatar is gone. Gone after maybe half a day, with the old picture of her in a tennis outfit back up. Someone must have gotten to her and suggested something about common sense and hypocrisy.
[...]
It’s a sexy photo, she looks great and it’s not pornographic. To be honest, I would actually find it to be somewhat artistic if it weren’t for the serious business of stalking women. What was her message anyway? What was she trying to say? Just this: Look at me.
Instead, what she was saying was this: Peep at me, but don’t stalk me.
Huh?
There is an enormous difference between viewing a photo of a woman that the woman herself makes available for public consumption, and a woman being stalked. The latter is not consensual. The two are completely different.
As such, there is no “hypocrisy” happening on Williams’ part here. Absolutely none. Couch argues that he is innocent of victim-blaming, but he is employing the same general line of logic often employed in victim-blaming: that if you’re a woman, you’d better watch how you look. If we say that, we are assigning a degree of responsibility, which is not okay.
I’m not out to pillory Couch -- I don’t suspect he’s a monstrous misogynist, I just think he’s using faulty logic -- but I saw enough voices agreeing with him to feel that it was worth bringing up.
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