As England and much of Europe swelters through a heatwave, female (but not male) tennis players at Wimbledon have been allowed to take ten minute heat breaks between the second and third sets. The only criterion that must be met for women competitors to receive this break is that the Heat Stress Index, an adjusted balance of air temperature, humidity and surface temperature, must be above 30.1°C (86.18°F).
This is despite male and female players receiving equal pay and men having to play best-of-five set matches, rather than the best-of-three set format of the women’s game. More paradoxically, boys playing the Junior Wimbledon Championship must soldier on in the heat, yet the adult women and Junior Girls Championship participants are favored by the rule.
Many of you will be familiar with one of my first ROK articles, which criticized the lunacy of “equal” pay for female tennis players. Equal pay means competing in the same field, not constructing your own so that you get massive financial rewards you otherwise would not.
Like I said back then, it’s analogous to creating an equally paid extra NBA for short people, or a sister NFL competition for the skinniest men unable to go the distance with normal, burly football players. The sexist heat rule debacle at Wimbledon is simply adding more butter to the bread of why female sports in general have a gross sense of entitlement, all whilst seething for so-called “equality.”
The heat rule not only privileges women, it’s contextually ridiculous
If Serena Williams wants equality, she can earn it by playing five sets, without the chance for heat breaks and against men like Novak Djokovic!
As The Daily Mail points out, at the 2014 Australian Open temperatures went above 40°C (104°F) for four days straight. The difference between 30.1°C (86.18°F) and 40°C+ (104°F+) is gargantuan. Both Wimbledon and the Australian Open are held during Britain and Australia’s respective summers, and the heat rule for Wimbledon can be applied by female players at a temperature that is below the middle-of-the-day average for the Australian Open.
What’s more is that many of the highly ranked tournaments around the world, including a number in the US, occur in very hot or humid climates.
The excellent British Times journalist Matthew Syed, whose crisp analysis in another article I used for my earlier tennis equal pay ROK piece, makes a compelling argument against this “We’re special princesses!” hypocrisy:
Why do female players acquiesce in this sexism?
They have been vocal in calling for equal prize money, equal status, equal everything. But when it comes to playing over five sets, rather than three, what you might call equality of effort, something that these lithe and impressive athletes are perfectly capable of doing, everything seems to change.
When men, in tennis or beyond it, don’t give women “equality,” it’s sexism. That equality includes giving the same rewards for on average inferior skill and work, such as entry and promotion in the military, pay and recognition for sports, and the use of (female) gender quotas on business boards.
But when women claw invariable privileges that butcher the notion of theoretical equality, there’s usually no accompanying compunction for any of them to speak out against it, let alone forfeit their special treatment.
Oh wait, Maria Sharapova says the rule isn’t unfair
Do people watch Maria because her skills are on par with Federer (or the Men’s World Number 200) or because of continual feminist “equality” propaganda and her body?
Exhibiting perfectly how entitled females can dismiss any form of privilege they receive as nothing, Maria Sharapova brushed aside the gender unevenness of the rule:
I think if it’s something that they’re concerned about it, they can re-evaluate. If it does get quite hot for us, we’re able to use it, then why not?
This is the same woman who has raised so-called sexism against female players innumerable times, even as she says nothing about having to play fewer sets than the men at notoriously hot tournaments like the Australian Open. Or about the artificial conception of her being paid the same as a man for winning a Grand Slam, as if her performance and spectacle were somehow equal to his. Caroline Wozniacki and Serena Williams also opined this week that the organizers were encouraging sexism by having more featured men’s matches on Center Court.
To argue that they deserve more airtime, women’s players have to, like Sharapova, mentally crowd out the litany of ways in which they are privileged over the men. Only then can they “coherently” lambast the powers that be, who are actually those that allow them to gain special treatment in the first place.
As people, overwhelmingly men, across the United Kingdom are forced to work strenuous jobs in the midst of this heatwave, including as removalists, postmen, builders, laborers, roof tilers, and truck drivers in boiling vehicles, well-paid female athletes like Sharapova are being pampered in the pursuit of millions in prize money.
Play the men under the same conditions or get out
Who will save the wee tennis women from themselves and their heat-ravaged bodies?!
The perennial whinging of female athletes and others who demand that we bend over backwards to accommodate their queen-sized expectations is only expanding. Before too long, feminists will be arguing that guidelines or laws should be instituted so that women’s sport is guaranteed 50% of the airtime on television and minimum expected coverage in newspapers and other print or online media. After the SJWs have performed their legislative or similar magic, sportswomen will still be the recipients of skewed rules that make their lives much easier relative to the men.
Whereas some people see sport as a distraction not reflective of society, I take the opposite view. By seeing female athletes bellowing for substantial privileges, the average woman is actually “inspired” to insist on her own form of these privileges, whether at work, in the state support she expects for being a mother, or the way she extracts material and other benefits from the men she interacts with.
To rephrase a famous line: if you can’t stand the heat girls, get off the tennis court.
Read More: What Women’s Tennis Says About “Equal” Pay
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