Is it me or are feminists getting crazier by the day?

Via Feministing:

My mornings begin with ESPN. There have been a handful of mornings when I don’t tune in — and those mornings have led to days that have ended poorly. My habitual and somewhat religious commitment to ESPN mornings isn’t so much definitive — it just kind of is.

Increasingly frequently while watching, I’m plagued with a rather disturbing thought. I do my best to squash it and am quickly swept up by the top plays of the day. I’ll do almost anything to avoid the question, because it’s terrifying: is it ethical to watch sports? Is it feminist to watch sports?

I don’t want to ask because I don’t want to deal with the answers. I am a sports fan, so what am I supposed to do with myself and my deep love for ball if watching sports is a moral misstep?

I’ve been avoiding this question for most of my life, and writing about the transformative power of sports since I learned to type. Sports can be transformative for society at large. They tend to do better around issues of race than gender. And there’s work to do around homophobia as well — but it’s work that is slowly, slowly happening.

But are sports in and of themselves a societal good? In other words — are they worth having?

Freud would probably say watching sports is necessary to give everyday non-athletes the opportunity to channel their aggression into something that doesn’t cause them or those they love any harm (not the case for the athlete/gladiators we watch, alas). Sports allow us to live in cities and yell at TV screens instead of starting fights in the street, or so that line of thinking goes.

Then there’s the matter of representation. There’s the increased blood flow to my heart when my dad’s eyes well up when he talks about being a teenager and seeing the first ever all black starting five at Texas Western. Sports matter a lot to me as a black woman. The role models of mine that looked like me on TV were WNBA players. Sheryl Swoops quite literally taught me to play the boys on the playground like they were punks (and I scored 11 points in 3 minutes of playing time — just saying).