Defending the Offensive: Female athletes shouldn’t receive more backlash for trash talking than males do

I dribbled the basketball up to the 10-foot tall hoop in our families’ driveway and attempted to sink the basket and salvage myself from a loss to my 12-year old brother. The shot misses though soaring way over the hoop. My brother laughs and shouts: “Brick!” at my horrible shot.

Merciless banter between my brother and I over whose better at basketball or soccer or whose faster are common. And no one ends up crying over the joking insults or posting raging tweets about it.

This family repartee — or ‘trash talk’ as my family likes to call it — is merely a part of friendly competition only meant to make the game more fun, not to hurt anyone’s feelings. From playing basketball in my driveway, to a soccer game, trash talk isn’t unsportsmanlike — it’s the backbone of sports.

All trash talking does is add another competitive layer to the game. It makes players more motivated and creates a connection between opponents. 

While it can be taken too far, getting to the point of being disrespectful and obnoxious (including getting in peoples’ faces or being physical), most of the time trash talk is just meant as friendly competition between opponents merely motivating athletes rather than harming them.

So if everyone trash talks, why do girls end up getting the backlash for it?

Despite the rules being the same for both boys and girls sports, girls get many more dirty looks and whispers when they throw out an aggressive comment. Every time a girl makes a competitive comment, parents in the stands gasp in horror. 

Freshman lacrosse player Emily McShane has noticed this double standard when attending boys and girls lacrosse games. While parents disapprove of girls commenting on other players’ skills it’s treated just as another part of the boys’ games without even a second thought.

Freshmen Rebekah Slaughter, Macy Sims and Molly McDonald who all play volleyball together and constantly throw out quick remarks and insults to each other.

“When you have people that you can brag to or you can make fun out of it,” Slaughter said. “It gives the game a fun perspective.”

In an Instagram poll of 214 votes, 86% of students say that they feel trash talking is a part of sports. Despite the necessity of it, trash talk is being phased out by vague rules about respect and conduct such as: “Be courteous to all” as said in the KSHSAA rule book and even with threat of being benched or carded.

The problem isn’t only at our schools. Louisiana State University player Angel Reese held up her hand pointing to her ring finger, gesturing to Iowa player Caitlin Clark during the women’s NCAA final game. Of course no one could be bothered to recognize the achievement of LSU who had just won the March Madness tournament, no, they were too busy commenting on Reese’s ‘classless’ behavior.

This kind of harmless teasing is seen all of the time during men’s sports yet they receive no comment for it, but Reese is being slammed with negative public attention, while if a man did the same, no one would bat an eye.

My question isn’t, “Why would she ever do that? Wow, that’s so rude and disrespectful.” No, my question is,”Why does anyone care?” The only time trash talk between mens basketball players like Draymond Green and Patrick Beverley would ever make front page news is if it dissolved into a knock down fight. But the instant Reese and Clark try to be the least bit competitive the entire country flips out.

While women’s sports have come a long way from the days of mini skirts and perfect hair, this double standard needs to be changed. The societal rules and expectations that women should always be polite and respectful when playing sports are absurd. 

There is a time and a place for being polite and that is not during an intense basketball game. That is a time to be aggressive and be competitive and have fun and sometimes that means using a little trash talk.