FINALLY, Men’s Health tells us how to talk about sports with women

I really thought that at some point, the Girls Guide to “fill in the condescending blank here” would come to an end. It’s a tired and cliched point. However, Men’s Health posted something yesterday about “the secret to talking sports with any woman” in what was clearly a click-bait post.

Men’s Health would go on to delete the article and the tweet promoting it, but here’s a screengrab that we saved of it:

The whole “in case you hadn’t noticed” bit that implies it is such a problem that some women don’t like sports bothers me. The whole “women are foreign species” when it comes to sports bothers me even more. The issue here is the generalization that women are not interested in sports and care more about human interest stories than stats.

I am not alone in my outrage, based on the latest tweets from Men’s Health as they apologized for the article (if you can even call it that):

Apologies for our “talk sports with her” story. It missed the mark and the negative feedback is justified. We've deleted it. [part 1]

— Men's Health Mag (@MensHealthMag) October 7, 2014

It wasn’t meant to suggest that women are in any way inferior to men, in sports, or anything else. But … we’re sorry that it did. [part 2]

— Men's Health Mag (@MensHealthMag) October 7, 2014

It is baffling to me that insensitive articles and/or blogs like this keep surfacing. They usually cause enough turmoil to require a retraction, and yet we’re stuck dealing with the same thing a short time later.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write the Girls Guide to Dealing with Girls Guides.