I am notoriously not a sports fan. I liked track as a kid, but I hated competition. But as I got older, my interest in representations of Black women in the media, particularly our experiences with misogynoir, made my disinterest in sports untenable. Misogynoir is a portmanteau I coined that describes the anti-Black, racist misogyny experienced by Black women and people read as Black women.

My first published scholarly engagement with misogynoir was around the outrageous treatment of South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya when she was punished by the International Amateur Athletic Federation for having natural testosterone levels that athletic officials deemed too high for a woman in her sport. Semenya’s media malignment; Serena Williams’ unfortunately necessary self-advocacy during childbirth (and both sisters’ entire tennis careers); and more recently Angel Reese’s disproportionate disciplining for using the same hand gesture her white opponent had made earlier in the same National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, are just a few examples of the way misogynoir runs rampant in sports.

The continued vitriol directed at WNBA star Brittney Griner following her unjustified 10-month detention in Russia for trace amounts of hashish oil found in her luggage remains top of mind to me. While it was refreshing to see Griner and her wife Cherelle Griner step out on the Met Gala’s red carpet in custom Calvin Klein earlier this month, I could not help but remember counting the days Griner was detained in a Russian jail and then a prison work camp just months earlier. I signed the petitions and reposted to social media, but ultimately felt powerless to intervene in her situation. Misogynoir is so much more than mean tweets about Griner on Twitter or the media’s inattention to her detainment. The material impact of misogynoir on Griner and other Black women in sports demands collective action and requires transformative solutions that don’t mirror the punitive ways misogynoir gets weaponized in the first place.

Many people on Twitter blamed Griner for her detention, with versions of “she should have known better” or “she knew where she was going” popping up in early reactions to the delayed news of her arrest in March, a whole month after her detention began in February. Tweets claimed it was her fault for packing—however accidentally—contraband that got her hemmed up. Blaming the victim is a common practice in our society, but it’s even more common when the victim is a Black woman. When legendary producer Dallas Austin was arrested in Dubai in 2006 for a personal-use amount of party drugs, he was detained for a little over a month before being sentenced, quickly pardoned, and allowed to return to the United States. The outpouring of support he received was significant in a pre-social-media-saturation moment, with an eclectic group of major celebrities, politicians, and corporate bigwigs working in tandem to ensure his safe return. People expressed a greater level of understanding and concern for Austin’s planned recreational drug use in a country where it was illegal than for Griner inadvertently packing a nearly empty vape pen of medically prescribed cannabis for mental health and pain management—which should have, at most, resulted in a hefty fine

Being a Black woman made Griner a less sympathetic victim in the eyes of the public, and made the many folks rallying for her release less visible as well.

Read the full article about misogynoir by Moya Bailey at YES! Magazine.