SEATTLE _ In sports, you usually reflect after a season _ not in lieu of one.
But that's what fans and athletes are mostly left with after the sports world was shut down to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Nearly the entire country is under quarantine orders, leaving fans and athletes with replays of old games, virtual-skills challenges and social-media jokes to cope.
However, some of those jokes have served as a reminder that gender-based discrimination in sports has continued _ even while the games are paused.
"Found a young lady sitting on my couch yesterday," @IsoJoeJR tweeted in March after the sports world was shut down. "Apparently she's my wife. She seems nice."
The owner of the Twitter account declined to be interviewed for this story. But after the tweet drew nearly 300,000 likes and 51,000 retweets a follow-up tweet from the account said the initial post was intended to be a joke.
"It's a tired joke," said Mechelle Voepel, who covers women's college basketball, the WNBA and volleyball for ESPN. "It goes back to this whole idea that sports is inherently male turf, and that's the default. Where it's an issue is it automatically puts women in the position of being interlopers either as participants or as spectators."
This indefinite break from sports can be an opportunity to reconsider how we view women and sports. Huge steps have been taken toward creating equity in sports since the passing of Title IX in 1972, but the movement for women's sports remains slowed by stereotypes of social roles based on gender.
