Just One Of The Guys: Six Male Athletes Who Are Probably Women
You’ve no doubt heard of 18-year-old Caster Semenya, the South African sprinter who caught the world’s attention after rumors that her masculine looks might exist because she could be a he. A week later, the only things that are certain are a) she’s infinitely faster than the people she’s racing against and b) if Semenya is a man, he’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding it.
It would have taken a lot of preparation to fool people up to this point. Noticing that a female has underarm hair, extra fuzz on her lip or a muscular body is more likely to develop into unneccessary cruelty toward a teenage girl than it will solid detective work.
The truth is, our ultra-sexist society often supports women’s sports as long as they don’t encroach upon a man’s ideal of how the athletes within those sports should appear. It’s cool if Gina Carano is the Women’s MMA champ, but if “Cyborg” Santos is it then I’m going to start blaming it on her hidden stock of man-parts. There can be no other explanation.
If Maria Sharapova wants to grunt her skinny blonde skirt into another Grand Slam championship – so be it. But if it’s Serena Williams rifling serve after serve past opponents, clearly we have a tranny on our hands.
Why are we only discussing the potential of men posing as women? Male athletes, on average, make more money than women, get more coverage than women, have more fans, more opportunities, more leagues … Stephon Marbury made twice as much last year as the entire WNBA’s player roster last season. How do we know more skilled female athletes aren’t trying to upgrade into these situations? How do we know there aren’t women posing as men? We don’t. But that shouldn’t stop us from having a good old fashioned witch hunt, now should it?
Grab your pitchforks and torches and follow me after the jump to gander at the most likely candidates of female athletes posing as males.
David Eckstein
Look at this picture. Eck is, like, a foot shorter than 6’3″ Albert Pujols. Also, he sounds like one of the members of the Lollipop Guild.
Shaun White
No one with hair that luxurious and a butt that narrow could possibly by a man. He posed without a shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone several years ago, but no one actually saw details of his torso because his pale skin blinded everyone. Artists had to go in and Photoshop a little boy’s chest into the blinding light left in the photo. Not a bad ruse, Ms. White. Not bad at all.
Patrick Kane
Okay look, Kane is either a 12-year-old boy or a woman, either way he’d be perfect to play the lead in “Peter Pan.” No man is so fiscally controlling that they’d be compelled to punch out a cabbie for $1.20. Someone’s got to keep track of the checkbook and it certainly wasn’t going to be Kane’s cousin James.
Baron Davis
Big doe eyes, short stature, no rational fear of the damage his driving could cause to people nearby … Yup. Sounds like a woman to me. Also, look at that beard. No one with that much facial growth is without secrets. He’s covering up something with that beard and my guess is that it’s a vagina.
Lance Berkman
Until about 2006, I thought Sonny and Cher’s lesbian daughter played first base for the Houston Astros. Berkman perpetually looks as if he’s wearing eye shadow.
Eli Manning
Archie wouldn’t settle for 2-of-3 boys, so he taught Ellie to keep her mouth shut and her head down. Ellie’s gotten pretty good too. The only times he betrays his gender is when he lets out those girlish yelps as he’s getting sacked (New Yorkers pretend they haven’t heard it, but they have). Oh, and that perpetually dumbfounded look on his face … that’s the look every woman has had after seeing Jeff Feagles exit the shower.
____________________________
Movie poster and Berkman photos courtesy of Flickr
All other photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via AP
Leave a Reply
