THE WRONG SIDE OF A GENDER EQUALITY DEBATE
My friend
By Candice Smiley
Frisbee Rob found himself on the wrong side of a debate regarding gender equality. Unwittingly, perhaps even innocently, he waded chin deep into the dark water that is a twitter debate... And he lost... Horribly!
Picture this; it's the World Games in Poland, 2017. These are the sports that are not yet in the Olympics but would like to be. It’s a big deal! The World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) sends one commentator to the games on behalf of the sport, a man the best person they have for the job. Criticism of the lack of gender equality begins to happen on twitter with a tweet from one woman (#fuckthepatriarcy).
Rob had recently watched the documentary, The Red Pill by Cassie Jaye. He was wandering into the conversation with a small amount of knowledge about the depth and width of the challenge facing him, but no idea of the anger that often comes from a conversation about this. The conversation on Twitter very quickly became very one sided… and it wasn’t in Rob’s favour. Many then, and since, encouraged him to not engage and walk away; but he didn’t. He made the mistake to take the conversation to his personal Twitter account and things really went downhill from there. The exchanges got heated and taken out of context. Others with more experience and a lot of anger got involved. Rob was in over his head.
As he begins to tell me this story, I can feel my heart sink. I know what’s about to happen next, and I know it won’t be good.
I don’t need to tell you how it ended. By the time the dust had settled, a petition had been signed calling for Rob’s removal from his position at WFDF. The impact was felt immediately and Rob was asked to resign... He did.
As the Global Director of Communications for the WFDF brand, Rob hopped onto Twitter to respond to the comment and share that they believed they had sent the best commentator, male or female. This was not received well at all.
WFDF did end up sending a female commentator to the World Games as a result. That’s about the only win from all of this that I can see. It was good for the brand, and good for the sport (and for the gal who got to go!) but Rob became a
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T h e W r o n g S i d e O f A G e n d e r E q u a l i t y. D e b a t e
