I know absolute bugger all about feminism. I would describe myself as a feminist. I am straight, I am white, I am male (and, evidently, I am holier than thou). A number of my favourite storylines - and therefore matches - over the last few years have involved female wrestlers. Several of my favourite wrestlers are now therefore female. This opened my eyes to something about which, if I'm honest with myself, I knew all along: women are underrepresented in professional wrestling; women, when present, are represented poorly in professional wrestling. It's probably one of the best times in history to be a woman in wrestling - but it could be so much better.
The first thing that stands out - the word "diva" is an insult. It literally is an insult. Why have the female wrestlers for years had to be referred to almost exclusively as divas? The male wrestlers get to be known as "superstars" instead of the equivalent (presumably "douchebags" or "********s").
It's encouraging that the females have been given their own show. It's not encouraging that it's called Total Divas (there's that word again) and is an unconvincing "reality" show built on pointless arguments - but what, one supposes, is professional wrestling if not an unconvincing reality show built on pointless arguments? Perhaps John Cena, Daniel Bryan and Tyson Kidd should have their own spin-off called Total Knobs.
Nearly as bad as the diva issue is that big bastard butterfly belt that the female champion has to carry. The butterfly belt has to go. Either that or you've got to replace the men's title with a giant penis trophy or something just as ridiculously gendered and gaudy.
On to someone who's had to carry that belt: AJ Lee. AJ Lee is an absolutely fantastic wrestler - she's got a great look, a defined character, is incredibly charismatic and is responsible for numerous fantastic matches. Trish Stratus, despite literally being considered WWE's greatest female wrestler of all-time, was mediocre at best. Lita, despite being revered almost as much as Trish, was mediocre at best. Currently, there are a good amount of excellent female wrestlers in WWE's employ but they are by and large exclusive to NXT. The majority of the women on the main roster are, many feel, entirely untalented. Eva Marie, for instance, doesn't have a grasp of the very fundamentals of pro wrestling.
Moving on from the in-ring talent, Renee Young is, if I'm not mistaken, the WWE's first female commentator and she is fantastic. Her less talented male colleagues have been repeatedly used on mainstream broadcasts while she's been left to kill it on NXT. Recently we had a thread on this site in which the original poster denigrated her - and, in fact, all women - for having too high pitched a voice.
Women aren't treated as equals in kayfabe terms either. Chyna was deemed good enough to wrestle midcarders - e.g. Chris Jericho and Jeff Jarrett - because she was exceptionally tall and muscular. Typically, women are treated as significantly weaker, significantly more cowardly and, maybe as a consequence, significantly more conniving than the men. A good way to get a cheer has often been to grab this weak, cowardly, conniving person and, say, powerbomb them through a table.
It's less a problem now that we're in the midst of the PG era but women in wrestling have been used as sex objects very, very often. Although we might not have as many pillow fights, mud fights or bra and panties matches as we used to, we still have entrances where two women squish their arses together, storylines wherein the competitors bizarrely develop a sexual attraction to one another and ring attires which emphasise the wrestlers' cleavage.
There are a myriad more problems, e.g. the lack of screentime for women, the overuse of lesbian storylines - but those are the ones that are most prominent in my mind. What I'd like to address now is potential solutions to those problems.
This in mind, someone I'd like to discuss is Candice LeRae. Candice LeRae is Joey Ryan's tag team partner. Joey Ryan is a man. Together they are The World's Cutest Tag Team. They don't exclusively wrestle other intergender teams. Most famously, they've wrestled The Young Bucks in PWG in a "Guerrila Warfare" match (i.e. a street fight). In that match, and in all matches, Candice wasn't able to absorb less punishment than any of the other wrestlers. She wasn't less courageous than any of the other wrestlers. She wasn't less dangerous than any of the other wrestlers. Joey Ryan is her tag team partner, not her bodyguard.
But hang on - a woman... wrestling a man? Surely you jest! How far-fetched!
Well, in the words of Joey Ryan:
Intergender wrestling isn't really the solution, I don't think. At the very least, it'd be a very, very hard sell to those who produce WWE's current shows. In principle, I'm absolutely not opposed to it. My solution on this front, however, would be a) stop making women into victims and b) build them into more legitimate competitors.
For this, my example is actually from TNA. Gail Kim versus Taryn Terrell was a great feud, which included a ladder match and a last woman standing match. OK, it was called a last knockout standing match, and "knockout" is a pretty daft term too, but you can't have everything. The feud, without making a song and dance about it, proved that women aren't delicate flowers who must be protected from doing things which men do as a matter of routine.
As part of making women look like legitimate competitors, I'd only hire legitimate competitors. If you can't wrestle, you definitely don't get to go into the ring. If you're bad at wrestling, you definitely wouldn't get onto my show - not when there's a plethora of extremely talented female wrestlers out there. For example, all four of NXT's most prominent female wrestlers - Becky Lynch, Charlotte, Bayley and Sasha Banks - are very talented. What's more, NXT has a Women's Championship. Triple H refers to NXT's female talent as women.
I wouldn't refer to the female talent as women - I'd refer to them as superstars. I know, "superstar" is a ridiculously masculine word - to the point that it's impossible to say it out loud without picturing a gigantic, throbbing phallus - but I'm just stubborn like that.
Get rid of the butterfly belt. That's one of the areas in which we've actually moved backwards in the last five or so years. Bring the old belt back; it was fine.
Bring Renee Young up to Raw. Claiming Jerry Lawler, JBL and/or Michael Cole are shit isn't a controversial opinion, so replacing one of them with a good commentator shouldn't rock the boat too much. In the future, use her as an example and don't limit women to holding a microphone and looking scared while a man yells.
There's a long way to go, it looks like we might get there, but it's going to be a slow journey.
The first thing that stands out - the word "diva" is an insult. It literally is an insult. Why have the female wrestlers for years had to be referred to almost exclusively as divas? The male wrestlers get to be known as "superstars" instead of the equivalent (presumably "douchebags" or "********s").
It's encouraging that the females have been given their own show. It's not encouraging that it's called Total Divas (there's that word again) and is an unconvincing "reality" show built on pointless arguments - but what, one supposes, is professional wrestling if not an unconvincing reality show built on pointless arguments? Perhaps John Cena, Daniel Bryan and Tyson Kidd should have their own spin-off called Total Knobs.
Nearly as bad as the diva issue is that big bastard butterfly belt that the female champion has to carry. The butterfly belt has to go. Either that or you've got to replace the men's title with a giant penis trophy or something just as ridiculously gendered and gaudy.
On to someone who's had to carry that belt: AJ Lee. AJ Lee is an absolutely fantastic wrestler - she's got a great look, a defined character, is incredibly charismatic and is responsible for numerous fantastic matches. Trish Stratus, despite literally being considered WWE's greatest female wrestler of all-time, was mediocre at best. Lita, despite being revered almost as much as Trish, was mediocre at best. Currently, there are a good amount of excellent female wrestlers in WWE's employ but they are by and large exclusive to NXT. The majority of the women on the main roster are, many feel, entirely untalented. Eva Marie, for instance, doesn't have a grasp of the very fundamentals of pro wrestling.
Moving on from the in-ring talent, Renee Young is, if I'm not mistaken, the WWE's first female commentator and she is fantastic. Her less talented male colleagues have been repeatedly used on mainstream broadcasts while she's been left to kill it on NXT. Recently we had a thread on this site in which the original poster denigrated her - and, in fact, all women - for having too high pitched a voice.
Women aren't treated as equals in kayfabe terms either. Chyna was deemed good enough to wrestle midcarders - e.g. Chris Jericho and Jeff Jarrett - because she was exceptionally tall and muscular. Typically, women are treated as significantly weaker, significantly more cowardly and, maybe as a consequence, significantly more conniving than the men. A good way to get a cheer has often been to grab this weak, cowardly, conniving person and, say, powerbomb them through a table.
It's less a problem now that we're in the midst of the PG era but women in wrestling have been used as sex objects very, very often. Although we might not have as many pillow fights, mud fights or bra and panties matches as we used to, we still have entrances where two women squish their arses together, storylines wherein the competitors bizarrely develop a sexual attraction to one another and ring attires which emphasise the wrestlers' cleavage.
There are a myriad more problems, e.g. the lack of screentime for women, the overuse of lesbian storylines - but those are the ones that are most prominent in my mind. What I'd like to address now is potential solutions to those problems.
This in mind, someone I'd like to discuss is Candice LeRae. Candice LeRae is Joey Ryan's tag team partner. Joey Ryan is a man. Together they are The World's Cutest Tag Team. They don't exclusively wrestle other intergender teams. Most famously, they've wrestled The Young Bucks in PWG in a "Guerrila Warfare" match (i.e. a street fight). In that match, and in all matches, Candice wasn't able to absorb less punishment than any of the other wrestlers. She wasn't less courageous than any of the other wrestlers. She wasn't less dangerous than any of the other wrestlers. Joey Ryan is her tag team partner, not her bodyguard.
But hang on - a woman... wrestling a man? Surely you jest! How far-fetched!
Well, in the words of Joey Ryan:
Intergender wrestling isn't really the solution, I don't think. At the very least, it'd be a very, very hard sell to those who produce WWE's current shows. In principle, I'm absolutely not opposed to it. My solution on this front, however, would be a) stop making women into victims and b) build them into more legitimate competitors.
For this, my example is actually from TNA. Gail Kim versus Taryn Terrell was a great feud, which included a ladder match and a last woman standing match. OK, it was called a last knockout standing match, and "knockout" is a pretty daft term too, but you can't have everything. The feud, without making a song and dance about it, proved that women aren't delicate flowers who must be protected from doing things which men do as a matter of routine.
As part of making women look like legitimate competitors, I'd only hire legitimate competitors. If you can't wrestle, you definitely don't get to go into the ring. If you're bad at wrestling, you definitely wouldn't get onto my show - not when there's a plethora of extremely talented female wrestlers out there. For example, all four of NXT's most prominent female wrestlers - Becky Lynch, Charlotte, Bayley and Sasha Banks - are very talented. What's more, NXT has a Women's Championship. Triple H refers to NXT's female talent as women.
I wouldn't refer to the female talent as women - I'd refer to them as superstars. I know, "superstar" is a ridiculously masculine word - to the point that it's impossible to say it out loud without picturing a gigantic, throbbing phallus - but I'm just stubborn like that.
Get rid of the butterfly belt. That's one of the areas in which we've actually moved backwards in the last five or so years. Bring the old belt back; it was fine.
Bring Renee Young up to Raw. Claiming Jerry Lawler, JBL and/or Michael Cole are shit isn't a controversial opinion, so replacing one of them with a good commentator shouldn't rock the boat too much. In the future, use her as an example and don't limit women to holding a microphone and looking scared while a man yells.
There's a long way to go, it looks like we might get there, but it's going to be a slow journey.
We all had high hopes from Renee Young initially, but she hasn't been marvellous at commentary. People have pointed out that she says "oh!" a lot, and most often, the other guy has to start the topic before she starts talking. It will be tough for her to do commentary for 3 hours.
