ALT

I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won’t Because I’m Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen by Sandra Cisneros

The first time I took acid my friend and I were trying to make a ranked list of different divination methods and number one on the list was “you already know the information”

sometimes when two people love each other very much something bad happens

Bibin, Dragan. Confessional II, 2017

Friends, romans, people who are nonbinary except at work, lend me your ears,

iván lamark

It is endlessly frustrating that elite sports in America are just an avenue where autonomy-less entertainers must generate money with the expendibility of their bodies. This is abundantly clear across women's sports, and maybe the clearest right now with the bungling of the WPBL, or the uncertainty of the PWHL, but you also see it with Black men in football and basketball, and in D1 college sports.

There has been substantial mishandling of communication in the WPBL, with fans reeling from the promise of easy access to games that were revealed to be gone 48 hours before the start of the season, but the communication has been infinitely worse for many of the players.

This great Defector article (with illustration by Mattie Lubchansky mwah mwah) from yesterday has gotten into the way many WPBL players have been left to hang out to dry. There were drafted but unsigned players who have had to beg for any information about what comes next. There were players who found out last minute when tryouts would be. There were players told they had to tryout to beg for a spot, and were left unsigned, while other players were signed without tryouts. And many players have been finding out key pieces of information about their careers from social media posts, not the league communicating with them.

Every new league has growing pains, but this pattern of behavior establishes that the players are not a priority--or at least not most of them. A few key players have become brand ambassadors as much as players, which is great for the sake of promotional content and getting the word out about a league that refuses to otherwise advertise where viewers are waiting. Where it's less great is when they start doing PR work (prompted or unprompted by the league) doing damage control.

A Black content creator expressed the disappointment we all had that suddenly platforms to view the games became unavailable. Several star WPBL players jumped into her comments. Kelsie Whitmore tried to redirect the "negative" energy back into support for the league, while Amanda Gianelloni was more of a dick, saying "looking forward to your next video where you review all of the great things about our league to use your platform to boost a new women's league" implying she hadn't been doing just that, when really she was actually upset it'll be harder to give the support she wants to give.

There is a justified defensiveness from players, who will absolutely be the most harmed if things go tits up, but the fans are not responsible for the flames, so trying to hose down people who want to support is not the move. The blame lies fully with the league, who naturally, players will not be quick to attack. None of the players with the most complaints in that Defector article spoke non-anonymously. There is no union yet. Many players do not have agents either. They do not have representatives, they do not have larger support within the league, and choices by the league are isolating fans.

Currently, Mark Walter, head scuzz of the PWHL is being investigated for fraud and is frantically selling off his stake in teams he owns--but not PWHL teams. Soccer. Baseball. But he's got a death grip on the PWHL teams where he has monopoly ownership. It's never been clearer why the teams need to be owned by multiple sources. The excuse that funding coming from one source allowed for fairness could have resulted in multiple contributors dumping into a pool that teams drew from, but even at that, the teams have different expenses and challenges unique to their location.

Despite being a Boston team, Boston played in bumfuck western Mass. Toronto played in downtown Toronto. New York only rarely played in New York, instead going on tours of various New Jersey locations. New teams are getting preferential treatment over teams that have been repeatedly neglected (New York), and now with backdoor deals one of the youngest teams is the most stacked with talent. So much for 'Mark's monopoly ensures fairness.'

The abysmal pay in the PWHL has recently come to light, with the highest paid player making 1/7th of what the lowest paid NHL player makes. The same excuses have followed about being a young league. But the pattern doesn't hold. Sure. You won't make Sidney Crosby's salary in a baby league, sure. But they won't even make what the bench riders do, and the non-salary support is lacking. The housing stipends do not reflect the cost of living in all cities, players on limited contracts are getting dragged behind the league, and essentially all players are taking up secondary sources of income because the league does not pay them enough to afford what they need.

This isn't unique to the US/NA but for players who play for these leagues, they also have to contend with the BS of their home countries in the meantime. Currently, Austria's women's national team is threatening to boycott the IIHF for the poor treatment they've been experiencing. Gross living quarters, inedible food, leftover equipment from the men, and terrible compensation. Sweden did the same in 2019.

I think about how merch from the PWHL costs what the NHL men's do. Ticket costs are skyrocketing. The WPBL being in one location means fans of all 4-corner cities must travel to middle America to watch in person. And HAVE been. There are dedicated fans and dedicated players and both are getting left in the wind to make a quick buck.

While I have been one of Mark Walter's biggest haters for a while, it strikes me as suspicious that he's *now* being investigated by the government for his financial activities. The league is successful, is raking in cash, and the league is ever-expanding while players are not carried upwards with it. During the biggest peak of anti-trans anti-women-in-sports rhetoric we've seen in a long time? Yeah, I can't help but find this convenient timing to go after not dipshit Mark, but really, the league.

Women's sports are treated like a precarious aberration that we need to suck money from quickly while it lasts, instead of a solid investment that will grow into something beautiful--and hey, financially lucrative--if you are willing to treat the participants like people and not cash cows.

I really hope going forward these leagues can find better stability, treat their stars like AGENTS in this business move, and stop abusing the generosity of fans and players to pick up the slack where the leagues cannot be fucked.

gillian anderson & hannah einbinder: secretary (2002) reading

not sure why the audience is laughing cause im wet but okay

source: tiktok