By now I’m sure you’ve heard – WNBA star center Brittney Griner has been in the hoose-gow for going upside her fiance, fellow WNBA star Glory Johnson’s head in a rough and tumble that would make Rickson Gracie blush. The happy couple was arrested by the Goodyear, AZ police, and, according to AVFM Sports Editor Ty Henry, the WNBA is currently “obtaining more information” into the events surrounding the arrest of their two marquee players. Just for the record, it has been suggested that it was Griner who was the aggressor, arguing with Johnson for several days before the brawl broke out in their Phoenix-area home where a man attempted to break up the two, himself getting hurt in the process. According to her Wikipedia page, Griner is 6’8″, 199lbs, while Johnson weighs in at a mere 170lbs and is 6’3″. That is important, because the argument goes, at least when it comes to straight couples, that the reason why the focus is on the men involved is due to their inherent physical size advantage they have over women (disregarding the fact that “Jack Spratt” couples are quite common). Of course, that goes right out the window when lesbian couples, where one more or less takes on the more “masculine” role is being considered, eh?
So, let’s get right to it – one can’t help but recall last year’s hot story, where on Valentine’s Day weekend, then NFL star-running back Ray Rice, punched out his then-fiance Janay, in an Atlantic City casino and resort elevator. Before all the facts were in, Rice was quickly suspended from the team, then booted from the Baltimore Ravens football club altogether, and then was suspended indefinitely from playing in the NFL ever again. An enormous push on the part of social justice warriors and Black feminists descended onto the NFL, imploring them to make much more noise about domestic abuse, and held out Rice as the whipping boy of all that is wrong with the league’s culture of “toxic masculinity”. As Rice would go on to say a year later, he was nearly brought to suicide as the result of the CYA lynch mob mentality and actions on the part of NFL Commissioner Goodall and company.
The NBA seems to have followed suit, airing ads about the need for men to “lean in” and have “conversations” about domestic violence and the like, seen most prominently during the famed All-Star Weekend that took place in NYC earlier this year. So, it is very interesting that its sister organization, the WNBA, now has to grapple with the very issues they have been raking male fans and players over the coals with.
The questions, are obvious. Will Griner be suspended from the Phoenix Mercury, pending results of a full police investigation? Will she be released from the team, due to the bad image Griner has given them? Will the WNBA indefinitely suspend her, like the NFL has done Rice – and if not, why? On what grounds?
More questions: will the WNBA now prominently display adverts, discussing the facts about domestic violence, and urging awareness of same to their lesbian fans and players? Will the WNBA now have lesbian anti-domestic violence advocates and workers, there to school and train its personnel and staff, on the issue? Will there be all manner of armchair psychological profiles of Griner in the press in the manner done to Rice, to account for her abusive actions? After all, it is a matter of public record that Griner has reported being bullied as a child – a classic “tell” of an abuser. If not, why?
Even more questions(!): will Feminista Jones, write about the ills of domestic violence as they pertain to the Black lesbian community in Time magazine? Will Kimberly Foster and her team at For Harriet, do the same? Will Kali Nicole Gross, PhD, pen at least one column about the darkside, pardon the pun, of Black lesbian love, in the august Huffington Post? Will Brittney “Professor Crunk” Cooper, speak on it from her perch at Salon.com? Keep in mind everyone, that a major plank of the Black Feminist manifesto, going all the way back to the Combahee River Collective more than four decades ago, was all about being deeply concerned with Black lesbian women; today, Black Internet Feminists, proclaim loud and long their allegience to the LGBT communities in Black America. Well, now is their time t really put up or shut up – will they?
Now, let’s keep it brutally 100 here. I think we all know that to ask the questions, are to answer them. None of these folks, nor the WNBA itself, gives a damn about the truth, or fairness, or justice. They all care about their own bottomlines, and the ideologies they nuture and harbor, in that order. And if we’ve learned anything coming out of the Ray Rice affair, is that piling on men and men alone (recall the fact that Janay Rice herself has gone on the record in saying that she was just as much at fault as her now hubbie Ray in what went down that night in that elevator) is big business in America. Nothing will be said about the current Brittney Griner issue because it doesn’t fit the Narrative, that only men alone can be aggressors – never women, under any circumstances.
Even if it’s a lesbian couple who are duking it out in the middle of their own living room in full view of witnesses.
If you think what happened to Stephen A. Smith in the wake of the Ray Rice story was bad, can you imagine what will happen to him if he were to dish on the Brittney Griner issue in his signature no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-TIZ way? He won’t just be fired; he’ll be walked up to Calvary Hill and crucified.
I predict that the Brittney Griner story will quickly go down the rabbit hole, because it doesn’t excoriate the right people. And I further predict that Black feminists will act as if nothing ever happened, even when prompted to discuss the matter (and oh, believe me, I will be prompting them, just so it will be on the record – follow me on Twitter to see all the action for yourself!).
You heard it here; count it!
