The WNBA: Approved by males!

I don't quite know what to think of when I read articles called "I Went to a WNBA Basketball Game".  Dave Schilling's article over at VIBE appears to be desperately in search of a theme and he finally ends it with this.

To everyone but the season ticket holders, the WNBA is the punchline to a crude joke. The only way to make the WNBA and other female professional sports feel more legitimate in the popular culture is for men to start respecting it. We have to actually treat it as equal to the men's game. Sure, there's no dunking and the passing is kind of sloppy, but these are the best female players in the world.  As long as women playing basketball remains a curiosity, the need for a bunch of absurd “entertainments” like dancing grandmas will continue. When the Ole Skool Crew is dead and no longer twerking at halftime, and Sparky the loveable mascot hangs up his sneakers, will the WNBA survive?

Every year, you get one of those breathless "I went to a WNBA game" articles written as if the author is 19th century British explorer telling his tales of finding the lost Temple of Pangle. 

The WNBA!  So foreign and mysterious!  Do they use a basketball?  Or do they bounce a giant hair scrunchy?  If a player breaks a nail, does play stop?  Are there women taller than six feet tall?  Who would have thunk that such a thing could happen in biology?  Do they wear uniforms or aprons?

There's a word in use called "mansplaining".  Someone called mansplaining "a delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance."  A guy, always a guy, takes some topic - regardless of whether or not he knows what the hell he's talking about - and simply assumes that his female target is completely ignorant of it and then explains it.  You know, like explaining rain to a four-year old.  Double mansplaining if the topic is something you might assume that women have pretty strong opinions about, like feminism or birth control.  "Superior explains to inferior" is generally the theme.

Initially, I thought this article was a step forward.:  where some self-appointed gatekeeper says, "It is okay to like X.  Go with God, my children, and like X".  But I had a feeling of uneasy until I figured it out.  Rather, this is a mansplaining article that avoids that whole talking-to-women issue.  His target audience is men, and his message is, "Guys, clearly this WNBA needs male help to survive!  We need to give those WNBA ballers some basic respect while we teach them how to properly entertain their (male) fans." (*)

I don't know if female fans of the WNBA are to feel flattered or infuriated.  I suspect that this has happened to them more than once.  They probably just nod, smile, mark a tally on some hidden ledger, and try to get on with the rest of the day.

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(*)  Dave Schilling's main issue with the WNBA's in-game entertainment is that *he* doesn't like it.