when men prove me right

Last week, I published an op-ed at CNN that explored the media narrative around the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce relationship. In it, I specifically criticized the way (mostly male) sports media commentators seemed to be pushing a narrative around the relationship that did not line up with anything Swift or her team had said or done up until that point.

I wrote: "At the end of the day, whether or not Swift and Kelce are actually dating, the boys and men who consume sports media have ingested some incredibly harmful messaging about entitlement, consent and how to get the girl."

And let's be clear—the reason that I specify that boys and men are the ones consuming this content is because the numbers support that conclusion. Eight-seven percent of sports talk radio listeners are men.

Shockingly, the men of sports media—and their audiences—that I called out in my piece did not agree with me. And in their attempts to let me know just how much they disagreed with me, they demonstrated exactly the kind of toxic behavior that I described in my op-ed. Ironic, eh?

My inbox was full of men (weirdly, many of them named Dave) insisting I listen to their 1,000+-word diatribes on all the reasons I was wrong, then demanding I explain myself to them (this, despite the fact that I'd already spent 1200 words explaining myself on CNN's website).

On TikTok, several men made videos about me and my piece, with their commenters organizing harassment campaigns in the comments section. They flocked to my page (giving my video the most views I've ever had, thanks so much for the engagement!) and bombarded me with comments telling me how wrong and stupid and ugly I was. When I made videos in response—one disputing the claim that I don't know anything about sports (lol) and one simply showing screenshots of the comments I was getting—they were mass-reported and taken down for "harassment and bullying." It remains shocking to me that people can spend days bullying and harassing me but when I point out that harassment, I'm the one who is somehow being a bully.

I think the thing that baffles me every single time something like this happens (because it has happened to me before and it will happen to me again) is how these men cannot see that they are just proving my point. Instead of leaving a comment on the original article and voicing their disagreement like a normal person, they feel the need to seek me out and either demand I listen to them tell me why I'm wrong or just overwhelm me with comments telling me how stupid I am. They are doing nothing to disprove the idea that this kind of misogyny and male entitlement are toxic. Instead, they are reinforcing the very point I was making.

So for that reason, I'd like to thank every single man who spent precious hours of his day(s) this week harassing me because you all just hammered home how right I was about you—and there's nothing a Sagittarius sun/Virgo moon like myself likes more than being correct.