On Monday, there was an incident on Raw at the beginning of the show that upset me so much I couldn’t fully enjoy the rest of the evening. I was still upset the next day and I’m still upset now, to the point where I am asking myself if I should continue to watch WWE. This has never happened before.
This is what happened: The story began with Zack Ryder becoming enamoured with Eve Torres, but she took a while to warm up to him. At the same time, over the past few months, Zack’s friendship with John Cena has been played up. On the night when Eve finally consented to go on a date with Zack, Kane attacked them. These attacks continued over the past couple months, as a way for Kane to get under Cena’s skin and get him to “embrace the hate.” With Zack becoming confined to a wheelchair, it fell to Cena to start rescuing Eve. After becoming trapped in an ambulance driven by Kane (shut up, it’s wrestling), and saved by Cena, Eve kissed Cena, not realizing that, in true soap operatic fashion, poor Zack was right there in his wheelchair with flowers for her (yes, it was Valentine’s Day). Zack wheeled off and later in the show accused Cena of being a bad friend, even going so far as to hit him, while Cena restrained himself from hitting back. So far, so good.On Monday, the show began with Eve chatting with Niki and Brie Bella who, uncharacteristically, were concerned about Zack and surmised that Eve must be really worried about him. However, Eve, after giving a wholly unconvincing evil cackle, revealed that she had been using Zack all along in order to get to Cena, which would then further her career (and apparently her evil plan involved getting terrorized by Kane? Oh, wrestling logic, how you do not exist).
Cena overheard Eve’s confession and promptly hightailed it to the ring to tell us all about it. In the minutes that followed, he called her a skank, a ho, and a bitch, and implied that she had a venereal disease, actively encouraging the audience to chant “hoeski” (a play on one of Zack’s phrases, “broski”) at her when she came out. He blamed her for the loss of his friendship with Zack. That’s right. John Cena, with the words Rise Above Hate emblazoned on his T-Shirt, the man at the forefront of the WWE’s Be a STAR anti-bullying campaign, slut shamed a woman in front of thousands of people. That was bad enough. What followed was one of the most deeply uncomfortable things I have ever watched. Eve came out to try and explain herself, but under the onslaught of Cena’s barbs, she started crying and collapsed in the ring. When Cena started to help her up (because he’s such a class act), she tried to embrace him and begged for him to just listen, still crying. All while Cena motioned for a ref to come in and pull her off. (This led to the gem, “I’ll have you know I’m disease free and would like to stay that way.” Hi-larious).
Cena exited the ring to cheers, a smile on his face. Eve stayed in the ring, still crying, still unable to support herself, finally being escorted (half carried, half dragged) away by a couple of refs, chants of “hoeski” following her the whole way. Lesson learned: Women are manipulative whores who will ruin your friendships. So sayeth Cena, the role model for children. This is not ok. In the context of the narrative, this doesn’t even make sense. Eve was not actually dating Zack Ryder. She kissed Cena, but HE KISSED HER BACK (though this was undoubtedly the result of her Super Skank powers, I’m sure). Hell, it might have been ok if they had even just kept her defiant about her plan: She works in a division wherein the women are lucky to get two minutes of screen time a week. Why shouldn’t she try and hitch a ride with someone who can actually help her? But no; instead she dissolved into tears, being nought but a woman who wronged her (supposed) man. We can all feel good about ourselves knowing that Cena put that bitch in her place.
You guys: Slut shaming is not ok. Not ever. It wasn’t wrong for Cena to criticize Eve for being manipulative and dishonest, but you’d better fucking believe it was wrong for him to criticize her for her sexuality, whether real or perceived. Kissing a man does not make you whore. NOTHING makes you a whore except actually being a prostitute, and even then no one has the right to shame you for that. The WWE converts women into nothing more than sexual objects and then vilifies them for it. It’s wrong. And it’s nothing new. That’s the rub. Look at this blog. Every single post contains commentary on how the WWE continually misuses its female employees.
I excuse this shit all the time. I know the WWE is a den of misogynist messages. Fun fact: there is not a single woman on the WWE’s writing team. People long for the days of yore: When Molly Holly was called fat? When Lita was called a whore? When Trish Stratus was forced on her hands and knees to bark like a dog? This isn’t ok. It’s NEVER BEEN ok. No amount of good matches and the occasional good storyline excuses stuff like this. I keep looking for progression and thinking that I find it. There aren’t any lingerie matches any more, sure; instead, Eve is called a whore because John Cena had a falling out with his BFF.So why do I keep watching?
I’m going to get personal here. I normally don’t hold with exposing a lot of my inner self on the internet, but this is relevant. I watched Raw the night after my Dad told me that he and my Mom were getting separated, on February 14, 2011 (guess who is never celebrating Valentine’s Day again?). That night the Rock came back and announced that he would be hosting WrestleMania 28. At the point when I never thought I was going to be happy again, the Rock made me smile. At that moment I decided that the world could pretty much go fuck itself; wrestling was here for me and always would be.
From then on I focused most of my energy onto wrestling. Being a nerd, I always tend to throw myself wholeheartedly into things I like, but now I dissected every match and tracked character development (yes, it exists in wrestling) like never before. I didn’t talk about my feelings about my parents, but I could tell you in great detail why CM Punk deserved to be the top star in the company. After being flung into chaos when I felt (and still feel) that the foundation on which I’d built my life had been torn out from under me, I landed on wrestling. For better or for worse. That’s what wrestling has meant to me. It made sense to me when nothing else did.
But what do I mean to the WWE? As a fan, I know that I really don’t mean much to the company, except as a potential spender. I view wrestling as an art, sometimes as great art. I would say that the majority of wrestlers (the good ones, at least) also consider themselves artists. The WWE considers itself a money making machine. That’s not a criticism; companies exist to make money.So I’ve long realized that the WWE does not really care about me as a fan, but what about me as a woman?
The WWE does not understand how women work. The women have two characters (if they have a character at all): Nice Girl and Mean Girl. Let’s be clear: This is wrestling, not classical literature. Nearly everyone is a trope, but there is a particular lack of nuance to the female roster. If the WWE is even aware of its female fanbase, I think they think that women all hate each other. They think we don’t want to see the women succeed, so they trot out endless short matches in order to give the men something pretty to look at. So, not only does the WWE not understand me, but based on John Cena’s tirade against Eve, it thinks my every move as a woman is suspect. The WWE has been of infinite value to me in navigating a difficult part of my life. What am I supposed to do with the notion that they think it is fine—even ENTERTAINING—to slut shame one of its employees?
As I already said, I keep hoping that things will get better. Here’s another thing I do: I analyze the romantic relationships in every fictional work I encounter and decry the ones held up as ideal, but are really grossly unhealthy. As some can attest, I will talk at great length about why Buffy and Spike could not and should have a functional relationship. Most people also know how I feel about the central relationship in Twilight. Am I in an unhealthy relationship?
I’ve posted many links in the past to feminist media. I feel like a fraud. The WWE has never had a good track record regarding treatment of women. It still doesn’t. Sure, the night before the Eve Episode featured an excellent PPV match between Beth Phoenix and Tamina Snuka, wherein both women were presented as equals and capable of dominating the ring—but Lita still had good matches while the crowd was screaming that she was a whore, too. I don’t know what to do. There are so many facets to the WWE’s product. In some ways, it’s an exciting time. There are lots of new and young guys finally getting a chance for a spotlight to show what they can do. I love watching them and seeing how this new phase of the company is developing. What I can’t reconcile is the ways in which it is NOT developing.
What do you do when the thing you love doesn’t love you back?