Serena Williams controversy

[Don]

I was reading about Serena Williams in US Open and for some reason this topic ends up being about feminism or racism even though it sure sounds like Serena Williams just broke some rule and was called for it. I keep on seeing people claim that these violations are normally never called without anything to back it up (top men players surely gets called for similar offense too). Now you can argue about the frequency but it's not like if man gets called 1% of the time and woman gets can't get called 10% or 0.1% of the time. Just because some things that are normally never called does get called doesn't mean someone's out to get you, and even if someone's out to get you, it's your problem for breaking the rules. If a cop is watching you and jaywalk you can't say 'but what about all the other guys???' In the NBA they'd send out notices to officials to watch certain things, like say flops, and then they'd call them more often compared to normal.

I fail to understand 'everyone else does it' is an excuse, and from what I understand Serena yelled considerably more than other people. Just because sometimes people smash their rackets without getting docked doesn't mean you should expect to do that without penalty unless you're in the Prince of Tennis world. I agree some of the rules seem pretty bogus like the 'no coaching' rule that Serena initially get docked, but it's not like this rule was written to oppress her and she's got plenty of years to make changes. Besides, the whole thing about how these rules are not unenforceable is a red herring. In NBA it's not really possible to enforce the traveling rule. That doesn't mean when you get called for traveling you get to keep the ball even if 9 out of 10 guys gets away with it provided you really traveled. Even if someone purposely is only calling traveling on one side out of some agenda, it doesn't change the fact that as long as a player legitimately traveled then you're still at fault. Now you can go back and point out how all the other guys traveled are missed, but even that doesn't mean you're supposed to get away with it. It just means all the other guys should've been penalized too.

[Eric]

I know nothing of tennis, but non-call traveling in the NBA is pretty hilarious.

[kali o.]

Self perception as a victim and weaponizing that victimhood isn't a new thing; it's just much more en vogue lately. Serena Williams is just another dumb loser looking for excuses. I'm actually heartened by the fact that more elements in society are willing to call Serena stupid for this episode -- perhaps society is shifting away from this SJW silliness and is starting to recognize it for what it is.

[Don]

Seems like US based media is overwhelmingly in support of her. Also saw a lot of famous tennis player standing up for her, though I guess in this case since everyone normally gets away with these things so you don't want to criticize it because then you'd be criticizing yourself.


It's true that you can't catch all the rule infractions and people get away with blatant stuff in sports like traveling in Eric's example but that doesn't mean it's not your fault when you get caught. This isn't even something that's got some kind of room for interpretation like most sports call either. All the stuff she did are clear cut violations and just because people normally don't get nailed for that doesn't mean it's not a violation.

[Replay]

I think Serena threw a tantrum of epic proportion and should have shown some grace in the face of defeat. She has 23 Grand Slams, whereas Naomi Osaka has one major - and now all will think about with regard to this year's Open is Serena's tantrum, not Osaka's nearly flawless play.

That all being said, roping the entire thing into a crusade against social justice as a concept is...well, nonsense. Serena isn't doing one thing for social justice here. She's one of the top-ranked players in the world - that "dumb loser", for all her bad behavior here, is the second-most-successful player in the history of women's tennis, and probably has nearly as much money as you do, Kal. I offhandedly do wonder if that bothers you! She *is* the tennis establishment - which is why these calls of potential discrimination on race and gender look silly, and why she looks particularly bad here for throwing up claims of discrimination.

Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali - THOSE athletes faced real and poisonous discrimination because of race - Kayla Maroney, Simone Biles, and the other victims of Larry Nassar - THOSE athletes faced real and brutal betrayal by an official by the sport because of gender - the right answer isn't "social justice is victimhood", it's pointing out the difference between real discrimination and one of the elite players of a sport throwing a tantrum because she lost and it was hot.

[Don]

I saw someone online pointed out that it's possible some of the guys defending Serena's side literally have no idea what tennis is, so that they think when they say she was assessed a penalty of a game, they thought that means she was forced to forfeit even though you got to win 6 games to win a set and 2 sets to win a match which is why you see all these argument about how the penalty was too harsh or the umpire was out of the line even though it's pretty standard in tennis in terms of escalating infractions (warning, point, then game). Of course even if she was disqualified from the match I don't think it's anything unfair since I'm sure literally every sports has the 'you can throw out for detrimental conduct' clause.


I think she even started talking about how she's a mother and that she almost died while giving birth even though that literally has nothing to do with what's going on. It reminds me of an Onion article where I think Cardinals apologized for winning World Series against a city where people died from a natural disaster while nothing bad happened to St. Louis and that's clearly a dishonorable thing that a feel good moment was robbed. It's entirely possible Serena Williams faced discrimination elsewhere in life but whatever hardship she had has nothing to do with this game.

[Replay]

It's entirely possible Serena Williams faced discrimination elsewhere in life but whatever hardship she had has nothing to do with this game.

This. She has 23 Grand Slam titles. The notion that the tennis world hasn't been fair to her is an eyeroll. She's run most of her career with a lot of grace and turning into the women's McEnroe as she nears forty and a whole new generation of youngbloods start looking for their own glory days will be a bad look.

And, stop coaching from the stands anyway! I hate all the under-the-table stuff in sports, I see it in eSports too and it's not benign, let's see some genuine sportsmanship in all these endeavors that are purely for human entertainment.

Cheating to win at any sport always looks lousy to me, why play these games if you're just going turn the joy of sport and competition into ugly one-upsmanship?

[Don]

I think eventually we'll have robots as referees and after a few games where an entire team is disqualified people will stop all the 'but they normally never catch this!' deal. I think without robots it's unrealistic especially in anything that's fast moving or multiple area of interest to catch everything and you can't just call a time out to instant replay review everything if you don't want the event to take 5 hours.

Then again, I heard in tennis they switched to just using the Hawkeye technology to determine in/out in some events, and people still challenge and complain against the robot, who will just review it and immediately tell you that the answer is exactly the same as what it was 5 seconds ago but you wasted a challenge.

[Replay]

Robots won't make any better referees than people. A robot is as good as the logic it's programmed with. It lacks emotionality and bias, but also compassion and context-rich judgment that allows each situation to be judged individually. That may change one day with the advent of real personality AI, but we're still decades off from that.

Robot refereeing will never be a perfect solution in any case. We like to think computers are infalliable machines capable of perfect repetition, and certainly they can do things we can't - but the idea of technology as the perfect arbiter is really dangerous, and always needs to be challenged.