Ring Crew Commentaries: Slut Shaming

By Dubya

I first want to bring your attention to an article saying many of the same things I’m about to say.  It was written by Brandon of Uproxx called, “The Best And Worst of WWE Raw 2/20/12: About That Whole ‘Eve is a Slut’ Thing… and it can be found here.

I’m having a real hard time comprehending Raw last Monday.  That opening segment was one of those things that makes me embarrassed to be a pro wrestling fan.  I’ve seen worse.  I watched the WCW 2000 era.  I’ve also watched the WWF during the Attitude Era.  Hell, I remember how every heel female manager in ECW had to be a total whore.  Francine telling Justin Credible he wouldn’t get any “nookie” if he didn’t win the ECW Championship.  Yeah, I just reminded you of a Limp Bizkit song.  I swear, this article gets worse.  I remember all of these things, but I remember them during the TV-14 era when I was a 14 year old.  I’m almost 27 and watched a TV-PG show do the same material that used to happen 13 years ago, only it wasn’t a heel forcing a woman to do slutty things to keep her job like what Vince McMahon did to Trish Stratus.  This is “Be a Star/Rise Above Hate” John Cena, who apologized only months ago on his Twitter for comments against homosexuals and promised to no longer do that sort of thing slut shaming another part of “Be a Star” Eve. 

And why?  To get out of a stupid storyline, see.  Had they kept up Zack Ryder in the Friend Zone, people might have turned on him for being “weak”.  In the masculine WWE, you just can’t have that.  You now have John Cena, desperate for some new edge to his character now in the home run stretch to his program with The Rock for Wrestlemania (probably the weakest program for material a one year feud has ever been in the history of wrestling), who also kissed Eve and then almost attacked a near crippled Zack Ryder in a neckbrace.  Gotta make people forget that after his heroic victory against Kane at Elimination Chamber in the worst gimmick match this side of a San Francisco 49ers match.  So now you have Eve.  Who has the least to gain from all of this.  If she’s using Ryder to get to Cena… why?  What does she gain?  But that she did, and even though Cena kissed her, he’s in the right in the eyes of the WWE and immature misogynistic wrestling fans everywhere to reference her “skank juice” and call her a slut. 

In a TV-PG environment, unlike the wild west late 90s, this makes me uncomfortable.

Now, I know the arguments I’ll hear.  This is being written prior to a Ring Crew Show broadcast where we’ll discuss this.  The fact is, Cena was the babyface rooting the crowd to call Eve a slut and Eve was treated like a heel for kissing John Cena.  When there was no implicit relationship between Ryder and Eve.  And Cena, despite being a babyface who people know is married IN STORYLINE and WILLINGLY kissed Eve after saving her from Kane is the babyface for calling her a skank juice slut.

In a PG world. 

This was female bullying at its worst.  This was slut shaming at its worse.  As Brandon said, people who celebrate these sorts of thing grow up or are already grown into the kind of guys who become rape apologists.  It’s already hard to watch the WWE at times because of it being a mediocre product, but putting something like this over to the fans and Cena trying to lead a “Hoeski” chant makes it simply hard to be a wrestling fan.  People who don’t watch wrestling might watch the WWE and think this is what fans like, accept and think.  That’s difficult enough.

For some reason, I just want to blame Vince Russo for this.