Dingus of the week: Gregg Doyel

The smallest man who ever lived

Hello and welcome to the weekly dingus! Sit back, crack open this email, and enjoy me roasting the hell out of someone who made our discourse just a little bit worse this week. And then, I’ll tell you something good and share a drink.

Spoiler: This week, I went to a second location with a Wisconsinite. I am just getting rid of my hangover.

This week, a sports columnist for the Indy Star had an awkward exchange with one of the newest members of the Indiana Fever, Caitlin Clark.

And by awkward, I mean deeply misogynistic and creepy.

During a press conference, Gregg Doyel introduced himself to Clark and then made a heart with his hands. Clark begrudgingly responded, “Oh, you like that?” And then explained that it’s a gesture she makes for her family after every game. Doyel replied, “Well, start doing it to me and we will get along just fine.”

It’s a 22-second exchange that reveals entitlement, misogyny, and some good old-fashioned creepery, and some sexual harassment lite. You have to give it to Doyel for so efficiently expressing patriarchy in such a short amount of time. He’s clearly had a lot of practice infantilizing women.

When Doyel was called out for this behavior, not only was he surprised — because it simply never occurred to him that he has to take women seriously — but he doubled down in a non-apology of a column in which he claimed he would have treated a male athlete the same way. And no, Gregg, buddy, you would not have.

But congratulations on missing the point so thoroughly and completely. To put it in sports terms, Greggers, that would be like, trying to kick a soccer ball into a basketball hoop, and getting mad when people said it wasn’t a point. And also maybe you sexually harassed the ball a little.

The exchange shows how unprepared our country is to take women seriously. So much of the coverage of female athletes focuses on them being an inspiration to young girls, which is great. But y'all, that’s not why they hoop. They play because it’s their dream and because they’re good at it. It’s like we can only take women’s work seriously when we connect it to children in some way. Doyel’s creeping on of one of the best athletes in America is just another reminder for women that no matter how good you are or successful you are, there will always be some guy, ready to call you sweetie and insist you give him a little heart gesture.

Not to pull a Gregg and make it all about me, but this week, I did a book event with Garrett Bucks in Omaha. It was wonderful and I adored meeting so many of you. As we sat on stage, a woman raised her hand and asked Garrett how he felt sharing a stage with me, a woman who advocated for divorce, when his family is so important to him.

And, listen, I mean zero disrespect to Garrett when I say:  I am a New York Times best-selling author who has interviewed the president and who wrote a zeitgeist-influencing book, but my work is so often reduced to questions about how men feel about my work and I hate that. ¹

Literally everyone asks about men’s feelings. They want to know how men feel about my work, as if that’s the thing that needs to be centered in this narrative. It’s quite literally the most boring thing about all of this. And the fact that people keep trying to make women’s work about men’s feelings, is why the Gregg Doyel moment hit fans so hard. This is why this guy gets to be dingus of the week. Because it’s a man who is choosing to take a woman’s achievements and make them all about him and how he feels. And we’ve all been there. And we are all so fucking exhausted with it.

And I cannot stress this enough, WE DON’T CARE. We simply don’t care how you feel. Like can’t we just do our work and have our lives and not have to constantly worry about if a man is going to feel hurt because we were successful or didn’t smile enough or give him a little heart sign back?

And now for something good

It sucks that a white female athlete dominating a sport is bringing light to a conversation about the pay gap in sports (and just in general) that mostly affects Black female athletes. But we are having it again and that’s a good thing. And let me just say, the pay gap is real and we need to solve it.

One of the funniest things that happened this week was that Donald Trump was forced to listen to mean tweets about himself during jury selection for his trial. Schadenfreude is good, actually.

FART!

We live in an era of women making incredible music. Taylor Swift. Maggie Rogers. Chappell Roan. And also Joy Oladokun came out with a new single!

Reminder, I will be coming to California next month! Get your tickets. 

What I am drinking

This week, I broke one of my cardinal rules: Don’t go to a second location with someone from Wisconsin.

But I broke it because I was hanging out with Garrett Bucks. Garrett is an incredible writer and community organizer. And together we run the Flyover Discord, where subscribers to both of our newsletters congregate to talk about our overlooked places.  (Paying subscribers, you get a Discord invite link in the welcome email!)

After our event at the Pageturners Lounger, where we had one hell of a time, we went to a tiki bar in downtown Omaha and got rum drinks and laughed and talked about friends and family and our lives. As we hung out, I was getting messages from Nada Hammad, who was thanking me and the newsletter community for donations to her GoFundMe to help get her, her son, and siblings out of Gaza. 

And it was wonderful, even though I woke up completely hung over.

But it made me grateful for this work. Because it reminded me that while we cannot change the world, and the world is an exhausting place, that takes so much, and offers so little in return, that we have connection, we have joy, and we have the work we are doing to make this world a little better.

And that’s why the drink of the week is a mai tai.

1. Also, to his credit, Garrett said this exact same thing to the question asker. He pointed out that his feelings had nothing to do with my work.