San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec




San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

Grow up and stop poking Jimmer’s girlfriend

Related:  Wonnacott responds to SDSU’s poking

I don’t want to poke Jimmer Fredette’s girlfriend.

Don’t get me wrong, she seems very nice. Actually, she seems more than nice. Whitney Wonnacott seems very mature and classy in her handling of the junior high girl’s locker room tactic she’s been subjected to by the Cro-Magnons from our beloved institution of higher learning, San Diego State.

I know if someone started a Facebook campaign dedicated to harassing me by making a sex joke about me to get to my boyfriend, I would probably start breaking all the fragile things near me, ripping pages out of books, performing ritual sacrifice and howling at the sky, that sort of thing.

So I’m very impressed by her apparent cool and calm in the face of the onslaught of thousands of students who apparently do not know where to draw the line. She gets that it’s all a mind game and seems to accept that it’s just part of the territory when it comes to college sports.

The thing is, her classy attitude notwithstanding, tactics such as this should not be a part of sports culture, college or otherwise. I’m not saying fans shouldn’t do crazy fan things or try to mess with the opponent’s head, but going after family, friends and significant others is absolutely, 100 percent too far. Distract Jimmer by wearing a Michael Jackson mask and reenacting scenes from Star Wars or by wearing a combination banana-Punisher costume. Send him thousands of postcards with our Aztec logo, or a hundred funeral bouquets that say,

“We’re sorry for your loss.” Heck, even creating a page or group about Jimmer himself if you like. But leave his girlfriend out of it. She had to deactivate her account to get away from it, for crying out loud. That’s a clear sign its gone too far.

Part of the reason this gets to me is because it’s sexist. (Cue a thousand anonymous website comments accusing me of being a feminist — which I freely admit to — who is trying to censor freedom and tell people what to think and dictate what’s right and anyway, I’m overreacting because it’s not sexist I’m just sensitive hey chill out it’s not even me they’re being sexist about lols omg wtf.)

I’ll say it again, because it’s true: This is sexist. It’s an attack that’s very specifically geared toward the fact that she’s a woman and if thousands of people “poke” her, it’s a euphemism for sex. Which is a really roundabout way of calling her a slut, or at the very least “easy,” which comes from our notion of how frequently “proper” or “respectable” women should have sex. Slut-shaming and why it’s wrong and sexist is a whole ‘nother column and those interested can go find a multitude of perspectives about that.

The bottom line is this: As funny as the “Poke Jimmer’s girlfriend” phenomenon may seem to you, and as unconcerned as she appears to be about it, that doesn’t make it OK. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard than attacking a rival student athlete’s girlfriend. We can be better than this.

That is, if we want to be.

—Ruthie Kelly is a journalism and political science senior.

—This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.

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San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913
Grow up and stop poking Jimmer’s girlfriend