At the ESPY Awards, ‘courage’ means left-wing cultural propaganda
Christopher Tremoglie
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During Wednesday night’s ESPYs, the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage was presented to the United States Women’s National Soccer Team. Named after the former tennis legend, recipients are those who “reflect the spirit of Arthur Ashe, possessing strength in the face of adversity, courage in the face of peril, and the willingness to stand up for their beliefs no matter what the cost.”
However, none of this describes the USWNT. They were just female athletes who wanted a raise and used a fake narrative of a gender pay gap to get it.
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The sports network gave the USWNT the award because of their supposed “courage in the equal pay fight.” The team settled a class action equal pay lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation and was awarded “$24 million, and the USSF committed to providing an equal rate of pay going forward for the women’s and men’s national teams ‘in all friendlies and tournaments, including the World Cup.’”
As a result, the USSF was the first federation to mandate that FIFA World Cup prize money would be equal for men’s and women’s teams.
I support the efforts of anyone trying to get a higher salary from their employers. Most people typically would. However, the narrative that the USWNT were underpaid because of their gender was hogwash. As my colleague Zachary Faria wrote in June, “There were always several issues with the USWNT’s claims.”
The fact that the U.S. men’s national team was paid more had nothing to do with discrimination against women.
Before the recent agreement, salaries were contingent upon the amount of revenue each team accounted for. As Faria wrote previously, the men’s national team typically generated significantly more revenue than the women’s team because more people watched men’s than women’s soccer in the country and had higher salaries as a result.
However, that was not the case in recent years. Between 2010 and 2018, the USWNT actually earned more than the USMNT, according to the judge in a lawsuit from 2020.
“The statements offered by Plaintiff [USWNT] are insufficient to establish a genuine dispute that [female players] are paid at a rate less than the rate paid to [male players],” the judge wrote in his decision. “Defendant [U.S. Soccer] has presented evidence that the [USWNT] was paid more on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the [men’s team].”
There was nothing courageous about what the USWNT did.
Furthermore, given the left-wing narratives that dominate the nation’s airwaves, most people believed the USWNT were underpaid and supported their efforts for a higher paycheck. They didn’t face any adversity or pushback from anyone in mainstream society.
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Arguably, everyone was on their side, even though they shouldn’t have been if they genuinely cared about equal pay and were basing their opinions on truth and facts. Receiving the award was little more than a participation trophy for pushing left-wing propaganda.
It was never about equality but, instead, priority. Left-wing narratives about a gender wage pay gap dominate the culture despite such claims being repeatedly debunked. The only thing the USWNT transcended was its ability to get many people to believe its bogus claims. That’s not courage; that’s manipulation.