When sexual harassment plays out in sports, something I like to call The Script goes into effect. Tennis player Maxime Hamou trying to repeatedly kiss Eurosport reporter Maly Thomas during a French Open interview hits all the notes in a familiar story.
There’s the trainwreck moment that activates The Script where the harassment plays out unstopped, despite the onlookers. Thomas’s own colleagues in the studio were clapping for Hamou’s grabbiness. Three times, Hamou pulled in Thomas for kisses. He waited until she was speaking, when should couldn’t resist as easily, and the third time Thomas was unable to hide her anger anymore. She jammed her forearm against his chest to push herself away. She twisted around to pry his hand off her shoulder to create distance between their bodies. The video ended with the sharp exhale of someone trying to flee, the “stop” Thomas couldn’t say.
Why couldn’t she, or didn’t she, say stop? Because it’s a shock to be groped in a professional setting. The polished course of action in that moment is to keep acting like a professional until you can process what happened. A live broadcast amplifies the feeling to press on, to not embarrass the person you’re interviewing, and to minimize the frustrated feelings when you’re in front of an audience. The Script doesn’t work in a woman’s favor here. Stop the interview altogether and she’s seen as dramatic. React politely and save the anger for off-camera and naysayers will claim the harassment wasn’t that bad.
It’s telling that Thomas said: “If I hadn’t been live on air, I would have punched him” when she described the moment to Huffington Post France.
There are things I would have done, in hindsight, during moments when I’ve been harassed in my career, but they stay buried inside me. The moments have passed. I didn’t react as strongly as I expected I would, so I’m disappointed in my paralysis even though I did nothing wrong. What I do now is talk to other women. When examples of harassment arise, it’s like a beacon activates in a deep network of reporter friends, and suddenly we all know about the incident. We speak out. And we have long memories.
These incidents are reminders that no matter how much progress women make in a male-dominated field, there are some people who will only ever see us as skirts. Every couple months I get tweets from men who see me on TV and pause their screens when my mouth is shaped like an O with the microphone up to my lips. They snap pictures of my frozen face and send them to me.
A baseball friend remembers which players make sure they splash her too during interviews when they douse teammates with Gatorade. She notices who is staring at the tightness of her wet dress against her body as she works. She feels embarrassed when the wetness and cold air make her nipples stand out.
A football friend knows which players are giving her flirty vibes and who she has to rebuff, while also trying to build relationships in the locker room. It’s a fine line. Postgame, as players shuffle out of the showers, she notices who looks her in the eyes as he drops his towel and slides his boxers up slowly.
The Script is helped by the attitude that the men behaving badly didn’t mean it. Hamou removed himself from wrongdoing with an apology that conveyed he was just a young guy in a joyous moment and he pulled Thomas into his orbit to celebrate. What’s lost on Hamou is why his actions were inappropriate. Thomas is not his prize. He relies on a hallmark of the The Script with this part of the apology: “I want to offer my deepest apologies to Maly Thomas if she felt hurt or shocked by my attitude during her interview.” These words shift the focus to her feelings, not his actions.
The Script continues with the reaction from the French Tennis Federation, which did the proper thing by revoking Hamou’s accreditation, but maybe waited a tick too long to see how social media was reacting to the harassment. The Script churns on when the typical voices wonder if the punishment was too reactionary or sensitive. The Script turns accountability into a slippery slope.
Talking to a male friend about this situation brought up an assumption The Script enables. He asked me if I heard about what happened (of course, the beacon is strong) and he summarized the moment, getting the major points right. He wanted to know what I thought.
I didn’t name The Script, but I tried to share the cynicism that it’s easier to punish low-level athletes instead of the big names. “Hamou had a wild card for the French Open. I wonder what would have happened if Andy Murray had ...”
He interrupted me. “Oh, she would have loved it!”
“No,” I said firmly. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”