long post about ted lasso and internalized misogyny and literally no one follows me here but i'm gonna put it under the cut anyway.
i'm seeing a lot of people say, "rebecca didn't discredit all women, she just only thought of ONE man," and hey, that's still internalized misogyny.
what do you mean alice built that team from the ground up? what do you mean alice was ALREADY WORKING WITH THE WOMEN? what do you mean she has put forward so much love and care with this team and wanting it to succeed, and when it came time to select a head coach, rebecca's mind went to ted?
never mind that ted would need to move him AND his ex-wife and child across the atlantic ocean. never mind that ted only JUST learned about football through the man greyhounds, and as the show highlights, there are so many women who are in it for a pure love and understanding of the GAME. focus instead on the fact that ted was only kept around because he "fixed" the greyhounds. they weren't functioning as a team. the entire spirit around them was broken, and ted "fixed" them by making them believe in themselves and love the game again. and then he left. because he fixed them. duty over. now they can just love and play the game. in fact jamie, the 'center' of their total football approach, just left for barcelona, and there's no mention of needing someone around to help re-center the game on. i have to assume it'll be dani? but roy didn't even seem pressed about letting his ONLY assistant coach go with the team in flux. because the greyhounds are fixed!!! now they're all good because they all believe in themselves and love the game and so does roy!!
the women already believe in themselves. the women already love the game. and in fact, the women haven't yet played a SINGLE game, and yet rebecca brought in her "fixer" because she already views the women's team as something that needs fixing.
and that's the point! the episode has so many examples of OVERT misogyny and so many more examples of the way society has internalized it. like yes, the women are given shittier facilities and shittier pay and the press is cruel to them - those are facts and overt examples in our society. but also rebecca has space in her 'budget' that the men's coach already views as imaginary for whatever tiny luxury the men's team has and doesn't consider reallocating ANY of it to push up the women. we're all supposed to be understanding about her wanting ted back because we love ted! he fixed the greyhounds! without considering that yeah maybe women should've been considered FIRST for that job. maybe the lady greyhounds don't NEED a fixer. maybe the woman who helped build the team should've been even CONSIDERED. when alice was mentioned in episode 1 i gave rebecca the benefit of the doubt in thinking maybe she was a complete outsider but the gut punch of finding out she's been with the lady greyhounds from the start and still wasn't considered is definitely purposeful.
also they're called the lady greyhounds. they didn't even get their own name. literally took the male default and said but this is the girl version of the sport! and maybe that's UK sports versus US but even here in the US, women's teams will get their own names and colors and mascots. i'm going to a women's professional league baseball game TONIGHT that shows that.
there's something in the initial locker room scene, too. alice assuming keeley is a girl who just wants to paint a problem. keeley and rebecca and seemingly higgins and roy and beard not seeing a problem with where they stuck the women's team until ted arrived to call it shit, when alice has been calling it shit, bluntly, the entire time.
not to mention the fact that roy is the ONLY person who doesn't have a bad thing to say about alice because she's the same person he was in season one. guarded. unsure. untrusting. jaded. blunt. and we all loved roy immediately in season one. it's set up that way as the first time that the audience may be made to stop and think - oh. whatever bad feelings they could've had about alice are the same good feelings they had about roy. it's the second time in the episode (after alice's "did you consider any women?") that the audience is set up to stop and think about how they could be viewing things.
rebecca's VERY overt storyline was to set people up with the idea that they may be confronted with ideas that challenge their position as feminist. and her apology ended....poorly, in a bad joke, which the show reflects in alice's reaction, but it starts out GREAT. and i wish i could believe that energy will carry through the rest of the season, but i also strongly believe some of these examples could've been accidental because misogyny is systemic.
also for those of you saying not MYYY rebecca - she's always had a feminist blindspot for women she doesn't like or in favor of men she loves. lest we forget that she made keeley pretend bex was ugly and insulted her as though she was the problem or HATED meeting with female shareholders of the team (whose shares richard bought out) and abandoned her best friend and psuedo-niece for six years! for a man! and so suddenly that she made a six year girl wonder what she'd done wrong! and gets rightfully called out by sassy for doing so. she's initially okay with throwing keeley to the SAME cruel press who have been dragging her for being cheated on by setting it up to make it seem like keeley is cheating on jamie with a married man. and we understand it comes from rebecca's childhood and her mother and her marriage and the way she's been treated in this male-centric society...but it doesn't make her misogyny suddenly not exist.
and that's okay! it's okay to be a victim of the system we're in. as long as you take some time to sit with it, acknowledge it, and work on it. and i thought the episode set up an arc for that very nicely.
