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| Chris Jericho reinforced rape culture in wrestling with his woefully ill-advised "advertising" for his cruise Photo Credit: WWE.com |
A lot of those fans are not the kind of people one wants to spend a week sequestered at sea in an enclosed vessel with. Then again, it's not just wrestling fans that have people with ugly personalities and bad social views, it's everyone from all walks of life. However, when I go on a regular cruise, it's just on a boat with people who like cruises, not with a bunch of people who share one same specific interest. The Jericho cruise will have a level of assumed comfort that might make people want to talk to strangers, which is fine as long as the person you're reaching out to agrees with you on various hot-button topics, like whether Roman Reigns is the great Satan or if women are in fact people.
I've joked that the cruise probably has minuscule amounts of female passengers because again, I've not encountered a ton of women at Ring of Honor in Philly, mainly because of the atmosphere set by ROH's narrative structure. But according to Jericho himself, 35 percent of the passengers will be women, which hey, would be fine if he weren't using that fact to try and sell more tickets to men...
Also 35% of the guests booked so far are females between ages of 18-49...that’s a lot of BIKINIS! Book ur cabin NOW! https://t.co/5ZoFzjCyXT— Chris Jericho (@IAmJericho) November 10, 2017
Oh no Chris, what is you doin' baby.
I shouldn't have to remind anyone why that's a problematic thing to say, but even in the year 2017 of our lord Bryan Danielson, it needs to be said, for fuck's sake. Women are people. They have free will and agency like the rest of us, and their bodies are not possessions or selling points for men to be drawn to purchase a good or service. When Pro Wrestling Sheet auteur Ryan Satin went in on Jericho, he said that he actually did respect women before accusing Satin of getting offended just to get offended and banning him from the cruise. Honestly, I'm not sure that's the truth. Had Jericho respected his female passengers, he wouldn't have advertised their bikini'd bodies as items in a visual meat market. Furthermore, he'd have understood that his influence as a huge celebrity might signal to the less scrupulous of passengers that the women are there for their amusement, and that they might be emboldened to make unwanted advances at them. Even furthermore, did anyone, Jericho or those replying to him, even bother to consult female wrestling fans as to how they felt instead of speaking for them? The answer is cloudy.
No matter how many advances wrestling makes towards inclusion, people like Jericho prove that the industry still has a really long goddamn way to go before it makes women feel at home at a wrestling show or at a get-together with other wrestling fans. If you think I'm wrong, then I will point you in the direction of the guy who got arrested yesterday at a ROH show for sexually harassing female attendees. That incident was not isolated. It happens everywhere, and not every victim speaks up because of disbelieving reactions from men in power who think false rape allegations are a bigger problem than rape itself. Jericho has a platform, and he could've used it for good. Instead, he used it to try to enrich himself at the expense of his female fans and doubled down when called on it. It's disappointing even if it's not surprising.
