lightningspiral:

…specifically, WWE (I feel NO obligation to justify my love for Shimmer)…

…is that it’s very fascinating to see the live crowd’s reactions to things. 

In this case, the THUNDEROUS booing to a woman telling beloved wrestling hero Zack Ryder that she wanted to be “just friends.”  And make no mistake, the hatred was directed toward her.   

It was very disturbing, and very telling. The “friendzone” bullshit is widespread enough that a team of wrestling writers could predict that the vocal majority of the crowd would instantly put all their sympathy on the guy who got burned on it.

To be clear, this is absolutely nothing new in pro wrestling—audiences have been booing women for failing to put out, and calling women “slut” for putting out for the “wrong” guy, for most of the 20 years I’ve been watching it.

Wrestling does not appeal to any one class of people but it does appeal to each fan’s most reptilian-brained instincts about right-versus-wrong and us-versus-them.  Nobody in San Diego tonight paid to seriously, critically analyze the shades of gray in the Cena/Kane/Zack/Eve story.  They came to pick a side and demonize all the other sides.  I’m not defending it, but pro wrestling makes its money off of that visceral emotional response, so WWE tends to encourage it.

None of this means that WWE had to craft this story to make Zack the natural favorite for the average wrestling fan.  (Although since the average fan is some young man who is bitter that he won’t get a girl like Eve, it’s not hard.)  But it’s been very clear to me for years that the power behind he wrestling industry—promoters, writers, bookers, and agents—are largely old, out-of-touch carnies with very backward ideas about a lot of things, particularly women.  They produce the show they want to see and then seek an audience that will conform to that vision. 

I guarantee you that this angle has very little to do with friendzone/”Nice Guy” issues on the internet (I suspect the powers that be in WWE don’t even know that “friendzone” is an actual term).  There is an institutionalized misogyny in wrestling completely apart from the misogyny in the rest of the world, and in some ways it’s much, much worse.