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Man 'corrects' a female golfer's swing, completely clueless than she's a PGA pro

This is the most embarrassing interaction you'll see all day.

Representative Image from Canva
A man tried to tell a pro golfer she was swing too slow.

We’re all probably familiar with the term “mansplaining,” when a man explains something to a woman in a condescending or patronizing way. Often, this comes in the form of a man explaining a subject to a woman that she already knows on an expert level. The female neuroscientist who was told by a man that she should read a research paper she actually wrote comes to mind.

Often, mansplaining can show up in small interactions that minimize or infantilize a woman's knowledge and expertise. It can be a man spouting off facts because he thinks it makes him seem interesting, or giving unsolicited fitness advice at the gym in a poorly disguised flirting attempt. But sometimes the irony at play is just too much to bear. Frankly, it's often delicious.

Recently some next-level mansplaining was caught in the wild. Well, at a golf driving range anyway. Georgia Ball, a professional golfer and coach who’s racked up over 3 million likes on TikTok for all her tips and tricks of the sport, was minding her own business while practicing a swing change.

It takes all of two seconds on Google to see that when it comes to incorporating a swing change, golfers need to swing slower, at 50-75% their normal speed…which is what Ball was doing.

And this is what prompted some man to insert his “advice.”

In the clip, we hear the man say “What you are doing there … you shouldn’t be doing that.”

Exhibiting the patience of a nun, Ball simply tells him that she’s going through a swing change.

But her attempts at reason are unfortunately interrupted, multiple times, when the man repeatedly assures her that since he’s been playing golf for 20 years, he knows what he’s talking about.

He then insists, repeatedly cutting her off, that she’s going too slow on her swing and should be following through.

Cue Ball’s incredulous look to the camera.

Watch the whole, cringe-inducing interaction here:

@georgiagolfcoach

Can you believe he said this? 😳⛳️👀 #golf #golfswing #golflife #golftok #golftiktok #golfer #golfing #golfgirl #golfpro #golftips #golfclub #drivingrange

Hoping to appease him, Ball finally gives a hearty swing, writing “I knew I had to make this a good one” on the onscreen text.

As the ball sails through the air, the man says “see how much better that was?", completely taking credit for her swing.

Yes. Really. He really said that.

Poor Ball then tries to tell him that even the “best players in the world” slow down their swing when going through a swing change. And she'd know. Not only is she a golf coach, she's a certified PGA professional.

“No, I understand what you’re saying, but I’ve been playing golf for 20 years,” the man repeats. At this point Ball is just “trying to keep it together.”

mansplaining, golf, swing change golf, humor, golfing, sports, athletes, female athletes, womens sports, sexismWomen don't need unsolicited male advice, not on the golf course, not at the gym, not anywhere. Photo by Benny Hassum on Unsplash

Sure, this guy might have not known who Ball was, but it’s pretty evident that the last thing she needed was this guy’s “advice.” And thus, the “mansplaining” jokes commend in the comments section.

Here’s a small sampling:

“As a guy, this is the first time I’ve ever seen ‘mansplaining’ happen.”

“The way he took credit for your next swing.”

“But did you consider that he’s been playing golf for 20 years?”

“*implement nothing he says* ‘See how much better that was’ HAHAHAHAH.”

“My hope is that he comes across this video and it keeps him up at night."

Others couldn’t help but praise Ball for keeping her cool.

“He doesn’t even give you a chance to explain, just forces his opinion and advice onto you. Goon on you for staying calm and polite,” one person wrote.

Of course, others felt Ball was being “too nice” to the man. One even exclaimed, “there’s no reason to be so polite!”

Ball told BBC that it wouldn't be in her nature to shut the man down harshly, even if that's what he deserved. ""I wouldn't interrupt and say that," she says. "I suppose it's just the humble side of me."


@georgiagolfcoach

Play a hole with me ⛳️🏌🏽‍♂️25mph wind 🤯🤣 #golf #golftiktok #golftok #golfer #golfswing #golfing #golflife #golftips #golfcourse #golfclub #golfgirl #golfdrills #playaholewithme #golfpro

Perhaps worst of all, this kind of behavior is pretty common, especially for female athletes. A fellow female golfer even commented “So glad you posted this because it is my BIGGEST frustration when I’m at the driving range. Unfortunately, men always feel the need to comment on my swing or want to coach me. Guys take note: Please don’t.”

On the bright side: as annoying as it is that Ball had to endure that (not to mention what it says about the very real b.s. that women in general have to put up with on the regular) she laughed it off and just went on about her life being awesome at what she does. Just like the other smart, capable women of the world. It’s almost like…maybe women don’t need advice, so much as they need respect? Now there’s a concept.

But for her part, Ball isn't holding onto any grudges over the incident.

"I have a lot of interaction with males and females every single day [on the course]. And I'd say it's mostly always positive," she says. "I'm just glad I can look back at it now and laugh about it because the majority of people and golfers are all just out to help each other."

This article originally appeared last year.

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Wellness

A new study found that both men and women say women exaggerate how much pain they experience

Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

A female friend once told her husband that her doctors had dismissed her when she described how much pain she was in. Her husband gave the docs the benefit of the doubt, saying that pain was subjective and maybe she just needed to describe it differently. Then he went to a doctor's appointment with her, saw the phenomenon himself, and apologized. She was right. She'd explained exactly what she was experiencing—the doctors just didn't believe that her pain was as bad as she was describing.

Gender bias in pain assessment and treatment in clinical settings is well-documented, but a new study has found that it's not just health professionals who tend to think women exaggerate pain levels. In a paper published this month in the Journal of Pain, an international group of researchers from the U.S., France, and China shared that among a sample of average adults, both men and women show a "reasonably strong gender bias" in their interpretations of patients' pain. The main takeaway is that people tend to believe that women aren't in as much pain as they really are.

The study involved two experiments, the first with 50 participants and the second with 197, in which people watched videos of both male and female patients experiencing shoulder pain. Participants were asked to observe the patients' expressions of pain and rate their pain level on a scale of zero (absolutely no pain) to 100 (the worst pain possible).

In both experiments, participants perceived female patients to be in less pain than the males, even when they were experiencing the same intensity level of pain. And across the sample, women were just as likely to underestimate women's pain as men were.

Participants were also asked how they would prescribe treatment for the patients' pain if they were doctors. Though the numbers weren't drastically different, women were more likely than men to be prescribed psychotherapy (42% for women, 38% for men), while men were more likely than women to be prescribed pain medication (58% for women, 62% for men).

Why such discrepancies? The study authors think on reason is gender expectations and stereotypes.

"Generally, boys are discouraged from expressing emotions, whereas girls are permitted to express them," the study authors told The Academic Times. "As a result, men may be more reluctant to express pain and other vulnerabilities than women. Thus, masculine gender norms are associated with high pain tolerance and stoicism whereas feminine gender norms are more permissive of expressing pain."

In other words, since people perceive men to hide their emotions more, the assumption is that they are actually in more pain than they're letting on. Since women show their emotions more, the assumption is that their pain may not be as bad as they're expressing.

Researchers also included a Gender Role Expectation of Pain Questionnaire in their second experiment, which found that women tend to believe that women are able to endure pain longer than men, and both genders believe that women are substantially more willing to report pain than men. According to the authors, those pain-related stereotypes predicted the pain estimated biases shown in the experiment.

Paradoxically, women may be perceived as exaggerating their pain precisely because they are more open and honest about it.

"Women are consistently found to report higher levels of pain than men and to be more expressive of pain than men," the authors said. "Perceivers may in turn get habituated to more frequent or more intense pain expressions in females and as a result reduce the pain they attribute to those expressions."

Such gender biases in pain estimation matter, as they can interfere with effective clinical care when coming from physicians and impact social support when coming from the people around us. Similar pain perception biases also happen along racial lines, so women of color face an even steeper climb to have their pain recognized and treated effectively.

Though biases are subconscious and can be tricky to weed out, a simple solution here is a shift in mindset to believing women when they describe what's happening in their own bodies. Pain is subjective, which should be all the more reason not to make your own judgments about what someone else is experiencing. If a woman says her pain level is a 7 out of 10, that's what she means. She knows her body. It's okay to take her at her word.

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Marvel just hired its first female film composer. Here's why that's a big deal.

My daughter and I watched a documentary about film composers and were stunned by how few women were in it.

Like, seriously stunned.

Of the many composers featured in the film "Score," only two were women. But I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised. If I were to list famous film scorers, I'd offer up names like John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, and Howard Shore. I don't even know the name of a female film composer off the top of my head.

John Williams received a lifetime achievement award for his film composition work in 2016. Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

That's not good news for my daughter, who wants to be a film composer. She'll be studying music composition at university this fall, and while I have no doubt she'll rock it, it's disheartening to find out how male-dominated her chosen field is.

But perhaps change is on the horizon.

Marvel just made superhero movie history by hiring a female film composer.

As a bright spot in the darkness, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought on Pinar Toprak to score the much-anticipated "Captain Marvel" film. Toprak, who helped score the popular video game "Fortnite," will be the first female film scorer in a comic superhero movie.

To give you a sense of why this is significant, take a look at this list of DC superhero films and this list of Marvel superhero films. Just scroll through to see the sheer number of films — presumably all of which have included a score of some sort.

It's not that women don't ever score movies. They do — but only 3% of the top 250 films of 2017 included female composers (up from 1-2% a few years before). The industry has long been dominated by men and has been slow to change.

It's not just film scores. The whole music composition world is heavily skewed toward male composers.

In some ways, it's understandable. The most well-known classical music pieces come from the likes of Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Brahms, Vivaldi, and other male composers from generations past. The problem is that as the landscape has changed for women in music, the music that gets played and celebrated hasn't.

The statistics from Drama Musica and the Donne — Women in Music project show that among 1,445 classical concerts performed around the world in a year, only 76 included at least one piece by a woman. That means 95% of classical concerts only include male composers.

Image via Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, used with permission.

The numbers are not just due to the predominance of famous dead men in the classical music repertoire. In a survey of the 22 largest American orchestras during the 2014-15 symphony season, women only accounted for 14.3% of living composers whose work was performed.

"These numbers are both abysmal and embarrassing, particularly in this day and age," said Kristin Kuster, composer and associate professor of composition at the University of Michigan.

When an industry has been male-dominated for centuries, it takes a concerted, purposeful effort to level the field.

And there are some in the music world — like Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Music director/conductor Ulysses James — leading the way.

After reading an article about the gender disparities for composers in orchestra performances, James responded with this:

"Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association Board members and I saw this article and decided to do something about it. Fourteen of the sixteen works we will be performing in the 2018-19 season will be composed by women. I'll also commit to programming 50% of the following season and beyond to women composers. Thank you for the article."

That's how it's done. It takes a conscious effort to turn the tide, and even just one decision like James' can break a pattern.

Thank you James and others making the effort and giving my daughter hope for a successful career doing what she loves. Let's hope more will follow your lead.

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The reaction to a (nearly) all-male panel might prompt some long overdue change.

A quick glance at the lineup for Variety's annual "A Night in the Writers' Room" event turned up something a little odd: It was almost entirely men.

The event, to be held in West Hollywood on June 14, features some really great, talented people working in TV right now. Writers from shows like "The Americans," "Black Lightning," "Atlanta," and "The Good Place" are all slated to appear, a veritable who's-who of TV talent. But of the 12 writers scheduled to appear, 11 of them are men.

Writer Wendy Molyneux ("Bob's Burgers") noticed this, tweeting, "I guess what you'll find in the writers' room is over 90% men!"

A number of the scheduled writers offered to give up their spots on the panel to make room for women, which really was a nice gesture.

"The Good Place" writer Michael Schur (who goes by "Ken Tremendous" on Twitter) tweeted that while he didn't know who else was scheduled to appear at the event, he thought it'd be appropriate to replace him with "any one of the dozens of women who should be part of any event like this." David Shore ("The Good Doctor") concurred, saying that he notified organizers he was "happy to be replaced."

Twitter user @WintryMixALot replied to Schur, writing, "Dude, I love you, but you seriously accept invites to be on panels without asking who else will be on them? If you care about representation please stop doing that." In a follow-up tweet, Schur committed to doing that moving forward.

To its credit, Variety responded to its, er, lack of variety when it came to organizing this event.

"On behalf of Variety, we apologize for the egregious oversight regarding the lack of female writers participating in our upcoming A Night in the Writers' Room event," was posted on Twitter, adding Variety is "working on rectifying" the mistake.

In 2017, Variety's "A Night in the Writers' Room" event featured 10 men and two women. The 2016 event featured 10 men and three women. Now, yes, it is entirely possible that Variety had planned to make a more concerted effort to be more gender-proportionate in 2018, but based on past years, this seems to have been more business as usual as opposed to an "egregious oversight" on their part.

Lost in a lot of the social media discussion was the fact that in addition to being overwhelmingly male, the event has a tendency to be overwhelmingly white.

The 2018 event features zero women of color. There was just one (Ava DuVernay) in 2017 and one in 2016 (Misha Green). For all the outcry over the lack of gender diversity, however, not a lot was said about race.

Matt Warburton, Rob McElhenney, Marc Maron, Bill Lawrence, Matthew Carnahan, and Variety chief television critic Brian Lowry participate in the 2014 event. Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Variety.

Director Sade Sellers rightly pointed this out on Twitter, indicating she'd love to put together another panel filled with women — including women of color.

Hopefully Variety takes this criticism into consideration as it scrambles to fix this. After all, part of what makes panel discussions so interesting is hearing from people with wildly different backgrounds having a conversation about their different upbringings, perspectives, and how that fits into their work. That kind of conversation can only happen with a diverse panel.

Now, you may be asking yourself why stuff like this even matters. After all, it's just a panel. There's more to it than that.

"When they can't even manage tokenism, then you know they really don't care," says Nell Scovell, a writer whose credits include "Late Night With David Letterman," "The Simpsons," and "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch."

Scovell gets to the heart of the matter: These types of prestigious industry panels send a message to aspiring creatives and viewers about who their product is actually for. "These panels should reflect the audiences and women are just as interested in highly-paid, creative jobs as men. Maybe even more."

Nell Scovell (left) speaks with Oscar-winning actress Patricia Arquette during a 2016 event put on by Vanity Fair. Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Vanity Fair.

Molyneux touches on what kind of impression it makes when there's a lack of diversity in representation. If there's hope of keeping fresh talent interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, the industry needs to take a few small overtures in their direction. The problem has an easy solution: Don't be a jerk.

"'Don't be a d-bag' is the lesson of our time, right? Before you announce your panel, look at your roster and ask yourself: 'Am I about to be a d-bag?' says Molyneux. "I mean, if your panel is 91.67% male — and please have a man check my math — maybe get on the pink phone & ring up some girls. We all live in a big house together so we can sync our menses, so you’re bound to get SOMEONE. Under his eye," she finishes, jokingly.

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