When a Horse Is a 'Top Female Athlete'

(Dec. 24) -- A horse is a horse -- until, of course, she's a female athlete.

Feminists traditionally aren't sports fans, pointing to an industry that celebrates macho posturing, womanizing and good old gender bias, not to mention drugs and cheating. This week, The Associated Press gave them more reason to object with its annual Athlete of the Year list. Among the 10 female honorees, two -- including the first runner-up -- are horses.

As the bloggers at Feministing ask, "Was it really so hard to find 10 athletes who are women?"

Now in its 78th year, the list is determined by a panel of sports editors at U.S. newspapers that are members of the AP.

They are also mostly male, a reflection of the industry. According to a study conducted by the Women's Sports Foundation, men outnumber women five to one among sports industry professionals. The foundation adds that, in 2006, the Associated Press Sports Editors Association had only 24 female members out of 641 total members.

If the AP's intention was to garner press, it's working: News outlets and blogs from ABC to USA Today have protested the inclusion of tennis phenom Serena Williams or the horses -- or both.

The horse community, meanwhile, is pretty excited. "That's pretty darn good," Hall of Fame horse trainer Bob Baffert said of the equine upset, adding: "How did Serena finish ahead of Zenyatta?"

Over at the Huffington Post, Peter Daou, former adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, predicts the outlook for women in general as we head into the next decade isn't pretty. Of his 2-year-old daughter, he writes, "I know full well that her gender automatically brings with it the likelihood that at some point (perhaps at many points), she'll be treated like a second-class citizen."

For women, the sports industry has been a tough nut to crack. Even if they aren't quite second-class citizens, female athletes have long been celebrated for acting like men -- and then punished accordingly. No. 1 on the AP list is Serena Williams, best remembered in 2009 for an on-court outburst in which she cursed and threatened a ref during the U.S. Open finals in September. Williams suggested that her unsportsmanlike behavior was a boost to the game, telling the AP that "[it] got a lot more people excited about tennis," and that "I was right, for the most part." Then she was fined a record $82,500 -- more than any other tennis player, male or female.

When Olympic swimmer Dara Torres set records at age 41, she faced wild accusations of having taken performing enhancing drugs. Both Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez and Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz, meanwhile, made it through drug scandals this year with rabid support from fans.

It's not all bad -- or is it? Earlier this month, NBA commissioner David Stern opined that women could be admitted into the NBA within the decade. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban joked that "Whenever it happens, there will be a lot of DNA testing going on," referring, of course, to the controversy surrounding South African world championship runner Caster Semenya, who reportedly had both female and male sexual organs.

Semenya, meanwhile -- arguably one of the most notable athletes of the year -- was, in a particularly damning move, left off both female and male AP lists.