As we’ve told you before, we love Erin Andrews, and as we were researching her recent travails we came across a few differing perspectives, most of which we talked about last week.  There’s “OMG SHE’S SO HAWT,” “Wow, she sucks,” even, unfortunately, “what a slut.”  And, fortunately, there’s a good amount of the proper reaction, which is to feel terrible for the poor woman: the violation of privacy she endured with that nude video is hard to even comprehend for us mere mortals who like the undressing we do in our own rooms to be private, thank you.

The strangest–and perhaps even most unfortunate–reaction we saw?  Well, one can sum it up as “poor Erin, this must mean PRO SPORTS ARE EVIL!!!“  We know we’re late to the party: Deadspin among other notable blogs have covered this article at length, but we’d like to weigh in with a women’s perspective.

Bonnie Erbe, author of the article, recieved her undergraduate degree from Barnard before going on to Georgetown Law, and has been covering politics on a national scale since 1975.  She’s a widely-syndicated columnist who hosts a long-running show on PBS.  And she’s not usually seen burning her bra–or insert other outdated feminist metaphor of your choice.

First of all, Erbe isn’t making sense.  She says she agrees with another columnist who says that whoever perpetrated the video is sick and childish…and then somehow infers that to fix this, the correct action would be to get rid of pro sports, because it’s the pro sports culture that’s led us to this unfortunate incident. Now Erbe’s correct that this is horrid for Andrews and for women, but her logic isn’t just suspect: it’s really non-existant.

But actually, we have an even more important point to make to Ms. Erbe, if we could: pro sports do a lot for a lot of women.

Leave aside athletes, for the sake of argument.  Think instead of fans like us who get so much enjoyment from the game, and who feel camraderie, not sexism or harrasment, when spending time with male sports fans of their acquantance.  Think of all the women who get the same joy screaming at the TV as their boyfriends, or the girls who go to ballgames with Dad–or Mom–every summer.

Pro sports is a huge part not just of American culture, but of women’s culture.  Whether or not women’s sports in general are mainstream as yet isn’t the issue here.  The issue is that today’s woman doesn’t need to make some pat speech about blaming a male-dominated cultural institution.  We can blame stupid, horrid, sexist and mean behavior on those–men or women, and in this case, Erbe’s a bit guilty herself–who perpetrated it.

And then we can cheer for our team.