Someone Called Eva Marie a Ring Rat on the WWE Twitter Crawl? Eek, Not a Good Look

Not a ring rat Photo Credit: WWE.com

I rarely ever pay attention to the Twitter crawl on the bottom of the screen during RAW. It either contains pap from WWE superstars that I can see if I choose to on my own feed, or it highlights the most generic of all opinions from the genpop. There's nothing wrong with getting excited over the show, but I would think whomever WWE has throwing tweets up on the screen would be a little more discerning about what goes up there. When I looked up at the screen shortly after the Miz/Jerry Lawler/Total Divas hype segment, my fears were reinforced rather than mollified. I saw this tweet:

WHO IS THIS EVA MARIE TO DISRESPECT A LEGEND LIKE JERRY LAWLER #RINGRAT#RAT#Raw#RawRat
— JGeorge Estrella (@JGeorge489) July 23, 2013

Yep, some fan decided that calling a woman he barely knew in a character sense and knew even less personally a ring rat.

In a better world, I shouldn't have to explain why Eva Marie isn't a ring rat. In fact, I'd say she proved herself quite the opposite in standing up for herself against Lawler. Seriously, she objected to being ogled by a guy whose entire gimmick it is to be a pervert. Why is she even in the fucking wrong here?

The term "ring rat" carries a sleazy connotation, one that I can bet wouldn't be thrown around if that were, say, Corey Graves or some other NXT dude making his debut and slapping the King. I honestly can't say whether this particular person wouldn't have flipped out if the gender of the slapper was different. But I can say that if he had used a derogatory slur against a man, even one that would have connoted a sexuality that is something other than the societal norm, it would not have made the Twitter crawl.

I can take this Twitter user to task all I want. The chiding could make him see the light or it could further alienate him and push him towards negative attitudes. Trying to change the attitudes of random folks on Twitter is a daunting enough task once one realizes that there are a bunch of other people behind him with the same attitudes. I mean, look at the retweets and the favorites on that one missive. I'm surprise there aren't more because it made the Twitter crawl, but still, that's not a good look.

But the stone cold better way not to look like WWE is endorsing this kind of language as a valid reaction to a woman standing up for herself against a man, who, let's face it, doesn't exactly have the best record when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex is by not showing it to the world watching. Posting that tweet is not the first boneheaded move made by people on WWE's social media dissemination. They need to work on it being the last though.

There's a chance that the person who was charged with selecting the Tweets didn't know what the term "ring rat" meant. There's also a chance that person did and didn't care. Given the questionable way WWE treats women in character (and rumored to treat them out of it), I would not be surprised at all if it were the latter. Regardless, WWE can't do a whole lot of anything to take back what went across the crawl. They can, however, make sure it doesn't happen again.

I am not saying that indignation towards a woman slapping a man is not a valid reaction. However, the perception is already stacked against her in that Lawler gets to have a last name, while Eva Marie does not. She is already behind the 8-ball here. So when the company she works for further compounds her lack of worth by allowing a fan to blindly slut shame her as a valid reaction to her in character actions, the situation just gets more and more muddled. WWE has to do a better job in the future of catching these things, and if that was intentional, if the person filtering and selecting tweets knew what the term ring rat was and still used it anyway? Well, then it acts as further proof that WWE still has a long way to go.