#i'm 99% sure that seb also said that women couldn't be racing drivers at one point

[keepthedelta]

As a sport newborn, I need you to go on the longest tangent about how Seb was a misogynist and an asshole because these guys are so, so, so into their personal bubbles and their rebrands are so incredibly effective that I just know hippie Seb, not Mark Webber's sleep paralysis demon Seb. Pretty please? I'm asking because I loved your very well-worded Lewis takedown too. I just want to know what I'm supporting here.

i do want to preface this by saying that i'm not saying any of this to try and make people dislike seb, and i didn't say any of that stuff about lewis to make people dislike him either. i am incredibly aware that this is the millionaire tax evader oil company sport and absolutely none of them are perfect, therefore people should feel able to like whichever drivers they like. having said that, i do think we should be honest about who the drivers are and the things they've done, especially when they are trying to present themselves as activists for that cause.

with seb specifically, i think there are a lot of incidents of him being pretty gross and sexist. one time he told an italian journalist that he would only answer her question if she kissed him. another time he derailed an interview with a british journalist by talking about her wearing a revealing dress. he's made numerous jokes about grid girls and even objected to f1 introducing grid boys in an attempt to make the entire practice less overtly sexist because he only wanted to look at grid girls.

seb was always a very charismatic driver, and so a lot of the things he said and did were categorised as him being funny and cheeky, but i think when you look at what he was actually doing and saying, it does border on workplace sexual harassment. he was friends with some of the female journalists like lee mckenzie (the revealing dress incident) but she was very clearly uncomfortable in that moment, and it was really unfair of him to do that to her on international television and in front of her colleagues (mostly men who found it very funny that someone was kind of hinting at her breasts). that moment is also in a bunch of youtube compilations of seb being "funny", so she can't really escape it, if she ever wanted to. as a multiple world champion, seb had a lot of power and influence with f1, certainly more than the female journalists who likely had to work incredibly hard to get their positions and the respect of colleagues and viewers, and seb used his power to put them in uncomfortable positions where they likely would never be able to complain about their discomfort. and given that he never demanded a kiss from a male journalist, you know that it was gendered. i also think that it was incredibly disrespectful to his girlfriend/wife who was at home taking care of their children while he was doing all of this.