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ESPN's Mina Kimes shares sexist email from viewer who claims she doesn't 'know anything about male sports'

ESPN analyst Mina Kimes responds to sexist email from troll. (Photo: Getty Images)
ESPN analyst Mina Kimes responds to sexist email from troll. (Photo: Getty Images)

ESPN's Mina Kimes is shedding a light on the reality of her role as a female sports analyst after sharing a screenshot of a sexist email that she received from a troll.

The photo posted on her Twitter on Monday showed a message from a man named Charles Brown with the subject line reading "STOP!" The body of the email then went on to encourage Kimes to "stop embarrassing yourself and pretending to actually know anything about male sports."

"The only reason you're at ESPN is due to affirmative action," Brown claimed in his email. "Jeff Saturday must privately feel so emasculated having to pretend to have an intellectual back and forth about professional football with someone wearing lipstick and high heels."

The sexist remarks were made in response to Kimes's work as an NFL analyst alongside her colleague, Saturday. Luckily, Kimes was able to react to the email with humor as she posted it with the caption, "Sir this is a Wendy's."

Saturday took to his own social media account to defend his co-worker.

"This is absolute trash!" Saturday tweeted. "Mina is fantastic at her job and has earned everything she has at Espn. I can also tell you that I have reached out to Mina a number of times so that she could teach me about the use of analytics in football. She makes our NFL team better. Pipe down Charlie."

ESPN shared additional support for Kimes with the following statement to Yahoo Life: "Mina's role at ESPN is a groundbreaking one that she's completely earned. Thanks to her hard work and a deep understanding of the game, Mina's voice is universally respected throughout the league, as well as by her peers, many of whom played the game at the highest level. Mina is a fantastic colleague and our team is better because of her."

Kimes's tweet received thousands of reactions from fans and fellow reporters. Still, she had to justify her post to those who argued that she shouldn't "amplify" this type of negative feedback.

"I get asked by women every day whether it's normal, and I want people to see: It never ends and it has absolutely nothing to do with you," Kimes wrote of the sexism she faces.

After joining the sports network back in 2014 and becoming an award-winning journalist for her work as an analyst, writer, podcaster and television contributor for ESPN, Kimes shared that the misogynistic message isn't out of the norm. "Just another Monday," she wrote in response to a Twitter comment.

Other women in sports media shared similar experiences.

"I had something similar this week Mina, telling me go back to working at Ulta," Kayla Anderson, a sports anchor for Nashville, Tenn., news station WKRN-TV, shared referencing the beauty company. "Really sad."

Despite the criticism, many people praised Kimes for sharing the message and encouraged her to keep working to make a difference within the industry.

"Thank you for being a role model for young girls who love sports," Drea Blackwell, a sports anchor at KSBW tweeted. "Hopefully one day we will live in a world where they don't get similar comments."

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