The Associated Press has released their list of the top female athletes of the year as based on the compiled rankings of 158 sports editors around the country. Serena Williams tops the list with a horse coming in second. Yes that is correct, a horse. Zenyatta, an unbeaten race mare, has been voted as the second best female athlete of the year. While her accomplishments are nothing to scoff at having beaten her male competitors and winning The Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita's Oak Tree meeting, it still remains that Zenyatta is a horse and perhaps can’t go 3 seconds without thinking of a carrot.

By naming an animal in the category of best female athlete, the Associated Press was able to accomplish the sexist double whammy of both simultaneously denigrating female sports and women as a whole. The equation of women with animals is bad enough [bitches], the choice of a horse gasses the flames given the sexual baggage that accompanies popular notions of the horse that is unfortunately also equally applicable to the female sex, such that you can talk of ‘breaking in’ a horse, ‘riding’ a horse, ‘cowgirls’, ‘reverse cowgirls’, ‘mounting’, and barebacking. It doesn’t help that Zenyatta’s elf sized jockey is a male.

Why a horse would even be considered an athlete is beyond me. And why the Associated Press would have another horse at the 7 spot of top female athletes is even more baffling. At least animal rights activists will have something to be happy about.