Beware the Bigots
I have seen how quickly the unity and happiness generated by England’s Euro win has been spoiled by arguments and controversies, in the main coming from people who normally pay zero attention to football, other than to abuse it and those who follow it. It’s a waste of time and energy and, in my principal writings on the tournament, I have ignored it. I’m more interested in building on the momentum, interest, and enthusiasm generated by England’s win, rather than allowing those seeking to hijack the occasion to peddle their own pet peeves shunt it down into the all-too-familiar sterile channels.
But I did challenge this character for this viral tweet. 33k likes and shares and counting underlines just how much bigotry is out there. I didn’t waste time with a point by point rebuttal. I noted the reference to fans rioting to get into football stadiums, which I took to be a reference to Liverpool supporters. As a Hillsborough survivor who was on the terraces at Leppings Lane, I know well the harm bigotry of this kind causes. It could be a reference to the recent European Champions League final. Check the facts.
I’m more interested in the way that people who have hitherto shown no interest in football have hijacked the England win to peddle their politics. It’s all grist to the mill for them. They have zero interest in football, whether it is played by women or men. We shouldn’t let the interest and enthusiasm generated by this victory be dissipated and diverted by those with no interest in the game. The people who are using ‘women’s football’ as an ideal to denigrate, devalue, and dismiss ‘men’s football’ are no friends of the women’s game at all. Does anyone really think the women footballers don’t watch, follow, and enjoy the men’s game? Ask them, they will tell you.
It’s too daft to laugh at. I wasted a night checking this guy out for his having ever shown the slightest interest in the women’s game in the past. None. Zero. And when the season starts and we need people in the grounds offering their support, time, and money, one thing can be sure – people like this won’t be seen for dust. Give them short shrift.
It is for this reason I am concerned to check those whose ‘praise’ of the Lionesses’ victory seems to be motivated more by a concern to damn ‘men’s football’ than by any actual celebration of the ‘women’s game.’ They certainly seem to have little knowledge of women’s football, or even of women; they seem to be projecting their own prejudices onto the event. Their hatred of football – and most especially the kind of (working class) people who enjoy football – is palpable. The false standards they impute to women will soon be turned against women’s football in precisely the same way as they are being used to damn the men’s game. Because, ultimately, there is no ‘men’s football’ and ‘women’s football,’ with one ranking higher than the other - football is football and the criticisms made of the one will apply to the other in short order. These people will not be around for the long haul when it comes to advancing the women’s game. This idea that the women are better behaved than the men is reactionary drivel that cannot but backfire when it is revealed that the women are every bit as ‘tough,’ ‘competitive,’ and ‘verbal’ as the men. That’s football and, like life, it is real and raw in the flesh. That’s how I like people, as against those who are forever applying their disinfectants so that everything conforms to their antiseptic view of reality. I will take the rugged honesty and spontaneity of real people over conceit, deceit, hypocrisy, and sterility of frustrated Platonists every day of the week.
The same goes for those waxing lyrical about the second-goal celebrations as bold celebrations of feminine power or condemning the sexism of the men who commented. I’ve never given Gary Lineker’s views on anything a second’s thought and I’m not going to waste time on him now. When the snake is busy eating itself, just leave it to get on with the job, just don’t allow it to eat anything else in the process. The same for all of them weighing in on what, for them, is simply the event of the day. They won’t be around for the long haul. Don’t waste time and energy on these people, they only detract and never offer added value.
They’ve been out all week, using the event as yet another opportunity to peddle their pet theories, which they peddle week in week out in the mainstream culture. They’ve all been doing it. Many even openly admit as they write their articles that they don’t like sport in general and football least of all, they don’t ‘normally’ watch football but .. They have watched this tournament and are now using the interest it has generated to give us the benefit of their views, views entirely unrelated to the football. Tournament over, they will go back to their normal disinterest. The interest and attention that the WEUROs have generated belongs to football and football alone, and to the women’s game in particular. The momentum is with the women’s game and we shouldn’t let time and energy be diverted into sterile channels which have nothing to do with football. The test for all those weighing in with their opinions is this: will you show up next season and offer your time and money in support? Name your club and we’ll see you there. If not, then "Your voices are not worth a rat's squeak" (to quote John Ruskin’s decidedly anti-democratic view of ill-informed opinion).
I’ve already wasted about as much time on these neurotics as I’m prepared to waste, so I shall simply refer you to Fraser Myers’ article in Spiked, ‘Don’t let them spoil the Lionesses’ victory.
I just wouldn’t target ‘our woke elites’ as solely responsible for the attempt to turn this brilliant moment into a pompous lecture. I’ve seen people most decidedly anti-woke doing the same thing from the other side, albeit with much more reason (the protection of women’s sports and spaces). I’d prefer to keep the moment and the momentum out of the unwinnable wars of the culture wars. And that goes for this article in Spiked, too, which takes the opportunity to go on the attack against ‘woke.’
Yes, agreed, “don’t let them spoil the Lionesses’ victory.” It’s just that there’s a lot of people doing the spoiling. My test is this: who will turn up for training when the season starts? Who will be putting a shift in? Who will be attending the games come those cold and wet nights in November, December, and January? I’ll be there. I really don’t give a damn for the views of those who won’t be, those who will have moved on to the next big story to recycle the same words in the endless cycles of assertion and counter-assertion.
‘They’re going to ruin it, aren’t they?’ says Myers. I fear so. I avoided the nonsense on social media for a couple of days. But now I can’t switch on without hearing about Gary Lineker. If the people who spend hours generating heat every day on social media ever channelled their energies positively we might actually start to solve some problems. But they are plainly more excited by stoking division and feeding off the hatred. I want to hear about the football.
“The usual suspects just cannot let England’s victory be. Everyone from the BBC to the broadsheet sports pages to the blue-checks of Twitter is determined to mine the final for a ‘teachable moment’. The triumph of the Lionesses is already being co-opted by the cultural elites. They have spied in it a golden opportunity to ‘reset’ the game of football and push identity politics.”
OK, I’m off. Because all those with a view and a perspective do this, and they do it on any and every issue. I make a point of checking the footballing credentials of those who weigh in on the issue. Have they shown any interest in the past? Does it look as though they are showing any interest in the game in the future? If not, I don’t care what they say, they are not football people, their view is of no account.
But Myers does make a point that I made in “Play the Game,” my tribute to the England win – this idea that women footballers are as pure as the driven snow and men footballers odious cheats is sexist and reactionary to the core. And just plain wrong. The people who say this kind of thing show themselves for what they are – ignoramuses and false friends of the ladies game. These people are repeating their stereotypes to one another, telling each other things they believe to be true, that the ‘women’s game is so much more lovely and kind and calm – both on and off the pitch,’ ‘a gentler, fairer sporting spectacle.’ It’s the same tough and competitive game and I have the photos to prove it. And the language can be somewhat ‘industrial.’ Which isn’t to say that women footballers are as odious as the men, precisely the opposite: they are committed, determined, passionate, and tough. And perfectly nice outside of combat (one of the highlights of every game for me is to receive a very nice ‘thank you’ from the players whenever I retrieve the ball). Just cut the patronising drivel, it massively underestimates the women who play the game and imposes utterly false, indeed impossible, standards on them.
Whatever physical differences there are between men and women, female footballers are clearly just as driven, tough and, yes, as conniving as the men. Certainly, that is the view from Germany, whose best-selling tabloid Bild claims its team were ‘cheated’ on Sunday by an England handball. Those talking about the saintly women’s game, set against the toxic blokes, are peddling in crude stereotypes.
But, of course, it’s not the game of football that is the target of critics here, it is the fans of football – basically white working class males, people like me. You would have to be stupid not to detect the undercurrent of the criticism aimed at football over the years. It was the criticism directed at Liverpool fans in the aftermath of Hillsborough, when the authorities who tried to cover the culpability of the police up got the shock of their lives when they discovered doctors of medicine and high court judges and girls and women among the fans on the terraces. As the tweet above shows, the anti-working class bigots still abound and are doing their worst in the aftermath of the England win:
it is the fans who have been the target of all this chatter about the women’s game being so much nicer and better than the men’s. We are constantly told that the atmosphere at Wembley was much more ‘welcoming’ and ‘family friendly’ during the women’s tournament – that is, without the usual football crowd.
The message of all this could hardly be clearer: football fans are usually drunken, boorish bigots. They’re animalistic scum who are only ever one missed penalty away from going on a hate-filled rampage.
Yes indeed, I know the disdain and dehumanisation all too well. People remember the smears and lies of The Sun newspaper in the aftermath of the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989. I remember the abuse as more pervasive and systematic. I first came across this accusation of Liverpool being the self-pity city in an article written by ‘liberal’ Guardian journalist Ed Pearce. His bigoted views are worth repeating. At a time when the dead were being buried, Pearce wrote this in The Sunday Times (23 April 1989): “the shrine in the Anfield goalmouth, the cursing of the police, all the theatricals, come sweetly to a city which is already the world capital of self-pity. There are soapy politicians to make a pet of Liverpool, and Liverpool itself is always standing by to make a pet of itself. 'Why us? Why are we treated like animals?' To which the plain answer is that a good and sufficient minority of you behave like animals.” Pearce went on to state that if South Yorkshire Police bore any responsibility, it was “for not realising what brutes they had to handle.” It is now accepted what those there at the time have been saying all along – it was the obsession with hooliganism and the myopic concern with crowd control over crowd safety that prejudiced the police in their inaction and reaction all that day. The football fans had been treated as ‘brutes’ from first to last. If you don’t believe it, read of the events when it came to identifying the dead. As for the likes of Ed Pearce. I don’t lose sleep over him. Had football supporters not been treated as ‘brutes’, then many lives could have been saved.
So, of course, when I see people use the occasion of England ladies victory in the Euros as the opportunity to take aim against football and football fans for the umpteenth time, I make a point of exposing it for the hate-filled bigotry it is. ‘We can’t let the Lionesses’ victory be spoiled by all this – by this crude stereotyping that demonises men and patronises women. We can’t let them undermine what was so universally inspiring about England’s triumph on Sunday.’
It is no use whatsoever when it comes to putting the time in to expand the women’s game. It wastes the momentum we have as a result of the victory. But it offers a valuable lesson to one and all beyond football – such people are rootless and fruitless, they make a desert of everywhere they pitch their tent, give them a wide berth. And at this point all that remains to be said is that enough is by now more than enough.
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