Football’s Woman Problem

I haven’t witnessed this much good old-fashioned sexism since the NoMorePage3 campaign brought all the unreconstructed thugs out of the woodwork to call us ugly jealous prudes for wanting a public space for women free of soft porn. Yes, the Spanish women’s football crisis has reminded us that the old forms of sexism haven’t gone away, they’ve just been momentarily overshadowed by the new progressive form of sexism which calls women terfs and bigots for wanting a public space which is safe and fair for women. We’re back momentarily with the men who wouldn’t be seen dead in a ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ T shirt. Their old-fashioned opinion, that women shouldn’t be playing football anyway, now has a very modern public platform for its expression so we can all witness the meltdown of the men who still view the sexually inappropriate behaviour of a man as proof that women should be kept out of the beautiful game. There is a palpable sense of ‘’We told you so!’ in tweets which say things like ‘women are delicate flowers who cannot be around men’ or ‘Women’s football has been a thing for five minutes and they’re already destroying the game with #MeToo’.

I try to avoid making absurd comparisons with extreme regimes, now that feminists are routinely compared to Nazis, but nevertheless there is a continuum between the belief that women should be banned from football for their own good because men will simply not be able to resist assaulting them, to the Afghan Taliban’s restriction on freedoms for women ‘for their own safety.’ Like the periodic suggestion of curfews for women when there is a serial killer on the loose, the punishment and/or control of women for the sins of men is a pernicious form of victim blaming.

Comparisons are being made between the Rubiales kiss and the kisses shared between male footballers, as if the power disparity and women’s experience of sexism make no difference to the experience. It reminds me of the oft-used example of the ‘Diet Coke ad’ during the NoMorePage3 campaign, to suggest that male objectification is on a par with that experienced by females, but men just cope with it better. There is a deliberate sex-blindness where it suits, coupled with a full-on sex-determined judgement on the problem and its solution. We are expected to accept that it’s ‘people’ who kiss eachother (so a man kissing a woman is no different to a man kissing another man), but it’s ‘men’ who play football (so women should back off).

A similar feat of cognitive dissonance is required by the new progressives who will campaign about the issue of consent when a woman is kissed on the mouth but look the other way when a woman is forced to accept the greater risks of playing her sport against a man. For them, there is no difference between males and females when it comes to fairness and safety in sport, but all the difference in the world when it comes to who should be allowed to kiss who without asking permission first.

It is being said that this is Spain’s #MeToo movement, but I rather hope not. #MeToo quickly became defanged by a liberal feminist determination to include men who say they are women in the movement. A woman’s experience of assault then becomes a battlefield between those who decry all male violence against women and those who claim that some men are not really male at all, on their say so alone. A victim can quickly be cast as a bigot in these circumstances, and sympathy for her becomes dependent on a man’s inner feelings about his ‘gender’. Spanish women deserve a better feminism than this, as do we all.

The behaviour of Rubiales towards all the other Spanish team players bordered on creepy: the kiss on Jenni Hermoso’s lips was just the icing on the cake. As a woman, watching all those hugs was quite uncomfortable. An older man in a position of power should be aware of the disparity between his own standing and that of younger women, especially in a game where their acceptance is still a matter of debate. In an (admittedly unscientific) Twitter poll I asked the question of women: ‘Have you ever been made uncomfortable by a hug from an older male relative/friend’s dad etc which felt more like a grope/went on too long/was hard to get away from/was more than just a hug…’ Of the 912 respondents, 89% said yes. There is good reason for women to view Rubiales’ actions differently to men, but even if lived experience didn’t play a part in women’s perceptions, there is still the issue of historic inequalities which are pronounced in the world of football and should be a consideration if women are to be respected in the game. For many years the focus has been on the very basic desire just to be taken seriously in the first place. All the people commenting (sometimes patronisingly) on the status of the England women’s team as ‘inspiration for young girls’ should also be aware of the effect on young girls of watching the disrespectful treatment of those role models by some in the male management of the game.

Like Page3 at the time, treating women as sex objects serves to put women back in their place. It can be a useful tool for men threatened by women encroaching on territory they thought was theirs: it’s a reminder of what they could do to us if they chose. A kiss, a grope, a lascivious stare, in a situation where women are being celebrated for their achievements, is more than just a kiss, it is a statement of who is still boss and it is demeaning to a woman at the very moment of her success.

There has been overwhelming public support for the Spanish women footballers, which is nice to see, though I can’t help feeling that it’s relatively safe ground for the ‘right side of history’ bunch. The old sexists currently having their moment will not last long; the new sexists will reassert themselves eventually, newly confident and patting themselves on the back for decrying the attitude of dinosaurs like Rubiales. Some of them, still too scared to comment on ‘the trans issue’ in sport, but invigorated by this very public opportunity to show off their feminist credentials, might even be dusting down their ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ T shirts. But we won’t be fooled.