February 01, 2011
Andy Gray and Richard Keys
Soccer sexism, it would seem, is indeed rife. So why is anyone surprised?
In sports, success depends on strength, speed, and aggression, attributes associated with high testosterone and therefore maleness. So sports are always likely to attract more men than women as participants and fans. It is probably statistically true that most women do not understand the offside rule. This is because it is not interesting enough to bother to find out.
Acute observers realize that women and men tend to be interested in different things, and despite their training they will often react in stereotypical ways. For example, when Sunday Times journalist Janice Turner interviewed Millwall F.C.’s first female chief executive Heather Rabbatts, she immediately cut to the chase:
“Why did the 53-year-old chief executive of Britain’s most notorious football club this morning put on 4in leopard-skin stilettos, an ankle bracelet (among other chunky, clinking items of jewellery) and, beneath her Chanel-esque jacket and black miniskirt, add what I can only describe as knee-length, black lace knickers?”
Turner reprimanded herself””It is invidious to judge a high-profile woman by her appearance””but perhaps she was only giving in to the inevitable.
Interviewed recently by BBC Radio 5, Rabbatts incidentally revealed that she does not want equality herself. She said the game needed more female officials, then added: “But when they”re appointed, sadly, they”ll get the same abuse as their male colleagues.” One would think she”d have been pleased with such fairness.
Nor should we be surprised that men gathered together will gossip, grumble, and generalize about the opposite sex. Comments like those made by Gray and Keys can be heard any day of any week in any bar anywhere.
So can disparaging comments made by women about men, which no one seems to mind much. In August 2009, Labour minister Harriet Harman said that there should not be an all-male Labour leadership because “men cannot be trusted to run things on their own.” The following day, she said the banking crisis would not have happened if Lehman Brothers had been “Lehman Sisters.” These aperçus attracted some attention, but every day one hears similarly trite remarks about males lacking intelligence, emotional literacy, or multitasking ability. So what?
What Gray and Keys said was puerile and boorish. But it is exactly what one would expect from men who spend too much time watching other men propelling a leather sphere from one end of a field to the other and back again.
At the end of this saga, two football pundits have lost their jobs and purpose in life, other broadcasters have been reminded chillingly that “you”re never alone with a microphone,” and innumerable PC pundits have made themselves feel holy by condemning men for”err, being men. But even if sexism is hypocritically hidden in TV studios, it will remain as rife in the changing rooms, on the pitch, and on the terraces as it is in every other area of life. Anti-sexist agitators may think it’s all over, but if they do they will soon be as sick as parrots.
