A little while back, I was watching a conversation unfold on Twitter between two relatively respected football bloggers.  The conversation was concerned with the use of the word, ‘cunt’. The first blogger was offended by what he perceived as a recent overuse of the word – a word he regarded as the “worst swear word”. The other blogger was defending his own use of the word, claiming he had always used it and that he (and lots of other people) didn’t consider it particularly offensive anymore, even claiming he used it as a term of affection amongst friends.  His assertion was that the first blogger was wrong to be offended. As the conversation continued, others got involved, mostly siding with the second blogger, until the conversation inevitably petered out with nothing resolved or learned.

What no-one mentioned throughout the course of the conversation was how innately offensive the use of the word cunt is. We can, I think, assume the bloggers knew what the word “means”, yet the anti-feminist evocation implicit in it’s meaning was at no point discussed in relation to the word’s offensive nature. Now, you could argue that these are just two football bloggers talking on the backwaters of the internet and that it would only flatter them to imply that they represent football as a whole, but this isn’t an isolated use of anti-feminist rhetoric within these, and similar, forums. I’d also argue that the 30,000 followers they share between them (enough to fill a Premiership stadium) – many of whom are younger and impressionable, and whose development as well rounded individuals, they have a great influence over – might benefit greatly from not being subjected to the everydayness of the second blogger’s (and his friends) use of what is considered by many as sexist language.

Sexist language is intrinsically difficult to talk about and create awareness of, because much of it is so deeply woven into the fabric of social intercourse. We are all hyper-aware (I presume) of racist terms that in bygone eras were considered appropriate for everyday use, and that are now recognised as racially oppressive and discriminatory – especially with the prevalence of the subject in football at the moment. The same applies to the words, terms and phrases which have a history heavily anchored in sexism, as Laura explains: “I do understand that some people might use sexist language without intentionally being sexist or even realising that they are being sexist, because so many of these terms, like the attitudes that underlie them, are passed down and ingrained in our everyday lives to such an extent that it is easy to use them without even realising. This doesn’t mean that the individual is necessarily a ‘bad’ or ‘sexist’ person, but I hope that when it is pointed out they might nonetheless reconsider and adjust their language use accordingly, helping us to make a gradual shift away from the normalised acceptance of such terms.” In the same way using racist language doesn’t automatically make you a racist, using sexist language doesn’t make you a sexist; but the hope is that if you became aware of that misuse of language, you’d make a change.

As with racism (and any oppressive ‘ism’), the problem doesn’t simply reside in the offensive words themselves. Language is an arbitrary system, so it’s the inequality brought about historically, through social conditioning – expressed by such words – that is damaging. Language has the power to be discriminatory regardless of whether certain specific terminology is used or not. For example, when the Ryan Giggs story broke, the football community were openly damning of the alleged actions of one of ‘its own’ and, although Ryan Giggs himself was the subject of much abuse, it was the women involved in the news reports that were widely targeted by many within the football community. Even those within the community who were not expressing their opinion using specifically demeaning language were happy to “suggest” what they thought: ‘What kind of person goes after a married man?’ and myriad other examples. In other quarters Ryan Giggs was openly lauded for his alleged actions.

It’s this overt and innert discrimination, that may be the reason for the prominence of sexist language within the male-dominated world of football.  Laura details where such inequality lies in a wider context: “There are many sexist words used to describe women that don’t really have male equivalents: Consider the contrast between ‘slut’, ‘tramp’ or ‘tart’ and ‘player’, ‘or stud’ – between ‘old maid’ or ‘spinster’ and ‘bachelor’.  Women and men who display the same qualities are frequently labelled in different ways, as many entries to the Everyday Sexism Project testify.Women describe being given gender-specific labels with negative connotations when they work hard or perform well – where, they ask, are the male equivalents for phrases such as ‘ball-breaker’, ‘battleaxe’ or ‘harridan’? Meanwhile labels like ‘doll’, ‘baby’ and ‘sweetie’ infantilise women. And it is impossible to deny the connotations and implications of the language we use to describe women when you realize the overwhelming prevalence of animalistic words we use to suggest that women are base, servile, submissive, dumb, or inferior: “bitch,” “dog,” “chick,” “bird,” “cow,” “pussy,” “hen,” “vixen,” “cougar,” “catty,” “sow,” “lamb,” “whale,” “heifer,” “filly,” “biddy,” “fox.”  The list could go on.

Moving away from the more explicitly derogatory sexist terms, football does  – by default of existing as an institution within society – carry a lot of linguistic baggage around with it, none more so than with regards to the careers available: we have MANagers, ChairMEN, LinesMEN, GroundsMEN and Kit-MEN, to name a few. As Laura explains, it’s not only in football that we see such default discrimination: “We frequently see examples where language relating to being female is used as a slur or insult – from ‘don’t be such a girl’ to ‘you kick like a girl’ to ‘grow a pair’ to ‘man up’. Though it’s a minor issue, this use of ‘woman’ as ‘insult’ suggests male superiority and reinforces the idea that certain sports or activities are only for men.”

We also have some very prominent phrases in football that help to illustrate the mechanics of sexist language:

“My Gran could do better than that!”  This functions as an insult by using the premise that someone is incapable of completing a given task because they are old, but more importantly because they are female. The phrase wouldn’t have the same impact were you to substitute ‘Gran’ for ‘Grandad’, as the ‘Grandad’ would be afforded a certain level of respect on account of being a man. In addition, older men are a social group to be deferred to respectfully; older women are simply invisible, irrelevant.  Finally, he, as a man, would without doubt posses an innate ability to kick a football.

“Handbags!” Used when two players fight in a manner that suggests they are weak, soft and/or pathetic, therefore they MUST be fighting LIKE women. Handbags, being another motif used as a shorthand representation for ALL women.

*Woot-Woo* The “sarcastic wolf whistle” heard around football grounds when a player mis-kicks or loses their footing, suggesting the player’s lack of dexterity and/or ability. The implication is that the player shares characteristics with “the women that men see out and about on the street who they perceive to be ostensibly inviting their sexual advances by the simple act of them breathing”.

“WAGS” This is a relatively recent addition to the football community vocabulary, which was recently sited by the ‘Human Rights Society’ as a pejorative phrase to demean a group of women. The term suggests a particular group of women with no individual identities, whom exist as an inferior sub-section of “civilised” society.

Once again, the list could go on.

Everyone’s reality is different and as I tried to explain during the first post in this series, my intention is to create an exchange of thoughts through careful consideration. People can become defensive, build up walls, during arguments when they feel personally attacked, so I hope, to an extent, I’ve avoided that. If you want to read more on the subject, there are many articles you can search out and read regarding sexist language, including interesting debates on the word ‘cunt’ itself – concerning it’s position within our culture and attempts by feminist groups to “reclaim” it. Sexism is just as serious an issue as racism and any other oppressive ‘ism’.  It is not just a subject for “paid up members of the P.C brigade”, without a sense of humour. Over to Laura: “The argument that women who object to derogatory language or insults are ‘humourless’  is a thin one. It is often used to silence women who are hurt or upset by something as the accusation that they ‘can’t take a joke’ somehow suggests complicity from everybody else – if you ‘can’t take a joke’, you are the odd one out – frigid, uptight, overreacting. But the temptation to write off these smaller instances as just ‘a joke’ underestimates the impact that insidious instances of sexism like sexist language can have. These ‘smaller’ things perpetuate sexist ideas and assumptions throughout society, normalising the more serious incidents and making them in turn much harder to tackle.”

As touched on earlier, language itself is arbitrary: it’s the social constructs that shape it and give it its meaning, language isn’t offensive in and of itself. So hopefully, through re-education, a project like Laura’s will one day no longer be necessary. I asked Laura if the response to the project so far had given her hope that sites like Everyday Sexism Project would one day become obsolete?

A few weeks before the Euros, maybe more, I read an article by Owen Jones in The Independent entitled, “The battle that men who aren’t sexist must fight”. It resonated with me, so much so that I was in instantly compelled to write this (in hindsight, incredibly cringe-worthy) message to the author…

I just wanted to declare that I’m ready for the battle after your article in yesterday’s I. I’m a football blogger and my twitter timeline gives sexism the remit to punch me in the face daily … hourly. I tend to follow anyone interested in football, after a quick check of their latest tweets, who follows me. However, I primarily navigate twitter through a series of private lists, actually ‘following’ only very few, and rarely look at my main timeline. If I glance my main timeline as I log in and happen upon a sexist tweet, usually in the form of someone commenting on having to “give a female sportsperson one”, or a female reference as a default insult, I unfollow them. I confess that I don’t address the issue. I’ve had a few twitter ‘rants’ on the subject, calling for football fans to stop following a respected blogger who regularly uses all kinds of anti-feminist rhetoric for the purpose of a ‘LOL’ along with his knuckle-dragging followers, but I’m a lone voice and it’s incredibly difficult. After reading your thoughts on the subject I feel empowered to make a more concerted effort to be more proactive in fighting back, even if I have no support within my immediate peer group. As Margaret Mead also said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever does.” Thank you.

And then I forgot about it.

It was removed from the site.

I hadn’t forgotten about sexism though; it’s in this New Look t-shirt that was posted up on my Twitter timeline; it’s in the group of arseholes next to us in the pub finding the fact that one of them only watched the Beeb’s Sexism in Football?, because he’d “definitely give Gabby Logan a seeing to” hilarious; it’s not in any way, or by any stretch restricted to these isolated incidents: it’s everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Forgetting about sexism would be like forgetting to put your clothes on in the morning (literally and metaphorically).

I’d forgotten it was up to me to fight it. As I’d written in the letter to Owen Jones, my Twitter time line was wretched with it. I’ve always unfollowed people who were in anyway prejudiced or bigoted, but the sheer weight in numbers of people involved, at differing levels, was in a sense overwhelming.

When David and I set up the Bifurcated Twitter account, our objective was to get traffic to the site, and, for want of a better word, connect with United fans.  At the start we  indiscriminately added any account with a United interest, oblivious in many ways to the world we were soon to be inhabiting. After a month or so, we unfollowed most of the accounts that hadn’t yet followed back (if they don’t follow you back, they’re not interested in you right? Right). Over the past year we built up more followers (as happens) and like I said in the above letter, after a brief check of the previous few tweets of a new follower, we would follow back, but I just navigated Twitter through a handful of people on private lists anyway.

After I had begun drafting this post, I happened upon one of my followers tweeting a picture from a site called @dailygirlz or something equally as grotesque, adding a ‘lol’. You can probably imagine what the picture was of (actually no, you probably can’t, no really). As I unfollowed, it suddenly dawned on me that you can see exactly who else follows that account by checking the header on the profile. That was the start. Anyone who we were following who were following such accounts too, were swiftly dispatched. I searched for Nuts, Zoo, FHM, Loaded, Playboy, you name it, and did the same. Within an hour or so our ‘following” had halved. The cultural sexual objectification of women, there, right there; in front of me. I didn’t say anything, like I said I would in the letter to Owen. I mean, how exactly do you go about giving a perceived misogynist a dressing down anyway? Especially as it’s likely that they’re completely oblivious to the oppression they’re perpetuating. There was another consideration – what would moralising achieve?

In the case of these ‘lads’ it would be ignorant and extremely unsympathetic to their individual experience to disapprove of them publicly and attempt in some way to shame them as a punishment for a crime they haven’t knowingly committed. Doing it in front of a Twitter audience would make it as much about me as them. They didn’t ask to be born into an inherently sexist society. The only way we can effectively shift the moral compass is through an exchange of thoughts, feelings and careful consideration. Trying to achieve it aggressively by calling someone out in 140 characters, ultimately only widens the divide.

Unbelievably, these two are still working in football.

Here’s where it starts. In a couple of weeks we’re going introduce a section on the site entitled Biopsy: Examining Sexism in Football. We hope to include testimonies from football fans, as well as various and wide-ranging posts on the subject. If you have an idea, please share. If you want to contribute, please get in touch. It’s a work in progress and needs support from as many people as possible. I am going to be more proactive on Twitter when I witness something. Hopefully armed with a deeper understanding myself, through what we’re doing here.

Okay, it’s not going to bring Hugh Hefner’s empire crashing to the ground by the year end, but I’m going to be trying real hard to do my bit. I can’t change history, but I can change Our-story.

Time may fly, and dreams may die. The shaking voice that tells him “Go”,
Still thinks he might, he knows he won’t.

I’m missing the war.

Ben Folds Five, Missing the War, 1997

In 2005 our beloved Manchester United scrapped their women’s team because there was no financial sense in it continuing for the club. Forgetting thousands of years of institutionalised sexism (as a man, I’m well practiced in this), this is an important new factor in the stunted growth of the women’s game. Business, as football now is, for the most part does not often regard lateral thinking as an essential tool for its own perpetuation: if something is making you shed loads of money you carry on doing it. If it isn’t, you stop. The men’s game sees individual club revenues reaching consistently over 400 million. The women’s game does not. It’s of course hard to simply put a figure on how much it would cost to really push the women’s game, especially when there is an absolute absence of inclination, but it would be probably amount to no more than the average Premier League Chairperson’s pocket change.

Only one or two mainstream sports have a thriving women’s game, one of which is tennis. This is pure speculation and founded in nothing other than an uneducated guess, but this could be down to tennis throughout the century being a social ‘double-dating’ pastime for the middle and upper classes. Women were ‘allowed’ to play tennis. An alternative explanation for its near parity with the men’s game may actually be simply that it’s young females running around in short skirts. Whatever the reasons behind the success it provides evidence that women’s competitive sport can be lucrative.

When we stopped blinking for long enough and saw some women’s football coverage on TV in 2005, when the England team played in the European Championships hosted in this country, viewing figures averaged at around 2 million. Attendance at the grounds during the tournament averaged around the 20,000 mark. Both roughly just below a quarter of what the equivalent fixture achieved for the men during Euro 96. Albeit a big drop, this suggests that there is a ‘market’ for it. Most other sports would bite your hand off for those figures. There is money to be made.

Women have threatened to enter the men’s game but have been met with a reaction akin to that of a stag do infiltrated by an inquisitive fiancée. In 2003, Perugia were hoping to sign Birgit Prinz, a footballer for the national German women’s team. The Perugia president Luciano Gaucci said their investigation had led them to believe, “There was no regulation that would limit Birgit from playing with men”. He also felt the need to add, “She is very beautiful, and has a great figure. I can assure you that as a player, she’s very good.” I’ll let you pick yourself up off the floor and dust yourself off after that one. Birgit Prinz apparently declined the offer to join the club amid fears FIFA were about to throw their toys out the pram. The following year when Maribel Dominguez signed for Mexico’s second-division club Atletico Celaya, FIFA in a written statement acted swiftly, “The gender-separation principle in football should be maintained…this is laid down in league football and in international matches by the existence of gender-specific competitions, and the Laws of the Game and FIFA’s regulations do not provide for any exception…there must be a clear separation between men’s and women’s football”. Well, what did you expect? A clear, progressive, straight answer?

Of course, the women’s game does amble along in the background around the world. In America they give it a good go, but more often than not clubs claim they can’t maintain professional status due to poor revenue streams – which sadly means no-ones making enough profit from it, and not that it couldn’t be sustainable.

Here the Super League launch this year will see the financially stable women’s teams attempting to push the game into professional waters. The F.A however have already raised concerns about the financial climate and have admitted to struggling to find all the investment required. “We’ve got less money. We have to be clear about putting money behind priority programmes – and the Women’s Super League is a priority programme.”

Football is not run by historians, philosophers, psychologists, mathematicians nor scientists and so is not equipped to offer a solution to gender inequality. Sexism is not an issue football can tackle. It can assist somewhat if it changes it’s tact from sporadically mentioning the women’s game in brackets. But it won’t. It could, if it really, really wanted to, perpetually reinforce a well considered campaign of being a well adjusted institution. But it won’t.

You can’t undo His-Story.