{"id":1787,"date":"2015-08-17T10:38:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T08:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2015-11-18T10:07:49","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T09:07:49","slug":"playing-the-woman-healy-and-kyrgios-expose-sports-sexism-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/playing-the-woman-healy-and-kyrgios-expose-sports-sexism-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing the woman: Healy and Kyrgios expose sport\u2019s sexism problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aug
Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios used an on-court sexual insult against an opponent in a recent match. Reuters\/USA Today Sports.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This ought to have been a good time for women in Australian sport. The women\u2019s cricket team is on the cusp of\u00a0regaining the Ashes<\/a>\u00a0in England after the men\u2019s\u00a0abject surrender<\/a>\u00a0of theirs. Australia won the Netball World Cup in Sydney amid plenty of media coverage and decent attendances, including a world-record netball crowd in the final. The\u00a0Campbell sisters<\/a>\u00a0swam well and won medals at the recent world swimming championships in Russia.<\/p>\n

But, as so often happens, for every positive story about women and sport there are ugly reminders of just how heavily the odds are stacked against them. Sport stubbornly remains, at heart, a man\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

This view is central to the cricket WAGs (wives and girlfriends) controversy, in which a desperate search to explain the underperformance of the men in the Ashes series homed in on the presence of partners on tour. This intrusion, Test great Ian Healy\u00a0suggested<\/a>, broke the sacred bond of mateship essential to success in men\u2019s team sport.<\/p>\n

Once again, it was proposed that women are essentially a distraction for elite sportsmen. In order to allow their men to focus, they \u2013 and any accompanying children \u2013 should be invisible for the duration of combat. It seems that any reminder that there is actually life and responsibility outside the dressing room is just too much to handle for male sporting single-taskers.<\/p>\n

All that remained was for some antediluvian pundit to resurrect the ancient Greek belief that sex drains men of their vital fluids and so should be banned before a game. This myth persists in many corners of sport, despite the lack of any\u00a0scientific evidence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It may be worth noting that none of the four teams that imposed a complete sex ban on their players in the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil\u00a0made it past<\/a>\u00a0the Round of 16. But little seems to shake the belief for some in sport that sex for men is a perk of the job that should be saved for \u201cdowntime\u201d \u2013 and not uncommonly in the\u00a0company of teammates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that sex doesn\u2019t have its uses in sport, as Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios\u00a0demonstrated<\/a>\u00a0in using on-court sexual insults as a weapon against his opponent Stan Wawrinka.<\/p>\n

The playground taunt that Wawrinka\u2019s reported current girlfriend might have had (shock, horror) prior sexual history with another player is the latest in a long line of Stone Age affronts to masculine honour through disrespecting the women with whom they are associated \u2013 be they wives, lovers, mothers, cousins or sisters.<\/p>\n

One of the\u00a0best-known uses<\/a>\u00a0of this tactic led to the sending off for violent conduct of the French captain Zinedine Zidane (who is of Algerian origin) during the 2006 football World Cup final in Germany. Zidane\u2019s headbutt of Italian opponent Marco Materazzi was attributed to the latter allegedly calling him the \u201cson of a terrorist whore\u201d and disparaging his sister.<\/p>\n

The former statement was never proven and Materazzi successfully sued several newspapers for printing it, admitting only that he had sexually insulted Zidane\u2019s sister.<\/p>\n[youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zAjWi663kXc]\n

The Zidane headbutt.<\/p>\n

Whatever Materazzi actually said, it is clear that verbally abusing opponents\u2019 close female associates or using sexist language is standard practice in much male sport. But in this case more concern was expressed about the racist connotations of Materazzi\u2019s words, and it is often suggested that \u201cmere\u201d sex or gender insults are far less significant than the use of racial epithets.<\/p>\n

So, when Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh\u00a0allegedly called<\/a>\u00a0Andrew Symonds, a UK-born Australian cricketer of African-Caribbean and white parentage, a \u201cmonkey\u201d in Sydney in 2008, in mitigation it was stated that he\u2019d actually only\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0him a \u201cteri maki\u201d (Hindi for \u201cmotherfucker\u201d).<\/p>\n

Similarly, in the 2011\u00a0on-field confrontation<\/a>\u00a0between two English Premier League footballers, Liverpool\u2019s Luis Suarez and Manchester United\u2019s Patrice Evra, that led Evra to allege that he was racially abused by Suarez, the complainant admitted to a disciplinary inquiry that he\u2019d called Suarez \u201cConcha de tu Hermana\u201d. This is literally translated as \u201cyour sister\u2019s cunt\u201d, and generally means \u201cyou son of a bitch\u201d.<\/p>\n

In another case in 2012 involving\u00a0allegations<\/a>\u00a0that Chelsea\u2019s John Terry had racially vilified Queens Park Rangers\u2019 Anton Ferdinand by calling him a \u201cfucking black cunt\u201d, Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court heard that the third word was used all the time in football.<\/p>\n

Terry\u00a0told the court<\/a>\u00a0that he\u2019d been abused by opponents and crowds about \u201cshagging [a teammate\u2019s] missus\u201d, his mother had been regularly called \u201ca slag\u201d, and:<\/p>\n

The Liverpool fans made up a song that my mum \u201cloves Scouse cock\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ferdinand, for his part, was unconcerned about sexually abusive swearing. He\u00a0told the court<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s handbags, innit \u2013 it\u2019s what happens on the pitch.<\/p>\n

But if this kind of misogynistic atmosphere is allowed to prevail in men\u2019s individual and team sports, then all the platitudes about sport being a socially positive force stand exposed.<\/p>\n

It is not just sportsmen who have to take some responsibility here. There are plenty of\u00a0sports bureaucrats<\/a>,\u00a0media commentators<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0fans<\/a>\u00a0who need to reconsider their own conduct.<\/p>\n

A strong stand has been taken against racism in sport. Although slow to get going, an effective coalition was formed to challenge the racially coded crowd booing of Indigenous AFL player\u00a0Adam Goodes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Taking an uncompromising stance against racism in sport is crucial, but there is much less sensitivity towards sexism in sport. Women deserve no less a collective commitment to equality, not least in this\u00a0self-proclaimed<\/a>\u00a0\u201cnation of good sports\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Previously published by\u00a0theconversation.com<\/a>\u00a0(Academic rigour, journalistic flair).<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Copyright \u00a9 David Rowe 2015<\/strong>
\nEmail:\u00a0d.rowe@uws.edu.au<\/a>
\nTwitter: @rowe_david
\nWebsite:\u00a0http:\/\/www.uws.edu.au\/ics\/people\/researchers\/david_rowe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This ought to have been a good time for women in Australian sport. The women\u2019s cricket team is on the cusp of\u00a0regaining the Ashes\u00a0in England after the men\u2019s\u00a0abject surrender\u00a0of theirs. Australia won the Netball World Cup in Sydney amid plenty of media coverage and decent attendances, including a world-record netball crowd in the final. The\u00a0Campbell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,21,70,65,69,67,66,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-1787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-okategoriserade","7":"tag-cricket","8":"tag-gender","9":"tag-nick-kyrgios","10":"tag-racism","11":"tag-racism-in-sport","12":"tag-sexism","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-women-in-sport"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2JbBl-sP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}