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October 13, 2003
Women as footballs
Daily Mail, 13 October 2003 The most astonishing thing about the revelation of our sordid and debauched football culture is that anyone is astonished. Worshippers of the football cult are apparently shocked by the degradation of their so-called ‘beautiful game’. The nation is shocked by the stories of casual group sex between players and young female fans, who volunteer for ‘roasting’ – the euphemism for the charming boast of ‘stuffing a girl like a chicken’. The girls themselves are shocked to discover that, after they have swanned around half-naked, flashed their underwear and behaved in other sexually provocative ways, the men to whom they have sent these signals of eager availability proceed to take them literally. But how can anyone be remotely surprised by any of this? Such behaviour and attitudes are on display every day of the week – evidence of a society which worships celebrity and money, no longer understands that actions have consequences, and has turned self-restraint into an abuse of human rights. Football – far from being beautiful – has become a symbol of our corrupted, debased and unruly ‘me’ society. Over the years, players have indulged in appalling behaviour both on and off the pitch – ill-discipline (like the half-time fracas in Saturday’s match with Turkey), drunkenness, violence, drug abuse, anti-social behaviour in the street. Their fans have behaved accordingly – violent, racist, yobbish. The healthy response would have been to shun such players and marginalise the game as an embarrassing disgrace. But instead the players were lionised, their fame, wealth and public adulation grew and grew, and the game itself talked up as a national obsession. Tomorrow, the Prime Minister is expected to announce a new push against antisocial behaviour to curb drunkenness, intimidation and rowdiness. Such behaviour has developed into a plague because it has been treated with indifference, and will only be curbed by tough responses. In similar vein, football clubs should ban their rowdy, drunken, violent players. Yet they receive only light penalties for misbehaviour -- because the money they generate is the only thing that matters to club owners. More cynically still, bad behaviour makes players even more famous and so more valuable. So the money cascades in and the players’ celebrity status grows to fever pitch. Their lives are minutely dissected, their vast mansions are drooled over, their every banal utterance is breathlessly transcribed and they become global icons, bigger even than movie stars. Their heads are further turned by the girls queuing up to go to bed with them. No-one can say what happened at the London hotel where a teenager claims she was raped and serially assaulted by Premiership players, or in the separate case involving claims of assault involving two Leeds players and a 20 year-old girl. Nevertheless, the behaviour of the girls who now swarm around footballers is not only appalling but sends out the most dangerous set of signals possible. With their micro skirts, flaunted underwear and skimpy tops leaving little to the imagination, they dress like hookers in order effectively to prostitute themselves. They offer themselves for casual sex with men whom they meet solely for that purpose, because a one-night stand with a celebrity footballer is something to brag about. Even worse, a one-night stand with a whole team of them is an even greater conquest. So girls are apparently queuing up to be shared around between football stars. Of course, the behaviour of the players themselves in going along with this is utterly sordid and repugnant. Of course, it is possible that things can get out of hand, leading to an actual assault. But such sexually aggressive behaviour by girls sends out -- at the very least -- a set of ambiguous and confusing signals. If they offer themselves for casual or even group sex, they can hardly be surprised when men treat them like sluts. This does not excuse sexual violence. But it’s a bit like a woman being mugged if she has left her handbag wide open and her purse and mobile phone on clear display. This doesn’t mitigate the seriousness of the crime -- but the victim must bear some responsibility for recklessly inviting it. These girls’ behaviour is even more reckless because their sexual availability sends such a devastating message. This is that they don’t regard sex as having any more significance than a pleasurable sport, and have no regard for their own bodies which they are happy to make available to a complete stranger for his pleasure. Since girls thus patently regard themselves as no more than a piece of meat, it is hardly surprising that men contemptuously treat them as a ‘stuffed chicken’. But why is anyone surprised by such a debasement of human dignity? One only has to look at the tawdry scenes in Ayia Napa, or in our town centres on a Saturday night. In our sick society, sex sells everything, including – disgustingly -- thongs for small children. Our culture has lost all sense of modesty, shame or personal respect. It has become instead vicious and voyeuristic. Pornography, violence, cruelty and humiliation are now mass prime-time entertainment. Bad behaviour is routinely celebrated on TV, and is a passport to fame and money. Sex is held to have no deeper value than as a means of instant gratification. Continence is so last century; group sex parties and partner-swapping are now relationship chic. Privacy is out; sex is now public entertainment. Hence the rescheduling to a prime-time TV slot this week of Teen Big Brother, a so-called ‘educational’ programme which just happens to feature an actual sex act – another historic achievement for humanity by Channel Four. Much of this sexual promiscuity is being driven by family disintegration, which for girls creates in particular feelings of sexual worthlessness and disrespect for the body. It is the combination of such tragic personal frailties with the feminist doctrine that equality requires female sexual aggressiveness that has completely destroyed accepted codes of behaviour between men and women. For women have always controlled sexual relations. When they withheld sexual favours, they tamed and civilised male sexuality. But now girls are sexually available, they have effectively given boys a licence to be irresponsible and even loutish. Boys who happily use them for sex say – like their football heroes -- that they regard them nevertheless as slags. With women having torn up their sexual and moral rule book, men have done exactly the same. Far from liberating women, the sexual free-for-all has inflicted upon them humiliation, self-abasement and contempt. To those who promoted the sexual revolution, however, casual sex is a badge of freedom. They depict anyone who dares suggest that this should be discouraged and sexual restraint promoted instead as some kind of fascist. Having preached that women must behave as badly as men, however, they must take some blame for the catastrophic collapse of respect for women by men. Football, as a game for barbarians, is merely the technicolour version. By reacting in such horror to the football scandals, our society is behaving like Shakespeare’s Caliban, the deformed monster who, when he finally looked in a mirror, could not bear the sight of his own reflection. Posted by melanie at October 13, 2003
Comments
Why are you absolving men of any responsibilty for their behaviour towards women? I notice you don't rail against groups of men who want to take turns having sex with one woman, why is that not disgusting in your eyes? They can turn these women down, they're are not being forced to have sex with them against their will. Why do you think that if a women is sexually available that condones a man behaving "irresponsibly" and "loutish". This is the sort of article I would expect to be written by an ignorant man, one who would think that a woman deserved to be raped because she wore provocative clothing. I can't believe a woman would have these views. Posted by: Karen Harper at October 13, 2003 03:25 PMVery well said Melanie. I wonder how long you and others have to keep rephrasing so powerfully this same, deadly accurate message before we start, as a society, rethinking the assumptions of the so-called sexual revolution. Ms Harper is entirely wrong; Melanie Phillips is scathing of both male and female behaviour in this article. Rather, the message social conservatives are trying to get across is that the combination of mendacious political correctness and libertarian amorality which presently governs relations between the sexes often extracts its most devastating toll from women, not from men. To imply that a woman ought somehow to know better than to make this blindingly obvious point is to do women a grave dis-service indeed. Please let's give up on this ego-driven sex-war rubbish - "we" men have daughters, sisters, and neices of our own, and many of us care very much what sort of a world they grow up in, what role models they're provided with and how society tells them they ought to treat and be treated by men. To then stand accused of mysogny and/or bigotry because you don't want to abandon them to the viscious social environment the sexual revolution has created - that just takes the biscuit. Posted by: Simon Jones at October 13, 2003 04:23 PMBabara Amiel (yes, another woman) was actually even more scathing than Melanie in todays Telegraph, though took a more libertarian stance. I prefer Melanies term of 'gender fascism' Babaras 'sexual terrorism' however. I personally think all justice should be done in public. Accuser and suspect should both be named throughout. "Tomorrow, the Prime Minister is expected to announce a new push against antisocial behaviour to curb drunkenness, intimidation and rowdiness." Ha ha. I've been hearing this one for over 20 years, in both labour and conservative governments. Nothing has changed, and let's face it, nothing will be done. The idea that this is a new phenomenon, however, I think is misguided. I am in my mid-forties, and I cannot remember a time when Britain was not plagued by such behaviour. It also shows that statistics about crime rates can be misleading. It is one of the reasons that the USA, for instance, can be a much more pleasant place to live in than the UK, despite its higher murder rate. It wasn't always so. 15 years ago, New York was an awful place, worse even than London is today. Gangs of drunken louts and drug pushers haunted every corner, hurling abuse at passing women, and just taking a short walk one felt one was putting one's life in one's hands. One of the successes of the NYC zero tolerance regime was that it recognised that such behaviour - although often not overtly classified as criminal - was more distressing to New Yorkers than many categories of crime. Surprise, surprise, it also turned out that the people behaving this way were the same people committing the crimes. Amazingly, no one had ever made this connection before. Consequently, in the crackdown, crime fell. But will this happen in Britain? Well, don't hold your breath. Posted by: kev cidle at October 14, 2003 10:46 AMAt the danger of sounding like an optimist, I have the feeling that there is more widespread anger and disgust at the antics of these footballers than before. I would be interested to know whether ticket sales and viewing figures over the next few months go down because of disgust at this sort of thing. I love football but I am surely not alone at wondering whether the game deserves a penny of my income. Fortunately, real men play rugby. Posted by: Johnathan at October 15, 2003 12:04 PMWhile Mrs Phillips delivers one of her usual sweeping condemnations, this time of the state of the beautiful game, she and most other commentators have missed a very interesting development: women's football is on the rise, and so far it is clean and fair. Every German newspaper was full of praise this week for the national team, which has just won the World Cup in America. No mention of it in the British press as far as I can tell, because the British press just can't get enough of smearing the game with dirt. The only reference I could find is on that damnable of news services, the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/women/3185896.stm Posted by: Frank at October 15, 2003 12:53 PMAs usual, Melanie tells it like it is. Interestingly, the Brit football scene, aside from the wealth, is now like the New York slums of the 1960s and before. The youths were amoral but if any female slept with any of them, she was "a bum," the very point that Melanie makes above. Nothing new, of course. As King David observed 3,000 years ago, "The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted." The present football genre is at least 3 millenia behind the times. Posted by: alan o'reilly at October 15, 2003 04:46 PMFootballers are media stars, they earn beyond any professional group, and we do not have star surgeons to rank alongside them as in the USA. The girls who hunt down such Lotharios are only the top of the pecking order, try Doncaster on a Friday night and how they dress and what they are out for; and then check on the STD problem which the media has focused on the least common illnesses rather than the most prevalent. It is a cult of thrills in a life of boring monotony; and the very very ordinary boys with lots and lots of money are not endowning libraries or reading books, but are the media stars to boost the tourism into city watering holes which need bimbos to attract thirsty men. It is all so commercial. Watch out though at the publicity you give out, remember "Christiane F" ? The German film about the young prostitute at Bahnhof Zoo in Berlin.......and just how many young teenagers flocked to Berlin to emulate her ! Posted by: Peter Williamson at October 17, 2003 08:16 AMMs Harper apparently thinks that 18, 20, 22-year-old men who make millions of pounds because they have outstanding talent in a highly physical job should be the moral guardians of anonymous young girls who dress and behave with the intention of drawing their sexual interest, and who go back to hotel rooms with them. It is the girls who are the aggressors and given the frank intention of the outfits they wear - which they have shopped for and thought about for weeks - and their ready availability - no one has to sweet talk them - why on earth would an 18 year old man, rich and famous say no? Why would he, Ms Harper? Of course the girls are regarded as disposable sluts. That is how they present themselves. Why they became that way is another question. Women are the civilising, controlling, influence on the sexual progression in male/female relationships and in a one-on-one relationship, it is a rare man who doesn't accept that. Girls who advertise their instant availability are going to be taken up on their offers and it speaks of the emotional poverty and rootlessness of today's Britain that so many girls spend their money shopping for provocative clothes, having their hair dyed and permed and putting on make-up to look outstanding enough to attract a gang bang. Posted by: Caroline at October 17, 2003 06:17 PMI am so, so glad that at least some female journalists like Melanie Phillips actually give young women who are promiscuous a right ticking-off, because they are actually letting the rest of us down. They let us down by presenting themselves as meat for males who are too young and too immature to be called men - and then these males go around behaving obnoxiously towards women who behave decently. Pornography has the very same effect. Every time a small group of women behave like sluts, the majority of women suffer. That is why traditionally, before the 1960s, feminism was sexually very strict (remember 'votes for women and chastity for men' .... ? Hmmm). It was given real credibility by the moral righteousness of the women who ran the movement. Unfortunately, Melanie Phillips doesn't seem to understand that the reason why many women have abandoned traditional sexual restraint is because there are fewer social sanctions for female promiscuity than was once the case. In the days before the sexual revolution, if a woman slept around she ran the risk of being left with an illegitimate child or even gaining a reputation that made it difficult to get a decent job or a husband. Also, in the days before DNA it was often harder to prove paternity and track down fathers for child support. However, contraception, easy abortion and the like has radically changed all this, and generally made it easier for women to be promiscuous with fewer penalties to worry about. Another thing is that women who sleep around with successful men realise that if they get pregnant they will be able to claim vast sums in child support, and so have a meal ticket for a long time to come. This is why many young women are willing to turn themselves into whores for men who make a lot of money. The truth is that these women are not as lost and confused as Phillips makes out. Rather, they know exactly what they are doing and how to use their sexual power to get ahead in life. Posted by: Nick at November 2, 2003 05:13 AMBe wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so. Posted by: Foong Chwee Sze at January 9, 2004 04:39 AMAn unimportant door is never locked. Posted by: Murray Ralph at January 25, 2004 05:23 PM |
