Funny place, Australia. We’ve got all these tales we like to tell about ourselves, like how no one person is more important than any other person, and no one should be allowed to tell anyone else what to do.
Not all Australians actually believe this in practise, it turns out, but whatever, we like to play pretend about who we are as a nation.
Or what about that other fun myth… that we’re an egalitarian country full of easy going, laid back people who live and let live and aren’t bothered by what other people do so long as it’s not hurting anyone?
Sometimes, living here, you could almost believe that it’s true – until Bob Whatisname from Melbourne, who was once someone Very, Very Important, pops up in the paper with a Very Important article informing us all in stern language that he doesn’t like women’s football.
The correct response to which, of course, is to smile benignly and say “that’s nice dear,” and ignore him. But the slightly schizophrenic nature of this very Australian phenomenon deserves further study.
My first question is always “why does he think we care?” I mean, he’s an Australian, he should know that the first response of every Australian to pompous self-importance, according to mythology, is “who gives a stuff what you think?”
But where commentary around women’s football is concerned, it seems that there’s an awful lot of people who think that everyone should give a stuff what they think.
“We don’t like having our culture changed,” is one refrain. “We don’t like the media telling us women’s football is great when it’s not.”
Well women’s footy is a product. If you’re trying to sell more laundry detergent, you’d make big advertisements with big, smiling faces telling all sorts of exaggerations about how this incredible laundry detergent will change your life. It’s called advertising, it happens in a free market economy.
What slogan are they supposed to run with? ‘AFLW, it’s not for everyone?’
The AFL are a commercial organisation with a product to sell, and believing that it should somehow sell this product in a more low-key way so as not to cause high-pitched squeals of offence from those who are not the product’s target audience is daft.
If TV or newspaper coverage is ‘shoving it down your throat’, change the channel or turn the page.
Then there’s Jeff Kennett, who said on SEN a week ago that he feels uncomfortable watching women getting hurt on the football field.
It’s astonishing, really. What nation does he think he’s living in? Should all Australian women now ask Jeff’s approval before doing anything even vaguely dangerous?
Should we set up a hotline to Jeff, where young women can write him emails like, “Jeff, I really wanted to go riding my bike today, but I was worried it might make you uncomfortable. Do I have your approval?”
Maybe we could rig scoreboards at women’s football games across Victoria, where alongside all the scores and stats, they display a ‘Jeff Kennett Discomfortometer’, which can be raised or lowered depending on how tough the collisions are out on the field. If the Discomfortometer level gets too high, the field umpire must immediately halt the match and phone Jeff directly, to get his permission to continue.
To be fair to Kennett, the comments were made in the context of an attempt to be constructive about the issue of injuries in the women’s game — an issue that was always going to be a problem in the first few seasons of what is, as far as I’m aware, the first major professional contact sport competition for women anywhere in the world.
But they were also framed within the context that Jeff apparently doesn’t believe women are physically equipped to play the game in the same style and rules that the men do, and that the game ought to be radically changed to something more approaching AFLX so that women can play it without getting hurt.
Whether these viewpoints come dressed up in fatherly concern as Kennett expresses them, or yelled in abusive rants in the comment section of internet newspapers, all are equally wrong, and at least as far as I’ve been brought up to understand the term, equally unAustralian.
They’re unAustralian because they’re telling people they shouldn’t do the things they enjoy. “You there, little girl! Stop it! Stop enjoying that sport! Stop kicking that ball! Stop having fun! Live your life the way I want you to! Don’t make me uncomfortable, or I’ll…”
You’ll what, exactly? We live in Australia. You can’t do a damn thing about it, and that’s the truth of what makes this country great — the truth that Bob Whatsisname from Melbourne, who used to be Very, Very Important, somehow managed to live his entire long life here without ever once understanding.
Yes he’s entitled to his opinion, and it’s an opinion doubtless shared by millions, not all of them men.
So what? Who cares? In this country, believe it or not, no one needs these people’s permission for anything. Expressing your opinion is very fine and very Australian, but this opinion takes the form of disapproval with something that other people do that’s none of your business.
It takes an enormous amount of self-importance to think you’re so much better than other people that those folks ought to give up what they love because you feel uncomfortable.
In this country, I’ve always been told, that sort of self-importance is not on. And yet here they come, all these planet-sized egos and mini-dictators, brandishing their self-regard as though it meant something, sputtering about “let me tell you this!” and “I wanna tell you that!”
Fine, you tell everyone that. If Australia were really the nation we pretend to be, these people would have realised the fundamental contradiction of trying to uphold some version of traditional ‘Australian Values’, while trashing the very first and most important of those values, which is ‘Thou Shalt Not Presume To Tell Other People How To Live’.
Thankfully, at women’s football matches across the nation, very few people care, which is a far more faithful observance of Australian tradition than these critics will ever manage.
Joel Shepherd
Roar Guru
Mine is a libertarian argument. 'Libertarian' and 'progressive', on today's political spectrum, are generally (but not always) opposite. Try again. And your attempt at baiting about women's injuries only shows that you don't understand the argument. How I feel watching women getting hurt is irrelevant. I know people who would be pleased to see a world without football (or combat sports or motor racing, etc) because they don't like watching men getting hurt. Most don't care what they think, because they agree the participants are adults and can take that risk if they choose to. Same should apply here.
Paul D
Roar Guru
If you apply a different standard to women hitting women to men hitting men you've already lost the argument cya
I ate pies
Guest
Ahh the Australian “progressive”, where opinions are welcome as long as they’re the right opinions. Does the author feel comfortable watching women get hurt? Seems to.
Paul D
Roar Guru
See, I think that's a weak counter argument, Jeff Kennett is a former premier of Victoria and a former president of a football club, he isn't just average joe off the street I see no hypocrisy in someone with no power influence or vested interest decrying the views of someone who does have a natural platform to speak from, and saying that we shouldn't listen to him
Peppsy
Roar Guru
The part we’re he’s telling us that someone elses opinion should be ignored, but his opinion shouldn’t.
Blue
Guest
Kennett didn't call for the game to be scrapped, he just voiced his personal opinion. The only person trying to push his views onto others is the author. Pretty hypocritical piece, or at least one that needs a little more self-awareness.
Bombastic Bob
Guest
AFLW may have been a learning curve for most of us in one way or another. I learnt really quickly that woman can be just as rough and tough as mens footy and as hard hitting. I also had to get over any quiet prejudices I may have had regarding how woman might look or present themselves on a footy field, many looking quite 'manly' or should that be 'womanly'...you see, it rearranged my concept of 'womanly'. Obviously there's not much point in 'girly' females hi-stepping around the paddock in make-up looking like models, worried about hurting themselves. I learnt this quickly when i witnessed one girl deliberately kick another in the crutch with full boot extended, raising victim off the ground! cant' recall when I last saw such an incident in male footy? there seems to be a few butch or male-looking woman with male hairstyles and build, a female Thai friend pointed out that they are 'Toms' (and she should know), or as we used to say 'dykes', which I've now learn't is not cool and someone's sexuality is none of my business. So after this steep learning curve or self adjustment, I've come to really like AFLW, the skills involved and actually admire or respect the female players, sorry - the players; certainly more than AFLX, whatever that is? There is another learning curve, that of the physiology, that woman are being found to be different to men in ways unknown or untested before re : concussion and legs/knees etc. am guessing this will be addressed and modified somehow in the near future. Meanwhile- Go Girls? or...Go Women!!
Paul D
Roar Guru
You're not wrong there Penster. Geoff/Allanthus's views on AFLW are fairly well predictable by now http://www.theroar.com.au/2017/10/05/afls-900-million-shades-hypocrisy/ http://www.theroar.com.au/2017/07/16/hey-afl-spare-us-little-britain-apologies-please/ http://www.theroar.com.au/2017/03/01/afl-womens-empress-new-clothes/
Penster
Roar Guru
All relative innit. Criticising AFLW commentary and not mentioning some of the god-awful AFL commentary that saturates our airwaves all season (Basil, Rex, BT ....) and pedestals our male hero superstar legend players have been put on since time immemorial ............ double standards much? You don't veer much over to the AFL pages Geoff, but when you do, your article or comment has been highly critical of the AFL and particularly, the AFLW.
TomC
Roar Guru
I feel quite strongly that the SEN link is a better source than Daisy Pearce's summary in an opinion article. Worse things have been said about Jeff Kennett, but your article very much reads like a specific response to his comments. He is referenced repeatedly up until the last few lines. I think we'd all be better off trying to be measured and proportionate in our response to criticism of the AFLW. Nascent competitions need feedback and indeed criticism from a variety of perspectives. There's an awful lot of simple mean-spiritedness floating around - including in this comments thread - but we need to distinguish between the potentially helpful and the unhelpful.
Joel Shepherd
Roar Guru
I read that article on SEN, but it doesn't completely sum up what he said -- I couldn't get a complete transcript, but apparently Daisy Pearce heard the whole thing and summarised it in her article in The Age. My understandings of what Kennett said in full are taken from that article. https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/why-is-it-any-different-when-women-get-injured-playing-contact-sport-20180216-p4z0lu.html But my main point isn't to beat up on Jeff, it's the extent to which his comments fall into a broader pattern of people lecturing female footballers as though somehow their own free choice to play the game isn't the end of the matter, which it should be.
Pope Paul VII
Guest
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Oingo Boingo
Guest
I really think you've all missed the point here.... this is a man sharpening the "thin edge of the wedge ". AFLW was always going to lead to a watering down if the contact rules , as collective governments attempt to soften up the youth . This won't be just a sideline comment that goes away , this will become a snowball .
TomC
Roar Guru
Ugh. Annoyingly sycophantic, is what I meant to say. Couldn't decide between annoyingly and frustratingly so clearly I put both down and left out the actual important word.
TomC
Roar Guru
The sports media has been annoyingly frustratingly about athletes for generations, and players are constantly getting talked up by breathless commentators reaching for ever more outlandish superlatives. This is an annoying aspect of all sports coverage, and could only be attributed to political correctness by someone actively looking for it. And people actively looking for political correctness is even more pervasive, and even more annoying. Nobody ever feels the need to explain why political correctness must be to blame, or even what it is. I only see two differences: firstly, women's sport is long overdue some much needed positive coverage, and secondly. there are many, many more people seeking to run down the game for its own sake. Social media is packed full of unconstructive criticism from those who claim not to be interested. Positive media attention just provides some balance to the longstanding apathy and sometimes really nasty criticism women athletes have had to deal with. I don't see how any good comes from running down the AFLW, but I see a lot of benefit in talking up its potential and relevance.
Geoff Parkes
Expert
An important and accurate distinction Chet. It's noticeable that many influential people around AFLW, including Susan Alberti, have toned down the rhetoric and started to lower expectations, with views like 'it's only the 2nd season, we have to allow time for skills to improve' now being more commonly expressed. IMO this is an entirely reasonable position, the introduction of AFLW is a boon for increased participation of girls and women in sport, and if it eventually becomes a pathway to a fully professional career then good luck to all who make it. But whether out of political correctness, to curry favour with the AFL, or out of sheer blind love of the game and/or women's sport, there is still far too much media coverage that reflects, as you say, "advertorial" rather than actuality. For example, in a two to three minute section at the end of the Lions v Bulldogs match the word "Superstar" was used five times by the commentators to describe a number of players in the match. Usain Bolt is a superstar. Maybe Sam Kerr if you're looking for an Aussie female example. With the league now settling in and finding it's level, it's about time sections of the media realised that this type of nonsense is counter productive.
JamesH
Roar Guru
Nice read, and I agree. In terms of individual freedoms, there's generally a need to balance those against social harms. In this case it's hard to see what social harm there is in a few women risking injury to play a sport they love. Kennett being uncomfortable means nothing.
Cat
Roar Guru
Sure you don't ... that is why you took the time to not only read the article but to then comment on it as well.
Cat
Roar Guru
One minute Jeff is angry because NM wouldn't agree to let Hawthorn jump on their winning AFLW licence, next minute he is claiming he is happy the Hawks have never bothered to apply for an AFLW license and now he is mad the Hawks never applied? FMD this guy is a joke.
shiftyxr
Guest
I really don't care...