Football culture is far more harmful to women's rights and wellbeing than porn culture.

[solidgoldbrass]

For a start, football culture gives a far more pervasive, wide-ranging and monolithic message: men are gods and women are either decorative accessories or foodstuff. It's misogyny and toxic masculinity encapsulated. Never mind the fact that the England women's football team have apparently won the world cup more often than the England men's team: there's the whole WAG thing, where being someone's appendage is a prize girls are told to covet, yet if they actually try to seek this prize they are demonized as sluts and gold-diggers, there's the way in which rape is seen as far more forgivable than being gay... and hard evidence that violence against women has a big upsurge every time there's a major football match on.

Completely agree with sternface

It drives me mental that female officials have so much attention drawn to them by commentators & when they get a controversial decision right/wrong act completely horrified; "she's a WOMAN, she can't possibly make that sort of decision without bursting into tears".

But OP, I'm quite offended by your post. My stepdad is an ex-referee, my partner is a huge football fan and I LOVE the game. Neither of them are mysogonists (sp) or are to knowledge guilty of any of the things you mentioned. YABU if you assume that all football fans are or that all football fans are male. Don't tar the majority with your brush.

Agree it is misogynistic. But do we have to have a discussion about which is worse. Can't we just accept that both are bad and need to be changed?

Morning has broken and the opening post is still bollocks.

No.

Both are a problem.

Football culture is very mysogynistic. That should be tackled. However weighing it up against porn is a distraction from the real issues.

In response to the OP

1. I have never been told I ought to try to be a WAG. And if I was told to do something like that, the teller would get a big fuck off in reply because I do not do as I am told just because I am told to do it. Like the vast majority of people over the age of about 10, surely? How patronising to assume people can be told.

1. WAGs being demonised as sluts etc is the work of the media, not of football. I couldn't care a less who was seeing some footballer or the other, much as I couldn't care a less who was seeing pretty much anyone in the entire world unless I actually know them personally. The media are clearly to blame here, and to an extent the men and women who still read the gossip columns.

1. Rape being seen as more acceptable than being gay? In what universe, exactly? Utter bollocks.

1. Evidence of violence towards women during football matches - do you think that removing football will remove violent men? Do you think the blame could lie more with alcohol?

I quite like football, as do many women. I think this OP is badly thought out and illogical.

I think it's more to do with celebrity culture than football. Yes there is sexism in football but I think that will gradually die out, celebrity culture, the deifying of footballers to the point that they believe their own publicity is sickening. But that's not every day football.

'and hard evidence that violence against women has a big upsurge every time there's a major football match on'

Not that old chestnut again......

"During the era of the infamous Super Bowl Hoax, it was widely believed that on Super Bowl Sundays, violence against women increases 40%. Journalists began to refer to the game as the "abuse bowl" and quoted experts who explained how male viewers, intoxicated and pumped up with testosterone, could "explode like mad linemen." During the 1993 Super Bowl, NBC ran a public service announcement warning men they would go to jail for attacking their wives.

In this roiling sea of media credulity, one lone journalist, Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle, checked the facts. As it turned out, there was no source: An activist had misunderstood something she read, jumped to her sensational conclusion, announced it at a news conference and an urban myth was born. Despite occasional efforts to prove the story true, no one has ever managed to link the Super Bowl to domestic battery.
World Cup abuse?
Yet the story has proved too politically convenient to kill off altogether. Last summer, it came back to life on a different continent and with a new accent. During the 2010 World Cup, British newspapers carried stories with headlines such as "Women's World Cup Abuse Nightmare" and informed women that the games could uncover "for the first time, a darker side to their partner." Fortunately, a BBC program called Law in Action took the unusual route pioneered by Ringle: The news people actually checked the facts. Their conclusion: a stunt based on cherry-picked figures."

full link

Hi, we've moved this into Women's Rights. Thanks.

But surely us feminists are not supposed to mention feminism outside of feminist sections??

Kat - this comes out of a notorious news item (though with an OP that's a load of bollocks admittedly) - odd decision. But okay...

I don't know how misogynistic football is because I don't know much about football or football culture. I have no interest in it, nor does DH, DS, DD my parents or my brother and sister. I don't live in any kind of media free bubble particularly so my lack of knowledge about it would suggest that, in my experience, the influence isn't pervasive or wide-ranging.

I have noticed that in a town not far from us, there is a negative and unsafe feeling around the football ground area on match days, but that is very much a race issue not a gender issue, and I would say is to do with the race issue in that town in general, and not because of football in particular.

The football club has done outreach sports activities to my children's school; the cheerleaders came in and did cheerleading with the children, and both my son and daughter enjoyed it. The same was the case when they had some football players is (might have been the B team or youth players, not really sure how football clubs work).

I would suspect that the issue for me would be that I notice the impact of porn culture more, even though none of my family has an interest in that either, because the whole existence of porn culture is based on making sexuality into a performance to be viewed. This is rather different to football; most football matches are for playing, not watching. DS and DD must have played hundreds of football games between them, despite their lack of interest, but only some people watch football as a hobby. The overwhelming majority of people involved in porn watch it without ever having done it themselves. So it is a consumer activity.

Porn culture that is visible in public spaces and the media is making a statement about sexuality - mostly women's sexuality, so I feel it is saying something about me and my daughter that I'm not happy about in a public space. Football primarily isn't making a statement about anything other than that some people have fun kicking a ball. It is mostly just kids and some adults playing a game in parks, schools or sports centres that I might happen to walk past.

I would agree that there are strongly misogynist elements within the "culture" of professional football in the UK, just as there are strongly misogynist elements within most organisations and institutions that are dominated by men.

We would seriously struggle, however, to identify any but the most minute elements of the culture of porn that aren't expressly misogynist.

Why does it have to be a competition? Can't we deplore misogyny wherever it is found without turning it into a, "well, it's worse here than there so we can just let there go . . ." kind of pick of the pops approach? What's wrong with challenging misogyny wherever it is that we find it?

Oh, and super post above SeaHouses.

Why does it have to be a competition? Can't we deplore misogyny wherever it is found without turning it into a, "well, it's worse here than there so we can just let there go . . ." kind of pick of the pops approach? What's wrong with challenging misogyny wherever it is that we find it?

Because the OP is desperate to minimise the insidious effects of porn, I would have thought.

Bad call to move this to Feminism, MNHQ. Although the basic premise of the OP is flawed, it's an interesting discussion about popular culture to which none of us are immune. Mind you, I don't agree with Feminism being marginalised on a discussion board at all - it affects every man and woman and child.

Agreed. Sexism and misogyny are frequently confused and spoken of as if they are the same thing. They are not.

So whereas the culture around football is inherently and institutionally sexist, it is not inherently and institutionally misogynist.

Porn on the other hand, is.

I am not a fan of football but have spent saturday and sunday mornings with DS1 playing. In terms of violence DS1 loves watching on TV but doesn't turn violent before during or after. Having been to matches with him I know that there is a tribal response but that seems to been against the other tribe (team) and the officials rather than women.

The celeb culture has a lot to answer for but I don't think you can blame the sport for it. The media certainly but not the sport.

Why has this been moved to Feminism MNHQ? It was a bit of a random OP but has initiated some interesting debate - why should it be hidden on a lesser-used part of the board?

Because feminism is a "minority" interest? (Note I am not happy that it has been moved either)

It's very odd that this has been moved. Why shouldn't it stay in AIBU? I'd suggest that Mumsnet move it back.

WRT the OP - I don't remember the 1966 England World Cup squad for example being involved in "roasting" (raping) semi-comatose teenagers or standing outside a window filming it to share with their mates on their mobiles. That's the current generation of young men. It's not limited to footballers either - it manifests itself right across male culture.

Given that gang rapes, voyeurism and degradation of women are the staples of pornography and not of football, I think you've got your assessment here ass-backwards SGB. It's porn that helped teach these young men to behave like this, not football.

How do we ask for it to be moved back?