If you watch or listen to football games and shows on the tv or radio you may get the impression that the authorities regard you as a chain smoking wife beater as the most common public service announcements and ads revolve around those two topics, smoking, and, not wife beating exactly but “respecting (all) women”.
The anti smoking stuff is usually very dark and even gruesome, one problem with it is that children also watch football and their minds are not fully formed and if one or both of their parents smokes they may think that daddy is going to die a horrible death soon due to his smoking and those responsible for these ads should be publicly flogged for this.
More recently they have gone all in on the respecting (all) women thing:
Particularly on the radio it is sometimes granularly targeted to “respecting female umpires”, and there’s been a rash of articles like Female football umpires abused, harassed, forced to change in front of male colleagues, report finds where it is claimed:
A study into female Aussie rules umpires has uncovered a culture of sexual harassment, misogyny and spectator abuse that is driving women away from officiating in the sport.
Women represent just 10.8 per cent of umpires in Aussie rules and only 2.6 per cent of umpires at AFL level.
Some of the female participants in the study recalled incidences of sexual harassment, including being sent unsolicited nude photos by fellow umpires, and overhearing comments from male umpires about their breasts.
Others retold stories of racist abuse from spectators and having to change in front of older, male umpires before games.
Basically being told they weren’t good enough to be umpires, that they weren’t good enough to do particular games — it happened in all aspects of their umpiring.
Some of that stuff sounds red herringish but I want to focus on this bit:
“Basically [they are] being told they weren’t good enough to be umpires, that they weren’t good enough to do particular games — it happened in all aspects of their umpiring.”
They’re mainly talking about amateur and junior football games, where it has to be admitted a fair amount of pretty ugly stuff can go on, sometimes on the field violence, but often it’s idiot parents and spectators and even coaches who are over invested in what is just a game that is not important, and one major factor in unpleasantness getting started is that many umpires have no presence as they are often just daggy teenaged boys, or now and worse, gormless young women, some people just aren’t going to respect them and this can kind of embolden some to start trouble.
According to the science, my science, the ideal umpire is a man who is short, balding, stocky, and at or approaching middle age, as for some ineffable reason yet to be group-thinked into becoming The Science it is this type who tend to have an air of confidence, competence, and authority about them, and boys and men are very good at picking up on this quickly, and it causes people to behave themselves and That One Kid that is always mouthing off and trying to start fights will mysteriously go quiet.
Instead of accepting the reality of how men and boys are likely to view girl umpires (and goofy 15 year old boy umpires) in a football game they have to go about trying to change reality, and it will fail, which is just an excuse for them to continue trying, and berating people, forever. They love that.
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