Monday, January 24, 2011
Women as Referees
Those were the comments by Richard Keys and Andy Gray during the Wolves-Liverpool match. These comments have caused an uproar and Sky Sports subsequently been dropped from Sky's coverage of Monday Night Football. I'm honest enough to admit that when I first heard the comments I chuckled, but then I thought about it more. Female referees are often chastised more openly than male referees because there are so few of them. This means that when they make an error, the reaction is amplified. Everyone knows the names of the female referees because there are so few of them. Fact is though that every referee makes mistakes.
I think the NBA is a good example of this. There is one female referee and her name is Violet Palmer. I will not comment on her credentials as a referee, but if you call her a bad referee, I can name you at least 10 male referees who are just as bad. Going back to football, there was a couple instances in the last two Arsenal games where the male linesman made the wrong call on offsides. The player that the ball was played to was onsides, while another wasn't. The correct call was to play on, but the referee waved his flag for offsides. Where is his criticism?
Fact is that men's sport still has a men's club mentality. There's a certain masculinity that's expected from all aspects and when a female tries to get into the men's club, it's received poorly. This does not make it right, but it's a reality of societal issues in sport. Will this change in the future? I think it's too soon to say. Sky made the right call in dropping Gray and Keys though.
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Sport really is one of the bastions of patriarchy in Western Culture. It's a place to display and praise those characteristics most closely associated with masculinity: power, strength, size, aggression, violence, etc. And, in the United States, you typically have the added layer of thin, sexualized, scantily clad females whose PROFESSION revolves around praising the achievements of big, strong, powerful men. It's no wonder that this happened, and it's surprising that it doesn't happen more often. Sport is the manifestation of a society's gender order in it's barest form. As such, it is a stronghold of patriarchy, as Andy Gray and Keys (whom was actually more offensive than Gray, IMO) demonstrate.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Daniel. I can't really justify what Gray and Keys said about Massey, but I enjoy listening to them for their football coverage. A lot of people were outraged, probably rightfully so, but this was off the air. I'm sure a lot of people make off color comments in private, I know I do.
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