What's Been Hard to Talk About The Past Few Weeks
I don’t want to say it out loud but sometimes I understand the men who get angry about political discussions in sports
For the past two weeks I’ve been struggling to find the words to talk about it.
On October 3rd, a report was released, authored by former deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, mapping “abusive behaviour and sexual misconduct” in the National Women’s Soccer League in the US. A monumental report which is just beginning to uncover longstanding abusive patterns and conditions in several NWSL clubs (in some cases spanning decades!), behaviour conducted by male coaches which in many cases is normalised already at youth level. ESPN and JustWomensSports have informative summary articles on what’s gone down lately, I would also recommend following Molly Hensley-Clancy and Meredith Cash.
People in power knew about this. Players have come forward about this for years, and have been punished for doing so whilst the coaches get to stick around, or in the very worst cases allowed to leave their position without a bad word being said about them, free to continue working elsewhere (when they should be called out, held accountable, and possibly prosecuted). This exists black on white and a public trace of evidence is being assembled as an array of stories have been collected and distilled into 172 pages, although this is just scraping the surface of what has been going on.
GAAAH!!!
There is still incredible amounts to process and I gently urge everyone to take their time with all the details that are coming up in these investigations <3 but what I can clearly discern from this is that
WE NEED TO STOP HIRING MEN FOR THESE JOBS!!!
There needs to be more women in positions of power. There needs to be somewhere for the players to turn, a possibility of demanding accountability in the workplace (and that can not be governed by more men). We need to start having serious discussions and workshops with men and boys about the patriarchy and power imbalances (these are not discussions that can be held exclusively in non-male settings) And:
WOMEN ARE COMPLICIT TOO.
There’s been many reports about abusive female coaches (France’s national team coach Corinne Diacre being a big current name). Women who actually have some fucking power in these systems have not used them in the way one would’ve wanted them to (like former US national team coach Jill Ellis, who received complaints about both Rory Dames and Paul Riley yet did nothing and actually heavily favoured players who played in the NWSL for selection to the national team, effectively putting players in harm way by inadvertently forcing them to stick around the abusers).
Sometimes it all feels too much, like all this anger is too much to carry around. It’s easy to get desensitised by the onslaught of bad news. It’s exhausting to be angry all the time. I don’t want to say it out loud but sometimes I understand the men who get angry, whose little faces get all scrunched up when the political discussions are “brought into football”
(as if it didn’t always exist there)
because it’s easier to be angry about a game of football that operate within the parameters of the 105 x 68 meter pitch with its set rules enforced by a referee, and which ultimately is going to have little to no effect on these men's ability to exist in the world. It’s easier to place one’s happiness and sorrows onto the performance of an external symbol such as a football team (the existence of which can be contested) and it’s easier to blame the weekend’s football results for one’s dissatisfaction.
But no one ever promised easy. And we can have both. It is possible to watch the game and carry out the necessary discussions within the realms of football - to demand that people in power do more, and do it better.
In Iran, a revolution is unfolding. Women are refusing to wear the hijab, they’re cutting their hair and pointing fingers and saying “WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM”. Internet access in the country is restricted at the minute and it’s important we engage with what does get out, and football is one vehicle through which to bring attention to and talk about what’s going on. Open Stadiums, a movement to allow Iranian women into football stadiums, came out two weeks ago, straight up asking FIFA to disqualify Iran from the upcoming men’s World Cup in Qatar in November following everything that’s currently going on in the country. Some male Iranian national team footballers have tried to make their feelings known on the issue through covering their country’s emblem during the national anthem in a friendly last week.
In 2019 Sahar Khodayari, also known as ‘Blue Girl’, set herself on fire outside a court in Tehran and later died in hospital. She had been charged with “appearing in public without a hijab” as she’d tried to enter Azadi Stadium dressed like a man.
Before their game against France on Tuesday in front of a sold-out Gamla Ullevi, the Swedish women’s national team displayed a national team shirt thad said “We are playing for our girls in Iran”, much like their campaign back in 2017 under the hashtag #IDittNamn (in your name) where they took quotes from a person of their choice, and put at the back of their shirts instead of their last name, and Magdalena Eriksson chose a quote from Agnes-Lo stating the same.
Here’s a gofundme by Iranian Diaspora Collective that focus on creating global visibility and accelerate the mainstream media coverage. These instagram accounts are helpful to follow for more information: