…and, if they ask me to, I’ll take down this piece from the Guardian. But I hope they don’t.
Marina Hyde’s piece points fingers precisely and asks the pertinent questions that so many other papers dare not print.
Here it is.
Truly, nothing says Christmas like a footballer-party rape allegation. It’s getting so Pavlovian that the first story suggesting one guest might have enjoyed herself rather less than the others at some club’s festive bash has become as evocative as the smell of mulled wine or wilfully spun reports suggesting the Muslims are stealing our Christmas.
Facetious? Most of the responses to the fact that a 19-year-old Manchester United player has been accused of raping a 26-year-old woman at the club’s Christmas party early on Tuesday have been about as nuanced. They have run the gamut from “footballers are lawless scum” to “the girls are no better: they all deserve each other”. There were some “she probably made it ups” in there, too, and maybe the odd “women are just meat to these beasts”.
Yesterday further revelations about the party surfaced. One “very drunk” woman was “roasted” by five or six men, according to another guest, who told a newspaper that “I asked her if she was OK and she said, ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I be? They said I was a great shag.’”
There will be people - some would even count themselves as third-wave feminists - who can read that statement and accuse anyone who feels the vaguest sense of unease about it of being straitlaced, or repressive of this woman’s natural sexuality. These people like to think of themselves as sexual cognoscenti - a bedroom version of those television chefs who tell you they always get their truffles from a family supplier in Puglia and assume you’ll do the same. For their bondage tips, they go to the Marquis de Sade in the original French.
If they’re that smart, though, they should appreciate that not everyone indulges in these things with quite the same degree of consequence-free delight and rationalised abandon as they do - and it’s inverse snobbery to pretend that it is so.
And so to a vexing riddle of our times. Namely, if six footballers can have six girls each, why do they only want one between them? The answer is actually incredibly simple (and has nothing to do with repressed homosexuality). It might be partly that they enjoy team activities and it’s a kind of extended goal celebration, but it is primarily because that is what they see in porn. And porn is screwing up sex. Not sex in relationships, but the kind of casual sex in which it would be nice to think people could indulge in a mutually enjoyable, non-exploitative fashion. In this context, footballers are not qualitatively different from plenty of other young men, it’s just that being regarded as demigods makes it easier to act in this way.
Several years ago Naomi Wolf pointed out that the proliferation of porn, particularly on the internet, was the way most young men and women were now, in effect, taught about sex - “what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are”. It had a significant impact on the way they interacted. She wondered whether all the sexual imagery around represented the true liberation of sex, or whether “the relationship between the multibillion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity”.
No matter where you stand on it, porn has undoubtedly skewed many young men’s expectations of sex, and many young women’s sense of sexual obligation. The marvellous website jezebel.com touched on this theme recently, having identified an experiential trend among the staff’s acquaintances. Several of these women had been on a first date, ended up sleeping with the guys, and the men had ejaculated on their face without asking. The reader responses were revealing. It transpired that lots of people had had this surprise experience, and while there was debate about whether the act referred to was rank misogyny or something you could truly love, there was unanimous concurrence that it should be on the “have to ask first list” - and that the presumption even in a few people that it wasn’t signified a shift in popular male imagination. Several younger readers wrote in saying that they found men their age were so conditioned by porn that “they don’t think sex is ‘good’ unless it’s somehow fetishy”.
Now, either these guys were just borderline rapists, or - way more likely and way more scarily - they simply didn’t know any better.
It would be nice to think we could reclaim the right to say people don’t know any better without being accused of snobbery, because the longer we allow the argument to be short-circuited in that fatuous way, the longer the debate remains buried. And there are plenty of questions, wherever you stand. Is this the only sexual liberation we’re going to have, or are we due another rethink? Are both genders having better sex than they did 10 or 20 years ago? Could it be that women who queue up outside a hotel just itching to be told they are “a great shag” by an assortment of footballers have bad sex most of the time? If we placed more emphasis on addressing these issues, would there be fewer of what we might, with immense charity, call “misunderstandings”?
Merry Christmas one and all.
11 responses so far ↓
jennifer drew // December 25, 2007 at 12:19 pm
An article in Saturday’s edition of the Guardian provided more information as to why these male footballer players believe it is their right to sexually exploit young women. The title of this article began with ‘Harvest Time’ which says it all in respect of how women are viewed from the male aspect. The men and their cohorts who targetted young women were in fact pimps or procurers seeking out young women in order to sexually exploit and abuse them. Freedom of choice - oh yes that wonderful nonsensical phrase which hides the fact these young women were targetted because of the fact in comparison to the arrogant, overpaid men, they are poor.
Here is the link - http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2231398,00.html
Men ask women if they want to be gang-banged? No of course not that would transgress male sexual entitlement.
Rebecca // December 25, 2007 at 1:20 pm
This is a brilliant piece, hope that it can stay up.
One of my escapes from my personal history, is that I am a massive football fan.
I get very angry at the behaviour of footballers, bu really that they continually allow to get away with their violence. They definially coping porn scenerios. These spoilt brats are made to feel that are gods, and everything is owned by them. Women are just sex-objects to them. If they can get sex for free, that makes it better. “Roasting” is common theme in most porn, so how can the rapes and use of porn not to be connected whether conscious or unconcious.
I find it very depressing how many rapes have be gang-rapes by young men. It feel like rape has become a way to prove you are a man. This has happen often in history, But, now it is often dismiss as “high jinks”.
Most of this behaviour is common in porn and prostitution, now it has spread out. As a cynic, I think they are cheapskates. But, on a more serious note, the normalisation of porn means violent sex and rape are viewed a “free choice” or sex gone wrong.
I find it so sad that many young women feel they should accept porn sex as a normal. I am not surpise that a young woman after being roasted, should say it was ok coz she had a good lay. After all, when porn stars or prostitutes speak of their experiences in public, they will say how fulfil it makes them. To see that you have been abused is terrifying, denial is loads easier. Part of denial is saying what a good experience you had - that it was your choice.
Sorry to go on so long.
Very merry Christmas everyone, Rebecca.
witchywoo // December 25, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Thanks for the link Jenn - it rounds the whole scenario off.
There’s a lot in these reports that troubles me but, when I connect it to my experience, I agree with Marina Hyde - this behaviour isn’t limited to footballers.
I’ve been a rape crisis counsellor for many years now and when I first started the young girls who contacted us did so because they were being sexually abused by their fathers, or their step-fathers, or their uncles, grandfathers, their fathers’ friends - you get the picture.
Increasingly often these days we’re being contacted by 13 and 14 year old girls who’ve been gang raped pornography-style by their 14, 15, 16 year old male cohorts.
The footballers may be more ostentatious about it all - having the Trafford Centre trawled for hand picked female shop assistants and all (hmmm…no capitalist power relationship there, huh?) but what they actually do is exactly the same as the boy rapists of the children who come to us for help. They copy what they’ve seen in porn without even thinking that maybe the porn lies - which it does, of course.
Porn really is screwing up sex for all of us.
Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » “Porn is screwing up young men’s expectations of sex” // December 25, 2007 at 10:11 pm
[...] Essay by this title here, via Witchy-woo. [...]
jennifer drew // December 26, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Yes indeed Witchy I agree with you the dynamics of males committing rape are changing. I know via my connection with SWAP that increasingly younger and younger males are raping teen girls and comitting these atrocities in the same way porn depicts male on female rape as ‘normal’ female and male sexual expression. ‘ Reality is it is not simply isolated instances of male footballers committing these rapes but is, to borrow Liz Kelly’s concise phrase ‘a continuum of male sexual violence against women and girls.’ Rebecca, your comments are so apt - so true it is a coping strategy for a young woman to deny she was sexually abused because to admit it means she was powerless to prevent the male violence committed against her. Totally agree it is a terrifying experience to acknowledge one couldn’t control what happened and in fact one was utterly powerless. I know these feelings only too well.
m Andrea // December 26, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Thank you Jennifer for that reminder. Yes indeedy, to pretend that you have agency where you have none makes it’s easier to cope.
I’ve been wondering lately what these girls and young women are going to be like in 20 years. Will their pretense continue, or will it get worse? Will they wake up to what is happening as they mature or will their hopelessness entrench these normalized justifications more firmly into our culture?
It is strange to me how the smallest infraction in an office setting results in hours of ’sensitivity training’ - they recognize the wrongness - but if the backdrop is changed to a nightclub and filmed , gang rapists become performance artists and the victims convince themselves they are undiscovered supermodels. Our culture is strikingly schizophrenic.
Z // December 27, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I think that ’sensitivity training’ is usually only implemented to cover the arses of employers so women don’t sue them for not ‘punishing’ sexual harrassers within the workplace. It’s ultimately about money, not protecting people from being mistreated.
I agree with “…to pretend that you have agency where you have none makes it’s easier to cope.”
Unfortunately many people purposefully take this at ‘face value’ (I like to think most of us can understand a small amount of basic psychology) just so women are once again painted as ‘liars’ and the rapist men can walk away free.
Liz // December 28, 2007 at 4:17 pm
And porn is screwing up sex. Not sex in relationships, but the kind of casual sex in which it would be nice to think people could indulge in a mutually enjoyable, non-exploitative fashion.
While the piece says a lot of other great stuff, that line says a lot. It should say a lot to the people who think that anybody who has concern about this is a prude.
carrie // December 29, 2007 at 2:44 am
i am glad to have come across this article. it is good to know that there are some thinking individuals out there who are addressing this topic. as a woman who has been raped and sexually assaulted and had it minimized by everyone who hears about it (including law enforcement) i was beginning to think that nobody cares anymore. well, maybe that is the trend… but it doesn’t have to keep going in that direction. the acceptance of internet pornography as a portrayal of normal sex is insidious.
pisaquaririse // December 29, 2007 at 6:25 pm
“If they’re that smart, though, they should appreciate that not everyone indulges in these things with quite the same degree of consequence-free delight and rationalised abandon as they do - and it’s inverse snobbery to pretend that it is so. ”
Where is my stone and chisel?
simplywondered // January 14, 2008 at 10:16 pm
‘Several of these women had been on a first date, ended up sleeping with the guys, and the men had ejaculated on their face without asking…. there was debate about whether the act referred to was rank misogyny’
RANK misogyny - a typo?
i’m kinda sex-positive (no not one of them) but i must be so in a victorian setting as this article made me feel, if not quite prudish, at least a little out of touch!
porn and football or truffles and the marquis de sade; is there no third way that hasn’t already been tainted by tony? ah well - a belated happy mid-winter festival of your choice.
xxx
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