Here's To Kicking Sexism Out Of The Game

As the final whistle blew on the 2-1, Japan vs England, Women's World Cup Semi-Final, I (like many other long-suffering English football fans) sat silently, uninvited tears streaking my cheeks. The 2015 Women's World Cup has seen an historic and glorious run of play from the English side. Unlike the pathetically incompetent men's side who didn't make it past the Group Stages of the 2014 Men's World Cup, the women showed England how football should be played - with an aching hunger for victory, not with woeful resignation to defeat. 

The match had the cruellest of conclusions. As English defender, Laura Bassett attempted to whip Japan's cross out of the danger zone in the 92nd minute, her momentum meant the ball was lofted back towards the England goal and over the head of keeper, Karen Bardsley. A minute later the final whistle blew and England's memorable World Cup journey came to a harsh ending. The images of a distraught Laura Bassett lying on the pitch, weeping inconsolably were incredibly difficult to witness. But the subsequent reactions of team members holding Bassett in their arms and then manager Mark Sampson's wise response to a reporter's probing question gave evidence of the existence of honour and compassion in Women’s football.

“What did you sat to Laura?”

“I told her it’s okay to cry… she’s been courageous, strong… she kept this group together. She didn’t deserve that. But I think she’ll be looked upon as a hero. An absolute hero.”

Honour and compassion – traits that I believe make England’s female footballers the most worthy of role models.

Whilst the hope of World Cup victory is over for England Women, the ongoing battle of the precedence of women’s sport in English and most other societies alike is not; I hope that Steph Houghton and her team continue to push for sporting equality with their male counterparts.

During the 2015 Women’s World Cup I grew exceptionally exasperated with misogynistic comments comparing the women’s play to that seen in the Premier League or men’s World Cups. I am sick and tired of the constant running commentaries from my male peers on various social mediums about how, “If this was the Premier League, she would’ve been red carded for that diving!”, or their ever so intelligent insights into how they, “watched women’s football… it’s not really football though is it?!” To those boys and men who believe that simply by virtue of having a penis they are awarded the right to ridicule and critique women’s professional football, ideally I would respond with a lengthy string of expletives. However, instead I shall try to articulate a more eloquent and less irrational response.

So this is my response:

You are the privileged ones.

When you were a feisty and athletic nine year old, you were not denied the opportunity to play for your school’s football team, but told that instead you must join the girls playing netball.

During the playground games of primary school football, your (frequent) goals were not met with a cry of surprise and dismay due to your gender.

As you grew up and developed a passionate love for the sport, you did not spend time wondering why there was such a distinct lack of female footballing heroes whom you could look up and relate to.

Whilst attending a local Championship League match with your best friend, his dad and uncle, you were not fighting back prickly tears as the men joked about how, “women’s football is fierce – there’s a lot of hair pulling and bitching!”

As you dreamed at night of a footballing career, playing for Manchester United or Arsenal and eventually captaining England, you were thinking of the £13,000,000 per annum salary that Wayne Rooney (captain of England men) and his comrades earn. Not the measly £16,000 per annum that Steph Houghton (captain of England women) and her professional female footballing peers earn.

When you search ‘England Football Team’ into google, your heart does not sink every time endless results about the men’s side pop up – concluding that the internet deems men’s football, just ‘football’, whilst women’s football must always be ‘women’s football’. Because women shouldn’t try to claim the game they play is proper football – that would be deplorable, right?!

Every time you make a belittling and sexist comment about women in sport, you reinforce the archaic societal systems in place which prevent young girls from pursuing their sporting dreams; you reinforce the systems which deny professional female athletes the same salary as their male counterparts; you reinforce the systems which put less funding into girls’ school sport than into boys’. You reinforce the systems that ultimately tell girls and women across the world that they will never, ever be treated as equals.

So here’s to the courageous, professional, female footballers everywhere. Here’s to their valiant efforts to kick sexism out of the game. The likes of Rachel Yankey, Kelly Smith and Karen Carney encouraged my 8 year old self to join my local team and today their legacy lives on in the form of Steph Houghton, Eniola Aluko and Jodie Taylor. These women are inspiring young girls across England to thump footballs around their gardens, and if that’s not a victory - I don’t know what is.

Amongst The Mess Of My Mind

Over the past three months I have visited fifteen towns, cities and villages. I have shared a home with a multitude of family and friends - old and young (stayed with eighteen families and individuals). It's been one hell of a journey to say the least. When I left NZ I thought the hardest part about this year would be the inevitably saddening pangs of loneliness I'd feel when missing those closest to my heart back in Wellington - my family and Jess. And of course it's hard, so, so hard being away from the people I love most on this planet. But as I said, that was inevitable. What I never factored into this trip was the emotional toil and exhaustion I would feel as a result of the ever frequent changing of company, home and town.

I've spent the past week at Soul Survivor, a christian youth camp in the Somerset countryside with eight-thousand other young people and during the week one thing in particular stuck with me. Mike Pilavachi spoke of the book, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, and how the subject of 'realness' is touched on in this (seemingly profound?!) children's book.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

Realness is something that happens to you. I've laughed and cried on this adventure too many times to keep tally of. And despite the tears I've shed and pain I've felt at leaving the people I have grown to know and love so dearly over the past three months, I feel incredibly grateful. I feel grateful for both the height of joy and depth of sorrow I've felt. And I feel grateful because I feel alive. I feel real.

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

I feel like my life is starting to take off and I'm beginning to haphazardly forge my own path in this precious life I've been given. And it's you - the people who have shared this journey with me that have made this season of my life so special, so important and so valued. It is you who boiled eggs for me, slipped me twenty quid when you knew I was short, giggled over red wine or champagne with me, prayed with me, taken me for long, ambling walks through the sleepy English countryside, chanted along to 'I Predict A Riot' among a crowd of 85,000 with me, dived under rolling waves in the grey Atlantic ocean with me, kicked a ball around with me, let me have the first shower, sat in a field and talked with me about life, faith and the mystery of the two, comforted me when I felt fragile - it is you who have touched my heart and left your mark on my somewhat irrelevant life. Whether you've known me since the day I was born or I met you last week, I thank God for each and every one of you.

As I try to articulate the mess of my mind I know one thing for certain. This trip has taught me that deep human relationships are the greatest gift on this topsy turvy planet. My heart is now invested so many places that I don't know how I will ever manage to settle in just one.

I'm no good at goodbyes, I despise them, their fleeting and frequent nature, their inevitability and their inability to ever reflect the significance of the time spent with that person/those people. I'm not good at goodbyes. I'm more eloquent in writing than I am in person, so this is my written goodbye to you all, every person who I have spent time with over the past three months. It truly breaks my heart that the future is so ambiguous and I don't know when I'll see you again. But I hope and pray that our paths will cross again, soon. I really do.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

- Maya Angelou

An Unexpected Joy

I thought I knew myself inside out - who I, Harriet Ruth Winn was. I thought I knew my likes, dislikes, passions, interests and values definitely. I was sure about it – I’m a pretty stubborn person, I know what I want and what I don’t. So when this thing happened which made me take a step back and re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about myself, it was a bit unsettling (understatement of the century). It blew everything out of the water. I spent many a sleepless night questioning, questioning, questioning what the heck was going on. This ‘thing’ that had happened seemed in contradiction with the plan I had written out for my life as a child, it seemed in contradiction with some of my beliefs and utterly confused me but simultaneously confirmed many of the inklings I’d had during my life to date – inklings which I’d dismissed, ignored, put out of my mind. But finally, at the age of 18 (flipping heck how am I an adult, this is unreal), I’ve got to a stage where I’ve got a handle on this bubbling pot of emotion, feeling and turbulence. I’ve got to a place where I can look at myself, and at my life and say – “Yeah that’s me, and I’m allgood with it. In fact I’m more than allgood. I’m delighted and proud that I can embrace who I am and present myself openly and honestly to myself and to the people in my life who I love and cherish.” That thing that happened was meeting and falling in love with a girl. But this isn’t just any girl. She’s the most incredibly compassionate, kind, intelligent, hilarious, courageous, passionate and beautiful human being I’ve ever come across. She’s the most special person in my life and no one has ever summoned such intense emotion within me as her. I don’t want to leap prematurely and put a definite label on myself, however, I’m pretty sure I’m gay. And, you know what? I’m cool with it and I’m so, so happy that at last I can express it honestly, confidently and publicly. I love Jess Dellabarca with my whole heart and I’m ready, we’re both now ready to share that with the world.

Sexism and Seventeen year-olds

As a passionate seventeen year-old who has no qualms about describing herself as a feminist, I was unsurprisingly shocked and disgusted to hear my fifteen year-old brother innocently inquire, “Maybe men are just better at politics?” during a discussion about the entirely unequal American Congress statistics (362 men and 76 women, can you believe it???) But before you begin to draw conclusions about the typical teenage, sexist pig my brother probably is, let me elaborate. My brother is a well-educated young man who has been brought up with importance placed on the qualities of open-mindedness, equality and being non-judgemental; therefore I was aghast to say the least when this rather chauvinistic comment popped out of his seemingly unprejudiced (or so I thought) mouth. 

This small incident although as insignificant as it may seem in a world where women are still being paid 14.9% less than men, being objectified on a regular basis and stoned to death in predominantly Islamic countries where ‘honour killings’ are apparently necessary and acceptable, sparked a startling thought; in society today are we breeding misogynistic and chauvinistic attitudes amongst young men? I had always presumed that steady yet significant progress was being made in relation to women’s rights, I mean let’s face it – my fellow female peers and I are just as inclined to achieve as much in life as our brothers and boyfriends… right? This slip of the tongue by my younger brother lead me into the turmoil of questioning the progress being made in relation to attitudes towards women. 

It probably doesn’t help that my brother attends a Catholic boys’ school, Catholicism not being a particularly famous advocate for women’s rights… but aside from that, let’s look at the society which teenage boys are growing up in. You only have to leave your house (unless you live in Eketahuna or somewhere similar where only sheep roam) and stroll for five minutes before seeing an advertisement on the side of a bus or pasted on a billboard which shows a beautiful, often semi-naked, woman selling some commercialised fragrance. Or why not switch on the radio to hear Kanye West vehemently rapping into your ears? “I got that hot bitch in my home. You know how many hot bitches I own?” Turn on TV and see news of the Australian Liberal Party’s lewd and sexist ‘mock menu’ which objectified prime minister Julia Gillard and made a mockery of her aesthetic appearance. These sadly typical examples of popular culture just go to show that society has ingrained social values that far too often objectify and discriminate against women.

To elaborate on what I mentioned briefly, previously about Julia Gillard and the objectification of her, this is a current event in Australia that happened this month (June 2013) in which Gillard’s opposition party both made a mockery of, and objectified her. During a Liberal Party dinner a menu was distributed which included the option of “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail - Small Breasts, Huge Thighs and a Big Red Box”. This menu, as light-hearted a joke as it was intended to be, actually has major repercussions. The Liberal Party, whom carry the responsibility of representing a large proportion of Australian society politically, have shown themselves to have misogyny ingrained into their political party culture. This leads me to think that if the people at the very top of the social hierarchy in Western society, those who represent a majority of a society and have large influence over many people still believe it is okay to share sexist jokes and therefore embrace misogyny... then surely this is just encouraging those growing up in the society in which this is happening to share the same values? Thus, breeding an attitude that it is ‘okay’ to be misogynistic and sexist. 

The effect that these ingrained social values have can be frightening, particularly when impressionable young men are being shaped by them. The Steubenville rape case, Retaeh case, and Tarpon Springs case, all rape cases from 2013 involving teenage perpetrators are an example of this effect. The effects show that petty comments or ‘harmless jokes’ that involve sexism and misogyny can lead to wider acceptance of these attitudes and eventually people acting upon that attitude (which obviously has disastrous and highly alarming results). Of course one cannot claim that the perpetrators of these cases committed the heinous crime that they did simply because of the effect that the objectification of women in popular culture played on them. However, I think it would be unwise to not consider the role that both the objectification of women and misogynist attitudes in society and popular culture must have played in forming the mindset of the boys which gave them the ability to commit such inhumane and degrading crimes.

So whilst one small comment from the mouth of a teenage boy which hints at having sexist connotations may seem inconsequential, in actual fact it’s all these small comments that lead to the growth and acceptance of gender inequality.