I must confess that when I heard about the Toronto FC soccer fans who yelled obscenities at journalist Shauna Hunt recently, I rejected the idea that the offenders had indeed ‘heckled’…clearly they had bullied and perhaps even committed sexual assault. I wasn’t even going to address it.
Oh dear. As I used to say to ‘potty-mouthed’ students …’ you don’t kiss your grandmother with that mouth do you?’ Who are these guys….? Might be awhile before I take my grandkids to the soccer stadium….although I hear the TFC games at BMO Field are still family friendly.
The Toronto Globe’s John Doyle came out with a good assessment in his piece on May 19th called “What’s needed: The feminization of sports coverage.” In it he introduces the reader to the English soccer world and ‘Laddism’. As he puts it, Laddism is ‘ the blithe, unthinking sexism of the lewd remark, the grope, the joke about rape, the intimidation of women in places where they have the right to feel safe.’ This is NOT heckling.
Good on the reporter Hunt for standing her ground and confronting the ‘goons’. Doyle’s contention, and a good one I think, is that ‘the Internet has created spaces for vile behaviour’. But this was not the Internet. This was a public space.
Doyle goes one step further and suggests that the sports stadium venue may be in a state of change from one where fans release rage, frustration and anger into one that confronts sexism and other forms of intimidation in public places.
