- Aug 1, 2008
- 15,149
- 25,678
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
- Banned
- #476
Yes, I am absolutely serious. It is you who persist raising the spectre of sexism. You who are trapped in defining an issue by gender. Ostensibly, you have done this to protect women. I have no doubt that you feel a certain outrage at the derogative comments targetted at Ms Cornes. Your intentions are admirable but these admirable intentions are in this instance misplaced and moreover actually harmful. In truth, you yourself are the victim of a type of thinking which causes and perpetuates the very problem it is trying to solve. You are not the actual author of this type of thinking - it is a meme - you just became infected with it. Whatever the orgin of this nonsense, you are now its unwitting agent. If you were even remotely original, I would let the matter pass. But on the contrary your views are all too common and their harm immeasurable. Women are either equal or they are not. If a person chooses to participate in the often heated, mostly purile debates, surrounding popular sport and subsequently that same person is on the recieving end of a tit for tat exchange - how can you be outraged.
Please note, I am not defending whatever poster used the C word. The moderators should indeed have deleted/censored it because of poor taste. As for the rest, I find you protest too much. It seems you are fighting older and perhaps personal battles and not the one in front of you. Or, worse, your entire self worth is reliant on this misguided defense of various identities - in this instance women. Most offensively, it appears to fill you with moral indignation and no doubt superiority - what cheap trip. There is a world of offences and crimes begging for our outrage. There crimes commited in our name and real tragedies demanding our compassion. The meme you are infected with merely distracts us from those real events we cowardly avoid. Whilst, we triumph in these banal crusades.
I for one, don't care for my sport to be used as a tool for social engineering. If spoilt, testosterone fueled 20 year olds have become our role models, the determinant of civility, the measure of right and wrong we are in diabolical trouble. How can it be acceptable to routinely humiliate these young people for the kinds of indescretions which a plainly part of growing up? This while our politicians routinely lie, or cheat, our corporate leaders manipulate markets, destroy competitors, run cartels and a litany of other serious excesses face less humilation and consequences. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Each time the AFL universe ventures in to this now all to common moralising - I become just a little less interested in supporting the AFL or my club.
Please consider Australia has the highest rate of suicide in the developed world in 14-29 age bracket.
We have hundreds maybe thousands of refugees held in detention centers for months and years
We have hundreds of thousands of homeless in our major cities
We have drug abuse, street gangs and violence
We are involved in a couple of wars
The economy is not great
Mental health issues are at epidemic levels, hospital waiting lists lengthen....
And our concern is what one footballer said about another footballer's mother? What some poster said about another footballer's wife? This is what makes us indignant? I wonder could there be an actual connection between our deteriorating mental health and this epidemic of moralising? Aren't the stupid things we say a form of stress release and little more. Is this a hanging offence? What kind of weak children are we creating: who will cry woof at any perceived slight.
