Recently Alex Hartley (Lancashire cricketer and pundit) joked that it was nice of the English men’s team to get their match finished in time for people to watch the women’s team play New Zealand. You’d hope this was the end of this particular ‘story’ wouldn’t you? Errrrr no.
It seems as though there are a few English male cricketers who could not get their head round what was a completely harmless joke with clearly not a single hint of malice behind it.
Rory Burns tweeted (and since deleted) saying ‘very disappointing attitude considering all the ‘boys’ do to support the women’s game’.
This is daft for multiple reasons.
- It was clearly a joke, there are lots of instances when a man makes ‘just a joke’ about women’s sport, when it isn’t really a joke, this is clearly not remotely similar.
- ‘All the ‘boys’ do to support the women’s game’, bizarre way of phrasing this given that this support has never extended far beyond maybe watching the occasional match or a clearly scheduled and scripted tweet.
- Someone from a more highly supported sector, quote tweeting down to someone from a less followed sector, never goes well as it effectively (intentionally or not) sends their Twitter troops in for the kill.
The second point is bizarre given that (as Ben Gardner wrote in Wisden) it almost seems like a threat, from this you could infer that the women’s team is lucky to have the support and it can be revoked. The idea that women are playing a man’s game purely because they are being permitted to is not a new one (on the pitch or in the press box) and whilst this is certainly not Burns’ suggestion, the comments underneath tell you all you need to know about current attitudes.
Whilst I am not suggesting in any way that Burns intended to call in the bruised ego brigade, he must be aware of the consequences of this tweet which would have done well to remain in the drafts.
The tweet has since been deleted which certainly hints at an awareness of the situation. So are we making a mountain out of a molehill? I think not, as it harks back to the level of nonsense football pundit and England legend Karen Carney had to endure after being stitched up by the Leeds United official Twitter account no less.
Carney made a comment about Leeds which, whilst not exactly on the mark, wasn’t truly horrendous either. This of course misses the point since the comments under Leeds’ tweet (not by the actual account) were not about the actual content of the punditry but about her inherent footballing shortcomings as a woman.
This remains the problem with the treatment of female pundits as they are never held to the same standards as their male counterparts. Karen Carney is, in general a very good pundit, in an industry that has recently employed Matt le Tissier and Roy Keane (among others).
Whenever Keane – for example – speaks, it is prudent to sound the ‘says it how it is’ klaxon despite him frequently ‘saying it how it isn’t’, or at least ‘saying it how he thinks it is’. It would follow then that Carney’s stance on Leeds and their promotion would be just her opinion, with which you may freely disagree and make your own hypothesis.
Unfortunately not.
You don’t need me to tell you what followed, let’s just file it under ‘awful’.
So how does this link to the Hartley/Male-Twitter dynamic then, apart from the rampant misogyny and point missing that occurred in comment sections around Twitter?
The official Leeds United account got hold of the piece of analysis from Carney and, whilst in isolation, not malicious, it was careless in the extreme. The social media team at Leeds will have been aware of the consequences of actions such as this given the amount of media training they surely must receive.
Both situations involve a clear lack of care or thought for the consequences for a) a woman making a joke and b) a woman giving an opinion on TV. Not something one should have to consider but either way, this is where we are.
Neither the Leeds admin nor Rory Burns meant to bring the masses onto Carney or Hartley but both happened, and they are not the only women to experience this sort of nonsense.
I’m not sure someone like Adam Collins or Jonathan Agnew would have received a ‘very disappointing attitude considering all the ‘boys’ do to support the sports media industry’ sort of reply, are you?
Michael Vince on Sport 