In 2016, you can be the manager of the Ireland football team, say outrageously sexist things, throw a homophobic slur into the mix, and there will be a bit of a kerfuffle before everyone moves on.
Right now, I should be concentrating on the excitement that precedes the Euros, and the fact that Ireland managed to get there at all given the opposition we had to overcome to qualify. Instead, having tried to forget Martin O’Neill’s ridiculous “joke” that “ugly” wives and girlfriends wouldn’t be allowed into the team hotel in France (Lads! Banter! Ha ha!), there’s a sourness to the run up to the tournament since O’Neill again “joked” (Lads! Banter! Ha ha!) that he made sure two coaches joined him and his assistant Roy Keane to the Super Bowl just in case anyone thought they were “queers”. O’Neill’s comment was so juvenile, stupid and crass that it’s tempting to declare it doesn’t even warrant analysis. But unfortunately it does. A watery, conditional apology followed – “If I have made inappropriate comments, I obviously apologise for it.”
Words matter. If you think O’Neill using the term “queer” as an insult is not a big deal, well, that’s relative isn’t it? Some people are lucky enough to be able to brush it off as a non-event, especially if they have never been called queer in a playground or a school corridor, or in an office, or on a football pitch, or on the street. We also can’t ignore the context of such a remark, in a sport that has such an issue with homophobia, gay players are scared into remaining closeted, fearing retributions and repercussions from fans, sponsors, teammates, and clearly, managers such as O’Neill, a supposedly intelligent man who casually reaches for homophobia when he’s looking for a gag. His language is disgusting and reprehensible. But football doesn’t like when people pull it up on “banter”.
Defused
Almost immediately, the impact of his language was defused in the reporting of it. In this newspaper, O'Neill's humour was described as "quirky". The London Times called it "an ill-timed joke". The Irish Examiner reported that O'Neill "tends to sprinkle his public utterances with dollops of humour" and said that the remark was "intended as a joke". The Irish Independent called it "Martin O'Neill's 'queer' quip". Why are sports journalists so reluctant to call O'Neill out? Probably because sports reporting remains a boy's club, of which "banter" is a key part. But we shouldn't brush off O'Neill's sexist and homophobic "gaffes". We should tackle them head on. You'd imagine that if O'Neill reached for a racial or religious slur, the FAI would turn damage control to red alert. But it's just women and the gays O'Neill was slagging, so let's "get over it".
Inevitably, those who view this language and behaviour as unacceptable and re-enforcing a sexist and homophobic culture within soccer, are told to move on. Reactions such as “he didn’t mean anything by it!” and “lighten up!” generally come from those who are most detached from sexism and homophobia, ie, straight men. Having probably never experienced sexism or homophobia themselves, they just don’t want to hear about it. It’s inconvenient, it’s annoying, it introduces a world view that is different to their own and therefore a bit awkward. It points out the nasty wallpaper of prejudice many of us live with, yet the majority don’t notice. It interrupts people who don’t even notice they’re punching down all the time and believe that reserving the right to say horrible things about people who are less fortunate than them without consequence is somehow “free speech”.
Sometimes I think these shouter-downers genuinely believe that people seek out offence, as if that’s a way anyone wants to spend their time. Instead of listening to what people are saying, they want their own view of things re-enforced, and unfortunately, anything that buckles that is to be swatted away. Time and time again, the people who are more likely to be discriminated against are told to “get over it” by those who least likely to experience discrimination.
Reassurance
I’ve seen people comment online: He apologised, what do you want? I want you to listen. I want reassurance. I want to know that the FAI and O’Neill value all of its fans and players, not just the straight male ones. What I want as a soccer fan who is both female and gay, is to know that the sport doesn’t hate me, doesn’t see me as a punchline, doesn’t slag me off, doesn’t casually drop slurs that I’ve heard shouted at me while being attacked. That would be nice.
What I want, is not to have to think of the gay kid who spends every waking hour kicking a football, who has their new Ireland jersey ready, who has saved every newspaper supplement and has the wallchart stuck up on their bedroom wall, who has their parents tormented buying packs of stickers, and when they’re pulling that jersey over their head in celebration after slotting the ball between their friend and a jumper of a goalpost on the green beside their house, that they won’t then go home and have to read or hear somewhere that the manager of their country’s team, their heroes, thinks it’s okay to use “queer” as an insult, a word they hear echo in the corridors at school and as stones ping their backpack when they walk out its gates. Football unites us. If that “us” excludes anyone, we’re doing it wrong. That “us” is not just “the lads”.