Essay: Feminism 1 - Patriarchy 0
Spain's team celebrates with the trophy after winning the women's World Cup.Rick Rycroft / AP
It is no coincidence that the biggest, most attended, and queerest Women’s World Cup ended with a man who is “obsessed with power, with luxury, and with women,” assaulting a woman at the height of her career as a record number of viewers around the world watched. He has since tried to gaslight us about what we saw, has hogged headlines that should belong to the victorious women’s team, and railed against “false feminism” and “witch hunts” as he refuses to resign.
Luis Rubiales, the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, who forcibly kissed Jenni Hermoso–a midfielder on the Spanish national women’s team, and therefore his employee–has become the mascot of men around the world bold enough to call assault “just a kiss to celebrate a win,” and too cowardly to answer “Does your male boss kiss you on the mouth to celebrate a work win?”
I have written two books and countless essays about patriarchy and how it works to privilege male dominance. And still, too many deny patriarchy’s existence or power. Thank you, Luis Rubiales, for being Exhibit A.
For their part, Jenni Hermoso and her teammates have come to represent a revolutionary moment for Spain.
"We are in a country of systemic machismo and are not only talking about the personal responsibility of Mr Rubiales but also the massive discrimination in Spain against women,” said Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz.
Amanda Gutiérrez Dominguez, the head of the football players' union Futpro said the union did not only want to concentrate on the Rubiales incident, but to make clear that “this is a cultural problem... social problem of our country in general.”
“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognise your power – not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist,” bell hooks
What a delicious irony that the man who accused “false feminism” of trying to instigate his downfall, will indeed be brought down by a feminist uprising in Spain.
If feminism promises an audacious freedom from cisgender heterosexual patriarchal norms, then women’s football is Exhibit A.
It is no coincidence that patriarchy has tried to destroy women’s football.
As the late Black feminist bell hooks said, “Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognise your power – not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”
Both this year’s World Cup finalists, Spain and England, and several other countries at this year’s World Cup, banned women from football for decades, ostensibly to “protect” them, but in fact to protect the men’s game from losing attendees and their hearts to women’s football.
I watched my first men’s World Cup on television with my father and brother in 1978. I’d grown up thinking of men’s matches as something with an ever-present threat of violence: players ready to fight when fouled, to argue with referees, to dive and exaggerate the consequences of a challenge. Violence that was often mirrored by fans in the stands and after matches.
There is a documented spike in intimate partner violence that accompanies both the weekly matches in domestic leagues and international tournaments, such as the men’s World Cup. Researchers have shown that there is an increase in men’s violence against women whether a national team wins, loses, or draws.
And it’s not just the supporters of the game. Their behaviour, remember, mirrors that of the football idols they follow. On the pitch, off the pitch, from managers to players to the men who support them: patriarchy fuels a dangerous cocktail of toxic masculinity in football as well as many other men’s sports. Football tournaments did not invent patriarchy. The latter drives the men’s game and the harm it takes home.
Women’s football is wonderful because it isn’t about being better than the men–it is about throwing out men as the metric.
In 2015 I attended my first Women’s World Cup matches in Montreal, Canada. I watched Germany beat France in the quarterfinals, and then the United States beat Germany in the semifinal to advance to the final, which the United States went on to win. The stands were full of outsiders: women with babies, teenage girls with their faces painted in the colors of their teams and men there alone, all of us unburdened by the need to imitate a form of masculinity that the men’s game insists on as the price of admission.
On the Women’s World Cup pitch, the players were liberated from that performativity. Those women wanted to play and had no time for time wasting. That liberation was echoed in the stands.
With teen fans at Women’s World Cup Semi Final between USA and Germany, Montréal, 2015. Photo: Robert E. Rutledge
Women’s football is wonderful because it isn’t about being better than the men–it is about throwing out men as the metric.
Feminism hamstrings itself when it holds up men and says, “I want the right to be exactly like that.” Feminism must want more. I’ve grown to love women’s football because it felt like an arena where we’ve figured that out.
And patriarchy has never forgiven women’s football for calling out its lies, for daring to want more than doing whatever a man can. Men are not our yardstick. If men themselves are not free of the ravages of racism, capitalism and other forms of oppression, it is never enough to say “I want to be equal to them or to do whatever they can.”
To cut us down to size, patriarchy insists that men play, and women are just playthings.
As long as patriarchy remains unchallenged, men will continue to be the default and the standard against which everything is measured. As long as men are the yardstick, patriarchy can forever move the goalposts to ensure we never win. My ambition is for much more. I want to be free. And on the pitch, women’s football is audacious in that freedom
How dare girls think they can play a boys’ game? And how dare the women’s game in its audacious freedom throw into relief how unfree the men are?
If you are a man who plays football, you would be naive to think that misogyny is patriarchy’s sole crime. Patriarchy is what fuels the boos when players take a knee and the racist abuse yelled at Black and players of colour; it is what fuels homophobic chants that are brushed off as “jokes.”
To cut us down to size, patriarchy insists that men play, and women are just playthings.
“The degree of abuse in football, I think, is widely underestimated. And the systems currently are not able to either protect, properly investigate and support ultimately the victims and survivors,” said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, General Secretary of FIFPRO, the global players’ union.
Men play. Women are playthings.
It is no coincidence that after a Women’s World Cup that broke all sorts of records, the patriarchy’s attempts to destroy it were so brazen and swift. Especially at a time when the women’s game is ascendant as the men’s is mired in rapacious greed and toxic masculinity.
Men just play.
Women play and think about the ways they must survive and thrive despite all the obstacles--unequal pay and facilities, sexual harassment and abuse, fighting to be taken seriously as footballers.
i.e. backwards and in high heels, to quote a Frank and Ernest comic strip published in 1982, in which cartoonist Bob Thaves shows two men and a woman outside a Fred Astaire Film Festival.
“Sure he was great,” the woman says. “But don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did…backwards and in high heels.”
Men win and become icons and legends worldwide.
Women win and become overshadowed by a misogynist fuck who assaulted a world champion as the entire world watched, and who has spent the time since demanding that we disbelieve our eyes.
It is no coincidence that after a Women’s World Cup that broke all sorts of records, the patriarchy’s attempts to destroy it were so brazen and swift. Especially at a time when the women’s game is ascendant as the men’s is mired in rapacious greed and toxic masculinity.
The day after Rubiales’ assault on Hermoso, Manchester United’s men’s team–which I’ve supported since 1976, when I was nine–finally let go Mason Greenwood, whose girlfriend said he had raped her. But not quite. It has been reported that United are loaning Greenwood to La Liga’s Getafe, and that the Premier League club is funding a six-bedroom, £8,000-a-month villa and a private translator for Greenwood at the Spanish club. The awful timing of Greenwood going to a Spanish now is not lost on any of us—Manchester United supporters as well as women in Spain.
So Manchester United are effectively keeping Greenwood on their books. They are either oblivious to their green lighting of misogyny or they think they are too big to care. I don’t know what’s worse. United has either miscalculated how deeply shaken we supporters are by what Mason Greenwood’s girlfriend has said he did to her or the club think it will be forgotten. Again, I don’t know what’s worse
While the women’s game scrambles with the pittance with which it must make do, the men’s game has long been awash in greed, most obviously displayed these days with one after another star player lured by Saudi Arabia’s astronomical offers.
You know who said no to money from a country ruled by an absolute hereditary monarchy, whose de facto ruler ordered the butchering of a journalist as well as the largest crackdown on women’s rights activists?
Fifa—football’s world governing body which gave the 2022 Men’s World Cup to a country where at least 6,500 migrant workers died to make the tournament possible—admitted defeat over plans to make Visit Saudi a major sponsor of the 2023 Women’s World Cup after a huge backlash from organisers and players.
We will remember the name of Jenni Hermoso as the name of Luis Rubiales rots in the trash bin of patriarchal history.
This World Cup crossed a threshold and that is where Luis Rubiales miscalculated–the anger directed at him and the support that Jenni Hermoso and her teammates have received.
We will remember the name of Jenni Hermoso as the name of Luis Rubiales rots in the trash bin of patriarchal history.
Meanwhile, with fewer resources, less pay, and considerably more patriarchal fuckery to overcome, the Women’s World Cup logged the largest number of countries that played, record-breaking attendance and viewership, and, as LGBTQ+ publication Autostraddle said, it “just might be the most openly queer sporting event in history,” with 100+ queer players and coaches.
There were no out queer players in the Men’s World Cup. Not a single one. The men know why.
Murray Drummond, director of the Sport, Health, Activity, Performance and Exercise Research Center at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, told the Washington Post that the visibility of gay players at the women’s World Cup “highlights the significant issues that we have in men’s sports.”
“We’re really still struggling to come to terms with different forms of masculinity among men,” he said.
How dare the women be free of cishet patriarchy?! Look at how diverse the sexual and gender identities of the players at this year’s World Cup.
Look how hemmed into the straitjacket of cishet patriarchy the men are—not one out queer major male player! Not one. They would not dare because cishet patriarchy would destroy them.
And so patriarchy reluctantly lets the girls play - but punishes the girls for thinking they can challenge cishet patriarchy.
But they do. And they are winning.
Backwards and in high heels and Doc Martens and Vans and Converse and all manner of footwear.
Next time you watch a women’s football match, watch the stands full of outsiders, unburdened and unfettered by the straightjacket of cishet patriarchy. I say "outsiders" because that's what we've been when the men's game is considered the default. The 2023 Women’s World Cup has considerably reset the dial on that.
Default for who? Default according to who?
To reimagine Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire: Sure male footballers are great, but don't forget that the women do everything they do, all while tackling patriarchal fuckery.
Fuck the patriarchy.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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