stand up, be humble

Do you want to know what I’m tired of? I am really tired of not having a place to sit.

You know… in those crowded venues where warm breath the scent of too-sweet liquor spirals down your neck while you stand, awkward and cramped, and laugh and socialise with aching calves. Heat raining down so thick and fleshy. Lines at the bar so compressed that it feels like a mosh pit. Cigarette smoke wafting from slurring mouths.

Do you know how to judge the breadth of a man?

All you have to do is watch the way he interacts with those he could easily wreck. Does he pull up a chair? Does he hold the door? Does he look the waiter in the eye? Are the spaces between his questions long enough for a hearty answer?

There are so many tiny giveaways for a man with a tiny breadth: does he clench his jaw often, take up a lot of room, go behind the bar to get his own drink instead of waiting in line? How defensive is he when you call him out on his arrogance?

How many specific men do you think of when you ask yourself those questions? How many of them kings? How many of them self-proclaimed kings? How many of them footballers?

Have you ever felt the suffocating culture that stifles a room whenever a footballer walks into it?

Picture it: grown men begging another man for a photo, girls checking their makeup. Everyone huddled like sardines while they sit on their plastic thrones and repeat: “Sure mate. Thanks mate. Yeah, I hope we do well this year too, mate.”

It’s kind of them, really, to continuously take photos with their fans. To rise from their chairs and engage in conversation. To give back to the common folk. An interaction so regular that it seems rehearsed when you watch from afar.

You’ve probably felt that suffocating culture if you’re a woman who’s been in the vicinity of an elite athlete. Tilted your chin higher while they scan your frame through drunken vision, and recoiled when they frown and dismiss you.

Worse yet, perhaps you’ve stood from your own chair in a crowded venue to give it to them, while they laugh and say: “Come on then, up you get.”

How many men does it take to change a culture?

A culture so convoluted and toxically normalised that their pedal stools have become a tight armour against human decency.

Picture it: a slight girl and a towering presence of a man; a group of them actually, who all recite to the mass media that they stand against bullying, waiting for her to gladly give up her chair in a stifling bar so he can sit down. Expecting it of her. A man with an elite social standing, a position of power, a tilted and charming smile.

And when he chooses to abuse that power, is it not understandable for the woman to cower under his shadow? To give him her chair without any drama? To smile and retract herself. Make herself real small. Small enough for him to fit in his pocket, to sweep under the rug, as he chugs down his (probably free) beer.

“You can’t tell me I’ve done anything wrong.” he’ll retort when you call him out, “I’ve been here all afternoon. She was in my seat. I’ve taken pictures with everyone. Haven’t you seen me be nice to everyone?”

He’ll continue, a smug air cupping him, while the girl he pushed off the chair watches and worries that too much of a scene has been caused.

“You come at me and make it seem like I’m a bad person.”

Do you know the number of footballers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting?

At least three teams worth.

Do you know how many of them I can think of who have treated me with basic respect?

At the very most, two.

If we want to bring digits into it to have some numbers to represent the entitlement these men have, it’s two out of about 40. The rest have sized me up and eaten me whole, crippled me with their judgement, angered me with their conceit. Considered themselves entitled to my time and to my body. Decided, with no hesitance, that a woman asking for a signed jersey is nothing but an invitation to their bed. Decided that because their muscles are bulging, females across all continents are entirely incapable of doing anything but fawning and obsessing and submitting to them.

Do you know what the men closest to me in my life said when I told them yet another footballer had disrupted a perfectly good day with their arrogance?

“Who are you, anyway? To talk to him.”

I have met many cruel men; men who are quietly cruel or blatantly cruel or traumatically cruel or accidentally cruel. Men who take up all the space or taint your flesh with their intrusive stare or expect you to laugh at jokes they make at a woman’s expense.

Not all of them have been footballers, but enough of them have been.

I don’t care that they throw a ball around. I don’t care that they make a lot of money. I don’t care that it’s hard for them to make it or that they never asked to be role models or that they might treat their mothers and wives and daughters with respect.

I thought about it, for a long while: who am I, to call out the halfback of a first-grade NRL team?

Two out of 40 means it isn’t an anomaly. It means it’s a culture. A culture that reiterates over and over and over again to women: you can speak, and we won’t listen. You can cry, and we won’t care. You can make yourself pretty, but we still won’t give you a seat at our table. You can tell the world we did you wrong, they’ll chant, but watch them – watch them – as they side with us anyway. Watch them as they give us our trophies and hand us our cheques and let us go behind the bar to cut the queue.

I don’t care that some of them are good, because what are those good ones doing to change the culture? A culture that teaches women that even if they stay small, even if you make allowances for their audacity, they’ll still take your chair. I don’t care what they do for a living. It doesn’t matter to me whether they’re playing football or shovelling dirt. I only care about the culture they promote.

You’ll shake their hand – that first grade half-back with an endearing smile who really knows how to kick a ball to tidy up a set play – at the end of the confrontation, amongst the sea of drunken humans, to end the conversation without anger, and their friend, a fellow teammate, will smirk and say: “Oh now you want to be friends with him after you’ve realised who he is.”

And what you’ll actually realise is that the message hasn’t permeated their ego at all. They’ll do it again next weekend at the next bar. To the next girl. And the insolence will become more and more normal, and their kingship will reign almighty.

You’ll realise that when he says ‘who he is’ he means bigger than you. More important than you. A superhero to the common people – above it all and completely aware of it.

I am not in the business of illusions. I don’t know how to end a toxic culture, or how to effectively communicate how disastrous for women the superhero complex surrounding footballers is.

I only know the strength of women; the way they stretch their limbs out from the pains of men every morning, and walk in shoes pointed like daggers for hours. I only flinch when I see these women – with brains and prowess and wits – cower under the audacity of a man who throws a ball for a living.

I only hope that we all get angry whenever a chair is taken.