Getting a stripper for a local footy club bash, attended by juniors, is all that’s wrong with AFL culture
HAVING a stripper at a Bayswater footy function shows that the AFL’s pricey PR drive to convince us it is part of the solution around respectful treatment of women, rather than a contributor to the problem, means little at the grassroots, writes Wendy Tuohy.
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BOOKING a stripper for a local footy club bash attended by 16-year-old junior players is all that is still wrong with AFL culture and its attitude to the place of women.
The real shock is that anyone attached to a local footy club, which as we know is often the hub of community life, thought it was fine to book a stripper as entertainment.
PARENTS OUTRAGED BY STRIPPER AT FOOTBALL FUNCTION
Hadn’t the AFL’s message to players at every level that the league can no longer afford to be an enclave of seedy old boys’ club culture (for the community’s sake) finally gotten through?
Apparently not.
The scheduling of a stripper shows that pricey PR drive to convince us it is onside with being part of the solution around respectful treatment of women, rather than a contributor to the problem means little at the grassroots (yet).
Some of the “boys will be boys-ing” among talkback callers today has been equally astounding. Comments such as, “I think you’ll find most teenage boys are interested in naked females” totally miss the point.
Sure, there are plenty of adult entertainment clubs offering strippers, and plenty of women making an honest wage from it, but context is everything. The context of this was an event at a club the community expects to reflect healthy, respectful values to young people.
Teaching boys a woman’s role in a male dominated environment is to be leered at and her value lies in the entertainment to be had by her getting nude for you, does not demonstrate that.
It undermines the chance of young men to have fruitful relationships, professional and personal with women.
To see the end game here, think Billy Brownless’ demeaning “here come the strippers” “joke” aimed at a mother and her 18-year-old daughter at a junior footy function at which he was MC.
Who wouldn’t think that kind of “joke” was fine if they had grown up through old-school footy culture — although to his credit, Brownless apologised.
But if the boys and young men of now take those crusty old “sportsmens” attitudes to women into a world which expects better of them, they are set up to fail — and young women they come into contact with will be the worse off for it.
In an era in which men and women are expected to be treated, and treat each other as equals, especially at work, older men chanting “this is the culture we grew up in, it didn’t do any harm” are failing their sons.
It confines women to the role of sexual plaything in the minds of men; a concept the AFL tells us it has been working hard to drum out of players and administrators, even as heads continue to roll among senior male staff for their treatment of women.
What happened at the Bayswater club matters, because AFL in all its forms and at all levels has the potential to help disseminate understanding about where respectful attitudes come from, and to build healthy young men and women.
The attitudes young people are surrounded by at their sports club have the potential to help them thrive, or to promote attitudes that will undermine them.
Putting a stripper in front of boys lays the groundwork for the latter.
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