BBC took the opportunity to throw shit on girls/women's football on the final day of Women's Football World Cup 2019.
BBC used most of their main news hour today to propagate for more cricket for young girls. This is in line with a long lasting history of resistance against girls/women playing the most popular sport ever.
The tea drinking puppet empire banned women from playing football on FA grounds 1921-1971.
Peter Klevius has made the most extensive research on the background to the ban and how it was connected to the introduction of Swedish gymnastics for English girls.
Here just a small aperitife:
Extracted from Peter Klevius research:
The pioneering role of club gymnastics (Swedish ’föreningsgymnastik’) was an all-European phenomenon - except for in the British Islands. In Sweden this was especially natural because of the Ling gymnastics tradition (Lindroth 1988:40). Since the end of the 19th century there has been a continuous differentiation of competitive sport. I doubt, says Hjelm, that a ‘league IV’ heavyweight boxer would consider himself a better boxer than the Swedish lightweight champion only because he would win a match between them. This is why weight classes as a form of differentiation were introduced in boxing. The official introduction of girls and women football in the 1970s hence represents a common way of organizing sport in Sweden (Hjelm 2004: 284). Similarly, it is hard to imagine that the many male sprinters who run faster than the world's best female sprinters but not as fast as the best male sprinters, would consider their wins in some local competition equally worthy as a female Olympic gold medal. Yet the same logic seems often to be missing when comparing male and female football.
Gender and ‘class-neutral’ football
Andersson (2002) has written an account of Swedish football's cultural history from the end of the 19th century to 1950. Furthermore, Andersson has surveyed the manner in which football could attain such a strong cultural position, and a class neutral character, to the extent that it could be automatically classified as the national sport of Sweden. Andersson concludes that the middle class dominated power elite in Sweden tried to control the development of sport through the federations, at both national and regional levels: the management of elite clubs; sports journalism; the referee corps; and, often, even the running of sports grounds. All of this was aimed at the realisation of football as a manly, class nonspecific, and successful Swedish project (Andersson 2002: 624).
However, this bourgeois middle-class sport power elite that was initially dominated by younger or middle aged males, aged and changed to a group of somewhat older middle class men, with the values of the male working class and of social democracy. So, although there originally existed two English cultures in Sweden - amateur and professional football - while the Swedish bourgeoisie went for the gentleman amateur values with the main objective to use the game as an element in nurturing masculinity for the good of the nation, this was later transformed to better correspond to the popular ‘mixed’ football culture (Andersson 2002: 628-629). In this context it may be worth mentioning the extraordinary long lasting and strong position the social democratic party came to have in Sweden.
Ideology bearing thoughts and convictions regarding ‘wholesome masculinity’, the nurturing of a gentlemanly identity, as well as amateurism and class crossing nationalism was transformed from a sound and ‘healthy manliness’ based on military character to approximate the popular movement’s ideals of duty and conscientiousness, albeit without compulsory temperance. Furthermore, in accordance with a rather freer male ideal, all boys were welcomed to participate, and gentlemanliness was transmuted towards proletarian comradeship, and a class related amateurism developed closer to professional football. A professional and scientific attitude, in which the will to win was central, emerged in Sweden (Andersson 2002: 629).
According to Andersson, football was masculinized through the ideals of the working-class because it was well suited to a Swedish working class culture that not only paid tribute to collective ideals, but also contained a tradition anchored rivalry between different groups, not least young men in neighbouring communities. ‘In this way, the game's masculine character was established’, despite what representatives of Ling gymnastics opined about football's danger to physical wellbeing (Andersson, 2002: 624). That football during the inter-war period was a definitively masculine sport was, according to Andersson, demonstrated when a more ‘entertainment orientated’ ladies' football was established in Sweden around 1920. Andersson traces the origins of female participation in football to women’s generally strengthened societal position. However, according to Andersson, the main reason for their entry onto the pitch was economic. Although women’s football in Sweden in this period was ridiculed and never developed beyond a humorous spectacle into a sport based on serious matches between contending women’s team, in this way women’s football contributed, albeit in a small way, to the sport's comprehensive commercialisation (Andersson 2002: 624).
In Sweden, the development of competitive sport was simultaneous with the continued expansion of gymnastics for women, to such an extent that it became a female domain (E. Olofsson 1989:203). Female competitive sport played a rather diminutive role in Sweden (and Finland – two major players in male sport). This may be due to the early democratisation of the sport, i.e. that many working class males were drawn to sport so that the emphasis was altered towards more male/manly (’manlig’) sports like football, hence making access to the middle class sporting culture - which hitherto had been at least partially open for women - more difficult (Andersson 2002: 80). All in all, this background seems to support the view that Swedish social-democracy did not benefit female footballers.
Equal or particular participation?
Olofsson (1989:201) uses the concepts of equality and peculiarity to describe women’s situation in Sweden, and claims that it is,
‘Based on a comparison between women and men, where the man is the norm, whom the woman is like equality, or unlike - peculiarity. An attitude to women that can be ranged under the concept of equality can be regarded as the opposite of an attitude to women ranged under the concept of peculiarity.’
Olofsson continues by asking: ‘Is there a universal likeness between people or are there basic differences?’Women's participation in competitive sport, according to Olofsson, is based on a preconceived idea of how a particular sport is performed by men. As a consequence, women's participation in competitive sport can be said to be based on equality between the sexes. This is the root of the opposition to women's participation in sport, because the form and rules of sport are based on the idea that it should be performed by men. Within the sports movement, Olofsson (1989: 200-1) continues, as in the rest of society: ‘the opinion that women are different from men has been, and still is to some extent, prevalent’. The idea of women's physical inferiority is the most conspicuous one among men in leading positions within the sports movement. However, this reasoning may miss the fact that even within the sexes (e.g. weight classes) the same holds true. Moreover, there is also a tendency, albeit perhaps still rather subtle, to see the advantages of women in typically male dominated sports. In racing, for example, a smaller and lighter body is clearly advantageous if only the skills are there. Danica Patrick is in this respect a good example. Her driving skills paved the way for what can only be considered full equality as a driver in the eyes of the male drivers.
Although women's participation in sport, according to Olofsson, presupposes equality that does not exist, the doors to male sport have gradually been opened for women. According to Olofsson there is no such thing as women's sports, only female participants in male sport. On the other hand, gymnastics for women has existed for a long time, based on the assumption of women's peculiarity an activity which, officially, is gradually disappearing (Olofsson 1989: 200-201). Olofsson has shown particularly that many doors to competitive sports were opened for women in Sweden in the 1970s. The motives for this, Olofsson clarifies by examining women's conditions in football. Even if sport had lagged behind the official work for equality, the sports movement was pressed to open the doors for women in the 1970s (Olofsson 1989: 205).
The development of women's football indicates another dimension compared with men's football. Interviews with female leaders show that women have a somewhat different attitude to their sports activities. The work for equality carried out by the Sport Confederation in Sweden has also, in the last few years, been based on the conviction that women can bring new ideas into sport. This springs from an attitude to women based on social peculiarity. Paradoxically, says Olofsson (1989: 205), the social peculiarity of women is perhaps more difficult to eliminate in sport than the biological. And at the same time, it is not possible or desirable that it should be preserved. This is probably an insoluble conflict between the conditions of competitive sport on one hand and women's conditions on the other. The concepts of equality and peculiarity illuminate the counterstrategies used by women in their efforts to be integrated into the sports movement (Olofsson 1989: 205-206). However, Olofsson's description 'that women have a somewhat different attitude to their sports activities' seems to assume a general female attitude despite the fact that women can not be seen as a homogeneous group other than biologically, and that the interviews may be the result of the time being and the segregation experienced, or even just the lack of quality of a young and less established sport.
Contrary to gymnastics it seems that female football became sexed when introduced. Olofsson notes that the female PE teachers in the beginning of the 20th century motivated females for gymnastics and their entry into the sports movement in line with the ideology of the times, i.e. female peculiarity. This was in opposition to the beginning of gymnastics for women which was, in many respects, identical with that of men. Olofsson has not been able to trace any opposition to this, but concludes that one explanation may be that the idea of equality between the sexes facilitated women's encroachment on the new field of gymnastics. Olofsson then assumes that the women involved gradually discovered that in this way gymnastics did not become an activity for women. Women's counter-strategy became to emphasize female peculiarity. This attitude to women was also prevalent in other social sectors at this time.
However, when (around 1970) women entered the world of football in Sweden and elsewhere they, according to Olofsson, chose another counter-strategy. Now they emphasized equality, which was in line with the prevalent attitude to women. This strategy, Olofsson continues, can be explained in the same way, i.e. the motive of equality is the ‘natural’ motive for women's encroachment into a new field. Then, in the 1970s and the 1980s, the ideology of peculiarity gained new ground, both within the sports movement as well as in the rest of society (Olofsson 1989: 206).
However, an examination of one of Sweden’s foremost feminist organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s, the left wing communism inspired Grupp Åtta (Group 81), reveals that sport was seldom debated in positive terms among its members. Furthermore, football was seen as an ‘unacceptable and uninteresting “masculine” form of culture’ (Hjelm 2004: 277). This is the more contradictory because, according to Hjelm, the same feminists also proposed that women, at an individual as well as at a collective level, should try and learn new activities – such as, for example, amateur painting, and performing political music and theater – things they had not dared to try before (Hjelm 2004: 177). Under the feminist Group 8, Swedish females would most probably not have been encouraged to play football.
For feminists and the political left in Sweden competitive sports in general, and especially football, were ‘hopelessly characterized by masculinity’, and, according to one informant from the original Group 8, sport supervisors and teachers of gymnastics were among the worst ‘indoctrinators of our rigid sex role patterns’ (Hjelm 2004: 276). Another aspect of the female resistance against female football seems related and very consistent over time. Whereas in the 1920s the concern about dangers facing sporting females targeted the reproductive organs, in the 1960s the focus was laid on ‘dangling’ breasts, and more recently on the disturbed menstruation cycle. In England, the concern about female fragility has led to the situation that girls and boys aged 12 are not allowed to play against each other (Kosonen 1991, Seiro 2002 in Paavola 2003: 33). All of these can be seen as different aspects of the same underlying resistance, especially targeting football and seemingly paradoxically including many female critics.
It has been noted that sporting females have not internalized role conflicts (Laitinen 1983, 34). However, asks Paavola (2003: 43), herself a footballer, if sporting females do not experience role conflicts, would it be possible that those women for whom sport does cause such conflicts, do not participate in sport because of this? This conclusion may be adapted not only to the case of the Swedish feminist Group 8 above but also, and similarly, to all the girls that have avoided football precisely because it poses role conflicts. In this light, the Swedish feminists from the 1970s described above seem to have been basically separatist and hence ‘real feminists’ as it is understood here, and consequently for a continuing sex segregation. Furthermore, a logical consequence of this reasoning would be that much of the so called ‘equal-feminist’ movement was not feminist after all, but rather a social twin to the early women’s movement for the vote and other equal rights.
Hjelm (2004: 278) records some self-criticism among Swedish feminists in the late 1970s. Although the fact that many girls were interested in sports had surprised feminists, the next reaction seems to have been that these girls were unfairly treated. Hjelm asserts that female football teams did not evolve only because women wanted to challenge the existing masculine hegemony, through experience such as paid work, as students, or through the sex role debate. It was at least equally important that the preconditions for football and competitive sport in general had changed because women had left their homes and had now parted into women communities (Hjelm 2004: 259-272). However, according to Pfister et al the myths of masculinity and femininity which are associated with different body or sport practices are dependent on the prevailing social and gender orders. So, for example, from the very beginning, the participation of men and women in certain forms of physical exercise or sport was tied to rules and norms pertaining to gender. ‘It was, above all, women who in compliance with existing gender roles were barred from sporting activities’ (Pfister et al 1999: 66-67).
In conclusion Hjelm’s position asserts that women who had left their homes wanted to challenge existing masculine hegemony, while Phister et al (1999) emphasise the myths of masculinity and femininity which are dependent on prevailing sex segregation. In this light, Hjelm’s view seems more focused on women alone, whereas Pfister et al’s position seems more open for a broader interpretation.
‘Female football was an embarrassing, shameful and disgracing activity, especially unsuitable for women’
The pioneers of women's football seem to have emphasized the aspect of equality. This idea agreed with the prevalent attitude to sport that existed within the Swedish Football Association. However, some representatives of women's football emphasize that women have a lower physical capacity than men, and that by using a smaller ball, women would be able to play ‘real’ football (Olofsson 1989: 205). Translated to 100 m runners it would mean that women should run some 8 meter shorter distance.
A motive for the favourable disposition of the Football Association to women's participation in football can be traced back to the general development of society, i.e. that the official work for equality between men and women was mainly based on the ideology of equality between the sexes. It would therefore have been difficult for the Swedish Football
Association to point out the ‘improper’ aspects of football for women (Olofsson 1989: 205).
Based on interviews and press research, Hjelm (2004:276) concludes that ‘nothing before the end of the 1970s’ implies that the Swedish women’s movement was interested in the struggle of early female footballers, or even that struggle was worth of their support. According to one of Hjelm’s feminist informants – one of the leaders in the feminist Group 8 who had actually watched a game in 1968 - female football was an embarrassing, shameful and disgracing activity, and one especially unsuitable for women (Hjelm 2004: 276). Feminists in other countries shared this view (Hargreaves 1994: 25). An examination of one of Sweden’s foremost feminist organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s, Grupp Åtta (Group 82), reveals that sport was seldom debated in positive terms. Furthermore, football was seen as an ‘unacceptable and uninteresting ‘masculine’ form of culture’ (Hjelm 2004: 277). This seems perfectly in line with the view that women actively and with power contributed to the 1921 ban in England.
Extracted from Peter Klevius yet to be published book Born to Play a Sport of Nature.
UPDATE
Peter Klevius wrote:
Peter Klevius obituary over the best ever: RIP, the worlds best football player, Lily Parr - and the next best, Pele.
Although both scored more than 1,000 goals, Lily Parr did so in headwind!
No
one can be more vulnerable for female sexual beauty (i.e. heterosexual
attraction - ask women who know him) than Peter Klevius - and no one
male can be more ignorant about sexual beauty when seeing a woman
playing football and on the arena becoming human instead of woman. Just
like the early Christian St. Perpetua who said before she faced death on
the gladiator arena 203 AD: 'And I was stripped (for death), and I
became a (hu)man*', i.e. no longer fettered by womanhood/femininity.
* A time when a man was considered the only fully human.
A sport of nature - or a fact of nature?
Social
convention based on a commonsense reaction to the ‘palpable menace of
sexual desire among all human beings, and, most especially, to the known
seductiveness of women’ (i.e. heterosexual attraction) was, at
Tertullian’s* time, i.e. the latter part of the Second Century, shared
by pagans and Christians alike. According to Tertullian, it was a fact
of nature that women were seductive, and Christian baptism did nothing
to change this fact (Brown 1988: 68, 81). However, we are not informed
why the fact that women are seductive, necessarily should imply
restrictions on her. We might guess that a number of Tertullians
transferred to a modern Western secular city might have diverged in a
similar pattern of opinion as would contemporary people. If women were
defined by marriage, by its sexual and procreative roles and by the
sex-based labor assigned to married women, then their refusal of
marriage might move them into a category that transcended womanhood.
Only in the arena of martyrdom can we view these transcendent women
unfiltered by the lenses of male observers (McNamara 1985:104).
Perpetua, a Roman matron, faced the lions in Carthage on March 7, 203.
She recorded her experience in prison which led her to a new vision in
which all her mortal persona was burned away. An unknown spectator'
possibly (most probably) Tertullian , rescued these documents and
appended an eyewitness account of her death, resulting in an authentic
female voice recording the emergence of her 'autonomous spiritual being
from the cocoon of her womanhood' (McNamara 1985:105). Perpetua
renounced everything that made her a Woman. She stripped away the
emotions and the constraints of the feminine role she had once fully
played. On the night before her execution, she dreamed that she had
entered into the arena to fight the beasts. There she was confronted by a
certain “ill-favored -Egyptian" who challenged her to fight with him.
Also, there came to me comely young men, my helpers and aiders. 'And I
was stripped, and I became a man' (McNamara 1985:105).
At the
foot of the ladder lay a dragon of enormous size, and it would attack
those who tried to climb up and try to terrify them from doing so.
* Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" as well as "the founder of Western theology".
Not "women's football" but human's football - or just football*!
*
You don't say about a child that s/he plays "children's football", do
you. If it's a girl you say 'she plays football' and if it's a Finnish
girl you say 'hän pelaa jalkapalloa', where 'hän' is a sexless personal
pronoun (as in most other language families except IE and semitic) and
therefore not translatable to the indoeuropean sex segregated s/he. And
when divided by biological sex then it should also say 'men's football',
right.
As Peter Klevius for long has stated,
evolutionary (i.e. biological) heterosexual attraction (the only
analytically relevant distinction between the sexes, according to Peter
Klevius - and islam) has to be "civilized" in our daily encounters - but
without islamic sex segregation*. And the tool for this was given 1948
with Art. 2 of the Universal Human Rights declaration (the world's most
translated document), which main purpose is to stand as the bedrock not
only for legislation but also as a bulwark against sexism hiding in
culture. In other words, we need to get rid of sex segregation. No
matter of biological sex one should be free to lead once life as one
wishes - which also means that you have the right to appear
"feminine"/"masculine" (whatever that means) without being in any way
criticized by e.g. Peter Klevius - as long as it's not part of
sexism/racism against others.
Lily Parr, the world's by far best* football player ever - no matter of sex!
*
If Marta (six times chosen as the world's best football player) when
she was at her best, had time travelled and played against Lily Parr she
would probably have outperformed her in dribbling although perhaps not
in kicking. However, that's not a fair comparison - just think if Lily
had stopped smoking and got the same training etc. possibilities as
modern top players! And compared to Lionel Messi, who as a teenager was
taken care of by the world's then best football club Barcelona FC, Lily
Parr got just the very opposite - a ban on her putting her feet on any
English football ground for the rest of her career!
Lily Parr was
born in St Helens in 1905 where she as a child learned to play football
in games with her brothers. At 5ft 10ins tall, Lily was said to have a
'fearless streak' and 'robust frame'. As a teenager, her first games
were with her local side, St Helens Ladies.
There was a growth in
interest in women's football in the late 19th century and early 20th
because of the huge popularity of men's football combined with the fact
that so many young women met football playing men in factories etc.
Dick, Kerr & Co was such a factory where women worked making munitions.
When in 1917 office worker Alfred Frankland saw the girls beating their male factory co-workers in an informal lunch-time match, he decided to be their manager, hence unleashing them on the general public, resulting in a game-changing and instantaneous success.
This really shows how sex segregation had kept girls/women back.
Dick, Kerr Ladies F.C. was one of the earliest known women's football teams, and remained in existence for some 50 years, from 1917 to 1965, playing 833 games, winning 759, drawing 46, and losing 28. Nettie Honeyball's team in 1895 was possibly the first.
The matches attracted anywhere from 4,000 to over 50,000 spectators per match. In 1920, Dick, Kerr Ladies defeated a French side 2–0 in front of 25,000 people that went down in history as the first international football game played by women. On the request of female physicians and others the English Football Association (FA) banned women from using fields and stadiums controlled by FA-affiliated clubs for 50 years (the rule was only repealed in 1971). There were 150 women's football clubs in 1921 when on 5 December same year the FA ban was announced.
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was also the first female team to play wearing shorts.
'Big, fast and powerful', Lily Parr was said to 'take corner kicks better than most men' and she scored 'many goals with a left foot cross drive which nearly breaks the net', according to her profile in a programme of 1923.
There were 150 women's football clubs by 1921 when on 5 December the FA decided to ban females from playing on its members' grounds. As a consequence the women's game declined but Lily Parr and other female players continued to play on non-FA pitches.
Dick,
Kerr’s Ladies became Preston Ladies in 1926. Parr became a psychiatric
nurse at Whittington Hospital but continued to play for Preston, finally
ending her long playing career in 1951.
Why the "beautiful game" is also the hardest to master well
Although
Lily Parr was taller than the average woman, most of the best players
have been below average height, like Pele, Maradona, Marta, Messi,
Modric etc.. However, Ronaldo is 187 cm and a former top player like
Crouch is 203 cm. This just emphasizes the greatness of "the beautiful
game" - a sport that fits everyone, yet is the hardest of all sports to
master because it eliminates tools and hands while keeping the feet busy
with multitasking with running and manoeuvring while also controlling
the ball with the same feet.
The page below in this book made Peter Klevius wipe tears several times
How Sweden was an accomplish to the death of English football for women - and how Lily Parr & Co's heritage created the world's best football team in the 1970s in a forgotten rural setting in Sweden.
Peter
Klevius has written a book with an in depth analysis about the history
of England's hostility against women playing football. Although Sweden
played an important role behind the scene, this has never before been
scientifically scrutinized. It's hoped that Amazon will publish it so to
make its existence more visible. Peter Klevius was about to go for self
publishing but it seemed impossible to reach out in a meaningful way.
After all, it's all about supporting girös and women who want not only
to play football but also lo tead their lives as they wish without
sexism.
Perpetua (203 AD): 'I saw a ladder of tremendous height made of bronze, reaching all the way to the heavens, but it was so narrow that only one person could climb up at a time. To the sides of the ladder were attached all sorts of metal weapons: there were swords, spears, hooks, daggers, and spikes; so that if anyone tried to climb up carelessly or without paying attention, he would be mangled and his flesh would adhere to the weapons.' Perpetua realized she would have to do battle not merely with wild beasts, but with the Devil himself. Perpetua writes: They stripped me, and I became a man'.
Peter Klevius: They stripped Perpetua of her femininity and she became a human!
The whole LGBTQ+ carousel is completely insane when considering that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) art. 2 gives everyone, no matter of sex, the right to live as they want without having to "change their sex". So the only reason for the madness is the stupidly stubborn cultural sex segregation which, like religious dictatorship, stipulates what behavior and appearance are "right" for a biological sex. And in the West, it is very much about licking islam, which refuses to conform to the basic (negative) rights in the UDHR, and instead created its own sharia declaration (CDHRI) in 1990 ("reformed" 2020 with blurring wording - but with the same basic Human Rights violating sharia issues still remaining). The UDHR allows women to voluntarily live according to sharia but sharia does not allow muslim women to live freely according to the UDHR. And culturally ending sex segregation does not mean that biological sex needs to be "changed." Learn more under 'Peter Klevius sex tutorials' which should be compulsory sex education for everyone - incl. people with ambiguous biological sex! The LGBTQ+ movement is a desperate effort to uphold outdated sex segregation. And while some old-fashioned trans people use it for this purpose, many youngsters (especially girls) follow it because they feel trapped in limiting sex segregation.
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