Last night Barry Hall was sacked by a radio broadcaster here in Australia for making inappropriate comments. Unlike some media outlets, I’ll not be describing Barry as an ‘AFL Great’, but a ‘fucking disgusting piece of shit’. Because I personally couldn’t give a shit about how well he played football, but do care about who he is as a human being right now. And quite frankly, he’s clearly not a very fucking good one.
I suppose if you don’t know what I’m on about, and really want to read about it, you can do that here. But as much as his behaviour is making all the headlines right now, it’s not him I want to talk about. I want to talk about the other men who were a part of that conversation. And those that are commenting on it now.
This was what could have been true watershed moment. A moment for men to make it clear that the people who do this are in the minority and that it will not be tolerated. Sadly, it was exactly the opposite.
Let me explain.
Call me pessimistic and defeatist, but my personal belief is there will always be people in the world who do shit things. There will always be a Barry Hall. Maybe there’ll be less Barrys in the future. But there’ll always be a few. So perhaps I’m not particularly surprised he said what he did. (Although truthfully, I still am. Surprised, and fucking disgusted.)
What I am genuinely surprised about though, and disappointed by, is what happened next. Which was… nothing. Every other man there had the opportunity to step up and call him out. Right then and there. It may not have been easy in that environment. It would have been potentially a bit uncomfortable. But what. The actual. Fuck. If blokes in that environment can’t say how inappropriate a comment of that calibre is, as blokes, we need to take a good long hard look at ourselves.
And I’ll tell you why.
When I went to find a link to the story to post here, the first one that came up on Facebook was the image I’ve posted with this story. When a radio station exec fires Barry, it’s easy for people like the guy who posted this to cry foul. To drag out the good old ‘political correctness gone mad’ defence. In this case, “officially” apparently. But if those fellow footballers had done what any decent human should have done at the time, it would have made that much more difficult. It’s one thing for a radio exec and media people to say this behaviour is not acceptable after the fact, but if other footballers had said it, for some people at least, like the guy who wrote that post, it would have had a lot more power. If his heroes had condemned that behaviour, what a message it would have sent. If those people had shown how to call this shit out, what an epic example that would have set.
What a missed opportunity.
That’s why it’s so incredibly fucking important that it’s not just women complaining about this, but us men as well. People who don’t respect women, must find it quite easy to write off their objections.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. And again. And again. As men, it’s no longer enough for us to just not be a part of the problem. We need to be an active part of the solution. It’s not enough for us to just not say these things. We have to tell others not to say them. And if we don’t, indirectly, we are a part of the problem.
This was the genesis of a new project I’ve just started working on, and it’s called The Bloke Test. And it’s a challenge I’m putting out to the blokes around me. I’m asking what kind of bloke are you? A Good Bloke wouldn’t say these things. A Good Bloke knows they’re wrong. But a Top Bloke speaks out against them.
Whether you believe it or not, it’s fairly widely accepted that degrading and inappropriate comments against women, support more serious offences. They create an environment where that other stuff can thrive. Not everyone who does the day to day inappropriate stuff will escalate to more serious offences, but almost all of the people who commit serious offences started somewhere. And our comments, our ‘harmless jokes’ can support those people doing worse and worse things. Just as saying nothing can do the same.
You never know who’ll take your comments, your jokes, as permission to take things one step further. So it’s time it stopped. All of it.
So my question to you is: What kind of bloke are you?
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