Lionesses: Our sympathy towards Laura Bassett is sexist. When Gareth Southgate missed a penalty during England’s semi-final match against Germany in Euro 96 he was vilified. There were practically calls for him to be put in the stocks and publicly pelted with rotten tomatoes.

Lethn · 2015-07-02T14:48:46+00:00

I would have absolutely no problem with the way the public are acting towards the woman if they did exactly the same thing for men.

The thing is, it's pretty fucking obvious they don't and they follow blatant double standards. Even in the comments page of that article you see them desperately trying to cover themselves. I was aware of how nasty people were when it came to these kind of double standards long before I found this sub-reddit but it was until only recently that I've decided to take a stand because it has gotten that bad now.

If you want equal treatment that's great, but that requires you not showing blatant favourtism towards somebody because of what gender or race they are as well as not being a dick to them.

cuteman · 2015-07-02T16:17:43+00:00

Maybe those twitter supporters can buy them a participation trophy. Shit happens.

SweetiePieJonas · 2015-07-02T14:02:58+00:00

Apart from in the United States, where soccer is about waving the you-go-girl rainbow banner domestically and globally, in the rest of the world soccer is an occasion for male bonding and male tribalism.

Progressives hate male bonding and all the drunkenness and untidiness that goes with it. The problem is that without a hard core of passionate male fans, you're a lot less likely to get the news footage that's required for great communal sporting occasions - impromptu street parties, progressions of cars with crazy guys hanging out waving flags. See for example: Women's World Cup fanzone: build it, and they don't come. So alongside the sisters-doing-it for-themselves rhetoric, there's a resentment towards male fans who've let women's sport down by not taking it to their hearts. ... Dudebro fans - can't live with 'em, don't have much of a sport without 'em.

The other aspect of soccer is that it's a stand-in for tribal passions - your tribe's representatives are fighting for your honor against the representatives of the neighboring village/city/country. That's why bungling soccer players get the hate - they've let down the whole tribe. Female soccer players aren't fighting for the tribe in the same way - it's a weak and dying tribe that sends its women out to fight for it. So yeah, women's soccer is regarded as a nice occasion where our nice girls play with their nice girls, and regardless of the result we crowd together, our tribe and their tribe intermingled like an I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing ad, and we all say together "wasn't it nice for them!".

pnw_diver · 2015-07-02T20:17:49+00:00

Men face far more punishing accountability in any society than women.

xNOM · 2015-07-02T18:36:25+00:00

Wasn't that world cup own-goal guy from Columbia killed?

kragshot · 2015-07-02T16:53:57+00:00

Of course it must be England; look at all of the white knights who were posting on that article...I don't think that they had a round table big enough.

dejour · 2015-07-03T04:34:21+00:00

I guess Canadians deserve some credit for giving our goat, Lauren Sesselmann, a hard time.

Any threats against a man or woman are wrong. But simply pointing out her repeated defensive lapses and stating that she should not have been playing is just simple accountability.

ThePigmanAgain · 2015-07-02T22:53:11+00:00

I'm no expert on soccer, but isn't the idea to put the ball into the other team's net? And don't you love the way she burst into tears? What is she during the off-season, a female scientist? Heh, heh. As for all the support she's getting, it's the usual crap with our gynocentric society.

"Sampson said: "When she goes home she will be a hero"

Men are heroes when they win, women are heroes when they lose.

"The way Laura Bassett has played in this tournament, she has epitomised all the values that England football fans want to see in that white jersey," added Sampson."

English fans want to see idiots kick own goals. How 'bout that?!?!?

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