Sexism, profits & football

Tom Pearson

"Gang-bang culture all in the game" ran a front page headline in 
the weekend edition of News Ltd's national broadsheet, The 
Australia, (March 6), in reference to allegations that six 
senior members of the Bulldogs rugby league team pack raped a 
woman in the NSW town of Coffs Harbour. Broadly typical of the 
mass media coverage of the incident, the article was an attempted 
justification of the actions of the players: damage control to 
protect lucrative sponsorship and television advertising 
dollars.

Nonetheless, two companies have so far torn up their sponsorship 
contracts with the Bulldogs. Fearing the implications for the 
National Rugby League (NRL) as a whole, its administrators swore 
public oaths of reform to change the game's "culture".

In tandem with this fine talk the Murdoch press has set out to 
play down the affair with a boys-will-be-boys approach.

"Footballers of all descriptions are more than capable of turning 
on displays of 'men behaving beyond badly'", we are told in the 
above article in the Australian.

To reinforce this line, the same weekend edition of the paper 
reverted to a historic gutter press ploy once the exclusive 
preserve of the tabloid muckrakers. 

In the middle of page three was the photo of a young woman posing 
in the equivalent of a bikini top, the uniform of the "Page 3 
Girl" that helped sell so many Murdoch newspapers during the 
1960s and '70s.

How fortuitous that this sledgehammer sexism should make a re-
appearance in the midst of a crisis over pack rape allegations 
besetting the sport News Ltd stole a decade ago in a hostile 
takeover.

There was certainly nothing fortuitous about the fact that the 
subject of the photo was Jodhi Packer, daughter-in-law of Kerry -
- with an accompanying promo for her new clothing label. Kerry 
Packer and Rupert Murdoch own the National Rugby League: Murdoch 
controls the board; Packer has the free-to-air television rights; 
Murdoch's Fox the pay-for-view.

Murdoch's man at the head of the NRL board, chief executive David 
Gallop, while denouncing rape (how could he not?) and promising 
wide-ranging changes, announced that the NRL wasn't even going to 
fine the Bulldogs. Unfortunately for Gallop there soon followed a 
second allegation of rape, the accused this time from the 
Melbourne Storm club.

It turns out that the Melbourne club's chief executive John Ribot 
hushed up the incident, leaving Gallop holding the can: "We 
certainly would have liked to have known that Melbourne had an 
issue of this type."

The Bulldogs management had also tried to keep things in-house 
and quiet.

And all the time the News Ltd mill kept grinding out the 
justifications, reaching ludicrous heights in the sport section 
of the Daily Telegraph last week where a psychologist 
offered advice to the six accused Bulldogs players in the lead-up 
to the first game of the year.

The expert proffered his aid because the Bulldogs will be playing 
"under the enormous strain of having up to six players facing 
allegations of sexual assault".

News Ltd's justification campaign is thus exposed: it is by 
definition the transference of blame, from the alleged 
perpetrators to the alleged victim.

Which is why, again the Australian article, an unnamed ex-
player is quoted: "Women were there to be used as part of a 
celebration of a good win or for that matter to help you get over 
a bad loss." The question begs — what has that got to do with 
rape? Ah, you see, they ask for it!

Gutter press

It is instructive to consider the treatment by the Daily 
Telegraph of another pack rape case last year to highlight 
the pernicious nature of the gutter press. When a group of 
teenagers from around Bankstown (ironically a suburb in the 
Bulldogs area) were accused of gang rape, the Telegraph 
had a field day.

In its coverage it inferred race as a contributing factor (the 
accused were from middle-eastern backgrounds) and sensationalised 
the case at every opportunity; photo mug shots of the accused; 
emotive interviews with the accusers, etc.

This line of reportage went on week after week, essentially 
setting up the Telegraph as judge and jury, passing a 
sentence of guilty before the convening of any trial.

At this time populist premier Bob Carr, after an exhaustive 
search, had finally found himself the hanging judge he'd been 
looking for, who, in a judgement tending toward justice-as-
revenge, handed down individual sentences of up to 55 years.

Given the high profile notoriety of that case, isn't it curious 
that the zero-tolerance crusaders at the Telegraph seem to 
have lost their zeal for the kangaroo court?

A suggestion

The treatment of women by some football players is a 
manifestation of a larger problem. This is the deeply engrained 
view of women as sex objects which is given impetus through the 
commercial media, particularly in advertising: it is profitable 
to degrade and demean women.

This attitude extends to all areas of society, including sport. 
So here is a suggestion to those in control of the NRL.

Rugby league has followed professional male sport in the US by 
the introduction of cheer squads of scantily clad women providing 
"entertainment" at games. This element of commercialisation 
emerged with the televising of sport, the women being used as sex 
objects to sell the product i.e. the game and the advertisements 
therein.

But people actually go to matches to watch the football. So let's 
see the NRL abolish the cheer squads, as the first, baby step to 
demonstrate there is substance behind the rhetoric. But don't 
hold your breath. In the end David Gallop and his fellow News Ltd 
cronies, whatever their personal views, are not moral guardians, 
but guardians of Murdoch's profits.