Toxic Masculinity vs The Suburban Yobbo Sheila

I went to a footy match the other day. Not a professional one. I went to see one of the nephews play. I did not particularly enjoy the experience. You see, they had twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year old boys playing in the same match. Some of them were under five feet tall and looked like primary school children, while others were over six feet tall, with budding facial hair, and physiques like grown men. The smaller boys were routinely steamrolled, trampled underfoot, and carted off injured. It was carnage.

However, one thing that caught my attention was the behaviour of the adult spectators. I expected many of them to be as horrified with the situation as I was, but none of them were. I suppose most of them had seen it all before. Even more interesting, was the general discrepancy between how the men and women carried on over the course of the match.

For their part, the men restricted themselves to shouting words of encouragement. "Go son!", "Kick it to Mikey!", "Move Up!", "That's the way, boys!". Any disparaging remarks they had, were quietly shared amongst themselves via a muttered whisper. "Bloody one-eyed ref", "What's the coach thinking, putting Billy on the wing."

The women on the other hand were not so reserved. Not only were they far more vocal with their disapproval, they were also a hell of a lot nastier with it too. At one point, I saw a young fella, who had been crushed in a tackle, limp over to the sideline, clutching his ribs, and drop down on one knee. A group of six or seven women, standing not more than a couple of meters away, then proceeded to berate him for coming off the field—calling him, amongst other things—a wimp, a wuss, a pansy, an embarrassment, and a girl. I have to say, I can't remember the last time I saw a twelve-year-old boy get completely emasculated by a group of forty-year-old women. After a few minutes of copping this abuse, the young bloke got up, and quietly limped his way down the sideline, presumably in search of a less stressful place to nurse his ribs.

I didn't know the boy, but I couldn't help but imagine how I would feel if he had been my nephew—and it made my heart sink.

If I was being super generous, I could write it off as a form of ultra tough love. That these horrible, loud, obnoxious, cows were doing the boys a favour, by desensitising them to the abuse that they might cop from larger crowds at more important games, at some point down the track. But of course, if that was the case, it begs the question, why was it only the women? Why weren't the men getting involved too?

I don't watch a lot of television these days, but I'm tangentially aware of the ads that the federal government has been running around domestic violence and respect for women. As far as I know, these ads focus almost exclusively on the bad examples fathers sometimes set for their sons. After my day out at the footy, I'm left wondering: (A) if these ads might actually be having some sort of positive effect on the way Aussie dads are behaving, at least when they're out in public; and (B) whether the govt might have missed a trick by excluding mothers from this message.

Any thoughts?