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fawsldaily · 5 years

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'Same sport, different game' has long been the unofficial tagline of women's football. But as it continues to grow and in doing so moves closer in proximity to men's football it is inevitable that some distinctions between the two sides of the sport will begin to blur.

The question of how the women's game can ensure the preservation of its elements worth holding on to, whilst simultaneously needing to attract fans outside of its bubble, is one which it has been asking itself for some time now. There is no simple answer, as demonstrated when those with the task of balancing the scales openly admit they are not sure of the best approach to take.

For the sake of its prosperity the women's game must tap into an audience which is more accustomed to the starkly contrasting culture of men's football; something so established and ingrained it permeates through to the very society we live in as society itself filters the other way. The nearer the women's game is positioned to something so influential the more likely its norms will change as a result, but there is still opportunity to control to what degree its customs are altered. If managed correctly it should one day be possible to look back and see a positive evolution as opposed to the loss of better days. There is, however, little time to decide how the game intends to achieve the former if events of Manchester United vs Liverpool on Saturday afternoon are anything to go by.

Many things were said about Manchester United's vocal fan base in the days before they hosted Liverpool in Leigh. Many more things have been said in the aftermath.

The commentary during the opening minutes of the match was dominated with talk of the club's ‘Barmy Army’ fan group. It echoed the positive sentiments of a BBC article published the day before detailing the group's origin, their song book and growing attendances. A particularly audible chant during the eighth minute prompted the commentator to again commend the group and their efforts creating an atmosphere. He was seemingly completely unaware that they had in fact just finishing singing about the visiting fans being so poor they resort to eating rats.

The chant in question was that of Park Ji-sung; once a player for Manchester United's men's team. Seven years after departing the club his chant was sung at a women's team match, all due to its punchline about Scousers and poverty. It is, therefore, the perfect example of the two most likely things to be brought into the stands on the back of importing too much of a fan base from the men's game and too soon - those two being, things which are unrelated to the women's game and things which should not be present in either. Park Ji-sung's irrelevancy to a Women's Super League match is not negated just because the final line of the chant referenced the opposition, and the nature of that reference ought to mean the chant be considered unwelcome at any match at all. It is hard for Barmy Army members to justify singing this particular chant on them not yet having material more suited to the women's team when they pride themselves so much on the existence of their women's team centred song book.

The point that new fans won't initially know the inner workings of a women's football crowd is a valid one, however. It has to be expected that their contribution will likely be what they do know, which is men's football. Often perceived to be the default in any case. A common argument being made in reaction to events at Leigh this weekend by those on the outside looking in has been that if women's football wishes to be treated equally it must be prepared to have the same elements as the men's game - warts and all. Many comments read like they had been left by people resigned to accepting that abuse is part and parcel now and you can't have football without it. It is easy to understand why somebody would resign themselves to that when also in amongst the reaction were comments from others carrying the disturbing notion that the sort of chants from the Manchester United fans are not even warts but are in fact enhancing a match day experience. Mocking destitution and death (as referenced in their chant related to the Hillsborough Disaster) is not an enhancer of anything.

It is difficult to find fault in the principle behind the argument that women's football must adopt things from men's football, when it is an argument being made in the general sense. But when made in the context of fan base attitudes and behaviours, it does not in fact need to adopt what are warts. It is impossible to convince fans not to cross a line or to come back on the correct side of a line when they do not acknowledge the existence of one. It is critical therefore that the women’s game establish exactly where the line is as early as possible.

Preventing the adoption of the worst elements of men’s football will require a robust, zero tolerance approach with input from all sides. Including the existing fan base who must play a role and be prepared to police both themselves and new arrivals. It is likely not a coincidence that the one set of fans failing to read the room, or outright ignoring it, happen to also be the set with no grounding in women's football culture because their team is only just over a year old. Whilst it is not possible to force new match goers to adapt to the differences of a women's match, a club stands a much greater chance of their fan base growing into a positive asset if new match goers can at least enter a ground and see women's football culture on display. Recognising and then taking on board the differences will largely be an education achieved through good example.

It is a shame then that the FA spent so many years catering to children and families rather than to the young adult and adult demographic who have been responsible for setting the crowd tone to date, and so are therefore the subsection who would be most likely to successfully set that necessary example moving forward. Had more of this type of fan been targetted earlier and more assistance been given for the establishment of fan groups then perhaps there would be enough of a vocal presence at matches to offset the introduction of anybody wired to make distasteful contributions.

It would be a continued shame if that demographic were now overlooked for a second time in favour of bussing in 'ready made' fans from men's matches, when it is the case that had this demographic instead been the target audience they could by now have developed into exactly what those bussed in fans will be, but crucially minus the problematic tendencies. The ‘source from elsewhere’ approach may shortcut to higher attendances, but, just as targetting children now so there is a fan for tomorrow came at the expense of building up the fan of today, an influx of fans too contrasting with the present will come at the expense of having a desirable culture in the future.

The young adult and adult demographic who have been part of the league are also key to establishing rivalry. The more seasoned the fan and the older they are the more able they are to recount previous meetings between their team and another. One argument made for bringing in fans from outside of the bubble is that it is a step towards lively atmospheres with needle, but the fact that we so often highlight the times such an atmosphere is present proves the women's game does in fact already have the ability to create such thing - the issue is that it isn't created often enough. This is not because there is something wrong with the current fans and their methods, it is because there isn't yet enough narrative and history which are two things vital to cultivating a partisan crowd.

The Women's Super League is only nine years old. It has also been through multiple restructures and re-licencings at the same time clubs and squads have been becoming unrecognisable from one season to the next, meaning you can divide those nine years into three or four completely different and practically unrelated eras. Going back further than a season or two takes you into a time of little relevancy to what is happening on the pitch nowadays. It is an unfair and unrealistic expectation that fans regularly create an atmosphere to rival those seen in men's football when those men's football fans are often doing so with a lifetime of meaningful past meetings to reflect on.

Of the eight founding Women's Super League clubs, only one fixture between them could really be considered a local derby but for the first two years it did not feel like one. Only in 2013, once some of Everton's better players had 'crossed the park' to join Liverpool who had finally become competitive and the power started to swing to the red half of the city, did the Merseyside Derby have the fitting significance. Almost 1500 fans travelled to Widnes on a freezing cold March night despite inches of snow on the ground to watch a Continental Cup match. The atmosphere whenever they faced each other during that period was exactly what is required and requested. Two seasons after the derby found its feet Everton were then playing in the second division and little of the Liverpool team which leapfrogged them into being best in the city remained, causing the few meetings between the sides in the years since to not manage to spark anywhere near the same level of passion in a crowd.

If we are affording ourselves time to grow the size crowds then we must also afford the crowd time to develop an identity, practices, stories and traditions. Such things can not be manufactured or come as a byproduct of transferring fans from men's stadiums because context is what makes the occasion.

Much is said about women's football being reluctant to the culture of the game changing with the introduction of new approaches but the fans being accused of having this attitude are the same fans wishing others would join in with their singing and bemoaning when an attendance is down from the week before. They are ones doing the utmost to create an atmosphere. The are the ones most open to changes which would benefit that goal. Their perfectly reasonable hope that change come with the respected condition that lines not yet crossed remain uncrossed should not be confused with a reluctance to welcome new people. Because to confuse the two will leave the door open for new people to cross the line and justify doing so on it being unreasonable to ask that they don't.

#fawsl #fa wsl #fawsldaily original post

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gaslightgatekeepgodot · 5 years

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A (sizeable) rant/essay concerning my experiences in the Tumblr JJBA fandom.

None of you asked to hear this, but I’m getting pretty pissed off at some people in particular (I will not name names, though I may heavily implicate some people) and it’s finally started to kinda spill over. So I’m letting it spill; take it or leave it.

I’m... Fairly irate at the moment, and writing out my feelings does tend to help me calm down in situations like this, so if I was going to put this anywhere the best place for it is probably on the public internet. Again, take it or leave it: this is the internet, you don’t have to interact with me if this concerns you or your ideals. Just click that handy little block button on my profile and you never have to see little Nat mouthing off again.

If you want me to summarise (I know not everyone wants/is able to read a fluffed-up pillar of text) or explain my reasoning behind anything I’ve said below the cut, feel free to direct message me here or on Discord @nati bati yi#1462. Once I get this off my chest I’ll be more than willing to chat to people about it. <3

(Before I say anything else, this is not intended to be a callout in any way, shape or form. I don’t mention the specific names of anybody, and the actions I do mention here will only point to specific people if you know them too. Anyone on the outside should have zero idea of who anyone I bring up is; I do not want anyone to get harassed over this, and I very much do not want to start drama - that’s what inspired me to go off and write this hunk of garbage in the first place. I’m just... Sick to death of the fandom as a whole.)

Anyway. Here we go.

From what I’ve been able to tell, being in this fandom for just under a year now, there are two main halves to it: the gay-hating, stale-meme-parroting dudebro side, who seem to mostly congregate around YouTube and Reddit, and... Whatever the side based on Tumblr (and probably now Twitter) is. I don’t spend a lot of time on Reddit, so naturally I’ve been more exposed to the Tumblr side of the fandom, and after experiencing the ideals some people here want to force on other people I’ve come to the conclusion I’d almost rather be immersed in the bigoted dudebro side. And I say this as an ace-spec/gay trans man.

I’ll start with the blocklist.

I think most of us on Tumblr came to the conclusion that the blocklist was utter bullshit, but I did see a few people in a Discord server I have since left (I will expand on this later) defending the reasoning behind some ships being on there, citing the fact they had been abused in a relationship with a similar age gap. I can definitely see why that would bother a person, and I do not want to erase the fact that people have been and will be abused in similar relationships, but you can’t project your singular experience onto every fictional, non-canon character relationship and every person who ships it. For one, not every relationship is going to turn out the same just because it meets this one criteria of “the age gap is too big”, and, also, you don’t have to write fiction to totally reflect reality. You are in full creative control. Maybe if the characters were real people they wouldn’t click, but if you’re drawing a picture or writing a fanfic you don’t have to go along with that. You can write them so that they’re good to each other, while still keeping it in character. Araki has said that Jotaro and Kakyoin’s personalities don’t work together very well, and that they wouldn’t have become friends or even spoken to each other if Jotaro wasn’t a Stand user... But Jotaro/Kakyoin just happens to be the most-written about JJBA ship on AO3. Me? I love Jotakak. It’s about the only thing I do ship. And I’ve read some quite frankly amazing fanfiction where the two boys are paired and they work together, and it’s still very much in character. Of course, I’m very much against loli/shota content or content depicting characters who don’t look very old- if someone drew Koichi in a sexual situation I would be pissed as all hell, but I don’t have to engage with that content any further. I can just filter out the tag/block the OP and move on. You don’t need to make a fuss and tell/imply to people that they are paedophilic for enjoying well-written content where a 17-year-old is in a healthy relationship with a 22-year-old, platonic or otherwise.

My second point brings in some of the things I’ve learned while studying media this past year. My main point here: not everyone in an audience is the same. There is a reason differential decoding and the uses and gratifications theory exist. The uses and gratifications theory states, at its most basic, that the audience of a media text is active, not passive; i.e. they are not just absorbing every piece of data thrown at them by the text they are consuming, and they are consuming different media to satisfy a need- for JJBA, that need could be entertainment, escapism, identifying with a character similar to yourself or to give you something to talk about with your friends. Differential decoding arises when someone consuming a piece of the media does not entirely go along with the creator’s preferred reading of it- an example might be how a sizeable amount of people enjoy villainous or “disgusting” characters such as Dio, Cioccolata, Stroheim or Melone, when they were clearly written in canon to be abhorrent, unlikable people for varying reasons. I can also say that, because the audience is active, and consume media based on their personal needs, that somebody writing fanfic of a ship you don’t like isn’t going to make incest or paedophilia more socially acceptable. I don’t consume that content, because I don’t feel the need to. Sure, real paedos might, but they’re a minority. Just because a couple hundred people or so read a fanfic on the free web where a grown adult does the dirty with a little kid, doesn’t mean to say everyone in the world will suddenly start thinking it’s ok. Mention it to any sane person in real life and they will not like that idea any more than you do.

And my third point is more a personal thing than anything else, but there is a community I used to be part of (and was part of almost from the beginning) where I didn’t feel welcome because of people causing drama over things like what I mentioned above. I started multiple discourses entirely by accident by saying I didn’t understand why everyone though X ship was horribly problematic and worth getting mad at people over. I still don’t feel like anyone deserves to be harassed over characters and ships they enjoy, but that doesn’t mean to say I support all of it. Along with generally feeling ignored by a lot of the moderators of that server, as well as their friends, I was just sick to death of how they seemed to single out some certain people to say, “hey, don’t do this” when other people seemed exempt. I was verbally warned for posting innuendos in a general chat (but it’s not like I could anywhere else on the server, because I’m not 18 yet), but at least once every day I would see two people flirting in-character in whatever channel they happened to meet in, and it never seemed to be in a roleplay channel- I couldn’t see into NSFW to check if they did it there too, but the fact it would leak out into gen concerned me. They would throw innuendo after innuendo at each other, and they never seemed to stop, or be told to stop. Yes, I could have messaged the moderators to say it made me uncomfy, but one of them was a moderator themselves, so I felt a little out my element doing so.

Another thing that bothered me is when I tried to join an offshoot of that server for kin, and the admin - I assume - of said offshoot server messaged me (with some other conversation concerning it in between) that, despite the fact I only wanted in to help me figure out what it meant to me, I wasn’t allowed in because somebody was uncomfy with doubles. I completely understand that, but I had spoken to the only person it could have been (I wasn’t given a name, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out who it was) multiple times about that character and how similar we were- hell, we had even roleplayed together as doubles of that character and no problems were ever expressed to me. If anything it seemed like we left off in a spot we could have carried on from later. It might not have been intended that way, but being told I wasn’t allowed in there made me feel excluded from the community nonetheless, especially because I’d had a few people tell me the night before that they wanted more people in there and that I’d be totally welcome. I was also told, before any of this happened, that the same person blocked a friend of mine in another server for going on a small rant about how they didn’t like the way Josuke acted in the episode where he plays dice with Rohan and ends up burning his house down, because they kin Josuke..? At least, that’s what was relayed to me.

But, hey ho, it’s all behind me now. I won’t lie; I don’t really plan on ever going back. I don’t want to engage anymore, because it makes me uncomfortable and anxious thinking about it, so I most likely will unfollow most (if not all) of the blogs pertaining to that community tonight. I do have a few people still there who I miss speaking to, but I’ve DM’d all of them on Discord at least once since I’ve left and talked to them about either how I miss them or something entirely unrelated to the server. I’d like to talk more with them, but DMs are always awkward for me to begin with... I have a feeling they might not want to talk after reading this, and I think I’m ready to accept that? Might be difficult not being able to scream about fanfic as much, but I won’t impose on anyone if my presence makes them uncomfy. I don’t want to be that guy.

I’ll say it again: now that I’ve got this off my chest and subsequently calmed down a lot, I’m more than willing to talk about any of it. Just shoot me a message on Discord and I’ll reply when I’m able and feeling up to talking about it again. For now I’m probably just going to go back to pissing about on Flight Rising or play Smash or something

#melon sounds #jjba #this doesn't mean i won't be consuming or creating fanon content anymore #you can pry kakyoin content from my cold dead hands #i just don't want to engage with the fandom as a community anymore.#which is hell because i want to roleplay #but i guess i could just do one-on-one/kceb for now #ilu kceb. you're all the best #but uhhh hit me up if you want to 1x1... i only feel fully comfy playing kakyoin at the moment but i love AUs and canon divergence #if we get close enough i could try my hand at playing someone else #and yeah. i'm not angry anymore #writing this has calmed me down immensely. jj&c bois will know how ready to fight someone i was #anyway. goodbye for now.#it's viddy gaem time

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