Euro 2020/2021

[Tamas]

Fair enough, but isn't being bothered by the mis-gendering is the intolerant position? If genders are not "only" equal but the matter of free (and sometimes changing) choice, then there is no reason to be bothered by the occasional mistake.

[Sheilbh]

Totally agree with this Olusoga piece on the England team - and as someone who is in their early-to-mid thirties in reasonably central London my England looks a lot more like this team than Johnson's/the culture war's England. Separately Number 10 have apparently decided not to hold a reception for the team (presumably because it's now seen as potentially risky given the majestic site of a footballer going in studs up on the Home Secretary ) and Guto Harri who is a host on GB News and was formerly Johnson's spin doctor in City Hall said he now "gets" why the players take a knee having seen the abuse they've received, so he took a knee on his show this morning (which was a little awkward):

The England team have exposed the lie of the government's culture war
Boris Johnson and his cabinet present race and class as binary opposites but England's footballers are as committed to tackling poverty as racism.
By
David Olusoga

Bukayo Saka of England takes a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement before the England vs. Germany game.

Watching England's journey through the Euros and then witnessing the sickening torrent of racism that, within minutes of Sunday's final, was directed against the players reminds me of George Orwell's description of England as a nation in which "the young are generally thwarted". In the same wartime essay, "The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941), Orwell described England as "a family with the wrong members in control", but wrote that it somehow, despite its dysfunction, remains "a family" with "its private language and its common memories".

Orwell's belief that at times of peril there were forms of English patriotism behind which the whole nation – despite deep inequality and structural unfairness – could unite is being sorely tested. Five years after the Brexit vote there now exist mutant strains of English nationalism, so toxic to those north of the border that they could well bring about the end of the 314-year-old Union. Those same forms of Englishness have, it appears, become so corrosive that they are tearing apart England itself.

In the England and the Britain of 2021 the wrong people remain very much in charge but for a few brief weeks the young – or at least one group of young men – have not been thwarted in their efforts to put forward an alternative vision of Englishness and English patriotism.

Sport, by its nature, excludes the old and places the young centre stage. Politicians, journalists, academics and business leaders, the groups that usually keep a firm hold of the microphone in our defective national conversations, tend to be people in their late thirties to mid sixties. After the 2019 general election the average age of an MP was 51. The average age of this England football team is 25.

For the past four weeks we have heard their voices as they made engagement with their moral priorities part of the England football experience. If their voices and the issues they highlight sound unfamiliar to some it is because we are unused to hearing their generation unmediated. Yet this team is what Britain in its twenties – rather than its forties or its fifties – actually looks and sounds like.

This England team are more diverse and more opposed to intolerance than their parents' or their grandparents' generation – and in that they are the perfect representatives of their generation. They should be understood not as "woke" fanatics, as the government would like to paint them, but as a sneak preview of the coming England, the part of the nation that is now at school. That England, by some projections, will by the middle of the century be around one-third black and minority ethnic.

Yet part of the government's frustration with Gareth Southgate's team is that the players, their activism and their backstories, risk exposing the false dichotomy that underpins the right's culture war. Key to this has been a concerted campaign to present race and class as binary opposites, suggesting that addressing one means neglecting the other. To support anti-racism, so the argument goes, is to abandon the so-called "white working class".

Southgate's team are racially diverse: their families have deep links to Ireland, Nigeria, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago. The New Statesman columnist Jonathan Liew has calculated that 13 members of the 26-man squad could, in theory, have played their football for those other nations. But their backstories also explode the lie of the class vs race dichotomy.

England's players grew up in places such as Sunderland, Sheffield, Barnsley, Manchester and Bury. Averaging 25 today, they were around 11 during the 2007-08 financial crisis and came of age in the midst of the austerity imposed by David Cameron and George Osborne. Whether their parents or grandparents came from Kingston, Jamaica or Kingston upon Hull they are young, working-class men with skin in the game of poverty, from families and communities for whom political decisions have consequences. In this respect, they could not be more different from most cabinet ministers (the majority of whom were privately educated). Their working-class childhoods mean they are as committed to fighting poverty as racism, with Marcus Rashford exemplifying that instinctive dualism.

The government's refusal to denounce the minority of England fans who, in the early stages of this tournament, booed their own players was motivated by standard culture-war calculus. Focusing on the team's anti-racism, and seeking to portray taking the knee as a divisive symptom of political extremism or even (ridiculously, given this is a team of young millionaires) rampant Marxism, was intended to direct attention towards race and away from class and poverty – and the fact that this team fight against both.

Yet a government so skilled at scapegoating and demonisation (if little else) has struggled against Southgate's players. With each victory the decision to stir divisions between the team and sections of its fanbase became more politically damaging. Hence the pantomime of ministers being bundled by aides into newly purchased England jerseys, for a series of embarrassingly misjudged photo opportunities.

Most preposterous of all was Boris Johnson, bursting out of his replica England shirt, his office shirt and tie bulging underneath. He looked about as convincing a football supporter as David Cameron did in 2015 when he couldn't remember whether the team he was pretending to support was West Ham or Aston Villa.

Having regarded the tournament as a culture war opportunity and having failed to stand up for England's players, Johnson's government has no moral authority in the urgent debate about racism and Englishness that followed the team's defeat by Italy. In football, authenticity – an attribute alien to this Prime Minister – is everything. A real leader would not have looked upon the England team as a pawn to be exploited, but as a portent of the country's future from which lessons could be learned.

David Olusoga is a historian, writer and broadcaster, and a professor of public history at the University of Manchester.

Also this is a lovely reflection on the England team in the context of their predecessors - I was not aware how many Irish links their with the 66 side or that Nobby Stiles had gone to mass and confession so was in a state of grace for the Germany game. But also interesting there's the class and geographic spread of this team - linked to the Olusoga point is that these are voices that are not represented in our fiercely privately educated media (worst offender: The Guardian ) and politics, voices from South Manchester, or Brent, or a guy from Sunderland speaking out for queer fans which does rather betray the lie that all of these issues are some middle/media class London obsession:
https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-england-and-ireland-made-the-three-lions/

Meanwhile the Rashford mural has been restored but still lots of messages of support and admiration going up:

While I sympathize with you and and while the annoyance of being misgendered is real and legitimate, I find the image of someone meeting you for the first time expecting a a dainty book-keeping lady and instead meeting a big bald metalhead pretty delicious.

Yes.

[Jacob]

Fair enough, but isn't being bothered by the mis-gendering is the intolerant position? If genders are not "only" equal but the matter of free (and sometimes changing) choice, then there is no reason to be bothered by the occasional mistake.

Gender is not a "matter of free choice", but a matter of deeply felt identity. Some people are confused about their identity, for a variety of reasons, so decent people give them space to figure it out and support them while they do it. Other people are not confused, but are dealing with a society (and/ or internalized pressures) that makes it a challenge to openly live according to their identity.

In all cases, it's kind of a dick move deliberately misgender someone. In many cases it can be frustrating to continually be misidentified, especially if the situation is one that is already fraught for you. It is not intolerant to be frustrated by being continually mislabelled.

[Jacob]

Sheilbh, you are doing an excellent job representing the things worth respecting about England and the English team

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh, you are doing an excellent job representing the things worth respecting about England and the English team

Cheers

And to be clear I'm no way distancing England from the behaviour of fans at Wembley - especially it seems people without tickets (and as I say very coked up - I think we need a bit of national reflection/discussion on the role of coke in our society because it is really common now and I think it is linked to some of the issues we saw), or from the racist abuse. That is also England. It may be a minority, but that doesn't matter because in a crowd of 60,000, 1,000 is a minority but it's still a lot of people and if you're feeling the threat or abuse from them it's a lot. I dont really think it makes sense to say "they are not real England fans", unless you're Harry Kane actively rejecting them as the team captain - because they clearly are Engalnd fans.

But I think it is also super-important to acknowledge that the people on the receiving end of that behaviour and abuse are pushing back and that there is a lot of support for them - and that the team looks more like young England (1/3 of kids in primary school are either from a minority or mixed race background) than the people abusing them do. This isn't the most diverse English team (I think teams in the 90s had more black players) but I think it is the most vocal on this and, again, I think that is generational - and this is the generation that are coming. I think it's easy to focus on that one story of the abuse and racism because it fits other narratives, but that's less accurate and less true. An example is that I read a piece from the US today on this which noted that English fans booed taking the knee - which is true. But I think you also need to add that other English fans cheer it to drown out the booers - which is also true

And amid all the nonsesne accusations of the players being cultural Marxists (), I have become a little bit Marxist on this in that I think there is a sort of dialectic and struggle going on over nationhood and identity in England. This may be because England is in some ways a very young nation - it was subsumed into British identity for centuries so Britain = England (look at pictures of 66: the crowd are flying union flags); it may just be a consequence of politicians using cultural issues as dividing lines; it may be generational. But I think it's too easy to just look at one side - both are true and active right now and it maybe is less of a culture war than a culture struggle.

So this week the racists have been out in force - so have the anti-racists and the "not racists".

Edit: And incidentally I think taking the knee probably would have stopped this season in the Premier League - Wilf Zaha had already done a very eloquent explanation of why he was no longer taking the knee (he wanted to "stand up to racism" was part of it). But I think there's no way it stops now and if anything I think Premier League teams will be looking for more ways to make their stance clear.

[Maladict]

By the way, I will always remember the shock I felt when ordering a pepperoni pizza in italy.

True story.

I actually got confused the other way round, way back when the American pizza chains opened and pepperoni pizza became a thing.

[Jacob]

If you want to vote for the best goal of the tournament, you can do so here: https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/news/026b-12bee5573e30-07a21f6d1f12-1000--vote-for-goal-of-the-tournament/?iv=true

[Duque de Bragança]

More real Euro 2020/21 news. 

[Sheilbh]

[Admiral Yi]

Gender is not a "matter of free choice", but a matter of deeply felt identity.

This is a statement of ideological-religious faith, not of reason.

[Valmy]

Yeah that sentence confuses me. I thought gender was this socially constructed thing, surely for something like that you do have a choice as to how seriously you identify with it.

But I don't know, these things are weird.

[Jacob]

This is a statement of ideological-religious faith, not of reason.

Okie-dokie.

What would you say gender is if not a deeply felt identity? Is it a biological truth? Or, as Tamas suggested, a simple choice?

[Jacob]

That The National cover is glorious

[Admiral Yi]

Okie-dokie.

What would you say gender is if not a deeply felt identity? Is it a biological truth? Or, as Tamas suggested, a simple choice?

I'll try to give you an answer after I play some golf.

[Jacob]

Yeah that sentence confuses me. I thought gender was this socially constructed thing, surely for something like that you do have a choice as to how seriously you identify with it.

But I don't know, these things are weird.

I'm not setting myself out to be an expert here, just stating my understanding. That said:

"Socially constructed" != "simple choice" or "trivial".

I mean, being an American is socially constructed, being a member of a First Nations tribe is socially constructed, being a Christian is a social construct, race is a social construct. All identities are essentially socially constructed. That doesn't mean they are not deeply felt or important, rather the opposite as history and human interactions show. I mean, I assume the fact that you're American, that you're white, that you're a man, that you're Texan, that you're married, that you're not a racist, and that you're an engineer are all pretty important to you in various ways even if they're all social constructs.

The challenge facing transgender individuals is that their sense of their gender does not align with the traditional view of society at large. In the past, typically, that resulted in society imposing its sense on trans people with a variety of different outcomes as a result (and typically not pleasant ones for the trans individuals in question). There may have been degrees of choice involved in some of those identities, but for others I'd expect there's not as much choice.

I mean, next time you see a trans friend or acquaintance you could ask them how much of a choice they feel their gender is, vs something that is core to their identity (assuming you can find a decent way to ask). When I say gender is a deeply held identity as opposed to a simple choice people can make according to random whim, I'm reflecting what I've learned from trans people. I could've missed something along the way.