swampash wrote: ↑3 years ago
Anyone got any thoughts about Greg Clarke's resignation?
There's a much deeper subtext to it. The world is a changing place, and in many respects it needs to change. However, it worries me that people are losing their jobs and being vilified because of increasingly politicised and policing of language. Older, white men are an easy target in this country - often with good reason, but in some cases they're guilty of nothing more than failing to keep up with changes in language. An example being use of the term 'coloured people' rather than 'people of colour'.
Some of the reporting of what he's said is fuzzy as well. For example, his comments on Sexuality:
'“The real issue is once you run out in front of 60,000 people and you decided on Monday that you wanted to disclose your sexuality – and I would never pressure anybody to disclose their sexuality – what I would want to do is to know that anybody who runs out onto the pitch and says, ‘I’m gay. I’m proud of it and I’m happy. It’s a life choice, and I’ve made it because my life is a better place’, I’d like to believe and I do believe they would have the support of their mates in the changing room.”
It's unclear to me as to whether the 'life choice' is about homosexuality or the notion of coming out publicly as a gay footballer.
And the comments attributed to him talking about women goalkeepers having the ball kicked at them. what he actually said was:
"I talked to a coach – and I’m not certain this is true – and said, ‘what’s the issue with goalkeepers in the women’s game?’ She said, ‘young girls, when they take up the game (aged) six, seven, eight, just don’t like having the ball kicked at them hard’, right? They prefer to kick it than have it kicked at them. We have to understand we need to look at different ways to bring women into the goalkeeper’s position.”
Its a fine line. Because on one hand, when you're in a high profile or powerful position, you have to have empathy with the demands and responsibilities of your role and you have to adapt to the times. At the same time, we have to be careful about where the line is drawn in relation to people losing jobs. Personally, I think society has some massive challenges on several front, and I don't think we're going about resolving those challenges in the right. I see increasingly animated and intolerant views of different sides of several arguments and I think its creating more division, not less.