(Veteran football commentator Hugh Langsby was unceremoniously sacked after being found guilty of gender-based linguistic violence.)
IN A RECENT match between English club sides Pumpkincustardford and Finchbottomshire, veteran BBC football comentator Hugh Langsby came under fire for using the term ‘handbags’ to refer to a minor altercation between opposing players Jesus Angel and Angel Jesus. ‘A bit of handbags here between the Brazilian internationals,’ said Langsby, availing himself of the well-worn figure of speech after the two collided in midfield and pushed each other lightly before being separated by their teammates.
Soon after the match, which concluded in a 0 – 0 draw, a scathing letter was posted to the BBC’s website by leading Oxford academic Professor Beverley Huntington-Gurnsley, head of the university’s Department of Psycholinguistics. ‘It is beyond shocking, offensive and insulting that in our so-called enlightened society of the 21st century such crude, barbaric gender stereotypes are allowed free rein by the national broadcaster. It’s an utter disgrace,’ read the introduction.
Her sentiments were echoed loudly on social media, where football was roundly condemned for being ‘the last bastion of toxic masculinity’; ‘continuing to place the patriarchy upon a pedestal’ and ‘re-inforcing oppressive gender stereotypes of the most base kind’.
In her missive, Huntington-Gurnsley took aim at the broader social tendency to equate femininity with weakness and helplessness. ‘Here we have two grown men being paid millions – and watched by hundreds of millions more – to engage in what Orwell referred to as “war minus the shooting” yet, when their physical encounters are deemed insufficiently aggressive to constitute ur-masculinity, the all-male commentators immediately reach for terms deemed derogatory due to their association with the female gender to denote the inherent inanity of such a conflict. Such micro-aggressions only seek to surreptitiously and subliminally re-inforce the myth of female feebleness in the masculo-normative paradigm under whose yoke we clearly still labour.’
Defenders of Mr Langsby pointed to his progressive credentials by referring to his post-graduate thesis in sports psychology in which he made the Freudian case that top footballers themselves were possessed of a singular loathing of socially-defined gender stereotypes. ‘By kicking the football they are essentially kicking their own balls in acts of repressed auto-misandrist rage,’ wrote Langsby. ‘Their ultimate goal of striking the ball into the back of the net is a symbolic effort to escape the prison of gender construct and return to a womb-like state of deontoligical innocence,’ he concluded.
Nevertheless, Langsby was retrenched at part of the BBC’s sweeping personnel changes ‘to bring the national broadcaster firmly in line with prevailing social values, norms and mores.’
Following an extended court battle, Mr Langsby was reinstated but immediately dismissed again after calling the defence of a local footbal team ‘impregnable’.
