Women hold up half the sky, said Mao Tse-tung many decades ago. It’s one of my favourite and more memorably slogans from my utopian and somewhat infantile student days, but the slogan still has resonance, and is a poignant reminder of just how patriarchal and misogynistic our world still is. Recently, a host of disparate events, some with a sporting backdrop, have come to the fore, and taken together, they paint a very grim picture of the current status of women on planet Earth. Metaphorically, and numerically of course, women do hold up half the sky, but in real earthly terms women are still labouring to free themselves from the fetters of feudal bondage. That may seem extreme but consider the following.

A woman in Iran has been sentenced to execution by stoning for the alleged offence of adultery. After a global outcry the sentence was commuted but she is still on death row. She now faces an additional punishment of 99 lashes for the alleged crime of spreading corruption and indecency. Her new crime? Allowing an unveiled picture of herself in a British newspaper. The newspaper in question has proved that the picture was of a completely different woman, but to no avail.

At some expense to the taxpayer, Britain is about to host a papal visit. This man, who calls himself a pope and is spiritual leader of some one billion people, does not have much going for him in terms of an enlightened modernity. He resolutely opposes the ordination of female bishops thereby confirming the second class status of women in the Catholic world. Furthermore, his church has the audacity to rank the ordination of women as a crime equal to that of child abuse, while at the same time failing to take a lead in the punishment of child abusing priests around the globe. He resolutely opposes the use of birth control thus reaffirming that man, and not the women themselves, should have control over women’s bodies. He holds similarly patriarchal views on the question of abortion. He will not countenance the use of condoms thus condemning millions of women and their offspring in the developing world to the increased likelihood of contracting Aids. He resolutely refuses to recognise homosexuality, of which a small but significant minority of the world’s women feel is the most natural way to express their sexuality, as a legitimate and natural part of the diverse human tapestry, preferring instead to demonise homosexuals as committing crimes against god’s order.

Meanwhile, Wayne Rooney, arguably England’s most talented footballer, like a host of illustrious sportsmen before him, has been caught frequenting prostitutes. Can Mr Rooney confirm that none of the said prostitutes have been forcibly trafficked into this country? Can he confirm that the thought has even passed through his brain? Ditto for Mr J Terry, Mr A Cole, and Mr A N other. Has Mr T Woods got anything to bring to the conversation? I think not. Anyway, Rooney scored a goal for England yesterday, so everythings now ok. Beatrix Campbell, writing in The Guardian 6/9/10 puts the matter succinctly;

The News of the World devoted its first five pages yesterday to yet another sleazy story about a footballer’s private life. But for all the sound and fury, footballers misogyny is apparently sanctioned. When footballers sexually exploit women, go to lap dancing clubs, buy sex or harvest local girls to line them up for shagging parties, it still doesn’t count, somehow, as sexism. It attracts only a fatalistic sigh.

Campbell then makes the telling comparison with racism. The campaign against racism once routine, embedded and sanctioned in football has been a triumph. (Not everywhere unfortunately) What was once regarded as ungovernable and inevitable in popular culture has been transformed football’s governing bodies have been forced to confront it.. Why then does sexism an equivalently embedded culture of contempt attract so little interest, so little comprehension?

England’s women’s rugby team reached the Rugby World Cup Finals for the third time, narrowly losing to New Zealand again, this time by the narrowest of margins. Having experienced first hand just how difficult it is to get to the top of the tree nationally in sport, I can only marvel at the international achievement of the national women’s rugby team. Will the British Rugby authorities along with the British media be organising a public celebratory reception for the women in recognition of their tremendous sporting achievement? It seems not. A relatively insignificant matter on the world scale of things I admit, but nevertheless, symptomatic of the bias the media and society generally show against women’s achievement in all areas of endeavour; intellectual, creative, sporting. It’s still very much a man’s world out there in 21st century Britain.

Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian 8/9/10 claims that some 352 billion of organised crime money found its way into the global banking system in 2009 laundering this tainted booty in the process, and thus playing a significant role in preventing a total global banking collapse. Some of this gigantic sum would have undoubtedly come from the global trafficking of women into prostitution and domestic slavery though it is impossible to determine what proportion that might be. Freedland has this to say on the matter;

Balzac had it right: Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime. And behind today’s dazzling fortunes lie some very dirty crimes indeed; if it’s not selling guns or hooking the vulnerable on drugs, its trafficking young women as sex slaves and would-be economic migrants into servitude. When the profits of evil deeds like these are laundered, the world is saying that crime even the gravest crime does indeed pay.
In a harrowing three part piece of powerful investigative journalism, Robert Fisk throws a spotlight on the barbaric feudal practise of honour killings. I am absolutely clear in my mind that there is no moral relativism at work here. This is barbarism pure and simple. That this is a world-wide practise culling tens of thousands of young women every year is horror enough, but that a blind eye is turned to this practise in Western Europe beggar’s belief. For fear of upsetting Muslim sensitivities, this gruesome practise of murder, under the wholly spurious clock of family honour, is tolerated in the West, and seems to know no bounds. The catalogue of cases presented by Fisk makes for stomach churning reading, and even in a world largely desensitised to institutional violence, these examples of premeditated butchery against women is hard to digest. Fisk introduces his grizzly account as follows;

It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders of the women beheaded, burned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the honour of their families are as barbaric as they are shameful. Most of the victims are young, many are teenagers, slaughtered under a vile tradition that goes back hundreds of years but which now spans half the globe.

Having provided his readers with the international dimensions of this never-ending horror show, he correctly turns our attention to matters closer to home.

And of course, we should perhaps end this catalogue of crime in Britain, where only in the past few years have we ourselves woken to the reality of honour crimes; of Surjit Athwal, a Punjabi Sikh woman murdered on the orders of her London based mother-in-law for trying to escape a violent marriage; of 15 year old Tulay Goran, a Turkish Kurd from north London, tortured and murdered by her Shia Muslim father because she wished to marry a Sunni Muslim man; of Heshu Yones, 16, stabbed to death by her father in 2005 for going out with a Christian boy; of Caneze Riaz, burned alive by her husband in Accrington, along with their four children because of their Western ways.

All this in Great Britain at the start of our brave new millennium. Fisk adds,

Scotland Yard long ago admitted it would have to review over a hundred deaths, some going back more than a decade, which now appear to have been honour killings.

But least we consider our Muslim brothers have a monopoly on misogynistic sadism, we might do well to remember that in our civilised Christian/ secular world of Britain, two women are brutally murdered by their husbands, partners or ex-partners every week. That’s over one hundred murders every year while many thousands more are beaten senseless on a routine basis. We euphemistically call this domestic violence and the police authorities shrug their shoulders as if it’s a private matter to be resolved within the confines of the domestic setting.

Add to that grim statistic the staggering fact that tens of thousands of British women are raped each year with only the equally staggering figure of a 6.5% conviction rate, and you start to realise that something horrifying is happening, East and West. It seems that men are at war with women the whole world over, either in direct assault or complicit by their silence. The Taliban may be the extreme face of misogyny, reducing women to the status of a village beast of burden, but they are not alone. From the English football terraces to the privacy of the domestic suburban English home, spurred on by a voyeuristic tabloid mentality, it seems that English men are also waging a misogynistic war against English women.
So there we have it. Permeating all religions, all nations, rich and poor, modern and traditional, all classes and creeds, women are still, as John Lennon so poignantly put it, treated like,the niggers of the world. Subject to demeaning objectification in the West and continuing feudal servitude, slavery and female infanticide in the East, with an increasing blurring and intermingling of the two, it seems the struggle for women’s liberation has barely begun. Mao Tse-tung is no longer around to comment, but Sporting Polemics would welcome a response from Wayne Rooney or John Terry when they have a free moment.

Dispiriting as all this may be, none of it should come as much of a surprise. On the contrary, we can expect nothing less. If the basis of our economic system is one of commodity production for individual profit, then given time, our culture will reflect just that; everything and every one becoming little more than a commodity. Sport has become a commodity, Music and film entertainment has become a commodity. And tapping into our most fundamental of human urges, capitalism is in the process of turning even our natural sexual drive into a commodity, to be bought or enslaved and then sold on the world market. The internet has, of course, made the market place that much more accessible. The internet has facilitated pornography entering the privacy and security of your bedroom. Order a pizza, order some porn, book yourself a prostitute, all in the comfort of your home. Aided and abetted by the pop music industry, soft pornography is becoming mainstream.

In a feature article on Women for Sale in the Guardian 11/9/10, journalist Amelia Gentleman pulls together some telling statistics and anecdotes that collectively paint a picture of the sex industry as anything but glamorous; bedevilled as it is with pimping, drug addiction, violence and mental health repercussions. But the quote that I found the most telling was from a marketing executive who had recently used prostitutes while abroad. Of his experience he says

It wasn’t sexy. It was just so transactional. Everything that that kind of intimacy shouldn’t be. And obviously you know what it is; it’s just business, business, business.. It was almost like a vending machine.

The bleakness of the commodification of women, of footballers and of sex was nowhere better illustrated than in a feature by Mark Townsend in The Observer 12/9/10 in which he describes the weekend pantomime of young women, some barely more than girls, trying to ensnare themselves a footballer for the night. One of these young women explained in to Townsend;

You’ve got a whole generation of schoolgirls whose ambition is getting off with a footballer. That’s it their only aspiration. They have a job only to save up enough money to come here.
It’s little more than a cattle market with the only difference being the women are now willing participants. Is that a step forward for women’s liberation or a gigantic step back? To get a true feel of the level of commodification that is at work here just consider this latest internet website. Townsend elaborates,

Several days before the allegations of Rooney’s adultery became public a small internet business began trading, largely unnoticed. Yet the launch of becomeawag.com in August offers proof that targeting footballers is a career option for a growing number of young women. The personal website invites women to send in personal details, including pictures, which are then forwarded to footballers who say yes or no to a date.

The cattle market goes online! It could easily be regarded as little more than prostitution, with the financial reward being a big cash payout if the women promise not to disclose any salacious details to the tabloids.

In a review of Kat Banyard’s new feminist text, The Equality Illusion Kira Cochrane, writing in the G2 Guardian 10/9/10 cites the figure of 63 billion for the estimated value of the global porn industry. Given that the industry by definition is murky and undeclared, that figure is probably grossly conservative. This figure, according to Banyard is, more than the combined revenue of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Apple, Netflix and Earthlink. Opinions, sociological theories and personal moralities are one thing, but faced with this staggering statistic, we can only conclude that our fundamental human sexuality is being turned into a cheap and disposable commodity to match what has already happened to our human labour power and our human culture. Seen in this light, Wayne Rooney and Co are as much victims as culprits in the reification of all things human.