Brickbat: Working the Ref

Police in Birmingham, England, have charged two 17-year-old boys, who weren't named by the media, with a public order offense after a soccer game between Birmingham City and Sheffield. The boys are accused of directing misogynistic chants at a female referee during the game. Media reports don't make it clear what they two said.

Comments

[Stuck in California]

Did you catch that ludicrous display last night?

[Bowerick Wowbagger]

I chuckled

[Dan S.]

"Misogynistic chants". Which the media there apparently are not even allowed to reproduce. Since cries of "Kill the ump!" and such are utterly routine on this side of the Atlantic, and hearing them is accepted as part of the job, the increasingly common British practice of pressing legal charges for such "offenses" is truly sad.

Of course, our First Amendment was adopted specifically because British practice had not recognized the freedoms it protects. But over the years, they had moved closer to our position, and now it seems they have moved further away from it again.

Is there nothing at all we can do to help move "the West" or "the free world" back toward freedom?

[SRG2]

You can call the ref a wanker - a popular enough chant, and you can question their ancestry, but certain insults are verboten.

[Adans smith]

If you can't take the heat get back in the kitchen.

[Ajsloss]

Zing!

[Mickey Rat]

It is England, free speech as a concept is a dead letter. Has been for a while now.

[Chumby]

Were the two lads also charged with referring to a football match as soccer?

If the female ref was that upset with the boys, she should have channeled her inner Eric Cantona kung fu kick!

[SRG2]

FWIW I remember when Cantona did that and all the studio pundits afterwards - commentators and ex-footballers - were saying how terrible it was, appalling, etc, while trying to stop pissing themselves laughing, and it was obvious that they pretty much all thought that the Palace supporter deserved it - as indeed did pretty much every football fan. They just knew they couldn't come out and say so. For a while you could even buy a T-shirt with printed stud-marks replicating where Cantona struck.

[Chumby]

Did it include “When the seagulls…” quote?

[SRG2]

Ha! No, it didn't. Few players could beat him for attitude, and he had the skills to justify it.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Are you aware the the word soccer actually originated in the UK?

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-football-soccer#:~:text=Linguistically%20creative%20students%20at%20the,quickly%20spread%20beyond%20the%20campus.

Although football-type games have been around for centuries, the sport we know today is often said to have begun in 1863, when England’s newly formed Football Association wrote down a set of rules. At the time, it was the most widely played game of its kind in the country, but it wasn’t the only one. Rugby football, named after an English boarding school, was a variation that allowed players to carry and run with the ball to advance it toward the goal. The game played under the Football Association’s rules thus became known as association football.

Inevitably, the names would be shortened. Linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of “rugger” (rugby football) and “assoccer” (association football). The latter term was further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, “soccer” never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain. By the 20th century, rugby football was more commonly called rugby, while association football had earned the right to be known as just plain football.

[SRG2]

"Rugger" is still heard, most notably in the phrase "rugger bugger", for someone who plays it.

FWIW a word shortened and appended with an "-er" is known as an Etonian diminutive, as it apparently originated at Eton.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The boys are accused of directing misogynistic chants at a female referee during the game.

Since Rotherham we know where UK authorities' priorities lie.

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

Right, they should have just raped her and claimed they were Muslims and they'd get off scot-free. Everyone knows rape by Muslims isn’t misogynistic.

[mad.casual]

The boys are accused of directing misogynistic chants at a female referee during the game.

Ah, the quintessential British-American policing passive voice repeated, unaltered, by an equally brain dead media. Did the youths shout "We hate all vaginas, especially your vagina, and we'd injure any vagina including your vagina." at her by name or did they lead the crowd in an inspired rendition of Jay Z's '99 Problems' or Ludacris' 'Ho'? Who knows.

[Longtobefree]

"The boys are accused of directing misogynistic chants at a female referee during the game"

misogyny (usually uncountable, plural misogynies)
1. Hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women.

How can there be 'misogyny' when there is no difference between however many genders there now are?

And how can there be female referees? There are just referees.

Clearly this is all fake news.