Andy Gray - red card for sexism?

EX EVERTON player Andy Gray and Richard Keys made jokes about Sian Massey, a woman linesman (aka assistant referee) not being able to understand the offside rule on Sky Sports over the weekend.

They did it in the tired formulaic way men speak about ‘women drivers’.

And women talk about ‘man flu’.

Some people want Keys and Gray hanged for sexism. Or rather fired (see update at the end of this). And then hanged.

Society’s official whingers have decided to jump on the bandwagon of comment and hijack it. Mostly these represent spokespeople of publicly funded groups and organisations, who are appalled about a couple of silly old buggers having a bit of banter. They are annoyed because they get paid to be annoyed.

But come on.

Gray and Keys are old school at best. In fact the whole of football is old school. But better that we allow them the odd daft moment rather than we monitor private conversations and broadcast them, as happened here - something akin to the phone tapping scandal submerging the News of the World.

Massey answered the old buffers in the best way possible by performing her duties perfectly. Maybe she should be given a match to referee rather than run the line. That would show Gray and Keys and then subject her to one of last legally allowable areas of discrimination: that of fans and pundits against referees.

You have to also wonder how perfect the Gray and Keys complainers are?

Do the men who have publically worried about Gray and Keys always have pure thoughts? Do they never see a pretty woman and judge her first by her body, do they never do the ‘women driver’ reaction when a woman pulls out in front of them?

And do the women who’ve complained, never speak out of turn, never generalise about men being oafs and idiots, never repeat in their head generalised clichés about ‘multi-tasking’?

Have these pure of thought people never said anything to friends which if it had been sneakily recorded and broadcast they would have regretted?

We have a public life and private one. Legislation is there to protect relations between individuals in the public sphere, if it is used to regulate private thought then we’re in trouble. Or used to monitor every type of private utterance then we are going down an authoritarian and an oppressive route. Now that would be offside.

What Gray and Keys said was wrong but they are the dinosaurs and Massey is the future. At a recent game in which she was officiating she was subject to fan chants of 'Put the kettle on'. That behaviour is boorish, pub banter of the type Gray and Keys came up with. Dull, but not vicious, almost done as male default stupidity. We can't prosecute all those suspected of suspect pub chatter or dubious thoughts. There'd be no end to it.

Update: Andy Gray was sacked tonight (Tues) after it emerged more questionable remarks had been made relating to females, specifically one to do with a microphone pack and some trousers.

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