I’ve been rather a fan of Times columnist Matthew Syed – the current Sports Journalist of the Year – since his brave, bold support for Max Mosley back in early 2008 – see, for example, this particularly eloquent article. In a column last week, he discussed the furore about the first woman to referee a league soccer match – opponents having claimed that no female referee could be fit enough to keep up with the pace of the men playing the game:
“We would do better – as a matter of practicality – to test… by, say, getting them to run 150-metre sprints rather than checking to see whether they have a penis or not. Because if you adopt the penis test, you might end up with a fat man who is very slow rather than a little woman that is very fast…
The problem with stereotypes is that they make sensible people do and say very silly things. They allow arbitrary differences to become subconscious inevitabilities and they cause us to make snap decisions on the basis of group membership (whether of a race, gender or whatever) rather than individual merit…
Please don’t get hung up on breasts and penises per se. In a world that is just beginning to recognise the extraordinary diversity that exists within groups, between groups and beyond groups, isn’t it just a trifle passe, as well as a little silly?”
This rang such bells for me. First, since I’m a ‘member’ of a ‘group’ of people – the spanking community – that have to hide our preferences and actions from so many in the vanilla world, for fear of misunderstanding, mockery or hostility. Second, since our community is such a broad church, with so many individual preferences and play styles – and tolerating diversity is so very important.
I have no idea whether Syed is ‘one of us’ – LOL although as a former international table tennis champion, he’d doubtless be most effective cane in hand. But whatever his preferences – vanilla, kinky (it matters not and is none of our business) – I think he’s something of a hero.
Loving Matthew Syed’s work – a man who successfully combines writing about sex and kink (quite regularly) as well as sport – three of my favourite things. I so hope he is one of us… Matthew, if you’re reading, please delurk and come and play with us!
“Sacking a person who is doing a good job because you disapprove of what he does in the privacy of his own dungeon is the first step on the road to serfdom.”
Classic quote.
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Matthew Syed is a powerful writer. More important by far, he is clearly a decent, fair man, who fights back against the bullies, whether they have shaven heads or silk ties.
“Who in their right mind” (he says) “would want to defend a man whose father was a Nazi sympathiser and who gets his kicks from humiliating, and being humiliated by, leather-clad women?
This is precisely the kind of question that sluggish liberals asked themselves in the 1950s when the victims of mob injustice were not ageing sado-masochists but gays.”
It can’t be put much better. It’s easy to defend the causes which everyone else will defend. What is harder, but much more worthwhile, is to defend the real minorities, on the basis of a real notion of justice and morality.
Congratulations ( I would say hooray, but I am British, after all, and have to show some reserve) to Mr Syed, and congratulations to this blog.