Joey Barton and his neanderthal army are not ‘truth-tellers’; they are just little boy losers | OneFootball

Joey Barton and Eni Aluko

If you think women in football or indeed anywhere else are not routinely discriminated against, try walking a mile in her shoes.

Sexism. It’s everywhere, all the time. Endemic. Systemic. Frankly, we’re lucky they even talk to us.

Recent comments about women and football by Joey Barton were typically obnoxious blartings from this serial abuser. Even if they were designed to publicise a podcast, I think most see his words as part of a wider personality defect. Listening to him is like hearing a phone-in at 4am when the only people awake are the mentally disturbed and insomniacs in hospital.

If you’ve heard one such phone-in you’ll have heard these people (they always sound like a nasal John Major and like they’re talking from the cupboard under the stairs), loaded on conspiracy theories that only get heard when regular conversations have gone quiet. These people presumably don’t think of themselves as the crazy. They see themselves as truth-tellers.

The trouble is, expressing bigotry and stupidity attracts bigots and stupids, so their targets get a lot of grief. In this case it was Eni Aluko and Izzy Christiansen who committed some great crime against football. I bet they are less in sin than Barton; it’d be hard not to be.

But it’s also unnecessarily hurtful. Imagine bullying people like this. The lack of empathy is glaring.

Because to such people, women will never equal men. That’s why they are so triggered by women talking about male football. Imagine caring so much. In fact it’s remarkable just how marginalised Barton et al are. That’s why they are noisy. They shout because no one is listening.

Now that we have the advantage is the time to press that advantage home and ostracise such critics. It’s particularly important with Kick It Out reporting a significant rise in sexist chanting just as a female referee takes charge of a game for the first time. Some men just can’t help themselves, it seems. They want to be both the arbiters and gatekeepers.

But they’re losers, out of touch and left behind. Never have they had less to contribute, never have their words been seen as so outdated and bullying. When abuse and upset is all that’s left, you know the petrol tank of bile is running on empty.

You can critique women as well as men. What marks you as a bigot is if you think they’re crap because they’re women, and think you have stumbled over some conspiracy to unfairly favour them.

They dress criticism up as not gender orientated but they seem in perpetual indignation only about women in football. There’s other stuff happening that is much more important and, even if the subjects of his supposed withering criticism are not very good, the target of criticism should be those who employ them, not the people concerned.

It was clear to many that Barton was not built for Scottish football before the Old Firm derby and should never been offered a contract. The fault lay with the club, not with a lack of ability or being owned by Scott Brown. To blame the player’s inadequacy would have been wrong.

Who are they are trying to impress with this insulting behaviour? This is where being a truth-teller comes into play. They think they’ve perceived something we cannot, not realising that we’re all way, way ahead of them, unencumbered by the heavy weights of bigotry.

We don’t feel the need to compare women with a supposed male norm and we see the whole picture. Because that’s sensible. What isn’t sensible is working yourself into a righteous lather about a woman’s work and inventing a conspiracy theory where people are unfairly favouring women over men. Don’t fret yourself Joey. The patriarchy is alive and well, at least in your house.

So deep is their hatred of women playing or commenting on men’s sports that the Bartons can’t just shut up. That’s the sign of the mad man. It’d be like me taking to social media to declare soap operas are diluting the quality of television. I suppose I could, given they seem like a meaningless waste of time, but what would be the point? Let people enjoy them if they want. It’s nothing to do with me. But no. Barton can’t resist the clicks barfing off gets you from right-wing gobshites. What is to be achieved by all this other than a dopamine elevation of your own self-worth?

Of course our support will be wilfully misinterpreted as some sort of box-ticking exercise, woke behaviour and not genuine. But things have changed. These sulphurous voices are widely felt to be rancid but we are right to fear they are the tip of a sexist iceberg waiting to resurface.

The BBC employ a man who struggles to form sentences and sounds like he’s been hit by a bus who, were he female, would be said to be employed as part of a box-ticking policy. Eni and Izzy as pundits do not represent a departure from the mean in terms of quality. Ironically, poor male punditry is as old as the hills.

It’s pointless to argue you do or don’t like this or that pundit. It’s subjective. Easier to ignore them. It’s not a sin or an insult, it’s just football and for all the heat and fury, what someone says about it doesn’t matter that much.

The gender tropes are old. That ship has sailed. You didn’t get on board and now you’ve been left behind. You lost…get over it and move on. You are not a truth-teller. You’re taking loud, you ain’t saying nothing. Like a blunt knife, you just ain’t cutting. But to let yourself believe that would destroy your ego.

Johnny Nic Joey Barton