[Albion] Homophobic Chanting

[Neville's Breakfast]

They did ... but I for one didn't as I found it utterly embarrassing ... along with the macho wanker sign ... and come on then bollocks etc!

Yep, same here. I just find the double standards on here incredible. Leeds fans are judged basis the behaviour of their dickheads but Brighton fans aren’t. There were so many idiots in our end making wanker signs and singing offensive songs but that’s not the story apparently.

 

[1066familyman]

FWIW I loathe that chant.

Context.
I gave up our season tickets and don't go to home games anymore. Watching the game against at West Ham, from home, I thought that was a brilliant chant and would have joined in, had I been at the game.

I was at Leeds yesterday. I certainly didn't join in at that point as felt it could come back to bite us. Had we been 3 - 0 up at the time, and playing exhibition football, I would have been all over it like a rash

 

[lawros left foot]

My Indian friend was offended by being called a paki as he was Indian. True story.

I have 2 foster sisters and 1 foster brother who are of Indian heritage.
They came to live with our family in the early Sixties, residing in a small Sussex village. The racism against them was extreme, to the point of one teacher calling my younger sister “a Paki bitch” My brother asked my Mum what ‘****’ meant as the boys on the bus called him a black ****.
Shopping in Brighton with myself and my younger foster sister my mother was spat at , and called a f***ing Paki loving bitch.
I was caned at school for punching a kid that called my sister a paki bitch, he wasn’t even told off.
The effect it had on my foster siblings was horrible, my 2 sisters often coming home from school/ playing out crying.

I now consider homophobia to be as bad as racism, and the FA/ PL should act against it with the same energy that they have put into the anti racism campaign.
I don’t know if the investigation is continuing about Chelsea supporters being called’Rent Boys’ , it does seem that if you support a ‘Big Club’ your sensibilities are treated more seriously by the authorities, than if you support a smaller club who traditionally get this sort of abuse on a regular basis.

 

[Triggaaar]

What I cannot live with is the sanctimonious opinions of those who follow what they perceive as the moral high ground.

You're perceiving it as that, but how else are people supposed to stand up for minorities? Either we want a world where racism, homophobia, and disablism are all fair game or we don't, and if it's the latter then ordinary people need to stand up for the minorities.

And to be honest, if you take every offensive possibility out of football chants, then you may as well turn the franchises over to Disneyland and sit at home in your little microcosm in front of your TV.

You're being obtuse. The vast majority of piss-taking football chants do not need to rely on racism, homophobia or disablism. Banning hate speech does not suddenly prevent piss-taking.

 

[1066familyman]

Quite disappointed there's not been a statement from either club yet

Would that make things better?

Personally I'm sick of tokenism and 'customer facing' announcements from businesses and organisations. It's why I agree with Mr. Tumble not taking the knee for example. It's a tick box exercise, as is a lot of the outrage being expressed on this thread.

What I wanted to see was our FA standing up in Qatar for example and saying to FIFA, actually our captain won't be taking off the rainbow armband for our games. If you don't like it, deal with it!, kick us out of the tournament and fly in another team sharpish to fulfill our fixtures. Then watch other enlightened FA's say, 'Me too!', let's see how your tournament progresses with potentially half a dozen major football nations downing tools whilst on the job.

That's why, on a different note, I'm delighted at what Lineker's done, and the solidarity response from his work mates.

I'm not going to be overly outraged by the chants I heard yesterday, on a personal level. I feel it's a distraction from a bigger debate to be had. But I'm also speaking as a straight male, so it's only my perspective. At the same time, I also accept the impact those chants have, and have had, on people who have been genuinely affected by this atmosphere over the years, like the few posters on here who have shared their lived experiences. I feel for them and sorry they've had to suffer that in their lives.

To highlight my point about tokenism, why so little conversation about there only being one English pro footballer (to my knowledge) brave enough to come out since Justin Fashanu? This is 2023 FFS!, Something has to be pretty rotten at the core of football culture and the authorities running the game for that to be the case, IMHO. No amount of flag waving, tick boxing or publicly condemning homophobic chanting is really working, is it.

 

[loz]

I don’t know if this has been mentioned but on GB news the alternative match of the day…I saw a tweet, they describe Brighton as rainbow flag waving ,tofu eating wookaraty.

The kin state of that show…I don’t know how to copy it but it’s pretty homophonic IMHO.

 

[birthofanorange]

I don’t know if this has been mentioned but on GB news the alternative match of the day…I saw a tweet, they describe Brighton as rainbow flag waving ,tofu eating wookaraty.

The kin state of that show…I don’t know how to copy it but it’s pretty homophonic IMHO.

Only the lonely watch trash like that - I pity them.

 

[Deleted member 37369]

I don’t know if this has been mentioned but on GB news the alternative match of the day…I saw a tweet, they describe Brighton as rainbow flag waving ,tofu eating wookaraty.

The kin state of that show…I don’t know how to copy it but it’s pretty homophonic IMHO.

It's the video in the second tweet in #239 on this thread

And yes, homophobic and generally horrible in other ways!

 

[Lenny Rider]

Unfortunately there are sections of society that it will take generations to eradicate.

On a related theme, through the passage of time I‘ve effectively inherited a third child, who now lives with me and Mrs H, a long time friend and former BA colleague of my daughter, XXXX, who is openly gay.

He’s a CSM, Cabin Service Manager, on BA and on Thursday had a flight to Vegas, on board which included a group of 30 or so Geordies on a Stag Weekend.

Fairly early on in the flight one of the party made the comment to a member of the cabin crew that, quote, he didn’t want to be served by queers, to which XXXX informed them that they wouldn’t be getting much drink then, and promptly closed the bar service to the said party an hour or so later.

But then whilst it is technically a hate crime XXXX leaves it at that, clearly wrongly it’s par for the course, but not worth all the additional paperwork and rigmarole that comes with it.

Ironically the stag party ended up drinking in the usual crew bar in Vegas and XXXX and his colleagues ended up with more conflict, culminating with one of the party stating he would make an official complaint to BA to which XXXX replied make sure to remember my surname ( XXXXXXXX) ends with two ll,s.

Being a knuckle dragger doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at the bottom of the food chain financially, as anyone whose done it a weekend in Vegas doesn’t come cheap.

But my original point, like the racism in parts of Eastern Europe, it’s a generational thing, and it will therefore take perhaps 25/50 years for attitudes to change for the better.

 

[Eeyore]

I have 2 foster sisters and 1 foster brother who are of Indian heritage.
They came to live with our family in the early Sixties, residing in a small Sussex village. The racism against them was extreme, to the point of one teacher calling my younger sister “a Paki bitch” My brother asked my Mum what ‘****’ meant as the boys on the bus called him a black ****.
Shopping in Brighton with myself and my younger foster sister my mother was spat at , and called a f***ing Paki loving bitch.
I was caned at school for punching a kid that called my sister a paki bitch, he wasn’t even told off.
The effect it had on my foster siblings was horrible, my 2 sisters often coming home from school/ playing out crying.

I now consider homophobia to be as bad as racism, and the FA/ PL should act against it with the same energy that they have put into the anti racism campaign.
I don’t know if the investigation is continuing about Chelsea supporters being called’Rent Boys’ , it does seem that if you support a ‘Big Club’ your sensibilities are treated more seriously by the authorities, than if you support a smaller club who traditionally get this sort of abuse on a regular basis.

The point here is that folk cannot see it from other's perspectives. My take is far simpler.

If people cannot attend a football match without hurling discriminatory abuse then they may wish to take up another hobby. The vast majority of folk can, so it is a relatively small group. When I was young I was one of those, but now I realise what a twat I was.

People's view of football being sanitised is really them saying 'I cannot cope with not being allowed to be nasty about people'. I can cope with with going to a match and shouting for my team for 90 minutes, like others. And this is something I can't see from the other perspective.

I run a couple of Facebook pages that would rival the resident DULLARD here. It's always the same group of people who engage in nastiness and flounce. Yet, unsurprisingly, once those folk are gone more start to engage than before.

I stopped using NSC for a while when I felt it was too much of a binfest. But since the rules of engagement have been tightened I'm on here all the time. For every one dinosaur there are multiple who move into the forest once they are gone.

 

[Cotton Socks]

....

 

[Bryanw42]

Actually, being a gay Brighton fan, it affected me for years. Throughout the mid/late 90s, early 00s I repressed it a lot, hid it from everyone and always had that sinking feeling in my stomach whenever the chanting started, both from the opposition and our replies. It would feel like there were thousands of eyes focused solely on me and that they somehow knew. When I finally came out at 29 all my footy mates stopped with the chanting, made them feel really uncomfortable, as all of a sudden it had real world consequences to one of their mates.

Am I naive enough to think it'll stop anytime soon? Nah, but if the FA took a genuine stance on it just once it would wipe it out in a second. They just pay lip service to homophobia in football, if that had been racist chanting it would've caused uproar, yet the whole toxic masculinity bullshit of suck it up, it's not offensive it's just banter, means homophobia in football and society will be rampant for years to come.

It just saddens me that young kids, teenagers, young adults and even those of an older generation in that crowd today will still be feeling the way I did back in the 90s.

This is spot on and in fairness I don't think most that view it as banter have this perspective (including me until I read it). I've got 4 boys, three of them go with me to football regularly, they all will I'm sure when the 4th is old enough. One of them asked me what was meant when some Chelsea scumbags shouted something homophobic near us once and I did my best to explain, it was difficult - but that aside, if one or more of my boys is gay, I'd hate to think they felt the desolate feeling described in the post above. Society will gradually change and this will eventually be a thing of the past we'd hope but let's accelerate the change by reporting homophobic incidents and at least having it stamped out at football.

 

[Beanstalk]

Not really, all those things are genuinely horrendous as well, but just because they exist doesn't mean homophobic chanting should take a back seat. I don't expect people to get it, I don't expect people to agree with me, but I do sigh when I read people on here saying it doesn't affect people, it's just banter, my gay friends find it funny (I really doubt they do). I just wanted to give a perspective from someone who went through it and who is gay, that's all

This is spot on really. Two things can exist and be worth challenging at the same time. Homophobia (and any other sort of discriminatory behaviour) is not acceptable and needs to be challenged whenever it comes up.

Thanks for sharing and responding to that unfortunate, immediate, response with such politeness and grace. I wouldn't have been as calm in your shoes if someone had told me it was just a bit of "obscene language".

 

[Grizz]

This is spot on really. Two things can exist and be worth challenging at the same time. Homophobia (and any other sort of discriminatory behaviour) is not acceptable and needs to be challenged whenever it comes up.

Thanks for sharing and responding to that unfortunate, immediate, response with such politeness and grace. I wouldn't have been as calm in your shoes if someone had told me it was just a bit of "obscene language".

I'm 46 now, me getting angry at this shit is only reserved for special occasions

The problem with most of the 'whatabouttery' or 'surely this is worse' comparisons is that they mainly stem from ignorance, so me getting all outraged and angry isn't going to change that person's opinion. If I speak of my experiences then they can't really refute that and will either reflect on it or dismiss it and carry on being ignorant, either way I've found taking that route means the inflammatory nature of the discussion is lessened, and possibly reasoned debate can be continued. That can also work both ways. I've been pleasantly surprised by the support in reading posts on this thread and people like @Bryanw42 and his kids give me hope. The generation his kids belong to are so gender fluid and generally don't give a crap about sexuality or assigning specific gender these days and that can only be a good thing. They'll be labelled as being 'woke', but I hope they wear that tag with pride, as it can only be a good thing for society going forward.

 

[Jackthelad]

I'm 46 now, me getting angry at this shit is only reserved for special occasions

The problem with most of the 'whatabouttery' or 'surely this is worse' comparisons is that they mainly stem from ignorance, so me getting all outraged and angry isn't going to change that person's opinion. If I speak of my experiences then they can't really refute that and will either reflect on it or dismiss it and carry on being ignorant, either way I've found taking that route means the inflammatory nature of the discussion is lessened, and possibly reasoned debate can be continued. That can also work both ways. I've been pleasantly surprised by the support in reading posts on this thread and people like @Bryanw42 and his kids give me hope. The generation his kids belong to are so gender fluid and generally don't give a crap about sexuality or assigning specific gender these days and that can only be a good thing. They'll be labelled as being 'woke', but I hope they wear that tag with pride, as it can only be a good thing for society going forward.

It really is not as common as you make out, and there are plenty of young girls who don't support the gender-fluid ideology. There are a lot of young feminists and lesbians who view the ideology as a threat to women.

 

[Grizz]

It really is not as common as you make out, and there are plenty of young girls who don't support the gender-fluid ideology. There are a lot of young feminists and lesbians who view the ideology as a threat to women.

Can only speak from my experience and yes I'm sure they'll be plenty who think the opposite way, but it's totally different to when I was growing up and I'm happy about it.

 

[BadFish]

Can only speak from my experience and yes I'm sure they'll be plenty who think the opposite way, but it's totally different to when I was growing up and I'm happy about it.

I agree here. Youth of today are far more accepting of each other than previous generations. The discussions on how to work some of this stuff out are being had but some kind of equilibrium will be found.

 

[Deleted member 37369]

Tweet from Leeds official LGBT+ fans account. Worth reading the comments. Some calling it out … some mentioning the ‘bantz’ word … and some quite rightly calling out some of our pretty disgusting chants.

 

[Bozza]

Marching Out Together explain stance on Brighton chants as club addresses issue

A Leeds United supporters group has condemned 'blatantly homophobic' chanting heard at Elland Road during the game against Brighton.

www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk

 

[RM-Taylor]

and some quite rightly calling out some of our pretty disgusting chants.

And what were those? One chant about Jimmy Savile in response to some nonsense by them? Apart from that there was absolutely nothing disgusting about what our away fans sang on Saturday