Doug PollardTranscript - Rob Mitchell Tackles Stephanie Rice
Sweet innocent party girl Stephanie Rice
DOUG: Just a moment ago we played you a tearful Stephanie Rice apologising for using the word: “faggots” in a tweet. Gary Burns reckons we should let her off the hook. Ian Roberts says “no” – and there’s another who says no, he’s on the line now and that’s my good mate Rob Mitchell. ‘Morning, Rob.
ROB: Good morning, Doug. How are you?
DOUG: I’m doing well – so, it’s not enough for her to boo-hoo and get her mascara to run on camera?
ROB: Well, look – I think we take a step back and work out where we are; we’re Stage 4 in a five-stage process that people have probably seen before with elite sports athletes when they get caught out doing something wrong. Stage 1 is head in the sand, it’ll go away – Stage 2 is a one line clarification from their management, again, hoping it’ll go away. We didn’t get to Stage 3 which we did on Monday night with Jaguar, one of Stephanie Rice’s major sponsors pulling the pin on her. Stage 3 is pivotal because that’s where the sponsor or club or money provider can work out that the on-coming light is in fact a train bearing down - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROB: - - - on top of them [laughs] and so Jaguar because they’re not stupid, have pulled the pin on her. That then puts us where we were at yesterday with Stage 4 which is the athlete then generally being shattered and the tearful apologies which we obviously saw and seen the clip on You Tube and you’ve obviously played it.
DOUG: But a lot of people like Gary Burns are saying: aren’t you over-reacting here? Aren’t we being over-sensitive - - -
ROB: I would say, it’s pretty simple really – do you want the youth suicide rate to come down or not? I mean, it’s that simple. We know that the very high rates – some five or six times, rates of depression and suicidal thoughts in our young people – our young – GLBTI young people, are caused by systemic discrimination. Now, when Stephanie Rice sends out a tweet which she’s got thousands of followers which is why she’s sponsored so that’s fair enough – a lot of people take great credence in what she says.
Now, what’s interesting about it of course is what she didn’t say. The Wallabies match was against Springbok – and some of them have black skin, Doug. Now, why didn’t Stephanie Rice say: suck on that you niggers?
And we know the reason why is because the second that tweet would’ve hit peoples’ screens she would have been vaporised and the only sound that – we wouldn’t be having this conversation if she’d said that. Because in a minute all of her contracts would have been shredded because the reasonable, community expectation is that they don’t do that. It’s only relatively recently that homophobia and sport have started to get a run and be seen for what it is which is what I think we both have called in the past, the pink nigger syndrome.
DOUG: Yeah, it’s – look, some people say - - -
ROB: Look, it sounds - - -
DOUG: (and)Some if the excuses – sorry, Rob - - -
ROB: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - some of the excuses I’ve heard, I saw an excuse yesterday being put forward that: oh, come on she was alright to use this word in this context – because ‘in this context’ faggot doesn’t mean faggot. It just means girly-man or something like that and therefore it’s not homophobic.
[laughs]
ROB: Sorry to cut in on you – but you’re right, it’s the endless series of excuses and it’s just crap. That’s what it is, it’s just crap. I was really, really encouraged to see Dr. Helen Szoke come straight out of the starter’s box on Monday and say before you let the clutch go on your mouth – or the clutch go on your keyboard, stick your brain into gear. That’s what she was saying and it’s not surprising because Dr. Szoke and the Human Rights Commission have got a project on about addressing homophobia in sport and coming up with ways that we can tackle this problem.
We really do need to tackle it and I think as Rodney Croome has said before – you know, this whole idea of using sexual orientation as a method of slurring people it’s really the last one to be tackled and using sport as a conduit, they’re behind the times and that’s why I would have thought quite honestly, that what happened with Jason Akermanis would have given everybody a bit of a heads-up about how much community attitudes have changed - - -
DOUG: Yeah.
ROB: - - - you know? We believe there’s more work to be done and so we do it.
DOUG: Yeah, well let’s just pull back very slightly for a moment and analyse what is wrong with what she did – I mean, she was not literally calling the South Africans a team full of homosexuals. What she was saying was: you played at less than your best. She was trying to diminish them as being less than wholly manly and therefore unfit to win. By labelling them faggots. That’s the wrong message that’s going out.
ROB: Yes, absolutely and it’s just more of this same thing about – you know, we’re stepping back a bit – how do we look at masculinity. How do we construct masculinity, what’s the community expectation around that and I can imagine some people listening to this and rolling their eyes a bit. But that’s actually what’s going on – I mean, at the schoolyard level where all this gets played out and we know this through the research into bullying and so on is that by perpetuating those out-dated, prehistoric attitudes we’re never going to get where we need to get. Which is to reduce the bullying and the discrimination and that in turn will have a dramatically beneficial effect on decreasing the rates of suicidal thought and depression – I mean, it’s not rocket science.
DOUG: Well, let’s ask the listeners on that one, what do you think – do you think we’re over-reacting on this one or do you think there’s something to deal with? Send us an SMS: 0427 JOY 949 and email: onair@joy.org.au – or leave a message with the switchboard: 1300 JOY 949. We have one listener who’s done that, he says: “What’s she sorry about, is she sorry she lost her sponsorship” [laughs] someone there doesn’t really believe in that apology, I think. Rob, what do you want to happen next?
ROB: What I’ve done is I’ve set-up a website: www.davenportsucks.com and I would like people to have a quick look at that and it’s just a micro site, they can have a quick look at why what she’s done is no good. In terms of what we want done, we want some concrete action from Stephanie Rice, her managers International Quarterback and also Davenport for example, they could partner with Headspace. There’s plenty of opportunity there to look at how they can partner with Headspace to conquer homophobia in sport.
They could do a lot worse than get on the blower to let’s say, Prof. Anne Mitchell of Gay and Lesbian Health. There’s plenty of opportunity there for corporate people to combat homophobia in sport and also, I tried a dozen times if not a hundred times to get for example, Matthew Mitcham’s manger David Flaskas of Grand Slam International on board for International Day Against Homophobia. Yet could not do it for love nor money and I think that swimming have got a bit of a problem so, let’s keep on the case of the Australian Sports Commission and also Swimming Australia – and if we keep doing that, we know we’ll get results.
DOUG: Okay. Got a couple of listener reactions here, Graham from Bundoora called and he said: “Can the gay community and you in particular, give the Stephanie Rice thing a rest? Let’s concentrate on the main game and go after the church and the other institutions that display true homophobia, Stephanie has displayed true contrition and really, this needs to be put to bed” however Jim disagrees, he says: “Behaviour not challenged is behaviour condoned” so - - -
ROB: I think that’s spot on and we know from the research and interesting, Sir Ian McKellen when he set-up the English charity: Stonewall – he says it’s about three things: schools, schools and schools – and it is. This behaviour that we see and people doing it in schools and sporting clubs, the sooner we get on top of it the sooner we call it for what it is. Which is child abuse. The sooner we’ll get a reduction in youth suicides.
DOUG: Okee-do-kee(sic) – well, thanks for that Rob. Keep up the good work and everybody check out: davenportsucks.com
ROB: Thank you.
DOUG: That was Rob Mitchell there, from the Rob Mitchell Trust he’s also an advisor on sporting issues to the Victorian government.
Style of Eye
What do you expect in this climate of para-socialising ...?
She behaved like a 22 year old who'd had a few drinks with mates on a Saturday night watching the footie and had her iphone in front of her.
And now she's behaving like a 22 year old who's made a careless remark, 'cept everyone knows about it.
Hard lesson for her.
Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter
Style of Eye
This is why Twitter and FB, etc, as fun and progressive as they might be considered are really part of the further narcissistic dehumanising collapse of modern civilisation.