Miranda Devine's Rugby Screed

What's everyone looking at? It's not like you haven't seen me disgrace myself before!

Much to my misfortune, every now and then I'll click on an item in a 'top 5' or 'top 10' most read articles list on the SMH website and be directed to a Miranda Devine screed. I've said before that I have a policy of not clicking through to her articles because I do not wish to contribute to her ongoing employment (as Gam said "Fairfax has been firing journalists, but they keep Miranda Devine?!"). In truth, I should have realised from the incredibly stupid headline for the article that Devine (or one of her equally stupid Opinion contributers, Paul Sheehan or Gerard Henderson) would be responsible for the article. "Natural men scolded into timidity", FFS. What was I thinking?

In the article, Devine claims that the recent spate of coverage of the behaviour of some Rugby League players amounts to an attack on men in general. A claim so mind-bogglingly baseless and stupid it's barely worth raising the obvious fact that, perhaps with the exception of some tiny, extremist-feminist enclave of a website somewhere (to which I would give the same credence as a Miranda Devine article, and be even less likely to read), absolutely no-one, not a single commentator in the media or elsewhere, has turned this incident into a criticism of the behaviour of all men. Except Miranda Devine, oddly enough, who invented the idea that someone everyone had.

The 'War Against Masculinity', Devine calls it, is currently underway. A war in which men are forced into acting like women (by a powerful army of women who refuse to act like women, apparently). The last remaining bastions of true masculinity are sports in which guys like to biff each other. Mind you, apart from pissing against the walls of hotels (hotels that contain bathrooms), Willie Mason-style and biffing each other, Devine provides scant detail of what actually constitutes 'traditional maleness'.

Although it is, apparently, not necessary to have a hairy chest. Which is just as well, since Miranda's writing implies a preference for the smooth, hairless kind.

Perennial dickhead Willie Mason's latest escapade- peeing in the street outside a hotel- is defended for its 'discreet' nature, and the fact that he is held up as an example of one of the many things wrong with the behaviour of NRL players is just a disgrace. A disgrace! Devine castigates Mason's 'mistreatment', under which he was handed an unimaginably harsh sentence by his club... a $2000 fine. Pissing against hotel walls, while (unjustifiably!) against the law, is merely a way by which a real man expresses his masculinity. Deriding or condemning such behaviour, therefore, is clearly a condemnation of every person with a Y-chromosome who hasn't yet been castrated by the maurauding feminist army. A word of advice to homeless guys, Indigenous men and anyone of Lebanese ethnicity: Miranda probably won't be so quick to defend any of you if you're caught doing the same. Indeed, if you happen to splash her shoes as she's leaving a hotel you'll probably find the next day that she's written a column about how you and everyone like you is some kind of scourge on society. At least make sure you're wearing a nice suit and you might get off more lightly.

Devine compares poor Willie Mason's plight with that of blonde uber-bogan Annaliese Smoel, who was ostensibly busted for stealing a bar mat at some Aussie bar in Thailand but had apparently verbally abused the cops who spotted it in her bag. Miranda might have had a point, given the sympathy perhaps unjustifiably extended to Smoel, but she perverts her own claims of a double standard by implying that Smoel should have been given a going over in the media while still claiming that Willie Mason should have got off more lightly. Note to Miranda: that pretty much amounts to reversing the double standard. Additionally, Annaliese Smoel was just some random drunk bogan. Mason, while a bogan, is also a public figure and is paid damn good money to be one. You don't see Hazem el Mazri getting drunk and pissing in public, do you?

Next, Miranda touts Rugby League as society's cure to problems 'men' have with aggression and 'sexual motivation':

Killing off rugby league isn't going to stop men being aggressive and sexually motivated. In fact, such games are the few outlets boys have left for excess physical energy.

Well, where to begin? The sexist assumption she makes that all men are aggressive? Or the ignorant assumption that men are the only people who are sexually motivated? Miranda's a bit abnormal, sure, but no cold fish, if her drooling references to hairless male chests and Schapelle Corby are anything to go by. There's a slight possibility that she's just a bit out of touch with reality. Here's a newsflash, Miranda: pretty much everyone past the onset of puberty is sexually motivated to some degree. It's learning to use that motivation to get what you want without causing hurt or distress to any other party involved in the process that's important to society. Funnily enough, playing Rugby League really doesn't seem to have been so effective in helping certain NRL use those urges appropriately.

Try not to shudder as you read the next paragraph...

In sanctioned team violence on the football field, young men can test their courage and express what it feels to be male, to have testosterone surging through young bodies, building huge muscles and attack instincts for which society has little use any more. It is teaching them, not to be violent but how to control their violent urges.

What a confused mess of concepts. First, does Rugby League create attack instincts, or control the ones that are already there? Frankly, I'm inclined to say neither is the case. As for the reference to the 'violence' of the game- what of it? To my knowledge, no-one has been stupid enough to link the mechanics of Rugby League to some players' apparent inability to determine whether the sexual situation they have entered into is consensual and appropriate. Well, until now.

As for 'expressing what it feels to be male', erm, where to go from here? How does Rugby League allow muscular, virile young men, bodies surging with testosterone (bucket of cold water, please!) to 'express what it feels to be male' any more than any other team sport? Oh, and Miranda's boys- it might be a good idea to discourage mum from attending your games if any of your friends are literate and unfortunate enough to have read her column. It'll only creep them out.

The rest of the article is such a mish-mash of Miranda's popular bugbears- 'androgynous feminists', women who learn that sex undertaken purely for enjoyment is ok (it's not!!1!!!1), and 'popular culture' that sexualises children. You might have thought that that last one was the creation of a host of corporate and media entities in order to sell shit to kids, but you'd be wrong- it's those damn androgynous feminists who run the world these days.

Finally, Miranda finishes with the admonishment that men aren't all violent and predatory. Thank god someone came out and said it, because I was getting afraid to leave the house, thinking they were all rapists and stuff. Yeah. Where would we be without Miranda Devine? From defending a small group of NRL players accused of sexual misconduct to defending the game itself from the imaginary attacks of 'teh androgynous feminists', to defending men from wholly imaginary accusations of being violent sexual predators- while at the same time insisting that all men have violent and sexual urges that can only be contained through the playing of Rugby League and other sports that are Traditionally Male... Maybe it's just a long time since I've been Devined, but isn't that deranged even by her usual standards?