I've previously written in this blog about the disappointment of following your 'heroes' on Twitter. As a result of this, the rationalised list of sports 'personalities' that I follow is effectively reduced to one man: Michael Vaughn. I follow the former England captain mainly because he is unintentionally very funny. For a man approaching 40 who has lived much of his life in the public eye, he is startlingly and endearingly naive. Whilst this usually leads to much thoroughly entertaining tweeting, it is easy to get depressed by humanity if one is to read the responses to many of his tweets. A number of his recent tweets about the England vs India Test series have elicited strings of badly spelled tirades littered with effing, c-bombs and insults about his mother. I realise that this is nothing compared to the sort of unbelievably threatening and sexually violent abuse directed at pretty much any feminist in the public eye, but I would suggest that it comes from a similar place. Based on the thoroughly unscientific evidence of my experience, a little extrapolation and a dash of presumption, I am fairly certain that the vast majority of this abuse comes from men. The modern narrative (and indeed the excuse that many of the perpetrators of the more extreme misogynist abuse) is that in a world where women are beginning to get some equality, men are increasingly unsure of their position and therefore feel the need to lash out agressively. My response to this 'excuse' is the same as my response to anyone who is having a strop because they can't have everything their own way: grow up.
Of course Michael Vaughn's response to the abusive comments he gets on Twitter seems to be largely to shrug them off, baffled that people from other countries can't take 'a bit of banter'. Unfortunately, it would appear that many of them can't, which is perhaps an indicator of the vast cultural divides still extant between countries that many view to have a shared (if partially imposed) cultural heritage. I am generally not a fan of banter; as far as I can tell it is simply a term used to excuse oneself from causing massive offence by insulting another. In too many instances 'banter' is used to excuse the inexcusable by those who think freedom of speech means freedom to give offence. However, in many contexts, banter could be interpreted as a form of progress in western male social behaviour. If banter allows contentious concepts to be discussed without the risk of actual physical conflict then it may be (partially) viewed as a progressive force.
Unfortunately for those on a global stage, the mitigating effects of labelling a statement 'banter' are not universal. In many countries, male concepts of 'honour' mean that people will take 'banter' seriously and respond in an extreme and (in the eyes of western observers at least) disproportionate manner. It would be an oversimplification to argue that the countries where men 'can't take a bit of banter' are those where other problematic concepts of masculine honour exist, leading to so-called 'honour' killings and rape, but a correlation could be made. Much of the 'traditional' concepts of male honour are tied up with a man's power over others, much of which manifests as, or is interpreted as sexual power over women. If a man believes in such a 'code' of 'honour' and feels his 'honour' threatened, questioned or undermined, he will respond initially with threats and ultimately with acts of violence. The fact that the violence is likely to be sexual violence if its target is female simply ties in with a logic that equates sexual dominance with honour.
In this context, anything that bursts the bubble of dangerous hubris that surrounds such logic must be counted as a good thing. Applied and accepted in the spirit it was intended, banter can undermine the dangerous conventions that have established themselves around masculine pride, but it is a blunt instrument. As Michael Vaughn and others have perhaps discovered, it does not magically wipe away all offence, which is most notable when that offence is unpardonable. Indeed, it is what is counted as unpardonable offence that perhaps differs from one country to the next. In the UK, many men will question their friend's sexuality and it will be considered 'just a bit of banter' (I'm not saying it isn't offensive, especially where the inference is that one form of sexuality is inferior), but threatening a woman sexually is not ever considered acceptable, even if someone tries to excuse it as 'banter'. That us not to say that it doesn't happen in the UK, just that it is not considered acceptable by the moral majority.
The last two sentences were the first written after I became aware of a furore over a selection of offensive texts written by some football person* being incorrectly classified as banter. The list of subjects of those texts (gender, race, sexuality) pretty much read as a definition of what is not allowed to be termed 'banter' in modern British society, yet in some countries would be accepted without so much as a raised eyebrow.
Reading over everything I have written so far, I realise that I've slightly missed the point. The broader cultural differences that allowed me to notice the different contexts in which 'banter' will or won't be accepted, blinded me to the fact that the perceived acceptability of any 'banter' is entirely contextual. OK, maybe 'blinded me' is a bit much, but I did think that the context was limited to national or cultural boundaries when it is not at all. With banter, the audience is everything: if it is between a few mates (who are all equally misogynist, racist or whatever) then it is banter; if it is between a broader sweep of society then it is more likely to be offensive. In this sense both Michael Vaughn and the Malky Mackay (the football guy) suffer from a similar problem: Vaughn doesn't understand the breadth of his audience, while Mackay never intended his words to reach a wider audience. Obviously I am not drawing direct parallels between the two men; to my knowledge, Vaughn has never said anything that could be construed as racist, sexist or homophobic, and he has (rightly in my opinion) never had cause to apologise for his tweets, but there can be no doubt that there are those who take considerable offence at some of what he writes in jest. However, in both cases, it is 'banter' that reveals the prejudices of the speaker and listener. Whilst Mackay denies his texts were banter, I'm fairly sure their definition only changed after they came into the public domain. If they had stayed private (and assuming they had only been shared with friends with similar prejudices) everyone involved would have viewed them as banter and gone about their lives with their prejudices intact. Of course Mackay argues that he has none of these prejudices, in which case, the defence of 'banter' would have best been held on to. Part of the purpose of banter appears to be to ride the limit of what the other finds acceptable and it is clearly easier to push that limit with a small group of friends one knows well than with a national or global audience. This appears to lead people to say things when they believe they are amongst friends that they would not countenance in public life, it apparently encourages people to make racist, sexist or homophobic remarks simply because they are taboo, but in the process poses the risk of normalising such language. The more we give voice to a concept without being challenged or asked to justify it, the more legitimate it appears to us, especially if we view it as a piece of harmless fun. So if we need to think about our audience before saying something, should we be saying it at all? The defence of banter is no defence. As Michael Vaughn has discovered, even when it is 'harmless banter', someone still finds it offensive.
* can you tell I'm not really a football person?
