Sam Kerr, Australian women’s soccer team captain and arguably the best football player in the world, executed a perfect shoulder charge to drop a pitch invader over in the UK (where she plays for Chelsea), putting him on his arse and earning a standing ovation from the crowd. (It also got her a yellow card from the referee, presumably for “ungentlemanly conduct”.)
I imagine many people shared my immediate reaction: give her a medal, make her Australian of the Year. Her act was a physical representation of what current incumbent Grace Tame has been giving verbally to idiot men all this year: a good ol’ fashioned don’t argue. Could anything be, according to our cherished self-image, more Australian than Sam Kerr’s shoulder charge of the pitch invader?
Ah, but brace yourself for the think-piece counter-arguments: first, violence is bad always, n’est-ce pas? More to the point, what if she’d been a bloke and the pitch invader a woman? All hell would be breaking loose right now; he’d be getting cancelled faster than Mark Latham can say “feminazi”.
These points are not illegitimate. Nor is it wrong, per se, to watch the video of Kerr delivering her coup de grace to the smirking fool and feel unalloyed joy. What, properly, are to we to make of this?
The standard ethical position on violence — whether retaliatory, righteous or not — is that it is unjustifiable except in either self-defence or defence of the defenceless. Otherwise violence is reserved exclusively to the state, which defends us collectively. Once we begin allowing for exceptions the slippery slope runs all the way down to the gladiatorial equivalent of Love Island.
Then, however, there are Nazis, and the controversial but (in my view) well-justified argument that it is always OK to punch them. The basis for that principle is, essentially, look what happens when you don’t.
The motivations and impacts of your average football pitch invader are a long way from genocidal totalitarianism, so it’s difficult to find a general principle which supports Kerr’s action. She wasn’t in any personal danger, nor was anyone else; there was security (albeit way less effective than her), and the only immediate downside risk was delay to the game.
In truth, Kerr’s decision looked very much like it was not so much provoked by the present circumstances but inspired by symbolism: the symbolism of this entitled male, and the symbolism of her iconic, female response.
The positive audience reaction, I suspect, falls into two camps: one is applauding Kerr for doing precisely what the archetype of a no-nonsense Aussie would; the other is cheering her as a feminist warrior declaring “Enough!” by body rather than words.
In that sense, this may be a rare moment of happy intersection between two powerful social forces in Australian society, strong enough to overcome the arguments of the ethical purists and the reactionary right.
Like Tame, who has spent this year riding straight over the top of the conventions of what an Australian of the Year is supposed to be (grateful, compliant, photogenically silent) and delivering what-fors to all and sundry, Kerr simply went for the kidneys: niceties aside, fuck this shit.
For all that, it’s tricky still. We do not want to encourage self-help to the point of vigilantism, because that way really does lie a society that looks a lot like a Trump rally in Alabama.
But, as we all instinctively know, life is not an ethics symposium. Sometimes we see something that may be difficult to reconcile entirely, yet it feels harmlessly right. I suspect Sam Kerr has hit that sweet spot, in a manner as perfectly timed and placed as her shoulder charge.
My reading of the situation, 1. drone invades female workspace, thankfully only armed with a smart phone and not a knife, or other lethal weapon (this fact is revealed retrospectively as the incident unfolded). 2 female leader blocks the physically inept ‘drone’s’ escape route allowing flat footed security to eventually arrive 3. drone’s bruised ego may undergo psychological rehab for several years, 4 male lawyers and others throw hissy fit worrying about the ‘drone’s’ right to invade female workplace and threaten/interrupt females while they are earning an income without any immediate and physical consequences.
I just thought it was marvellous. Great theatre by SK.
I am against violence but there was a part of me that felt extremely satisfied after that lout was put on his ass. I expect the AFLW will be wanting a chat with Sam.
Huh? About what?
They use hip and shoulder in AFL.
Also in football, rugby, rugby league etc…but no doubt afl invented it.
Soooo, you actually knew what a hip and shoulder meant?
I suppose the same as the rest of us are, pitch invader landed on bum in public.
I don’t think Kerr, although she has both the skills and AFL pedigree, would play AFLW, why?
Because simply fewer opportunities locally vs. football the ‘world game’, and one like others is cynical on the timing of AFLW being introduced to try stymie increasing interest in and popularity of women’s football (while crashing existing women’s Oz rules football teams/leagues).
If Sam Kerr (surely some Irish antecedents so no passport probs – several recent winners of the All Ireland Step Dancing have been Australian colleens) or Tayla Harris, wanted to switch to Peil Ghaelach na mBan they’d be knocked down in the rush to sign them up.
Just pray that they don’t take up Camogie.
The roots of the Kerr family name trace back to the Scottish side of the border with England, rather than Ireland. The Kerrs were one of the more notable families among the border reivers so notorious in the centuries before the union of the crowns for their battles, cattle raids, murders and feuding. The Kerrs’ feuds included a particularly long and vicious one the Scotts and others with the Selbys, Rutherfords, Herons and Turnbulls. The Kerr family was extensive enough that some of the Kerrs feuded with other Kerrs.
Nobody so far as I know has investigated the possibility Sam Kerr recognised the pitch invader as a member of one those families and acted entirely within time-honoured tradition.
The reason I enjoyed it is because I am sick of foolish pitch invaders. If Sam Kerr’s shirtfront discourages future pitch invaders it can’t be bad. Security trying to capture this idiot were ineffective until he was upended.
Same here. But that wasn’t a ‘shirtfront’; this one was pure hip and shoulder. A ‘shirtfront’ was what Abbott wanted to do to Vlad the Impaler Putin.
…but wimped out on.
Unlike Ms Kerr.
We need a guffaw emoji here!
Persons choosing to criticise Sam Kerr would be persons that contribute very little to the societies of our world.
Show me a woman that will stand her ground against some boorish trespassing anus, I will proudly support the woman who stood their ground.
Any alternative comment is irrelevant.
Not many women ‘stand their ground’ because it is too dangerous. They’d love to, but would prefer men became civilised and you know, ‘ heterosexual’ so then men won’t have to worry about people thinking too many of them are more on the rapey side of things if not something else. Apparently women aren’t allowed to say ‘ all men are rapists’ or even use the term ‘ entrenched misogyny’ but are nonetheless expected to accept the violence dished up without comment let alone a brilliant hip/shoulder move. Lets face it, what ARE violent cruel men who insist on ‘living’ ( term used very loosely in the interests of decorum lol) with women? Why does that equal ‘ heterosexuality’? Seems we need some new words.
Any word on the women who insist, despite all evidence, on living with violent men?
The most dangerous time in a woman’s life if she has got into a relationship with the classic wife basher is when she is pregnant and if she manages to leave, and takes out an AVO.
The violence usually starts slowly, if the woman is able to stand up and leave at the first violent encounter, then she is likely to survive this.
The women who are dancing yo the tune of person who uses coercive control, don’t usually realize how bad their situation is until it is almost too late.
The only successful strategy for this situation I have seen used, was a woman who became depressed, gained 30 kg, which made him re-double his attacks of “Loose weight, you’re embarrassing me in front of my friends”.
She didn’t and he dumped her and moved on to his next victim.
Her reactive depression disappeared, her weight dropped back and she and her children were safer than they had been.
I would suggest that the most dangerous time is the first meeting – any woman who can’t pick a wrong’un in the first 15mins isn’t trying.
From that First Contact all else follows.
It’s not as if they are aliens – the type is on public view and easily available for scutiny.
Your suggestion is not based on evidence. Abusive relationships have been extensively studied and I would suggest you check the research. Otherwise you are making pronouncements from an eyrie on top of Mount Stupid on the Dunning-Kruger curve, and there is far too much of that going on already.
Details, please.
At your leisure.