The author didn't visit country towns and remote areas to see how successful AFL has been in giving young men, especially indigenous, a healthy outdoor diversion that made them take pride in themselves, turning them away from drugs, alcohol and crime.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/22/2577942.htm

The author is wrong to base her article on the very flawed Four Corners story by Sarah Ferguson, where it is a matter of public knowledge that vital information, especially from independent witnesses, was overlooked.

There are many reasons why Scouts, Red Cross, Junior Farmers and other voluntary movements find it difficult to operate in country areas. For a start, country people are always poor and although such organisations run on shoestring budgets, the paltry kitties of a few hundred dollars a year cannot pay the pay the increasingly ramped up premiums for the insurance that is so necessary in modern times. Nor can they afford the upkeep for infrastructure that is already there.

Notwithstanding all of these problems, country people do very well with the poor resources they do have. Again, the author might have discovered that if she had looked further. Here is an example:

http://www.cwaofwa.asn.au/events_archives/young_leaders_workshop.html

Masculinity (and footy) might be the bete noir of feminists who are well represented in the sociology departments of universities but it is not the root cause of social deficiencies that might exist in some country towns.

Alcohol and cheap drugs, now that is a different story and there the city lads and ladettes have taken the lead. In the country, a pub is often the only social venue and you might have to travel hundreds of kilometres to get there.

What about solutions to the isolation, tyranny of distance and paucity of resources that city people take for granted? These are problems that are not easily resolved, especially where the main contributor is the refusal by large corporations to pay farmers fair prices for their produce and the insensitivity of city people to the plight of country people, especially in times of drought and flood.

It is almost as if we red different articles.
My understanding was this article pointed out quite clearly that if you do not play footy drink and or treat women as objects there is no place in the smaller community for you and you become lonely and isolated at best and or ostracized. Bachelor and spinster balls are another prime example.

Beefboy,
I thought the article was just another one of those “all men are bastards” articles that are churned out by university academics each year so as to maintain their positions in the academic system or perhaps get a PhD (although a PhD in sociology now means absolutely nothing).

No matter what the situation or circumstances, men are to blame and women are the innocent victims who are being oppressed by evil men. It could be playing football or rowing a boat or simply sitting on the back veranda, an academic feminist will still find something wrong with men.

How nice to see HRS/Timkins back under a new name.

C.J Morgan
Do you support academics to make generalised, bigoted, discriminatory, sexist and negative comments about males. If not, then nominate one academic feminist from an Australian university that doesn’t. In fact, you could nominate an academic feminist from any university in any country in the world that doesn’t.

It would be a considerable challenge.

Timithy/Timkins/HRS/vanna: << Do you support academics to make generalised, bigoted, discriminatory, sexist and negative comments about males. If not, then nominate one academic feminist from an Australian university that doesn’t. >>

Of course not - and off the top of my head, Catharine Lumby springs to mind. Of course, her work is very relevant to a discussion about masculinity and football.

However, we've been down this path before under your previous pseudonyms, haven't we? Now that you've confirmed my suspicion, I have no intention of playing your sad little games again.

However, I will point out your dishonesty when you do.

BTW - are you still banned under your "HRS" alias?