By Bridget Gordon and Ritika Bhasker
The time of corporate love is upon us, and what better way to celebrate than having two Effortistas (you know which ones) sit down and chat about one of the most important parts of romance: horniness?
Bridget Gordon: Ritikaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I have a problem. Everyone in this sport is hot and it’s ruining my life
Ritika Bhasker: Oh no, Bridget, surely not everyone!!!
B: EVERYONE
R: No, I can’t even pretend. It’s everyone. It’s absolutely everyone. Even the ones who shouldn’t be hot are hot
B: Maybe hot in a super weird way, but definitely hot
R: At first, I was skeptical when every single person I spoke with believed that their team was the hottest because clearly our team (Liverpool) has that title cinched
B: CLEARLY
R: But then I began to do some research and even teams like Wolves that are absolutely riding on the coattails of Adama Traore ARE HOT. What gives??
B: I think it’s a rite of passage for Liverpool fans the first time they realize they thirsted for James Milner. Like you don’t think you find him attractive at first, he comes off as kind of a goof. And then you see him without his shirt for the first time and it’s like “o-oh”
R: Was it the smile?
Was it the dad energy?
Was it the sheer boringness that he’s embraced as a fundamental part of his personality?
“Ah yes,” you say to yourself, “the whole package.”
B: James Milner is, as the kids say, A Snack
R: I want to be very clear here that we’re absolutely objectifying a man who some claim is the most boring person in football
B: It’s true! I’m not sure what turns my life took to get me to this point but here we are: Being Horny On Main for James Milner. What will become of us?!
R: It was a good turn. A necessary turn. A horny turn.
B: Quite. But to our original point: I’ve been thinking about this a lot: Soccer is maybe the most Horny On Main sport. Like, you’d think it would be basketball or a combat sport or something but, nope. It’s definitely soccer!
R: It’s true. I have watched all the sports and it’s only soccer that gives us the absolute horniest commentary, double entendres, and …well. Just general horniness
B: For a while I thought maybe it was Tumblr’s fault? Because Tumblr definitely made every fandom hornier (to wit: me inexplicably having lascivious thoughts about Captain America), but actually I think it predates Tumblr?
R: Tumblr definitely made every fandom hornier because of slo-mo gifs.
R: But wait, speaking of James Milner, can we talk about my favourite recurring tweet from him (and other Liverpool players?). The tweet I’m talking about is of course “come on the reds”
B: COME ON THE REDS
R: A beautiful rallying sentiment with and without the comma
B: If ever a comma’s absence was more conspicuous!
R: Surely at this point someone on the players’ PR teams have pointed out the problem?
B: And yet! Like, maaaaybe you can explain it with cluelessness but I don’t think so. I think these tweets are going unaddressed by PR folks because they get it. They know. They know that WE know.
R: It’s playing into our horniness which I can respect.
B: And theirs, honestly. Because this is too widespread to just be a Soccer Twitter thing.
R: It’s interesting that they’re okay with playing into the horniness on Twitter but they aren’t interested in doing the same on the pitch. I’m talking about you, yellow card for taking off your shirt rule! Of course, it does confirm that brands > fans.
B: It’s so weird, football is so horny but inexplicably likes to pretend that it isn’t. And very true: brands are seldom if ever horny, which is so odd because the sport itself is EXTREMELY horny.
How many times have we heard Martin Tyler and Jon Champion talk about going to ground? I mean, COME ON!
R: Good god, yes! What’s your favourite football term that is ABSOLUTELY a double entendre?
B: Ooh, “Go To Ground” is definitely up there. So is “Get In”, although that one can be excluding of folks who aren’t into penetration.
R: I enjoy the odd “ah so-and-so just pulled off another-person there”.
B: That’s good too! So is “slip in behind the last defender”! Or how a keeper really “fills that goal”
R: THEY ALWAYS DO, THOSE KEEPERS! THEY JUST FILL IN THE GOALS! My personal favourite is when “Get up there in the D” is a thing said on television in the MORNING. And of course the classic “stripped off and ready for the game”.
B: !!!!!
R: And how can we forget commentators declaring which team is on top?
B: “Just outside the area”! And while we’re here: did they HAVE to call it a TOUCHline?? I mean, really! As an aside, since we were discussing tweets and the like earlier, I would like to discuss a common chant in English football. It goes like this:
“Oh [Player Name]. you are the love of my life, oh [Player Name], I’d let you have sex with my wife, oh [Player Name]”
B: There’s A LOT to unpack with that, but we might as well get to the meat of the matter (heh heh heh). Which is:
R: Oh. My.
B: Does English Football have a secret cuckold fetish? I’m just asking questions here.
R: A fair question and one that deserves further analysis!
B: I mean, IDEALLY, what it would mean is that the English are surprisingly open to ethical non-monogamy, but if I’m being honest I’m not inclined to give the English that much credit at the moment! Certainly not post-Brexit.
R: I mean, considering the prevalence of toxic masculinity in all sports, you might be right. It should go without saying that women are not objects that you can hand out to your favourite sports stars. But it is interesting to note that this is the ultimate sign of affection for a player.
It’s almost an “I I can’t have sex with you because I need to retain my heterosexual image, maybe you could have sex with my wife?”
B: It SHOULD go without saying, and yet… I think the only thing we can conclude is that there are a lot of– let’s be real, cishet white male– English football supporters who secretly yearn for Eden Hazard to have sex with their spouses. QUITE POSSIBLY while they’re in the same room.
R: Yes, exactly
B: Which definitely raises questions about the current state of British masculinity, which I believe we can definitively say is In Crisis. Something something the end of Empire something something
R: Isn’t the entirety of this behaviour (and the chant) just a way for men raised in toxic masculinity to control their horniness after all?
B: So true. For all the thirst that this sport and the culture is steeped in, large portions of it seem in deep denial about it.
R: Again, we revisit removing shirts as a yellow card offense.
B: So many fans feel intense desire and then immediately deny it. Imagine a world where we could embrace our thirst in healthy and loving ways.
R: I mean, while we’re talking about removing shirts, please let’s also highlight the wonderful joy of celebrations in soccer in general
B: Lots of hugging! Even kissing! Just… so much physical intimacy
R: The one time men get to embrace each other and also let down their guard against society!
B: Right??
R: And such beautiful intimacy! I want cis men to be able to embrace each other when they’re overjoyed.
B: The tragedy is that that’s the only real outlet men have
R: The horniness is basically a gift if we think about it this way! A pure expression of joy!
B: Truly a special gift
B: There is something we need to unpack a bit. Because no discussion of sexy footballers and surreptitious kissing is complete without Foucault. My friend: it’s time to discuss The Gaze
R: Do go on!
B: So for those of us who didn’t have to suffer through hours of critical theory in undergrad, the super short version is that “The Gaze” is a way of discussing how power is distributed in social systems. In this line of discourse, power can be described as who is “Watched” and who “Watches.” Feminist theory took this and ran with it, bringing “”The Male Gaze into popular parlance.
R: My current go-to example is the most recent Charlie’s Angels film vs. the older ones!
B: That’s actually a really good example
R: The most recent is a great example where The Male Gaze isn’t prioritised!
B: Yeah! Now, this isn’t to say that Not Men don’t have a Gaze
R: We do! It’s also a thirsty one!
B: Quite so!
Belonging to a marginalized gender does not preclude someone from participating in unhealthy social power dynamics. People of marginalized genders can also be creepy! They can also be predatory! Still, it’s no accident that when we talk about The Gaze in this way, the Observer is usually cast as a cis hetero man
R: Absolutely. How does that change the dynamics of Horny for Soccer?
B: So there’s a few ways of going about that, and here is where it’s important to delineate something which can be called The Queer Gaze. Let’s establish that we live in a society that is fundamentally hostile to marginalized genders and sexual identities.
R: Agreed
B: Given that, while The Queer Gaze can be problematic in certain contexts, it often sidesteps those problems. Its very nature, situated in a fundamentally misogynistic and queerphobic culture, is ultimately radical and subversive.
R: Queer thirst as a subversive exercise: I love it.
B: Which is to say: it’s very different when you or I expresses desire for Megan Rapinoe than it is when a cis straight man does because the power dynamics are so different. When we thirst for Pinoe, there isn’t an implicit entitlement or threat of violence.
R: And that’s a great point to circle back to Tumblr’s inherent horniness, too!
B: Right! Because Tumblr’s fandom communities skewed heavily Queer
R: And queer thirst on Tumblr is still full of the “step on me daddy” posts you expect from social media, but there’s also a joy in engaging in our own corners, in our own quiet circles about the people we’re horny over.
B: (As an aside: while my ethical code as a journalist precludes me from asking Lindsay Horan to beat me up, I wouldn’t exactly say no if she offered to)
R: No one saw this aside and even if they did, they can’t prove it
B: Exactly. And that also predates and post-dates Tumblr. You wrote a great piece for Howler Magazine a while back about Kickette. That, I think, was what really got me thinking about intimate desire in soccer. (Disclosure: I was Ritika’s editor for that piece)
R: RIP Kickette
B: More recently, Autostraddle has started featuring more stories on women’s soccer– primarily NWSL and USWNT– and it is, unsurprisingly, EXTREMELY thirsty.
R: As we established right at the beginning: EVERYONE in this sport is Hot.
B: It’s so true! We’re just doing the work to highlight that hotness here. And also, I would hope, by highlighting it and saying it out loud, as it were, we can give people space and permission to explore that desire. Like we discussed earlier, there’s this weird shame cycle that’s bound up in that desire and I’d really like us as a sporting culture to break free of that cycle
R: Desire is okay! Desire is good!
B: Desire is beautiful!
R: Expressing yourself and your desire is lovely! That is–expressing yourself and your desire in a non-creepy and entitled way.
B: Sure, and that means a lot of self-examination and self-awareness and really being cognizant of our own social privileges.But the desire itself isn’t bad! It’s quite lovely, in fact
R: We’re both big fans!
B: And being able to express that openly and safely, while still being respectful of the boundaries of other human beings, will ultimately change the world for the better! As clearly evidenced by this piece!
R: What a perfect way to put it.
B: Hey, so, uh. Remember that time Christiane Endler picked up three of her teammates?
R: How does someone forget that moment? Because I would like to know given how much it’s ruining my life.
B: /dreamy sigh
R: Truly the best moment of the World Cup.
B: And indeed the sport as a whole, if we’re being honest
R: One that made me think a Lot of Thoughts about climbing Endler.
B: Yes. God, yes
R: I think we should make everyone suffer our “pain” and look at that image. Just contemplate that moment.
B: Oh yes. Also that pic of her showing off her biceps. I mean. Damn. Ritika. Why is everyone so hot?
R: I think this is a good time to remind everyone that we’re very small and very queer and football players should come with warnings.
B: It’s true, I break very easily. Which should absolutely be taken as an invitation
R: ABSOLUTELY.
B: Anyway: happy valentine’s day! Go forth and be thirsty!
R: In a responsible way, of course!
B: Consent, much like James Milner, is very sexy