Lie Back And Think Of England

The World Cup is here and the latest questionable country of choice to host is Qatar – see also  Russia 2018 (Ukraine), Brazil 2014 (Amazon), South Africa 2010 (apartheid) etc. Qatar’s views on the LGBT+ community, their appalling human rights record and their treatment of migrant workers (not to mention how they were awarded the competition in the first place) have wrapped the 2022 World Cup in more controversy than ever.

As a result, we’ve got many people and businesses here in the UK saying they’ll be boycotting it and many others saying they’re doing good whilst actually encouraging the bad (hiya Brewdog). For us, it’d be quite an easy thing to ignore, football is predominantly a male audience and ours is predominantly female but that would just be too easy, wouldn’t it? Instead, we thought we’d use the platform of the World Cup to draw attention to outdated English tropes and fallacies of jingoism, whilst still supporting the lads.

Lie back and think of England – ‘Advice’ given to women to endure unwanted sex out of a sense of obligation, by distracting oneself with more pleasant thoughts (England, apparently). A fucked up idiotic idiom that just so happens to look very cool on the St George’s cross. So why not plaster it everywhere and raise some money for the very people that suffer from the inaccurate ideals of ‘lying back and thinking of England’?

The origins of this fucked up phrase, apparently, belong in Edwardian England, when mothers would pass it on to their daughters on their wedding night. You know, that joyous occasion long established as being the greatest day of a woman’s life where they put up with unwanted sexual activity in exchange for the security of marriage. Sorry, what? I’ve heard of more joyous occasions, I’ll be honest, even that time my insert embarrassing moment here. Traditionally, their wedding night would be the first time girls had sex, leading to this helpful parental advice. 

Yes that’s right, think of England. England. That heavenly place. Home of the ‘stiff upper lip’, birthplace to David Attenborough, David Bowie and erm… David Cameron? This green and pleasant land of a country… A country so great that it’s desperately clinging on with the last piece of dirt under it’s grubby fingernails to the (dis)illusion of empire and respectability on the world stage. An empire built on the exploitation and slavery of faraway lands. But hey, despite the slew of recent international embarrassments from our “leaders”, we’re still great at pageantry didn’t you know? And what else counts but the uniquely English ability to wave a few Union Jack’s (yes I understand that’s not England) in support of an unaccountable, unelected family and woman. 

The rise of jingoism and flag-waving in a time of crisis for a nation is nothing new, of course, but England and the UK seems to suffer far more from this mythical, rose-tinted nostalgia. Whilst this has its many many pitfalls, including but not limited to the enabling of more and more of the worst types of people and leaders to rule over us, it at least provides us with a certain snobbery lens through which we can view other countries and their own records, in this instance Qatar. Yes, their human rights are bad, and they should be scrutinised for that but I’m not so sure the elites in this country are the right people to be doing that given Amnesty international’s recent look at our own record. People in glass houses and all that.

How does this link to women’s problems though? Well, when one in four people within the UK think non-consensual sex within marriage isn’t rape and it only became a crime in 2003, it’s fair to say we’ve got a few issues. Maybe, just maybe, the commonality of ‘lie back and think of England’ in general society lends itself to women being socialised to put their own needs second (cos why would a ‘sane’ woman ever actually want sex), and men being socialised to pursue their own sexual needs at all costs. 

Maybe England isn’t quite the escapist land the idiom makes it out to be after all? 

The more annoying among you may argue this is doing nothing but supporting the shitshow of a World Cup and that may be so (although you might be giving us slightly too much credit there). The reality is we wholeheartedly support the England team without supporting the way the country is being run and we wholeheartedly support the spirit of the World Cup without supporting FIFA/Qatar. This situation isn’t the players fault, they didn’t choose to host it in Qatar, they just likely had a dream as kids to go to the World Cup and represent their country and how many World Cups will they really get the chance to be involved in? So why wouldn’t we support em?

Equally, why should it be the responsibility of football (a sport) to draw attention to issues of politics. Especially given we have a newly appointed King, who recently received £2.6million in donations from the former Qatar PM. Perhaps it’s just another stick with which to beat football fans with, a disproportionately working class demographic that are often overly persecuted for the same crimes others commit. For example, drug use at the football is to be met with a 5 year ban meanwhile at the house of commons, the traces in all of the toilets will definitely definitely be investigated…. They didn’t have a say in this World Cup, they just want something to cheer and identify with to help em through. So why should they punished with the competition ignored when sport is traditionally a great unifier of people?

Surely then, it’s much more fitting for us to use this World Cup to raise attention to some fucked up elements of our own society with this message?

Cheers,

Dirty Gurty

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