Not all criticism is bad. When someone makes fun of your touch on the ball it could be a good thing, at least for girls in Morocco.
This past Saturday, I was again in Sidi Moumen watching a girls league team (Nassim) practice at the local district field usually dominated by men. As they played, groups of older boys who just finished practice leaned against the gate, faces pressed through the bars staring. They started making comments such as "what kind of touch on the ball is that" and "hey, did you see her control, she has no idea how to control the ball, even on flat land." My first reaction was annoyance. Let the girls be, I thought. Arrogant punks. But then I realized that perhaps these comments they were making was progress. They reflected a new level of respect. No longer were the boys commenting on the girls themselves as they had in the past (calling them dirty, saying they look like boys, or they are prostitutes or that girls shouldn't play football). Now, the comments reflected criticism of their game, something all players do to other players, be it male or female. The key to this was that they saw these girls as players. Don't get me wrong, they were probably still arrogant punks but at least, from my point of view, they respected the girls enough to comment on their game and not on them.
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