Fans’ phallic obsession with their own teams’ players is racist – and also extremely weird It really shouldn’t need to be written in this or any other year

Two weeks ago, Peterborough United striker Ivan Toney issued a statement to supporters in which he asked them if they would stop singing about the alleged size of his penis. He wondered whether Peterborough fans could perhaps change the words of the chant to make them more family-friendly. Given that Toney has scored 35 goals since joining the club in 2018, maybe they could focus on him being brilliant. I know, it’s an outlandish idea.

In a sentence that really shouldn’t need to be written in this or any other year, that case reflects a growing trend of football fans celebrating black players by referring to their penis size. Last month, Liverpool suspended a supporter who made a banner with Divock Origi’s face photoshopped on to the naked body of another man and hung it in the away end in Genk’s Luminus Arena.

Last season, Everton investigated a similar chant about Yerry Mina, and Romelu Lukaku pleaded with supporters to stop singing about his manhood. Those requests were initially met with chants of “We’ll sing what we want” from a section of fans in Old Trafford. Well done guys, you’re really picking the right battle in the fight for free speech.

Earlier this season, Barnsley and their player Bambo Diaby expressed anger at more terrace chants, provoking one Twitter reply that deserves to be hung in the Tate Modern and entitled merely ‘2019’: “Snowflakes in football is not a good way forward, we’ll be banning banter next, can’t be classed as racist me mate, Danny’s white and he’s a right cock on him” was the angry retort. Somehow, that account appears not to be a parody.

And who can forget the England fans who chanted so poetically in 2016: “He’s got a f**king massive cock, Heskey, Heskey. He tucks it in his football sock.” We truly are the land of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Keats.

There’s a scene in The Office where David Brent tells a joke with the punchline “Is it a black man’s cock?” and is subsequently forced to defend his tired, stereotyped gag to his manager. Brent – characterised as the faux-blokey, if well-meaning, epitome of misguided office banter – cannot understand that the joke is founded upon in-built prejudice. It leads to the immortal payoff line: “It’s not racist though, is it? It’s a compliment, if anything.”

That same limp defence is used by supporters 20 years on. It goes like this: God, fans made monkey noises and threw bananas and black people moaned and eventually we mostly stopped. Then we established a social and cultural hierarchy designed to block pathways for people of colour and they moaned and we didn’t address that, but whatever. Then we chanted that they had massive penises and they moaned again. It’s impossible to make these people happy. Shall we say it louder so you can understand: we are saying you are well endowed. How could that not be a compliment?

Racial profiling is racist. You are using the colour of a person’s skin – and that only – to make an assumption of that person, and thus demeaning and debasing them. The stereotype of large penises has long been used to dehumanise black men. It depicts them as animalistic, worthy of celebration only for physical prowess rather than sporting excellence, or anything else for that matter.

If it might sound more quasi-complimentary than suggesting players of colour are lazy or likely to steal from their team-mates – to refer to two other inaccurate racist stereotypes that have long permeated in western culture – that misses the point.

Part of the problem comes through ignorant normalisation that leads to misguided acceptance. That Heskey chant is still available as a video on YouTube, published by the Football Away Days channel. When the Lukaku chant began, website 101 Great Goals published the lyrics under the headline “Manchester United fans have a hilarious new Romelu Lukaku song” – that story also remains live. That kind of media celebration only legitimises what is unacceptable.

It’s probably true to say that some supporters singing these chants do not believe that they are being racist. But that isn’t their call. Just because the target of the chant plays for your team and you consider it to toe the right line of banter doesn’t mean it isn’t racist.

As an aside, it’s also incredibly weird. What could be more normal than celebrating a player than by chanting about his penis? “Back in a couple of days, Sandra, I’m just off to Belgium to display a banner of a naked man in a football stadium where families will be watching the game.” Again, very normal.

But there’s something else at play here, characterised by the “We’ll sing what we want” brigade who use deliberately provocative banter as their lifeblood and believe it to be far more important than silly things like decency and what players, clubs or Kick It Out might think.

They are the same people who think telling a woman she would “get it” is a harmless verbal display of affection and, actually, a burka does look a bit like a letterbox, when you think about it. It’s only words; it’s just banter.

To them, the fault lies with those taking offence rather than those doing the offending. This article is just another example of snowflake culture, people taking offence to something that is just a harmless bit of banter. You can’t chant anything these days, can you?