The first signals indicating a shift in attitudes occurred during the opening moments of Scotland v England at the Women’s World Cup. Attendance records were expected to be broken and television companies, at long last, were committing serious money and resources to the task of providing meaningful live coverage of the matches.

The exploits of Scotland’s international women’s team, who had qualified against formidable odds, had crept on to the back pages, long the exclusive preserve of male football, or at least the beer and cigarettes version that persists here. A BBC documentary chronicling how the women had won seven out of eight games to qualify first from a tough section was well received.

On social media, however, the law of Dodge City still holds sway, which means effectively that you can insult, disparage, hate and slander your neighbour indiscriminately, with little fear of legal redress. Inevitably, those first few minutes of Scotland against England attracted scorn and derision from anonymous men soliciting approval in pubs from their fellow six-fingered banjoists. It’s OK not to like women’s football but to suggest that women simply can’t play it and that their role ought to be confined to washing strips suggests a brain-cell deficit.

Then something quite startling happened. Instead of rising to the bait, these people were simply shooed off social media in the way that you might admonish a fuckity adolescent. It’s no longer funny or witty to disdain women’s football in this way and the tournament has progressed largely free of the cultural delinquents on social media.

No one’s suggesting here that women’s football can provide a similar spectacle to the men’s game. The difference in physique between men and women renders it foolish to try to do so. Better to take women’s football on its own terms and appreciate the skills, athleticism and competitiveness of well-coached teams and players. The mighty USA team will start tonight’s final against Holland as clear favourites. In the semi-final they were tested to the limit by a fine England team that was refreshingly free of the sense of entitlement that usually follows their men’s team at international events.

France has given us a wonderful tournament amid record-breaking attendances and television audiences. For once it will be possible for us edgy liberals to back a team sporting the colours of the omnipotent US. Their co-captain, Megan Rapinoe, has incurred the wrath of the White House delinquent by stating her intention not to visit him with the World Cup should she bring it home with her. She was also a vocal supporter of Colin Kaepernick in kneeling for the national anthem and is at the forefront of the campaign for equal pay in football.

Another branch of the male football liberal camp has also emerged during this World Cup. Among its members are leftie types who talk a good game when it comes to women’s football. We’ve learned the names of some of the stars and can trot out their back stories and some of their statistics when required. We’ll take to social media during games and tweet about goals and refereeing decisions with the same argot we deploy when following our favourite men’s teams. That way, our mates know that we’re actually watching the games. Some might call it virtue signalling. The true test of our recently discovered fervour for women’s football will come in the months ahead. In Scotland, the women’s game remains grossly underfunded and unsupported. All of our stars play in England’s professional league, although Celtic have announced that they are to field a professional women’s team from next season. By the end of it, I wonder how many of us who have affected support for and solidarity with women’s football will have attended any matches in the Scottish Women’s Football League?

There’s never been a better moment for well-meaning male football supporters to alter a lifetime’s habits and conditioning and support the women’s game by actually parting with some cash to watch a match or even buy some merchandise. The umbilical and spiritual connections to our men’s clubs, passed down from father to son through generations, are all being tested. Football has become the most corporate and ruthlessly capitalistic enterprise on Earth. In other spheres (apart from America) the acolytes of pure, free-market capitalism will attempt to soften the look with charity and academic endowments. In football, there can be no room for such scruples and only the survival of the fittest can be guaranteed.

My own club, Celtic, which sports its humble origins like a gaudy chain of office, is now sponsored by three online betting firms, the jackals of working-class football supporters. The European Champions League has been reduced to a boutique competition for the world’s richest clubs, including many such as Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris St Germain, who were never really able to cut it when the playing field was level.

Each year we who profess to be socialists, and shout about fairness and inequality, park our consciences and queue to be fleeced by this machine and the money launderers and gangster states that manipulate it.

Of course, if women’s football does become a global enterprise, the same corporations will swoop on it too. But for a few years at least our female footballers are giving us an opportunity to observe football in a purer environment.

• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist