Suspended for Using the Word ‘Monkey’🙊

There’s an English word that you can find in any dictionary. This word children can say freely around one another. They can even say it in the classroom in front of the teacher, and there will be no reprisals or punishment. It’s a word that friends and family call my young daughter, a word that she likes, because she’s such a great climber. She can now do around 15 pull-ups, completely of her own volition. But if you’re a professional rugby league player, and use this word directed at a fellow rugby league player, you’ll be suspended for eight weeks.

The word of course, is monkey.

Spencer Leniu, a Sydney Roosters player in the NRL who was born in New Zealand and has Samoan heritage. He called opposition player, Brisbane Broncos Ezra Mam, who is of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, a monkey. “Spencer Leniu handed eight-week ban for calling Ezra Mam a 'monkey' in Vegas”. In his own words, he said he thought his slur against Mam was just “one brown man saying something to another brown man”.

I’m not at all suggesting people should go around calling people monkeys in an offensive way, but this is a rough sport. For example, in the very same hearing, Tayson Fakaosi was suspended for one game for performing a crusher tackle. According to the NRL, a crusher tackle is when a player “uses any part of his body forcefully to bend or apply unnecessary pressure to the head, neck or spinal column of the tackled player. In some crusher tackles, the full weight of the defender is applied in a dropping motion on the tackled player’s head and/or neck and/or spinal column.” So applying brutal force to a player’s head neck or spinal column results in a one-week suspension, but a word that kids say in the playground on the monkey bars, kids say in the classroom in front of their teachers, a word that my wife calls my daughter when she’s on her fifteenth pull-up, that word results in an eight week suspension on the rugby field.

Look, I know, context counts. I’m not suggesting people should go around calling people monkeys in a hurtful way, but have we somewhat gone stupid with language now, where words are considered more hurtful than spear tackles? If he called him the n-word, okay, perhaps that makes sense. The dictionary very clearly states that’s considered offensive. But eight weeks for a single English word? Is that proportionate? If they just wanted to send a message, one week would have done the trick. Okay guys, don’t call each other monkeys. It doesn’t look good.

Leniu spoke about growing up with a Samoan background in Western Sydney where it was common among his family and friends to call each other monkey in a lighthearted sort of way. He said, “All those types of words are used in our language and how we speak to each other. I had no idea what that word meant to Ezra, what it meant to all the Indigenous people in the game.”

Leniu was even prepared to fly his partner and himself to Queensland at his own expense to give a face-to-face apology to Mam, but Mam wasn’t having a bar of it.

Sydney Roosters officials will put their entire club through cultural training. Yes, this is real.

Sledging, trash talk, whatever you want to call it. What if we changed the M of monkey to say a D? Would calling somebody a donkey be okay? According to the dictionary, a donkey is “a domesticated hoofed mammal of the horse family” of course, but also, “a stupid or inept person”. The very same dictionary, a donkey has a much more negative connotation than a monkey. Presumably though, if Leniu called Mam a donkey instead of a monkey, literally just change one letter, he wouldn’t have been suspended at all? That’s how stupid all this is getting.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, nah… that doesn’t apply anymore. If you’re offended by a word, that’s enough for people to lose their livelihood for eight weeks. Perhaps the NRL need to publish a list of offensive words along with the corresponding punishment. Galah should be okay, shouldn’t it?

It’s now coming out that Leniu actually was the first to receive a derogatory comment made by a Broncos player before his comment was made to Mam, but he let it go and told those close to him that he would not “snitch” on other players.

As I said, I’m not suggesting people should go around throwing hurtful words at people, but what happened to trash talk on the field? Is it not allowed anymore? “Excuse me sir, your mother looks like… a lovely lady. I mean person. I shouldn’t have assumed her gender. Sorry, I shouldn’t have called you sir, because that’s assuming your gender. No problems sir, no offence taken. Now do you consent to me touching you so that I can tackle you? Sorry sir, I do not consent. Oh dear, well I guess you better go score, as I don’t want to cause any offence. Thank you sir for being so understanding.”

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn