Feminists can be sexist, too.

There's something I need to get off my chest.

I know that sounds like an introduction to some confession of some sort (I cheated on you; I was born with a penis; I ate the last slice of cake... None of which are true, by the way. Well, except for maybe the last one), and I suppose that in some ways it almost is a confession. In some ways it is a confession that one of the causes which I so strongly support and dedicate so much of my writing to is still subject to one massive fundamental flaw.

The cause? Feminism. The fundamental flaw? The fact that the force which is fighting its corner, my sisters, my fellow feminists, are at times themselves misogynistic perpetrators of the enemy we are trying to defeat: sexism.

But I believe that if you support something and if you want something to succeed, then at times you will have to challenge it. You have to drag it up where it has made mistakes, tell it, "Oi, you're being an arsehole!" and set it on the right path. So that is exactly what I am doing now.

You see, a few months ago I published an article on sexism in football. If you haven't already read it then I encourage you to do so (because it's pretty damn amazing), but to summarise, in case you're short on time, it focuses primarily on the presence of sexism at the top of the game, with powerful people like the President of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, claiming that female footballers should wear "tighter shorts"; the pigeonholing of female supporters as "socerettes" (a scantily-clad, attractive woman who, if she knows anything at all about the game, is not encouraged to share her opinions) or WAGs, and the overarching isolation of female fans: the idea that football is for men; if a woman is there then it is only because she fancies Cristiano Ronaldo, and the attitude that "she may as well hold my beer while I pop to the loo". Whether or not you care about football, whether you appreciate the artistry and comradeship in it or simply think it's a stupid sport which promotes prima donna millionaires, is pretty much irrelevant. All that is relevant at this moment in time is the fact that I, among many other women, I am sure, identified sexism within football and felt the need to address it. And so I wrote this article.

I wrote the article back in November 2010. Why then, did it take me until July the following year, a full eight months later, to finally publish the article? Do I suffer from literary shyness? Am I so lazy that it took me a full eight months to copy and paste a chunk of text from Word into my blog? Nope, none of those reasons are responsible. While I may be shy, I have never been shy in my writing; in fact it was writing which always gave me the opportunity to get my thoughts and my feelings out there when my mouth was too timid to open up and utter a few words. And while I may enjoy the odd lie-in from time-to-time, I've never had a employer, teacher or professional describe me as "lazy" (and yes, I am kissing my own arse right now). So what was it that held me back from publishing the article, even when, in January this year, just two months after my article was written, Richard Keys and Andy Gray were making headlines when their sexist tirade of comments were caught on tape? When the rest of the world was talking about sexism in football, why did I hold back and leave my article gathering dust for eight solid months?

Stupidly, I now realise, I didn't believe the article was mine to publish. A month before the Richard Keys/ Andy Gray saga, I had "promised" my article to a well-known, reader-contributed feminist blog. I'd exchanged email correspondance with the editor who, following my pitch, told me "that does sound very interesting" and gave me the date of the following deadline, which I met without a hiccup.

I was fully aware when I handed over my article that it might have taken months before I saw it in print, but that was a sacrifice I was happy to put up with knowing that my work would be read by thousands rather than, say, ten. However, when just two short months later the headlines were being bombarded with what I already knew to be true - that football commentary is laced with misogyny and sexism - I expected my article to climb out of the editor's inbox and onto the web.

It didn't.

In fact, what I saw instead was a very recent (and I knew it was recent because it mentioned events which had happened in the preceding few days) article, written by... a man.

"That can't be right," I thought to myself. "Maybe they'll publish my article later on in the day."

But they didn't. My article went unpublished, not just for the next few days or weeks, but for months. Even when I emailed the editor, kindly but firmly asking that she confirm whether or not she wished to use my article, as I felt I could find a place for it on the web elsewhere if she chose not to, I heard nothing. Nothing appeared on their website, and no letter of recognition, even, appeared in my inbox. A feminist website, a website which is supposed to promote the voices of women in a world in which we are far too often silenced by patriarchy, ignored the voice of a woman, and instead gave room to the voice of a man; more than that, they gave room to the voice of a man in a realm which is already heavily-dominated by men. Perhaps they thought that if a man says it is sexist then it must be so, whereas if a woman says it is sexist... well, she could just be complaining again.

In some ways I blame myself for allowing my voice to get lost in the midst of the jumping-on-the-"Sexism-In-Football"-bandwagon and for not speaking up sooner. It took me eight months to take my article back, at which point I fiddled around with it, injected a little bit of stuff about the Richard Keys/ Andy Gray saga (because it would have been 'irrelevant' without it, it seemed) and published it on my own blog which, while perhaps not having a following of thousands, is at least mine and says the things that I wish to say, as opposed to some dude who is probably heard enough as it is already.

For the record, this blog post does not wish to shoot down other feminists and it does not wish to shoot down men; what it wishes to do is to demonstrate how easy it is to shoot down your fellow sisters and thus damage the very cause you are fighting for if you are not careful.