Tayla Harris: the athlete who set a precedent against sexual harassment

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The 21-year-old Australian football player is already famous in the world thanks to her statements against homophobic comments

Tayla Harris, star of the Australian Football League (AFL), was harassed on social networks because of a photograph showing her flexibility to hit the ball during a sporting day. Harris never imagined that this photo would bring so much attention from the public, and that unfortunately it was not in a positive way as she would have liked, but rather in an offensive tone.

Leer en español: Tayla Harris: la deportista que sentó un precedente en contra del acoso sexual

Harris is 21 years old and currently plays for Carlton Blue of the first division of Australian football, a sport very similar to rugby. It is a true surprise, because football is not the only sport that she practices professionally, since she also practices boxing with five disputed fights, four won and one null combat, reported ABC.

Those offenses immediately activated the Seven Network account, which decided to remove the photograph due to the excess of misogynistic comments it had generated. Contrary to the reaction that they expected, this bothered Harris even more, since from her point of view that was to give the reason to those who commented the post with insults. The mentioned account republished the image and this time it included a text in which it explained that the purpose of the photo had been decontextualized.

Tayla Harris also posted the photo on her Twitter account, which header is " Here's a pict of me at work … think about this before your derogatory comments, animals"

The athlete declared in an interview for a radio station that she had felt very bad about the incident, but that she was mainly concerned about home-school education in today's society. "The comments I saw were sexual abuse, if you can call them that, because they were repulsive and made me feel very uncomfortable," Harris said.

"Maybe this is a topic that might need to go further, because if these people say things like these to someone they do not know on a public platform, what are they saying and doing behind closed doors?" Harris asked, according to Us As.

Read also: Alex Morgan: the most beautiful soccer player in the world

Guild support

In social networks, the soccer player received important support from many people, including the sportsman Patrick Dangerfield and the Australian Red Star's player, Sam Kerr, who shared the photograph in a tone of solidarity.

"I saw it and I felt a little warm inside, I felt very good, obviously the AFL community moved around me, it was amazing, but it's not about me now, it's about a broader image," Kerr said, according to ABC.

The incidents mentioned here have made Tayla a champion of the fight against sexism and sexual harassment in sports, thanks to her denunciations and her firm position in social networks.

Through Twitter and Instagram, Harris lashed out against the numerous comments received, calling them sexual harassment. The photograph shows the player with her leg outstretched to kick a ball, a posture that unleashed the aforementioned macho comments.

Scott Morrison, Australia's prime minister, also intervened on the issue by labeling the men who offended Harris as "cowardly worms." "They represent a kind of hatred that lowers them as people. We should not give them anything at all, just treat them like the worms they are," ABC closed.

Trending topic in Australia for several days

The case of sexual abuse in Tayla Harris social networks was one of the most talked about topics in Australia in the days afterward, said Infobae. Channel Seven was another of the media that eliminated the post after the number of offenses received by the Australian soccer player.

"They were repellent comments of sexual content", was another of the statements of the player of the Carlton Football Club of Melbourne, who demanded that they take action in the matter before situations of this nature and so common on the Internet.

However, not everything was bad for Harris. First, it must be said that at the moment of being photographed it was a play seconds before the goal that she scored, and that several fans were moved by her case, to the point that one of them took the image of the girl to his tattoo artist and this one immortalized in his right arm.

In conclusion, Harris said she felt "sexually abused in the networks" by messages so "repulsive" of what she called "animals", reflected Extra. The 21-year-old called homophobes the users who attacked her due to the pose in which she was caught and, as we see, set a precedent at least in Australia, a country in which hardly anyone dares to make similar comments against a female athlete

LatinAmerican Post | Onofre Zambrano

Translated from "Tayla Harris: la deportista que sentó un precedente en contra del acoso sexual"