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The photo of AFLW player Tayla Harris kicking a goal from the 40-metre line is now famous.
It attracted a public reaction of awe and celebration, but also trolling and sexual abuse, as Harris herself termed some of the online commentary.
"It was repulsive and it made me uncomfortable," she told RSN Radio.
Author Sam George-Allen has spent years tracing historical examples of fear and suspicion of women's power, and says that fear is still evident today.
"I think for a lot of men of a particular attitude when it comes to sport, they seem to feel territorial about it," she says.
George-Allen says there's a "gate-keeping" impulse behind some of the negative commentary — and a belief that women don't belong in a traditionally male institution.
"That kind of response that's either sexualising or putting down, that's an attempt to put someone in their place — that place being not in AFL."
And she says this kind of response to female power stretches back to the middle ages.
George-Allen draws a line between historical responses to witchcraft, both real and imagined, and responses, centuries later, to the photo of Harris taking a kick.
"The term 'witch' has this element of fear to it and an element of power, and the suggestion that [female] power is aberrant or wrong somehow," she says.
She says that drove people in the middle ages to "scapegoat" thousands of women, and blame them "for things like crop failure and children dying".
George-Allen, the author of Witches: What Women Do Together, says the word witch still represents an "amalgam of all things terrifying about the feminine".
For example, the term appeared prominently, and controversially, at a 2011 anti-carbon tax rally in Canberra.
Tony Abbott and other then-Opposition members addressed protesters beside a placard prominently proclaiming, 'Ditch the witch' — a reference to then-prime minister Julia Gillard.
George-Allen says it was an example of the denigration of female power.
"People have this response when they go, 'Oh, it's wrong. It feels wrong to have a woman in power or demonstrating power in whatever way'," she says.
"I think you see it in these misogynistic reactions to images like the [Harris] one, or to women in power like Julia Gillard."
Ms Gillard later told the ABC's Sarah Ferguson that "sexism is no better than racism", and it should have been "a career-ending moment for Tony Abbott".
Another example of "people really being shaken by women's power", George-Allen says, can be found in the #MeToo movement.
"While the men being accused of misconduct obviously had the most to fear, there was so much hysterical hand-wringing about people no longer being able to engage in a bit of harmless flirting," she says.
"I think it really demonstrated how easily unnerved people are by the power of women coming together."
A 'suspicion of power'
The suspicion of female power, says George-Allen, relates in part to a fear of having one's own power challenged, but also to issues of identity.
For many people, she says, "their gender is foremost in their identity".
"A lot of how they feel about themselves and about how they relate themselves to the rest of the world is to do with their gender," she says.
"And so if something appears in their environment that challenges that aspect of their gender, in this case, just a woman doing something that they reckon is reserved for men, that necessarily challenges that aspect of their identity and that can be a really discomforting feeling."
George-Allen says it's important that people "interrogate" their own responses to demonstrations of women in power.
"It's not a thing that happens in a vacuum," she says.
"It happens because culture suggests that women are only suitable to certain roles and positions in society."
A silver lining
George-Allen says conversation around the Harris image has included "absurd" and "horrible" contributions — but she believes a far greater number of responses have been positive.
She says those online commenters "who are getting their jocks in a knot" about an image of a strong woman kicking a football are a "vocal minority".
Furthermore, she believes their trolling has, paradoxically, served a positive purpose.
"If there hadn't been that immediate and vocal backlash to the original terrible comments, then that photo probably wouldn't have gotten much traction," she says.
"I tend to think that the positives of having these kinds of debates in public outweigh the negatives."
Topics: australian-football-league, women, feminism, community-and-society, history, social-media, sport, australia, vic, melbourne-3000