I know a guy who, after the Dobbs decision (which overturned Roe v Wade this year), said that red states that ban abortion need to be boycotted (this was not an uncommon suggestion in Liberal spaces). I asked him yesterday what he was up to and he said “oh, just watching the World Cup in Qatar.”. It’s very easy to call for boycotts of things you’d never pay for anyway. if you have no interest in going to Arkansas then you can call for a boycott of Arkansas and feel smug that you’re standing up for human rights. But it’s much harder to obey a boycott for something you like, if the World Cup we’re being held in Arkansas then I know millions of pro-choice pro-LGBT people who would put their morals aside just to watch.

I will not be watching this year’s World Cup. But with how may people I know who will be watching, people who called for boycotts just earlier this year, it’s become clear to me that those calls for boycotts were purely performative, with zero moral backing behind them.