So, in case no one has heard, it’s Superbowl Sunday. The TV is taken over, the game is just a little too long, Black Eyed Peas will be assaulting some ears, but at least the food is good. This year has an extra flavor of social justice to it though. Many people have come out against the Steelers because of Ben Roethlisberger and will be cheering for the Packers. Some people haven’t forgotten Richard Seigler’s attempt at sex trafficking a woman. I can’t say I blame them, since Roethlisberger beat rape charges what, like 3 times….and one of the victims was harassed out of pressing charges? Many Facebook friends are doing it, and even my TV boyfriend George Stroumboulopoulos got in on the action, citing that it’s the same reason that he doesn’t cheer for Kobe.
Problem with that. If everyone is going to cheer for a team on principle tonight, you’re better off cheering for the refs.
Everyone seems to forget about Mark Chmura, a staunch critic of statutory rape laws no less, sleeping with his 17 year old babysitter at her after-prom party. Making a big stink that it was totally consensual, of course he got an acquittal. That seemed to have slipped everyone’s mind. Much like Steigler he no longer plays for the team and I bet anyone would love to know something current.
Not only will you learn of this scandal that was nicely swept under the rug, but you’ll see the sports player’s favorite mantra…”it was consensual”. It’s also quite unnerving to see how common this is in the sport world. I’ve always been pretty ambivalent towards football, but I think the way the NFL and their players handle sexual assault victims is enough to turn me off forever. Thankfully I always hated basketball, but I will be SO brokenhearted if the teams playing for the Stanley Cup have the same problems.
The greater narrative that really pisses me off? These men are “upstanding”, a picture of the American Dream, and of course they get a lot of women so they TOTES don’t need to rape AMIRITE HIGH FIVE??!! In the end, those victims will be the sluts, they will have asked for it, and if outed will be harassed and threatened by fans. I would write a song about rape culture, but I feel like the world is not ready to listen.
I, for one, will be hunkering down with some rice cooked in cream of mushroom soup and going through my PVR to watch some recordings. I’m pretty sure I have some figure skating galas and really bad movies to go through. As this is going on, I will pray that I’ll never have to write the name Roethlisberger again. It’s not only annoying to write, but it pisses me off to think that he gets to have the time of his life after he ruined so many.
In the meantime, Plaxico Burress went to Rikers Island for shooting his own fool self in the leg and Michael Vick got two years in federal prison for killing dogs.
But rape some women and no charges will be filed PLUS Roger Goodell still totally let you play.
I said on my Facebook page that if there’s any justice, Big Ben will go out like Joe Theismann tonight. Snappo!
Yeah, I went there. Fuck him.
MA, don’t get your hopes up for hockey players. It’s the same in every sport-players learn that they can get away with anything as long as they produce (and sometimes even if they don’t), and they learn that in high school or earlier.
I’ve been banging on this Rothlisberger business all season, and there are some die-hard fans who engage in that garbage reasoning you detail above. And besides, he said he’s sorry, right? So God forgives him, and so should we.
Bullshit.
In my religion, Judaism, God forgives sins against God, but only the person you harm can forgive you of sins you commit against another person. Moreover, true repentance means doing that, and, when put in the same situation again, not acting in the same way. Let’s see, Ben is on #4 now, and we haven’t gotten to the off-season yet. I’ll believe he’s sorry when I see him actually apologize publicly to his victim(s) and learn how to conduct himself with some decency and respect to women.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Scott Madin and Amina Mithri, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Superbowl Sunday: Team Rapist + Wannabe Pimp vs. Team Other Rapist + Pedophile http://bit.ly/eGgIEc [...]
My husband wanted to watch Superbowl, and I made the mistake of asking him what team the rapist was on. He got mad! “I don’t know!! Why don’t you Google it!!” I guess I made it worse when I said, “Oh, right, like I’ll be able to figure it out by Googling “NFL and rapist” – too many results.” Well, he threw a fit and turned off the game. Gee, didn’t think I’d strike a nerve with that! Really creeps me out. What’s he so pissed off at? If pro athletes doing bad things upset him, not even golf is immune anymore! There used to be a website showing athletes and their crimes – truly horrifying.
He’s still in the other room pouting. At least I don’t have to listen to the damn game.
@Becky – Don’t mean to troll but this drives me crazy – Michael Vick rightly went to jail for torturing dogs. The fact that other men should have been convicted and sentenced to jail for other crimes does not mean he should not have.
@veggiewood: never said Vick shouldn’t have gone to jail. Was just pointing out that torturing dogs gets you prosecuted but torturing women, not so much.
While I readily admit that pretty much any congregation of men will likely not only harbor but actually encourage sexual assault (team building, good fun, boys will be boys, etc), I do feel that football is a special case. It’s special in its place in the American mythology. It’s revered, the players are put on a pedestal, there is so, so, so much money involved, that it shields the players from consequences for their crimes. Good football players from all over the country have rarely been denied anything they want, because the promise of winning games or getting money has been to great for most people to tell them “no.” I know that at big football schools, the “important” athletes are graded on a different curve than non-athlete students, for example. And a look at the average American high school will see how the star football players don’t face consequences for their less than exemplary behavior.
And this is true, to a certain extent, for all (male) athletes. And in my experience, the opposite is true for female athletes, who usually have more pressure on them to get good grades and behave perfectly, at least in high schools. Girls’ teams still have to fight for recognition, access to the equipment, and funding in a way that boys’ teams don’t. (I say this as a former tri-varsity athlete.)
But it’s especially true for the exceptional players, i.e. the players who go on to play sports professionally. And it’s especially true for sports like football, which like I said are the repositories of a lot of emotion and money. I think that basketball is similar in the reverence it gets (though not in my hometown).
Of course, in places like Boston the baseball players are going to be treated with especial allowances. But football (I think, anyway) is unique in that all over the whole damn country the NFL players are treated like superheroes.
My point is that I really feel like hockey is different from football in that football culture engenders this feeling of “I can do whatever the fuck I want and nobody will ever make me responsible for my actions, except on the field” in a way that hockey culture just does not have. Simply because hockey isn’t respected the way football is respected. Even though places where hockey is important (like my high school) are as reverential to its players as to any football player, it’s just not as widespread a sport, especially at a school-level. Most high schools have football teams, and even in the northeast high school hockey teams are rare. They’re more often leagues outside of school, and that creates just a different way of dealing with its players. And country-wide, hockey is just not a big deal the way football is.
BUT I could just be totally delusional because the only mainstream sport I even half-enjoy watching is hockey.
Great article. Over here in Australia hardly a few months goes by without another footballer accused of rape. Of course, the newspapers love to run the angle of a “sex scandal” and toe the line that the women were complicit, responsible, consenting, or else sexual aggressors looking to make a buck from some poor innocent guy. Makes me sick every time. I’m not sure if I feel better or worse knowing that the USA teams are similarly mired in the mud… I think, worse.
Thea, it’s male privilege in a condensed version, and it’s true everywhere.
@BeckySharper – actually he DIDN’T go to jail for torturing and killing many dogs. He went to jail on the gambling charges. That’s also what a lot of the sports commentators were worried about at the time – his gambling charges.
That’s right, gambling is bad, but not death and torture.
I think rape culture goes hand in hand with child abuse and animal abuse in our society. All involve a lack of empathy and a justification of unwarranted violence.
The fact that Vick and other dogfighters use a “rape rack” to allow their female dogs to be held in place while having unwanted mounting by male dogs…which is a version of what the dairy industry does, btw, they also call them rape racks and they keep the traumatized female cow in place while raped aka artificially inseminated against her will (I know a dairy cow who was saved from slaughter and to this day she is so traumatized by the rape racks she can’t be kept still to vaccinate or approached from behind)…well let’s just say I think there’s more in common to various kinds of abuses than our society is ever willing to cop to let alone change. Because when you have a lack of empathy across the board, the ends always justify the means. So we shouldn’t do the Oppression Olympics, even accidentally, on one group to show that another is oppressed. Females are oppressed, nonhuman animals (female and male) are oppressed, there’s racism and classism and homophobia and transphobia and so on and so forth. If we use a language of “this cause is more important than that” cause it’s divide and conquer, and we all lose.
Here’s more on dairy cows and rape racks:
http://www.peacefulprairie.org/outreach/DairyCow.pdf
http://www.humanemyth.org/happycows.htm
Here’s more on rape racks in dogfighting:
http://yesbiscuit.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-is-rape-rack.html
The Best Friends Sanctuary “DogTown” Season 2 special, “Saving the Michael Vick Dogs”, shows one and believe me, it’s called a rape rack for a very straightforward reason.
aka the charges were more about the dogfighting/gambling element than the damage to the dogs themselves.
I got into an argument with a colleague about how the football players (and most male athletes) constantly have rape accusations. He was insisting that it’s because the men are in the spotlight and have lot’s of money so lot’s of women target them to try to make a buck. I told him about how the false reports of rape are statistically lower than almost all other crimes being falsely reported and he said that he’d want to see that statistic for athletes. Right. Because it will be very clear how many women were actually raped by the court decisions made. I think that the male athlete, specifically at that level of fame and fortune, feels entitled and is power-hungry. They think they can take what they want and treat women however they want and get away with it. Unfortunately, society only seems to support their mentality.
@Feminizzle
Exactly. Plus, esp. in football, it’s a culture of being the biggest toughest mofo possible. Steroids are common use in professional and even school sport teams, and rage is considered being “pumped up to win” (aka kill) more than it is considered to be inappropriate.
As for that dudebro’s argument you mention, you can always snap back with “I’d like to know how an athlete getting gobs of money, tons of fans, fame and a clean slate after every controversy as long as they win one for the team, affects their likelihood to think they’re owed everything they want and can get away with murder.”
What bothers me the most is some of the reactions I’ve seen from otherwise reasonable people to even the slightest implication that Roethlisberger was in the wrong. I was watching the game with two others (a guy about my age and an older woman) when the commentators made some sort of softball comment about Roethlisberger’s “sexual misconduct.” Cue immediate outrage from both of them (“Why do they have to bring that up?” “Whyyy couldn’t they give him this one night?”). Another guy came back from a fridge run and they immediately regaled him with tales of the mean mean commentators bringing up his “legal troubles” (thus softballing it even more than the commentators). These people weren’t even fans; their favorite team was out of the running and they were rooting for Green Bay. I had mentioned earlier that I would be rooting against Pittsburg specifically because of his “legal troubles” but this didn’t seem to cross their minds.
@Thea – I used to regularly watch games and support a team in the NRL. With the regular “sex scandals” and no heart felt apologies, or convictions I stopped watching. In good conscience I have difficulties supporting (with time, money or energy) a game where some players seem to have backward attitudes towards women.
So, I’m selective in what sport I watch, and increasingly, with a couple more options for watching sport on TV, I watch professional sport played by women (football, surfing, cricket, etc). That way my passions are more about supporting a team rather than getting angry over another “sex scandal”.
WTF was up with all the military propaganda during the show/game? It was just SO over the top. Maybe I usually tune it out/miss it by chatting or whatever, but yesterday’s extravaganza of bowing and scraping to the military/political industrial complex was so much more intense than any I can recall. I heard something recently about how football is the best sport to indoctrinate men into the military and war and it was obvious that that was the intent yesterday. WTF was that long ass video with the disgraced Colin Powell and a bunch of people wearing matching t-shirts or job uniforms or team gear? There were cheesy shots of the Constitution and other founding documents. I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, so many people were shouting at the TV (myself included) “It’s so LONG!” “Why doesn’t it STOP?” “Make it GO AWAY!” “Aren’t they done yet?” “This is still on?” and so forth. Really, it was just putrid.
@gogobooty: it was on Fox.
here’s a good link to what I was talking about:
http://loveallbeings.org/blog/ending-rape-culture-is-a-vegan-issue