Are sexual assaults more prone to involve football players as opposed to athletes in other sports or organized groups? Now that football season is in full swing, that infamous question has surfaced once again. Every year some female on one of America's college campuses is sexually assaulted by a football player and the action becomes a blanket indictment on all football players on every level.
The underlining concern is that, when you see or think of football on the professional or collegiate level, there is a strong possibility the image will be of an African American. After all, this group makes up close to 70 percent of many of the 2001 NFL players, as reported by ESPN.com
This ongoing debate has become one-sided. What needs to be discussed are the group structure, process and situational context, rather than the individual characteristics, which many times are the impetus for many rape episodes.
It is not an environment created by individual football players engaging in this sexually deviant behavior, but a manifested reaction to the atmosphere that has been created.
These sexually violent acts are performed more in a group setting. The common denominator is not football, but participants in traditionally male dominated organizations — in many instances, on a more frequent level than the aggressively perceived football player.
This masculine behavior is perhaps most evident in sports like football, but also soccer, hockey, rugby and lacrosse. These games were designed for affirmation of masculine aggression.
Masculinity is a socially constructed set of meanings, values and practices. It is not something you grow into by virtue of being a male, but worked at and staked a claim to. Traditional masculinity encompasses numerous components such as aggression, dominance, courage, adventure and, ultimately, risk taking.
These qualities are highly valued in Western society, especially North America. In sports, males exhibit traditional masculine qualities including power, strength and violence — all the while rejecting traditionally ascribed feminine values such as expression of beauty, empathy and compassion. Players who participate in these sports often use off-field activities as an opportunity to stake a claim to their masculine status. This is most often where females come into the picture.
From the time a young male is introduced to one of these highly aggressive organizations, he begins to see females as objects. Parents with boys participating in peewee football have their daughter[s] on the sidelines as cheerleaders. As these players become young males, access to women for sexual gratification is a presumed benefit of membership. On college campuses, it becomes intensified.
Along with elite sports programs, you have affluent fraternities competing for women as well. This has elevated the game of seeing women as sexual prey to its highest level. Some are even told outright that women and sex are readily available. In most scenarios, alcohol is used.
When alcohol is used to induce sexual activity, compliance is normative, whereas use of a knife, gun or threat of bodily harm is unacceptable. However, a female who drinks too much is viewed as causing her own sexually violent act.
Sexual coercion of women, which is a felony crime, is seen as a contest, as sport or a game. The sport is played not between men and women, but between men and men. Women have become the pawns or prey in this intercollegiate rivalry. This is one powerful way a team sport or university organization can gain prestige.
Unfairly, football players have taken a bum rap for many of the sexually violent events on college campuses. The unfortunate situation is these physically imposing athletes are also the most visible. The increasing numbers of these Darwinian prodigies are African American. We need to be careful in not meshing together the image of the overly aggressive criminals with our beautiful Black field warriors.
Masculinity of a narrow and stereotypical type helps create attitudes, norms and, eventually, practices that predispose a team sport or male dominated organizational members to coerce women sexually. These acts are sometimes individual, but most often collective.
We continually want to blame a particular sport, such as football, or its participants for creating an arena for this behavior. However, by looking at this issue from an anthropological perspective, we can see our society has had an impact on the shaping of how our males view females. These elite members are only acting out what they have seen for generations in the male-female relationship.
Unless the composition, goals, structure and practices change, women will be at the mercy of men in our patriarchal society.
Carlton Hamilton is an African American studies
and Sociology senior. Reach him at
chicago14@prodigy.net.
