Men CAN make a difference —Students or Pro Sports Players
BREAKING THE MALE CODE: AFTER STEUBENVILLE, A CALL TO ACTION
Flicker slide show “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” at Tulane.
This week I had the privilege to speak on a panel organized by Eve Ensler called “Breaking the Male Code: After Steubenville, a Call to Action.” I left this meeting convinced that this is a fight we can win but not unless men themselves stand up and say “no more.” No more to the degradation of women, no more to the normalizing of violence against women and no more being a bystander when potential rape situations unfold in our presence. This doesn’t happen by accident. It takes funding curriculum, hiring more teachers and training more coaches. In other words, it takes the devotion of resources. I also left convinced that there is no neutrality in this fight. To do nothing and just say, “Well, I don’t rape. I’m not violent. Therefore I don’t have to do anything,” is to live with your head in the sand. Men have to be heard and our institutions of socialization have to be heard as well. As Scott Fujita of the Kansas City Chiefs said to me, “There are a lot of impressionable eyes on professional athletes and their respective leagues. With that comes some responsibility, as far as I’m concerned, to show what’s acceptable and what isn’t. So if there’s anything we can do to help address a sort of ‘unspoken’ sports culture that has in some respects not taken the violence against and denigration of women seriously enough, that should be explored.”
Every year, the NFL trusses up players in pink for a month to showcase their commitment to combat breast cancer. It’s a ham-handed marketing ploy that allows them to sell pink merchandise online, appeal to female fans and support a worthy cause. They erred terribly in not doing more after Kasandra Perkins was murdered. It’s time for them to do right—confronting openly that there is a problem in this country, and enlisting themselves in the struggle to change how men view women. Violence against women is endemic in our society. What’s not endemic is people looking the other way when this violence occurs around us. It’s time for sports to pick a side and take their share of accountability for the toxicity in our culture that normalizes rape.