The fact that the Ray Rice story is being constantly jammed into my eyeballs and ears this week by Sportscenter, newspapers, and even football halftime shows makes it clear that we, that is to say the majority of the American sports watching/broadcasting world, deplore what Ray Rice has done. I don't feel the need to discuss his brutal beating of his then fiancé or even the shortcomings of the NFL or the Baltimore ravens in their response to this issue, mainly because it seems that most everyone agrees that all aspects of this horrific event and it's subsequent mishandling are unthinkably cruel and unjust, and many people are already talking about this far more eloquently than I can. Instead I want to talk about the more mundane and local instances of equally deplorable circumstances that I have come into contact with this week.
This sort of discussion of domestic abuse and mistreatment of women came up first this week outside of the Ray Rice story through a short story which I read for a class I am taking on Anton Chekhov. In his story "Peasant Women," Chekhov discusses the hypocritical and sadistic treatment of women in peasant society in late 1800's Russia. The professor of the class, which is taught in the Russian department, brought the story into modern times by emphasizing the prevalence of these selfsame issues in today's Russia; issues that are spurred on by Russia's rampant abuse of alcohol and by the patriarchal society that still exists there today. As the professor said that, he paused, and then said "I guess if any of you follow sports you know that these issues also exist here in America."
This relationship between alcohol, some weird patriarchal society, and cruelty towards women stuck with me as I left the class, but like many such things, it faded as I entered the weekend. However, all those thoughts came rushing back to me late at night on Saturday, as I walked home with a friend. She was complaining to me of her experience at the party we had been at, saying that nothing like what had happened that night would have happened while her (now graduated) boyfriend was on campus. Men at the party had grabbed her, grinded towards her on the dance floor, and generally done all sorts of "little" things that contribute to making someone incredibly uncomfortable in a place where they should be having fun amongst friends. She wasn't saying that her boyfriend had to fight to protect her body while he had been at those sort of parties, but rather that just the simple fact that he was on campus (NOT EVEN AT THE PARTY!!!) had prevented men from acting this way. This was something that shocked me, because it was something that as a man I would never have been able to witness for myself. Moreover, the same elements of alcohol and a weird and unjust patriarchal dynamic that I had seen in a Chekhov short story were popping up shockingly at a party that I had been at. There can be no doubt that this story, and another I heard from a different friend where a man she was kissing took her hand as she was trying to leave and placed it on his underwear covered (thankfully, although she didn't know how or when he had taken his pants off) crotch, were heavily influenced by alcohol; but there is also a dangerous and disturbing sense of entitlement that goes right along with it.
I am not writing this to tell my fellow men to try to protect women's bodies from attacks, because I hope that it is generally accepted that that is the right thing to do. Instead, I want to attempt to address this issue by reminding men of the terrifying power dynamic that exists: the one that allows the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL to ignore and suppress overwhelming evidence that Ray Rice committed a terrible attack, the one that hasn't changed since pre-1900's Russia, and the ones that makes presumably otherwise good people do awful things with only alcohol and lack of male ownership as the catalyst.
The Sandwich That I Have To Include In This Post Because Of The Blog Title: This pairs with a Ham and Cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomato, mustard, and mayo that turns into ash as soon as you take a bite. This is because it is a wholesome and all-American sandwich that inevitably turns awful.
No comments:
Post a Comment