Recent weeks and toxic masculinity
In the past few weeks, I believe I have witnessed more prevalent toxic masculinity in the Uni environment than I ever had before. Being involved in a single gender sport has been tough at Uni, especially basketball. The amount of toxic masculinity I see on the daily from people on the team, freshman through seniors, is sometimes excessive. In the locker room hearing someone say from across the room "that's so gay," or "you're so gay bro," has made me feel uncomfortable and feel it is unsafe to truly be part of this team. I don't know how to necessarily combat this, if there is any way to, because this is an unconscious thing, something that the people saying it may have been raised around, and I can't necessarily change that, but I wish I could at least stop it. Coaches won't listen, not because they don't care, but because they don't have to care. It pains me to be involved in an environment that I do not agree with, but I will continue on forward with the season. I don't believe that girls' basketball has this problem, I think it is just the guy's sports, which is problematic as it shows that there is a bigger, more problematic gender divide in Uni if one group is harboring these harmful beliefs and one does not have them at all. I hope maybe if I bring it up to someone who cares or someone who can actually do something, things may change.
I completely agree. During soccer there are many homophobic jokes that are made on the field and I don't say anything because everyone is laughing at it. I find it interesting, however, that in track these types of comments aren't very prevalent and I wonder why this is? Overall great post!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're talking about this a from witnessing it firsthand. I feel like there's a lot of secrecy around certain teams that are rumored to sometimes make inappropriate comments (for example, the boys soccer team, as mentioned by Deven. I remember one person telling a joke in front of by accident that made fun of the survey where 97 percent of women said they had experienced sexual harassment/assault in some fashion. When I called him out on it, he said it was "nothing compared to what the rest of the soccer team says." Which makes me wonder: what is the rest of the soccer team saying?? And how do we combat this normalization of intolerant comments in some of these sports spaces?
ReplyDeleteIt's been a couple years since I've been on a Uni sports team, but I remember hearing this exact kind of chatter during my time on the soccer team. I didn't think much of it at the time as in comparison to my previous school it felt mild and unnoteworthy, but as I've gotten used to the somewhat friendlier environment of Uni the talk coming from our sports teams has started to stick out like a sore thumb. Great post my good sir.
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