The Ray Rice story presents a perfect opportunity to stand up against domestic violence. Will the NFL go for it—or will they punt?
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A vital demographic that could benefit from understanding more about preventing violence against women is those involved in sports culture.
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The new video of Ray Rice pummeling his fiancé is horrendous and looks terrible for the NFL given their weak initial punishment. Thankfully, the NFL has suspended Ray Rice indefinitely and the Baltimore Ravens have released him. Now, some may argue that the NFL only is doing this to save face and that they could have known about this video all along. That may be true, but this terrible situation does provide an excellent opportunity for the NFL to take a stand against domestic violence and violence against women in general. Anyone who is familiar with sports culture (especially contact sports like football) knows how it is rife with hypermasculinity and sexism. Athletes do often benefit from tremendous privilege which can come at the expense of women as seen with the Steubenville and Maryville sexual assault cases. Therefore, a vital demographic that could benefit from understanding more about preventing violence against women is those involved in sports culture. The NFL can and should make this happen.
Toughening up on domestic violence offenses is a good first step, but the NFL can do so much more with its resources. The NFL has a campaign promoting breast cancer awareness, so why don’t they create a campaign which speaks out against domestic violence and all violence against women? It could be as simple as having some of its stars make a video like the White House did with actors in this video. That would be a great way to show the NFL is serious about this issue as I’m sure many good players would be happy to show their support. Such a campaign can focus on a few key messages: 1) protecting loved ones; 2) confronting peers; and 3) enthusiastic consent.
In the campaign, the NFL players could ask participants to imagine a scenario where their loved one is hurt and someone is standing by but doesn’t intervene. In my opinion, the first step is to get individuals to understand that violence is a problem that affects everyone, and everyone plays a part in preventing future occurrences. Obviously this is tricky because we don’t want to perpetuate the ‘damsel in distress’ trope, but we need to begin the conversation.
Once the conversation begins, we can start to confront peers and not be a passive bystander. Something I have learned from great gender violence prevention activists like Jackson Katz is that men need to speak out about sexual violence, which I write about here. When other men remain silent, they tacitly approve abusive behavior of their peers. If the perpetrator is never met with any resistance from his peers, it makes total sense that he would continue the abusive behavior.
Finally, while we are talking about violence against women, the NFL could bring up preventing sexual assault and the importance of enthusiastic consent. Consent is when all partners say yes to each activity and they are in a position to make that decision (i.e. they are of age and not intoxicated). The message should be clear that if women do not consent or cannot consent, it’s assault.
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The assault of Janay Palmer Rice is terrible, and it provides an opportunity for the NFL to do the make a real difference.
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The assault of Janay Palmer Rice is terrible, and it provides an opportunity for the NFL to do the make a real difference. They can take a strong stand in preventing violence against women not only in their league but also around the world. The NFL has millions of fans, and many look up to their star players. Some of these players have already spoken out against domestic violence. If the NFL takes a stand on preventing violence against women through a campaign or donating to a violence prevention organization, it could create a domino effect which could reduce some of the harmful aspects of sports culture. If sexual violence and violence against women is ever to be eradicated, we as a society will have to collectively take a stand against it. The NFL and other influential sports organizations can and should help make that happen.
Photo—Bradley Gordon/Flickr