Sophia A. McClennen examines the crisis of manhood now in State College.
Those of us who live in State College have learned to organize our lives around football. Some of us tailgate, go to games, and root for the team—living and breathing the Penn State football aura. Others, like me, post the schedule on our fridge so that we know when NOT to leave the house. For us, Penn State football is mostly about traffic, an influx of tourists, and long lines at the grocery store. Regardless of where one sits during the game, though, recent events have forced all of us to think about football culture. And they have forced us all to think about what it means to be a man—both a “good” one and “bad” one—in the midst of that culture.
Male football culture was immediately under suspicion when the community learned that a former coach, Jerry Sandusky, had been accused of multiple acts of sexual assault on boys. Not long after that shocking revelation it appeared that Sandusky had been enabled by a series of men that had turned a blind eye, or worse, while he continued to bring boys to campus facilities and molest them. What sort of culture of secrecy had made this possible? Why would Sandusky be protected over the victims? How could grown men witness Sandusky assaulting boys and not intervene? How had the allure of Penn State football played a role in helping Sandusky attract his victims? Had the power of Penn State football kept them quiet?
While these questions swirled through the minds of most of us living in Happy Valley, I had a somewhat unique experience. The day immediately following the announcement by Penn State’s Board of Trustees to remove University President Graham Spanier and football head coach Joe Paterno it was my job to teach my class on “Human Rights and World Literature.” And of all of the possible books to fall on that day, I was slated to teach The Kite Runner.
The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan and it follows the story of a young boy who fails to protect his friend, Hassan, when he witnesses him being raped by another older boy. The entire novel revolves around the implications of his failure to do the right thing, to be good. Amir, the protagonist, is morally weak, a coward, and easily intimidated by the boy rapist, Assef. Assef loves the control he has over the boys in the neighborhood. Later he grows up to be a major figure in the Taliban, which gives him even greater opportunity to rape children and punish the community. In the middle of these two models of masculinity we have Amir’s father, Baba, a man who is not ethically perfect but who tries to teach his son that a good man must be willing to stand up for his convictions, to defend the weak, and to contribute to society.
In the midst of these male role models Amir’s job is to figure out how to be his own kind of man. And it is his job to determine what it means to be a good man. As the novel unfolds Amir finally is offered a chance at redemption, a chance to choose a different action. In a twist of fate that only seems possible in novels, he returns to Afghanistan to rescue Hassan’s son who has become Assef’s latest victim.
I use the novel to teach my students about a culture that seems quite foreign to them. I teach it so that they can have a closer connection to a community that has suffered and still suffers the ongoing effects of war and loss. The novel asks whether good acts can be really considered good if they are done simply to assuage feelings of guilt. It also asks how one can recover from making a terrible moral mistake. You failed to intervene, to be courageous, to protect an innocent. But what about the next day? And the next? The novel’s motto is “There is a way to be good again.” And at the end of the novel it seems that Amir has found his answer.
I had always considered the novel to be helpful in building a bridge between my students and Afghans. I had considered the novel’s stark moral contrasts to be a bit extreme, but they also offered us opportunities to ask ourselves what we would do if faced with similar dilemmas. The Penn State scandal suddenly made the book immediately relevant as a way to think about our own crisis. This was a novel that was all about men; every major character is male. And that extreme also created an opportunity for us to think about the connections between masculinity and ethical behavior.
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The major players in the Penn State scandal are all men. Even the administrators that were not part of the football program are all men. All of the victims were boys. The only person to go directly to the police was a mother of one of the victims. These are the facts. And all gender politics aside, these facts force us to think about what this crisis will mean for the men and boys in our community.
We have the figure of Sandusky, who is accused of some of the most heinous crimes one can commit. He is charged with 40 separate accounts of child sex abuse. Then there are the men that witnessed Sandusky’s acts, Mike McQueary and Ronald Petrosky. Both of them appear to have been too intimidated by Sandusky to protect the victims and stop the acts they had seen. Then there are the university leaders, President Spanier and Coach Paterno, who allegedly heard about the acts and did not vigorously pursue justice. Paterno’s own name only serves to reinforce his role as a father figure to the university.
And we can’t forget Athletic Director, Tim Curley, or Gary Schultz, the school’s senior vice president for business and finance who had oversight over the University Police. They have both been accused of perjury in the case since it seems that they covered up knowledge of Sandusky’s acts of abuse and then lied about it. In one of those stranger-than-fiction realities our new child care center on campus is named after Schultz. Imagine the feelings of parents as they take their kids there to spend the day.
It gets worse. The Second Mile, the charity Sandusky founded in 1977 to help disadvantaged boys, seems to have served as a conduit for Sandusky’s access to victims. In the midst of news that senior leaders of the charity did not adequately respond to accusations of Sandusky’s sex abuse, Jack Raykovitz, The Second Mile’s president has resigned. Raykovitz is a practicing psychologist, which makes it very hard to explain his alleged inaction. The Second Mile served about 100,000 kids a year and, no doubt, made a positive difference for many of the boys it served, but the scandal has been so severe that it appears that it will soon close.
We have layer upon layer of men, all of whom seem to have collaborated to create a culture that allowed boys to be victimized in the worst imaginable way. The pain we are feeling here is linked, at least in part, to the fact that many of these men were community leaders, role models, idols worshipped by girls and boys alike. Some of these were the very sorts of men that parents hoped their boys might grow up to be.
All of those illusions are now shattered. What worries me, as the mom of a six-year-old boy growing up in this town, is that we will have become so disgusted by all of these men that we will lose any sense of what ethical masculinity looks like. And regardless of whether we were raising our boys on football culture or not, this scandal has had a measurable effect on all sorts of male behavior. I have heard fathers casually remark that they won’t be coaching soccer next year since they can’t handle it. I have seen the stiff and restricted body language of dads picking up their children from school. I have heard friends express regret at the work they did to raise money for The Second Mile.
This is where The Kite Runner comes in. The novel teaches us that inaction and paralysis cannot be the response to moral failure. In the face of such shame and disgrace, we cannot respond by closing down, by turning inward. They call these defining moments. But what definition will remain? The culture of suspicion, betrayal, and abusive power has seeped into our ideas of masculinity, but it can’t be allowed to define it. The images of masculinity put on display in the last weeks run from disturbing to revolting. These can’t be the only images we offer our boys. Now, more than ever, we need to find a way to teach our boys that part of growing up means learning how to be ethical. It means learning how to respond to life’s challenges with dignity and integrity and courage. And then we need to help them do it.
—Photo Josefina Photography/Flickr
Mervyn Kaufman. At the risk of being nineteenth-century patriarchal and not bowing to the culture of therapeutic wonderfulness, real men take care of business. McQueary was a wimp, a weakling. A real man would have saved that kid from further outrage and crippled Sandusky in the process. A real man might have been revolted and sickened at what he saw but he would not have been unmanned. He might have gotten drunk later on, but only after taking care of business. If we excuse people whose emotional state is so immature, we have no hope of getting the necessary business… Read more »
When news of Penn State’s sex abuse scandal first hit the media (and the Internet), my heart naturally went out to the young victims, who’d been so callously seduced and intimidated that they never (till now) came forth. But I also empathized with Mike McQueary. I’m not sure that I find him so much culpable—in that vast arena of coverup—as an ersatz victim. What he saw in that shower room must have been so shocking as to be truly paralyzing. Afterward, he might well have been in denial that what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, had actually occurred. And… Read more »
A good article but there is no need to refer to a novel— even such a very good novel. Would the professor turn her focus to the torture including rape committed at Abu Ghraib by US forces against women and children? It is clear that the torture was enabled by the highest levels of the US government and military and that the same parties later condoned and tried to cover it up. Then when it was revealed, they refused to prosecute most of those with responsibility and hid further evidence from public view. What is the professor’s opinion of those… Read more »
I’m sure you don’t mean to but titling this, “Is There a Way to Be Good Again?: How to Be a Man After the Penn State Pedophilia Scandal” makes it sound like the actions of these abusers/rapist and people who didn’t report it represent the entire make up of masculinity. For every man at Penn State that was a part of that horrible activity there’s probably about 5 men that would have spoken up. Asking if there is a way to be good again implies that case somehow tainted not only every man involved with Penn State but somehow represents… Read more »
“I’m sure you don’t mean to but titling this, “Is There a Way to Be Good Again?: How to Be a Man After the Penn State Pedophilia Scandal” makes it sound like the actions of these abusers/rapist and people who didn’t report it represent the entire make up of masculinity.”
I don’t believe that’s accidental, shes an academic not an armature. This is hate propaganda dressed up in sheeps clothing.
edit
amateur not armature
I’m sorry, but football/sport/jock culture is not inherently linked to masculinity. You want to be talking about jock culture, not masculinity. You’ve chosen one sort of man and decided that his image of the masculine is the normal, “proper” image of the masculine–and now that a number of men from that set are turning out to be crazy and depraved, you’re announcing a masculinity crisis. Maybe it’s a jock crisis. For guys like myself, it means nothing other than that the older generations have once again displayed total disregard for the young and innocent preparing to inherit the earth.
Sophia
I suggest you submit a follow up article apologizing for your bigoted views or at least in future keep them to your feminist areas, most of the people here don’t want to hear about how you conflate pedophiles with men in general, and have a blind eye for the same crimes of women.
I liked your article. But pedophillism is actually rare, and is a psychological (not a social) disorder. Therefore, I don’t think this indicts all the men in State College. The non-reporting was shameful, but it, too, was an artifact of special circumstances, not an issue that automatically indicts all men in the area.
Sohpia. Thanks for the womansplaining on how to be a man. Next time you talk about this topic can you not be so dishonest and misandrist as depicting it as a male thing? The Good Men Porject. Enough is enough, stop bringing in ill-informed, misandric feminists to lecture your readership. *94% of sexually abused youth in correctional facilities reported being abused by female staff. From: Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities, 2008-09. h tt p://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry09.pdf * Among inmates reporting staff sexual misconduct, ~ 65% reported a female aggressor. From: Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09. h tt… Read more »
I thought it was odd they chose a woman to tell us how to be a man too, especially with the route she took it. Since when are all men guilty of something a few men did? I’m going to stop here because nothing else I say will probably be this polite.
EDIT
“are not sexists.”
The male football community wasn’t under suspicion because most people are are sexists.
The problem is with political organisation that conflate child abusers that are male with men in general for their own ends.
I recommend the movie “Sleepers”(1996) to find out more about good and bad masculinity. Not very popular film, but it carries a strong moral message, and it has some connection to this scandal.
I find it interesting that you link PSU events to the Kite Runner. They have much in common. The character of “Assef” is a bully who expands his control over time. His bullying ways are even condoned as he grows where they fit into the aims of other people, the big picture. He becomes central in the society he lives in, and there is a complex mixture of fear and respect that allows his control to go on. The public and the private have very different natures. As the whole story of PSU scandal unfolds, more piece so the puzzle… Read more »