October 21, 2014
Op-Ed: Putting the “Unity” in “Community” - Sports Culture, Debate Culture, and Gender
By Christian Chessman
Note: The relationship between gender, debater culture, and debate is far too complicated to be fully addressed in a single article. This article is only the first in a series of posts to be published by Champion Briefs.
The presence of gender subordination in the lives of debaters, coaches, and alumni cannot be understated. Female debaters are subject to unwanted, uncomfortable sexual advances and even sexual assault[1]. Debaters throw around the term “rape” as slang for beating another team (“we raped them”) when one in three women suffer sexual assault in the United States. Intersex[2], trans*[3] or genderqueer[4] debaters still face basic participation barriers; I cannot find a single tournament description that notes the availability of unisex bathrooms or other necessary amenities. Anecdotal evidence suggests debate participation and coaching is sex imbalanced – there are overwhelmingly more male debaters and coaches than the percentage of men in the population – though we cannot confirm this empirically without the data that the NSDA has started collecting from debaters.
The debate community writ large is able to ignore gendered issues in part because it institutionally does not discuss them. The first Public Forum Debate topic to discuss gender in the history of the event occurred in 2014, over a full decade after the event was founded, as the 110th topic in Public Forum Debate.
In that same time period, the Public Forum Debate community has discussed international relations twenty six times, legal policy or democratic principles twenty two times, economic policy seventeen times, education policy nine times, healthcare six times, immigration six times, and alternative energy five times[5]. Nor is the absence of gender resolutions the result of an absence of gender topics; debaters could easily discuss ending campus sexual assault, the Violence Against Women Act, sex trafficking, sex-based pay disparities, the extent of reproductive rights, prostitution regulations, LGBT adoption policy, insurance coverage of birth control, and media representation of the female body. Even on resolutions where gender is a related issue – though not the core of the topic – gender is under-discussed. The choice not to discuss gender is precisely that – a choice[6].
I choose to discuss this problem now, on this topic, because of the powerful intersection between sports, gender subordination, and sexualized violence against women.
Steubenville. Notre Dame. Penn State. One cannot talk about American football in 2013 without talking about sexual violence. The past few years have inextricably, and horrifyingly, linked male aggression on the field with male aggression off it. […] We can no longer be naïve enough to think that worshiping at the altar of a sport that thrives on male aggression, physical domination over others, winning regardless of cost, and the complete absence of the feminine, has no impact on how we actually treat men and women day-to-day.[7]
Though this article is correct in many ways[8], it is incorrect in an important one: the nexus between sexual violence and sports is far from recent. A 1997 article published in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues identifies the same problem:
Violence committed against women by professional football players recently has attracted considerable public attention and concern. In an attempt to illuminate various dimensions of the problem, this form of aggression is examined in the context of gender and the nature of football, with particular attention to physicality and hypermasculinity. Moreover, this article offers evidence suggesting that professional football players in prestigious roles as scorers (i.e., running backs, receivers) are overrepresented in incidents of violence committed against women (i.e., domestic violence, sexual assault) as compared to players at other positions. The interpretation of these findings rests on the importance of several sociological and psychological considerations including positional status, prestige, narcissism, and a sense of entitlement.
In that sense, it is impossible to tell the history of professional sports organizations in the United States without discussing gender. In fact, scholars with an interest in combating gender subordination have painstakingly documented the historical intersection of “sports culture” generally and sexualized violence[9]. These scholars identify sports culture as a permissive condition that diminishes concern for victims of sexual violence (male or female) while attempting to defend those who commit it[10].
Sport culture also traditionally reinforces historical gender roles[11] through the hierarchy between the association of legitimacy between male-dominated sports and female-dominated sports (think NBA vs WNBA. Its worth noting that the aforementioned naming convention is itself indicative of a gendered hierarchy, because it assumes basketball needs an additional adjective when played by women – it need not be designated a “Men’s National Basketball Association” because the sport is “naturally” male).
Nor is the inclusion of women into sports events the equivalent of an end to gender subordination in sports; in part because such inclusion is typically token inclusion[12], and in part because masculinity[13] (whether exercised by men or women) remains the dominant and structuring norm of the events and culture.
These issues should matter to debaters both normatively and strategically. I include the latter consideration not because the former is insufficient to sustain the claim, but rather to incentivize debaters to pay attention to gender by sweetening the deal with debate victory. In other words, debaters should pay attention to gender (and gender scholarship) on moral grounds, but receive the auxiliary benefit of winning debate rounds for doing so[14]. In doing so, male debaters may find increasingly visible the sex inequality that plagues female competitors[15], and may learn how to take an active role in eliminating it.
Strategic Interest in Gender
Debaters who have researched the September/October 2014 topic for any amount of time have encountered social benefits as the bread-and-butter arguments for the affirmative. These benefits go by various names; “civic pride”, “community unity”, “psychic income”, and noneconomic “community development”. The common thread in each iteration of this argument is that professional sports organizations offer a positive cultural and social contribution to local communities.
The mainstream negative literature has taken two primary approaches to this style of argument: first, fully admitting the argument, and attempting to outweigh it (if not in those terms, then in similar concept) with potential harms, such as economic loss. Second, scholars assert that the level of happiness created is insufficient to justify the level of expenditure[16].
Notably, neither approach denies the essential thesis of the affirmative argument – that sports create a unifying or enjoyable cultural environment – and instead opt to ignore or merely diminish it. These arguments are fundamentally defensive in nature[17], and gain the negative little traction in effectively refuting the affirmative assertion that “sports culture good”.
Enter feminist literature.
I will not rehash the numerous feminist criticisms of sport culture – many of which are outlined in the first part of this article – and instead focus on the strategic deployment of feminist criticisms of sports culture. These criticisms are “offense” against “sports culture good” by directly identifying conceptual and concrete harms that result from the incorporation of sports into a local culture. Remember: affirmative social advantages are specifically predicated on changing the social culture of a particular local community. For example, if a community is otherwise unified, then the affirmative does not offer a unique benefit by redundantly unifying it a second time. Affirmatives who claim social advantages must assert that they offer unique change – which magnifies the link to the feminist cultural critique[18]. Put in other words, the social unity built by sports unify communities, they unify them under a bad banner. That “unity” comes at a high cost whose toll is measured in lives claimed by sexual violence and gender subordination. Better to be a less “unified” community than to be a unified, sexist community.
Conclusion
Debate changed who I am. It gave me confidence in public speaking, taught me critical reasoning skills that serve me to this day in law school, and showed me a community that I love deeply. My experience with debate is not exceptional or unusual: it is true of most debaters. Debaters often discuss how debate is as much a lifestyle as an event. Debate irrevocably continues to shape and change the identities of its participants long after their last competition ends. Whether that change is positive or negative is a question the collective debate community has the opportunity to answer.
Will our activity help debaters who are marginalized because of their identities and experiences? Will our community re-traumatize someone when a careless debater casually exclaims “haha, we raped them?” Will we be a community that embraces our vulnerable members? Or will we what makes them vulnerable?
The choice is ours.
[1] Whitman’s college debate program was shut down because of pervasive sexual harassment issues. See http://whitmanpioneer.com/news/2013/05/20/debate-culture-under-scrutiny/
[2] A biological chromosomal arrangement that is neither male (XY) nor female (XX), producing genitals that are neither penises nor vaginas.
[3] An individual who identifies as a sex other than the one assigned to them at birth. The use of the asterisk signifies respect for the debate over whether the term is properly “trans-gendered” or “trans-sexual”. The debate implicates the nature of trans* identity, and is beyond the scope of this article to address. Interested debaters should see http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v101/n1/full/fr201153a.html
[4] Individuals who identify as a mix of – or outside of – traditional gender identities.
[5] I have independently researched the split of Public Forum topics and collected the data into this representation.
[6] I encourage debaters to submit gender related topics to the NSDA here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YPBhJqrYKHSsWUsJbkrKamiYZ5knp-dZ_44xj_X1oOw/viewform
[7] Newsome, Jennifer. “American Football Culture and Sexual Violence”. The Huffington Post. February 12, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-siebel-newsom/american-football-culture_b_2665074.html
[8] I take time to note and laud Newsom’s identification and criticism of sexual violence against men. A traditional objection to feminist thought is that it ignores male suffering. The opposite is true: the same masculine cultural taboos that facilitate sexual violence against women also prevent men from seeking help for victimization from sexual violence for fear of being perceived as “weak” or “tainted”. Debaters interested in the solace feminism offers to male victims of violence should read Aaron Belkin’s case study analysis of male military rape at the U.S. Naval Academy. See also http://relationsinternational.com/against-feminisms/
[9] The language, timing, and conduct of sports has grown increasingly intertwined with warfare. See Stossel, Scott. “Sports: War Games”. The American Prospect. October 26, 2001. http://prospect.org/article/sports-war-games
[10] The serial rapes conducted by Jerry Sandusky at Penn State are an illustrative example. Sandusky and his defense team (which ultimately did not prevail at trial) concentrated their defense on the assertion that almost a dozen ten-year-old boys lied – in concert and detail – about being raped for “attention” and “prestige”. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/the-sandusky-rape-verdict.html.
[11] Messner, Michael. “Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism”. Sociology of Sport Journal. 2011. Iss. 28. pp115-170. http://www.northeastern.edu/sportinsociety/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GenderIdeologies.pdf
[12] The debate over token and authentic inclusion is complicated, and relies heavily on the context and nature of the inclusion of women, not merely the number of women included. Debaters who have seen the movie G.I. Jane have a solid example of token inclusion.
[13] American political dialogue often incorrectly conflates “masculine” and “feminine” (traits, behaviors, and symbolic associations) with “male” and “female” (personal biological and social identities). Men can exhibit traits associated with femininity (such as weakness, emotionality, and vulnerability) while women can exhibit traits associated with masculinity (such as aggression, violence, and dominance). Neither “Male” and “masculine” nor “female” and “feminine” map perfectly onto each other. Jack (previously Judith) Halberstam discusses “female masculinity” in depth in a book by the same title.
[14] My academic background focuses on poststructural feminist approaches to international relations theory generally and conflict specifically. Knowledge of that feminist literature base has assisted me in coaching debaters with unique though accessible arguments regarding the process of conflict escalation. Given that the most prominent topic category is international relations and conflict – six of which were NSDA topics – debaters are well-suited competitively to become literate in feminist thought.
[15] Female debaters are likely well-familiar with the “bitch/mouse” double standard. Too much confidence and judges dismiss you as a bitch. Too little confidence and judges dismiss you as irrelevant or “mousey”. Male debaters are regularly lauded for levels of loudness and aggression that are round-enders for female debaters. Similar concerns which deserve to be noted regard inappropriate commentary on the attire of female debater (the inevitable debate over pantsuits, skirtsuits, and skirt length) and the absence of gender-neutral restroom accommodations.
[16] Such literature typically includes research methods like the “contingent valuation method”, which measures public support for a good against its willingness to pay for that good. An example of a study using the contingent valuation method to conclude negative is available here. http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Whitehead_John_2000_Value_of_Public_Goods.pdf
[17] “Offense” and “defense” are debate terms of art. Bill Batterman, succinctly explains their meaning: “Put most simply, offensive arguments are those that provide a reason to vote for you while defensive arguments are those that provide a reason not to vote against you. Easy enough.” Read more here: http://the3nr.com/2009/05/08/the-meaning-of-offensedefense-theres-only-a-risk/
[18] Clever affirmatives will correctly assert that sexism already pervades American society, thus they are cumulative to pre-existing sexism. Negatives should combat this argument by noting the double bind the affirmative has placed itself in – it must assert that it changes culture to gain an advantage, but also asserts that its change does not matter when combating the negative’s argument. If the negative wins that sports culture is irrevocably gendered, then any new change brought by sports culture is a new contribution to gender subordination.
