The strangelings have all taken to playing netball. On Saturdays mornings we drag ourselves out of bed, early, and head off to stand in the cold, watching our daughters run up and down the court, with varying degrees of success. As yet, none of them appear to be gifted sports players, ‘though a couple of them have a fair amount of determination to prevail against the odds (that is, taller players).
As all the similarly cold and becoated, bescarfed, behatted and bothered parents met up on the first day of the season, we exchanged the usual greetings, and some offered platitudes about why we were doing this silly thing. I rather like the parents of the other players in my girls’ netball teams, but the reasons they gave have been bothering me. Reasons such as:
- It gives them physical skills.
- They learn to be part of a team.
- They learn to back each other up.
And so on.
Physical skills – well, whatever. There are myriad ways to acquire those. It’s the lessons of conformity that worry me. You must learn to fit in, to do what the team is doing, to sublimate your own ideals to the team’s ideals.
I find that message worrying. Conform CONFORM CONFORM!
Even worse, you must conform in the pursuit of dominating another group of people. Competitive sports are a zero sum game. Your team wins, and the other teams loses. The object is to beat other people, to force them into acknowledging that you are bigger better faster stronger, in the worst case, to force them into submission. Isn’t that just lovely?
So conform and dominate. My team contra mundi, and not just contra mundi, but damn well on top of the world, posing as the best, and demanding that everyone else be subservient.
Given that ethic in team sports, it’s not hard to see why rugby league players have treated women in horrible fashion, using and abusing them, to the extent of large groups of men taking turns to rape vulnerable women. This issue has been covered all all through the media for the last week or so, but I have not been able to summon the will to write about it myself. The Dawn Chorus has a good summary of the 4 Corners program, the Radical Radish analyses some of the issues, there are extensive discussions at Hoyden about Town and Blue Milk, and Stef debunks common rape myths. The whole thing makes me feel ill, and I feel even worse because none of the men involved seem to be willing to take responsibility for their actions. Any remorse and regret they feel is for their partners, and for letting their team down, and they seem to have not one jot of sympathy for the young woman they lined up to rape.
I can see why it has happened, and I can see that the men have refused to take responsibility. I think that the only solution then is to nullify the toxic mix of conform and dominate, and get rid of team sports altogether. If sportsmen will not take responsibility for their own behaviour, if they will not treat women as people instead of handy objects to be raped, if they will not at least stand up and admit what they have done, then they need to be removed from the environment that allows them to do this. And that environment is competitive team sports.
Sadly, I suspect that rugby league is not the only sport where women are raped by sports teams, and I suspect that sports teams are not the only groups of men who in some backslapping, social bonding, dominating and conforming way will treat women as mere objects to be raped. I know we need to change the whole damned culture. That’s a huge job. But perhaps the place to start is with sports, because we have incontrovertible evidence that men in competitive sports teams rape women. Not all men, but seemingly far too many of them.
In some ways, I don’t want to give up on team sports. Many years ago, I happened to be on the same flight across the Tasman as the Australian netball team. The plane seemed to be full of gloriously fit confident and happy young women. They were a joy to behold, and I’ve no doubt that their success in their sport was a large part of their confidence. I’ve seen groups of people who love getting together in the weekends to kick a ball around, and doing that as part of a social game of netball or cricket or soccer works well. And perhaps that’s the answer. Maybe it’s not so much the team sports, ‘though there’s still that worrying message of conformity, as the valorisation of top sports teams. Perhaps simply getting rid of the gladiatorial show aspect of big sports leagues would do, leaving in place the small scale social leagues, the neighbourhood sportsgrounds and games, the games that are part of the web of everyday life, instead of the huge spectacles served up for entertainment in lieu of lions and christians.
And my own daughters are playing team sports. As I’ve said before, even though Mr Strange Land and I are happy to be non-conformists, to go our own not-so-sweet way, do what we like and to hell with what the neighbours think, either virtual or IRL, that’s a big thing to ask of children. So I won’t be pulling them out of their netball teams, nor making it difficult for them to play.
In the meantime, I’m doing my best to avoid purchasing products from the sponsors of rugby league teams. There’s very little else I can do – I have long since removed my eyes from TV screens showing sports. My personal consumer boycott will be just a small protest, and one that won’t be noticed much, but it’s all I can do.
Click here if you want to know who sponsors the Cronulla team.
Update: Helen has also written about the strange contortionist excuse-making going on in rugby league: B-I-N-G-O. The last paragraph of her post covers some of the ideas I was trying to get to.
But I notice these arguments aren’t used so much for men in other settings. We don’t, for instance, see high-risk-taking rock climbers, parachutists, ocean yachtsmen and sea kayakers regularly fronting up to the cameras pretending to apologise for their latest “gang bang” or euphemism du jour.
Go and read the whole post.
24 responses so far ↓
Personal Failure // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 12:47 am |
My personal consumer boycott will be just a small protest, and one that won’t be noticed much, but it’s all I can do.
At least you aren’t giving them money. And, if enough people engage in small protests, it becomes a big one, and gets noticed.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
makarios // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 4:28 am |
Have you considered the possibility that rather than rugby causing men to rape, instead aggressive men are attracted to rugby?
Just wondering. And if you fear that she might become a “team player,” (horrors!) why not put your daughter into individual sports like swimming or ???
homepaddock // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 4:34 am |
It’s not team sport per se that’s the problem (just like it’s not religion or politics).
It’s the culture of the sport, which can be postivie, affirming and fun or negative and dangerous.
Exercising, getting fit, playing together, helping each other, even trying to do your best are usually good things.
Setting out to thrash the opposition by fair means or foul, thinking success on the field excuses bad behaviour off it, drunkeness , boorishness, misogyny, violence . . . aren’t.
Che Tibby // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 7:19 am |
another way to look at team sport is that it allows you to emphasise your strengths, while subsuming your weaknesses.
it’s a ability to master this that makes a good team.
not all teams are made up of Thugby players.
Femmostroppo Reader - May 19, 2009 — Hoyden About Town // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 8:30 am |
[...] I’ve just become an atheist about competitive sport [...]
tigtog // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 8:30 am |
makarios, I think there’s a rather large difference between causing and enabling. As homepaddock says, it’s the culture of the sport that can be toxic, but it doesn’t have to be.
No doubt that contact-sports do attract aggressive men, and that a proportion of these aggressive men will have sexual dominance issues that manifest in rapist impulses. But in a sporting culture that isn’t toxic they won’t be able to get their team-mates to join in and provide a smokescreen of boys-will-be-boys chiacking.
What we see in some male contact-sports teams appears to be a culture that enables rape by encouraging the men to extend their competitive behaviour to socialisation off the field, which distorts their sexual interactions with others. Some other sporting codes encourage their players to be “gentlemen” off the field and actually mean it. We need to look more deeply into what those codes are doing right and expand it.
Mindy // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 9:34 am |
Just focussing on the Strangelings playing netball – I think it can be a very positive experience and a very fun one. It does depend on whether there is a win at all costs mantra being pushed by the coach or parents though. Learning how to work with a team is an important skill to have, just because so much is dependent on team work in later life. It is important that they don’t just conform, as you say and I think this is where parents come in. It’s how you deal with wins and losses that makes all the difference.
Competitive sports do attract competitive people. Competitive people are not necessarily disrespectful of others. That is something that is taught or not taught in the locker room, and depends very much on the team ethos.
Liam // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 9:43 am |
Good post.
Commenter Rebekka and I both had a go at a variant of this question at the hoyden’s place a while ago. I think Rebekka’s answer is more concise, personally.
Deborah, I think you’ve just defined exactly what it means to be a “bad sport”. With the others here, I don’t agree that the things you’ve described, which mar competitive sports in our culture, are fundamentals to sport itself: sport’s far too broad and intrinsically human a thing to be adequately represented by the crimes of men-infants in the NRL.
To add to your list of positive things team sports do, I suggest that they also encourage children—and adults—to properly socialise themselves to winning and losing, to credit and acknowledge the merits of an opposition, and place great value on fairness.
rayedish // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 9:44 am |
Thanks for the link love Deborah. I’m kinda, sorta in half hearted agreement with you. I’m so not a fan of team sports, but our girls just started soccer. But the ‘kinda, sorta’ is because I haven’t thought though my stance, not because I have a disagreement with any of your points. My initial feeling is that the culture of domination that so often accompanies competitive sports, particularly at the higher levels is, what we as a society, should be seeking to dismantle.
Deborah // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 9:58 am |
I’m sure that I’ve had enough of prime-time competitive team sports, but I’m not so sure about what I might call, neighbourhood sports, and I hope that ambivalence has come through in the post.
But there is something horribly toxic about top sports teams and domination and fitting in with the team and doing what the team demands, and then totally failing to take responsibility for your actions, exemplified by the Cronulla rugby league team.
It does seem to me that there are lots and lots and lots of ways to learn how to work in teams that don’t involve beating other people. Like building something together, or completing a project together, or singing in a choir.
My daughters’ teams are getting lots of good experience in learning how to be graceful losers, and so far, there are no parents on the sideline yelling at them.
Armagny // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 10:04 am |
I’m hearing what you are exploring here. I’m torn, with Bear and Mitts, between a desire to give them the opportunity to fit in, and a cynicism about whether the benefits of team sports have really been made out.
I actually think the ‘team’ element is worse than the ‘competitive’ element, and think this is because so much that is bad about people comes out in conforming group situations. It is the desire to ‘take one for the team’, compromise individual actions, and together celebrate the defeat of the ‘other’ that dig into the pack thing.
Then again, I guess it’s about degrees and proportions. As a dad I’m still taken with the colourful idea of taking the kids to the MCG and watching the footy in the rain with four n’twenty pies. It’s a grounding cultural ritual, I suppose.
Che Tibby // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 10:21 am |
“But there is something horribly toxic about top sports teams and domination and fitting in with the team and doing what the team demands”
i disagree completely.
you’re looking at thugby and extrapolating to the *incredibly wide* spectrum of top-grade sports.
for starters, the most-followed sport in australia is not thugby, but cricket. and while the sport has its over-sexed arsehats (read: warne), it’s not characterised by incidents of sexual assault. thugby on the other hand is a homoerotic full-contact sport populated by cotton-wool-padded, overpaid, “stars” with god-complexes.
but very few sports are like that.
furthermore, “conformity” can be an inherent good. sociologically, more often that not it *prevents* extreme behaviour.
frankly, equating your daughters’ participation in school-grade sports with some kind of quasi-assimilatory conformity is… not reasonable.
Chally // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 10:53 am |
A good post, Deborah.
Helen // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 1:08 pm |
I hear you Deborah – I was made to play hockey at school and hated it. Hated! Then I became one of those horsey little girls. I noticed a big difference between the horse shows where it was all very competitive and sometimes nasty and the hacking out life where we just had a companionship and cooperation with the animal itself which was a completely different dynamic.
In my 20s I discovered bushwalking which covered exercise plus intellectual interest without (much) competitiveness, obvs there are always some people who want to be first to the top of the hill but it’s not important in the general scheme of things.
I guess my somewhat waffly point is that you can find exercise that doesn’t put competition first.
Helen // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 1:11 pm |
Oh, and distance road cycling like Robert M of LP does, but in those days I thought I was immortal and i’d probably crap myself if my kids did it. And that CAN get a bit competitive if you ride with others. Bike racing, forget it, those people are macho twits
hellonhairylegs // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 2:08 pm |
Great post Deborah
*Off topic*
Have you considered basketball or soccer instead of netball? Netball as a sport teaches women to follow far too many stupid rules and to stay within far too many lines. Also, at least as far as I can tell, soccer and basketball are actually better exercise and less wearing on the ankles. Obviously the Strangelings have the last say on what sport they want to play.
M-H // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 2:26 pm |
I understand your dilemma, Deborah. I had it too, especially when my kids were at primary school. But I do think there’s a difference between the neighbourhood kind of attitude to sport and the major entertainment it seems to have become, especially in Australia. I think that participation in sport can be good for kids, as long as it’s not all about winning, but how you play the game! Or, put as less as a cliche, how much enjoyment you get from the physical activity and from the team commitment. If you and Mr SL cultivate a careless, casual attitude to sport, rather than only showing happiness when the team wins, the kids may not get so sucked into the more stupid aspects.
vibenna // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 4:18 pm |
I’ve watched a bit of rugby league. It’s a nasty vicious game full of sly shots and gratuitous violence. They do things to each other on the field that would kill a frail person. A big part of team strategy seems to be to beat the other people up. I’m not surprised they like to rape people too.
I’ve watched a bit of cricket. They will never have the same opportunities for assault as in rugby league. But the game in increasingly about assaulting people with the ball, and assaulting them verbally. Nasty.
suze // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 5:54 pm |
I loved playing team sports as a child – it was the ‘teamness’ of it that I loved. My son plays soccer and I see the positive aspects of being in a team as learning to communicate to achieve a goal, learning to co-operate and not ‘hog the ball’, appreciating that other kids have skills you don’t have and that you have talents they don’t have; learning that the outcome is an outcome from how well you’ve been a team. And simply enjoying all playing the same game together, which is a pleasure you don’t get from the solitary physical pursuits such as swimming or running. Certain pleasurable skills, such as throwing or kicking a ball, rely on sharing with other people. Having said all that, it is notable that the vast majority of adults do solitary ’sports’!
Carol // Tuesday 19 May 2009 at 9:36 pm |
Deborah, I gather the competitive ethos is taken to its logical end in Australian sport – whether it be team or indiviudal sport. While it no doubt is a major factor in hauling in those gold medals and general world domination, there is quite a price to pay as you’ve pointed out.
My Mr Ten plays netball and I’ll have to say that I find all the strictures and regulations, not to mention heavy demands on parent involvement, tend to stamp the enjoyment of out it. [We played indoor netball last term, which was more casual and a good deal more fun].
Adele Villemez // Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 1:36 am |
My initial reaction was to protest lumping all competitive team sports together as a “bad thing”. Then I realized I had no grounds to protest whatsoever. We do not watch sports in my house at all. Not a protest – simply no interest. I don’t like participating in team sports either. I never did and neither did my husband. My daughter tried T-ball (sort of pre-basesball/softball for little kids) and soccer. She didn’t like either, though she enjoys playing both in a casual neighborhood game. She does not like all the rules and structure of “organized” team sports. Now she participates in gymnastics, but strictly recreational, not competitive and dance, once again not competitive. I actually consider myself a highly competitive person when it comes to board games and things like that, but I do not like team sports. I don’t think it is particularly necessary that children learn to “be part of a team” either. I agree that it is teaching more about conformity, fitting in at any cost, and following the crowd than anything particularly positive.
steven // Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 7:33 am |
I have begun to draw a distinction between competitive sport and combative sport. I don’t have a strongly combative personality, nor do I have and authority-centric personality. I am more achievement based, possibly explaining my enthusiasm for art. But art can be a highly competitive business. The competition is a problem requiring a solution, that drives my creative thinking.
Competition can also be applied cooperatively in the arts sector. Artists of one genre such as ceramics often compete against each other, causing a lifting of the game, that stimulates the spectators, leading to achieving validation of that team status. (team pottery, dominates the art market)
I’m a big fan of ocean going sailing. It is non interpersonally combative, yet has all the camaraderie of warfare. There is no enemy.
artandmylife // Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 8:06 am |
I have to say I can see where you are coming from but don’t really agree. I am more with Che, that I don’t think team sport is the problem in itself. I was never a team sport player and so far my kids are interested in individual pursuits but I can see benefits of a team environment (working together to acheive a goal etc).
Also someone once said to me that you have to learn the rules before you can break them which made sense at the time
penguinunearthed // Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 7:23 pm |
I too, don’t think that team sport per se is the problem. I played mixed netball weekly for five years as an adult, and I think there is a different level of enjoyment from feeling part of a group that is working really well together.
I’ve also got that enjoyment from being in a band, or in a choir, but that doesn’t negate the team sport experience.
Netball is a bit weird in that the rules really force that team work – there is no room within the rules for the selfish star player, the way soccer or basketball has. That can be good and bad – you’re forced to cooperate, but you don’t learn the benefits of voluntary cooperation for the good of the team.
In many walks of life, that is a valuable lesson, and enjoyable – at least for me.