Book Review…Sports, Sexual Assault, and the Law

Sep 25, 2016 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: Unsportsmanlike conduct: College football and the politics of rape
Author: Jessica Luther
Reviewer: Dr Glenville Ashby

Unsportsmanlike conduct is a revealing study that raises key sociological and legal

concerns.
Investigative journalist Jessica Luther delivers a damning indictment on a society driven by power, greed, and misplaced priorities.
Luther details the willful collaboration of authorities in obfuscating cases involving sexual savagery and sports personalities. Her work speaks to the glorification of sports and the exaltation of flawed human beings who emerge as role models to millions of young fans. Appealing to reason, Luther, an unapologetic football fan for years calls for a shift in values.
She brilliantly likens the shady, calculated handling of sexual assault charges to a playbook designed by football teams. In its social context there are also a slew of players, each working toward the goal of minimizing or shielding the accused from justice.
The Greg Dent case well encapsulates the thrust of the author work. Luther recalls that the victim’s statement to the police spoke of aggressive touching and penetration before she eventually fought him off. Dent, the wide receive at Florida State University was found guilty of misdemeanor battery, not sexual battery, and sentenced to time served and placed on probation for six months. Of the incident, his head coach told the Orlando Sentinel, “I am extremely happy for him the way it turned out. I think Greg is an outstanding young man, always did, and you know the possibility of him returning [to the game] is out there…I am extremely happy for him.”
A warped sense of masculinity is at the root of this problem. It is a visceral, pugilistic kind of manhood that is culturally promoted. Indeed, the dictum, “Boys will be boys” is far from innocuous. Young men are given carte blanche to be aggressive, cold and entitled. Luther argues that male bonding is hinged on aggressive, destructive principles. How else does one explain the preponderance of gang rapes? She writes, “Many of the sexual assault cases I’ve found involve multiple athletes as either participants in or witnesses to sexual violence, which is a particular facet of hypermasculine spaces.”
Weaker, effeminate boys and men are devalued while the seeds of sexism and misogyny are continually planted in macho-based cultures. Notably, young men are sexually violated in perverted rights of initiation. Luther cites Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig who, with data from the Bureau of Justice presents an unnerving scenario: A prisoner is likely to be sexually victimized at a staggering rate that is “thirty times higher than of any given woman on the outside,” and “inmates in state and federal prisons and local jails all reported greater rates of sexual victimization involving staff than other inmates.”
For sure, there is enough substance in Unsportsmanlike Conduct to suggest that humankind is stricken by a predatory impulse – a need to control and oppress its environment; and the most readily available weapon is sex.
Luther’s is a complex narrative borne from myriad of socio-psychological factors. It bridges sexism and racism, offering a historical snapshot of disturbing social currents that sweep justice under the rug. “That horrific part of US history and the ongoing racial disparities within the criminal justice system,” she writes, “mean that accusations of black men sexually assaulting white women carry within them cultural baggage that has to, at least, be acknowledged in these conversations.”
She recounts the sentiments of Byron Hurt writing for NewBlackMan in 2013: “It is true that Black men continue to be stereotyped as rapist…However it is also a stereotype that women lie about being victims of rape more often than not. According to FBI statistics, less than 3 percent of all rapes are falsely raped.”
And it is this stereotyping that has discolored and complicated the judicial process. Luther is targeted in her view of this social imbalance. “The white male head coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, members of the sports media, fans…are written out of the story, even though these men play important roles in the perpetuation of a culture that minimizes and sometimes even encourages sexual assault.” For Luther, there is enough culpability to go around. “It is only the player…who faces the consequences for his repeated behavior,” she writes, “never the men around him who enabled him by looking away, by hiding under the redemptive language of “second chances,” by always seeming to imagine that their player didn’t do that bad thing.”
Failed by the criminal justice system, victims seek recourse in the civil courts.
Luther’s incisive look at sexual assault in sports should ignite further discussions on effectively enforcing the rule of law. And although the road ahead remains precipitous, Luther is cautiously optimistic and buoyed by the position some players have taken to “change the system from inside.” She concedes that every initiative – “even a ripple in the scheme of things,” is invaluable in righting a terrible wrong.
Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College football and the politics of rape by Jessica Luther © 2016
Publisher: Akashic Book, New York, USA
ISBN: 978-1-61775-491-3
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Highly recommended

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