Tag Archives: Domestic violence

Antiblack Racism and Moral Panics

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September 20, 2014 in News

A National Pastime: Antiblack Racism and Moral Panics

By David J. Leonard

America is a nation bound together by moral panics; in the absence of an actual moral center or a compass of justice, we find power in collective outrage in the absence of self-reflection. And race or antiblackness is often what anchors these fits of moralism.

It is an expert at racial moral panics, a truly exceptional world power when it comes to moral posturing, collective outrage, and the resulting finger pointing.   From the culture wars of the 1980s to debates regarding hip-hop into the 1990s, from discourses around “black homophobia” and “black on black crime,” and far deeper into history, moral panics are often wrapped up discourses of blackness. James Baldwin spoke of this quintessential American tradition in 1960: “I think if one examines the myths which have proliferated in this country concerning the Negro.” Accordingly “beneath these myths a kind of sleeping terror of some condition which we refuse to imagine. In a way, if the Negro were not here, we might be forced to deal within ourselves and our own personalities, with all those vices, all those conundrums, and all those mysteries with which we have invested the Negro race” (quoted by Bouie)

Writing about the 1980s and the demonization of “welfare queens,” George Lipsitz (1995) identifies this history as one where “Americans produce largely cultural explanations for structural problems.” With a long history of scapegoating and locating moral imperatives and cultural impurities through bodies of color, it should come as no surprise that the release of video footage of then Ravens Running Back Ray Rice striking his then girlfriend Janay Palmer has sent America, from The Capital to the American media landscape, from NFL stadiums to Starbucks, into a perpetual state of moral outrage.

The effort to reduce social ills to individual failures, to individual pathologies, and cultural dysfunctions comes through a centering of blackness within these discourses. “What is forbidden in American culture often seems to be projected outward onto the outsider or scapegoat,” writes James (1996). “Blackness has come to represent sex and violence in the national psyche. Although they gain notoriety as the most infamous perpetrators of unrestrained criminality, African Americans are given little recognition in media, crime reports or social crusades as being victims.” The refusal to see or hear Janay Palmer, Kasandra Perkins and countless more makes this all too clear.

Directed at Rice (and several other players), and Roger Goodell for failing to properly control, discipline, and punish the NFL’s “out-of-control,” the moral panic feels less and less about intimate partner violence (IPV), hyper masculinity, a culture of violence, misogyny, or patriarchy, but instead yet another moment to locate social ills within the bodies of black men. Blackness, especially in the sporting world, is “legible” (Neal 2014) only as signifiers of dysfunctional, danger, criminality, and corruption. This has been the case with IPV, and equally evident in the aftermath of Adrian Peterson’s arrest. According to Jamelle Bouie, “It’s reminiscent of other conversations around broad-based behaviors or beliefs that become pathological and purely “black” when displayed by black Americans in elevated numbers.”

As black bodies are ubiquitously imagined as essentially disruptive, uncontrollable, as a source of “cultural degeneracy” the problem of IPV becomes not an American problem and not even one belonging to the NFL — but a problem of blackness. Blackness exists as “a problematic sign and ontological position” (Williams 1998, p. 140). The outrage resulting from Ray Rice reflects the logics of anti-black racism, perpetuating a culture that sees blackness as the problem, one that needs to be contained, purified, controlled, punished, and ultimately eliminated.

The outrage has little to do with the pervasive and endemic problem of IPV within the NFL and society as a whole. In a nation where 1 in 3 women report having experienced IPV, where 1 in 5 men admit to having committed violence against a partner, one has to wonder why now, why did Ray Rice prompt a national soul searching regarding the problem of IPV? In a nation, where the media and the court system routinely rationalize the prevalence of IPV through victim blaming and excuse making, forgive me if I ain’t buying this feigned outrage. The political power structure, particularly the GOP, should have a seat; they should delete their press releases and their demands for “zero tolerance” and simply look in the mirror.   From its foot dragging with the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to its budgetary PRIORITIES, it is clear that the political structure is perfectly fine with domestic violence. Combatting violence against women is not a priority, at least if it requires more than a press conference. In 2013, the National Domestic Violence Hotline was unable to answer “77,000 calls due to lack of resources.” And this isn’t the only example of how the GOP, and the Congress as a whole, has no moral standing with respect to IPV.

“The Republican romance with gun rights has proved deadly. More than 60 percent of women killed by a firearm in 2010 were murdered by a current or former intimate partner. The presence of a firearm during a domestic violence incident increases the likelihood of a homicide by an astonishing 500 percent, writes Katie McDonough. “The Republican-led assault on reproductive freedom has major implications for victims of domestic violence. Republican resistance to mandatory paid leave policies means that women who need time off to leave an abusive relationship or are hospitalized after a domestic violence incident can lose their jobs for missing work.” Congress and their friends at the NRA, like the NFL, is reflective of a culture of domestic violence and a complicit actor in the daily injustices experienced by all too many women and children in this society. In a nation where judges and police officers (“family violence is two to four times higher in the law-enforcement community than in the general population”) engage brutal acts of violence against women with impunity, where ESPN and other sports media, routinely mock and reduce women to dehumanized objects of consumption and ridicule, it is hard to believe in this feigned and surely short-lived outrage about Domestic Violence (DV).

The rampant hypocrisy, the racist moralism, and the scapegoating are equally evident in the types of “solutions” being proposed. In the face of rightful, even when misplaced, outrage, the NFL created a VP position in charge of “social responsibility” (to be filled by Anna Isaacson, the league’s current VP of community affairs and philanthropy) and hired three domestic advisors (Lisa Friel, Jane Randel and Rita Smith). Goodell, the benevolent white father figure whose primary responsibility was disciplining the league’s “unruly” black bodies had failed. In this context, 4 white women have replaced him. The focus on punishment, the embracing of the language of mass incarceration, and the moral posturing should give us pause in that the logics, tropes, and policies that have compelled mass incarceration are the center of the NFL’s reclamation project.   The focus on individual accountability (which needs to be part of the process) at the expense of collective transformation and societal cultural change, the concern with response rather than dealing with root causes highlights the systemic failures to truly address intimate partner violence.

At its core, the post-Ray Rice discourse is not about IPV; it is not about concern for Janay Palmer or collectively saying #blackwomenslivesmatter or #womendeservejustice. It is about racial paternalism and the historic efforts to imagine sports not as exploitation, big business, profits, and a health risk, but one of disciplinarity and moralism. Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson put these narrative rationalizations in question, resulting in panic and further reimagination of sport as a source of good. According to King and Springwood (2005), “Perhaps such public concerns and panics are best understood as a form of racial paternalism in which white America struggles to come to terms with its (exploitative) enjoyment of the African American athlete by advancing a linkage between the ostensibly moral and disciplinary space of … big time sports.”

The selective outrage at players within the NFL (and the league for not controlling them) and not Major League Baseball or Hollywood (Charlie Sheen) or mainstream music industry, or the police, or the military, or every American institution is revealing. The silence regarding Hope Solo, who stands accused of domestic violence, playing for the U.S. National Team is telling: whiteness matters.

So is the lack of moral outrage for Renisha McBride, Aiyana Jones, Rekia Boyd, and countless others. One has to look no further than Marissa Alexander, who faces 60 years in prison for firing a warning shot against an abusive husband whose history of violence has been well-documented, to understand the nature of today’s moral panic. One has to look no further than at the thousands of women locked up for defending themselves against an abusive and violent partner. America’s (so-called) moral center bends not toward, but away from the arc of justice. It is guided by racism and sexism; its compass is profit before people. We need a new compass not a new policy; a moral center of justice not more of the same: we need a new pastime

***

David J. Leonard is an associate professor and chair in the department of critical culture, gender and race studies at Washington State University, Pullman, and the author of a forthcoming book on race, media and gun violence. Follow him on Twitter.

Originally Published at The Black Scholar 

theSWAGspot | Dear Marissa,

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theSWAGspot | Dear Marissa,

Dear Marissa,

While we have never met, you have impacted me in ways you will never know. I think about you daily; a poster calling for your pardon hangs in my office. I think about you and the horror that you have endured. While the system has tried to make you disappear, you have not been forgotten. I often find myself thinking about how we as a society have failed you. While the injustices that have led you into a Florida prison have prompted national outrage, the entire nation should be outraged. Too many have failed to see you as their mother, as their sister, as their daughter, and their friend. We all should be demanding justice until your freedom is secured. We have failed to use our voices to shine a spotlight on the travesty of injustice; we have failed to walk from state house to courthouse, standing and sitting with you.

But our failure did not begin the day Florida decided to prosecute you for standing your ground; we did not fall short in the aftermath of a sham of a trial and the horror of a 20-year sentence. We, and by we here I am specifically talking about men, failed you long before you said enough to abuse. We have failed to create a culture that repels violence against women, which shuns and denounces every instance of domestic violence. We failed you in 2009 when your husband was arrested for abuse. The system has failed you over again. And we have failed in not holding that system accountable, in demanding a system that actual works to create a environment. In 2010, your husband said, “I got five baby mamas and I put my hand on every last one of them except one. The way I was with women, they was like they had to walk on eggshells around me. You know they never knew what I was thinking or what I might do. Hit them, push them.” Reading this hurts me because it is further evidence of our failure. We rear men who think this is ok, who are empowered to abuse. Where were we then? Where was the criminal justice system that is so concerned about protection and safety? We have failed you and for that I am sorry.

We have not just failed you, and the millions of women whose pain and voices are suppressed, but your kids as well. I think often about your sons and the impact of their witnessing violence. I think about the pain of seeing their Mom locked up; I think about your daughter and the years lost with her. We have failed them. We must do better for you; we must do better for them. Please know that many are working hard to hold justice accountable. Many are thinking about you and your family; many are working hard to stand with you because you should not have to sit alone in a prison any longer; many are working to secure justice because you should not have to stand your ground alone against violence.

Each day as I look at your picture, I think about what am doing in your march toward justice and freedom; what am I doing in the fight against abuse and violence? I think about you and your children, and how we cannot fail any longer. There is too much pain and it’s time to replace it with love. Looking forward to day that you can feel our collective love evident in your release and actual justice.

David

via theSWAGspot | Dear Marissa,.

#Justice4Marrissa #31forMarissa

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I was on CNN yesterday, talking Marissa Alexander and domestic violence, with Esther Armah and Don Lemon. Of course, I am replaying the interview in head, processing and thinking about the many more things I want to say.  Here are a few more thoughts:

(1) To understand why Marissa Alexander remains in prison requires talking about racism and sexism, patriarchy and institutional racism. It reflects societal sanctioning and perpetuating of violence against women. The violence she lived through, and her prosecution and incarceration reflects the insidious violence directed at women on so many levels: at home by an abuser, by police, prosecutor, and criminal justice system that punishes the victim, by a prison system that locks women in yet another unsafe and violence place, and a society that remains silent.  At the same time, it reflects the lack of institutional care/empathy/ concern/legal protection afforded to black bodies, particularly those of African American women.  Yes, intersections matter.

(2) Domestic violence is a societal injustice; it cuts across class, race, sexuality, and geography. It’s rooted in patriarchy; it’s rooted in pathological definition of masculinity; it’s rooted in media and popular culture that turns domestic violence into a spectacle, a source of profit and pleasure.  Clearly we can think about race and class operates here.  Domestic violence is rooted in the legal and cultural views about the “home” as a man’s castle, which contributes to systemic views about it being a  “private issue.”  All of this embodies domestic violence culture, where violence, the pain and bloodshed, the despair, and heartache, the injuries and terror are imagined as a personal and familial issue. In all, domestic violence culture ignores the rights, futures, wellbeing, and humanity of women, particularly women of color.

(3) Angela Davis once noted that, “prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” The incarceration of Marissa Alexander and the national silence on this injustice (and domestic violence) reflects an effort to make the victims of domestic violence disappear.  The fact that a women is assaulted every 9 seconds in America reveals how the problems, the violence, and the despair are fully present.

(4) As noted in a discussion between Suey Park and Summaya Fire: “Black women are 35 percent more likely than white women and 2.5 times more likely than any non-Black woman of color group to experience domestic violence. However, they are also less likely than other women to use social services. More Black women are likely to go to the hospital for domestic violence than social services.” In this same discussion, Summaya Fire points out how the stereotypes of black women has not only shaped the conversation/media coverage/ response from the criminal justice system but also plays out in terms of the lack of services/intervention from social welfare as it relates to black women.  The history of movements against domestic violence, media coverage, and even political discourse has erased the experiences of African American women. I wish we had more time to discuss these structural barriers to safety and security; to understand Marissa Alexander is to look at racism and sexism.

(5) A few statistics to know: Estimates range between 70-80% (some studies are lower) of women convicted of murder acted in self-defense against their abusers. One study found that cases involving domestic violence victims defending themselves against abusers had a higher conviction rates than in other cases.  That is women defending and protecting themselves from violent men were more like to be convicted.  They were also more likely to be given longer sentences (on average 15 years).  Additionally, African American women convicted of killing an abusive spouse/partner were the most likely to be convicted.  All women, and particularly black women, face harsh punishments from the criminal justice when trying to protect themselves from a violent partner.  Marissa Alexander and the thousands of women locked up for defending themselves against violent is evident of this horrifying reality.

And finally, the parallels between Marissa Alexander and Trayvon Martin are ample: neither Trayvon nor Marissa were given the right (legal or moral) to stand their ground.  Race and gender matters; racism and sexism matters.  Both Trayvon and Marissa have been criminalized despite being victims of violence; each have been blamed, question, and otherwise convicted within the criminal justice system, within much of the media, and within the public at large. We already know the outcome in the struggle for #Justice4Trayvon. The fight for Marissa’s release and the dropping of the charges continues.

Justice derailed: Chad Johnson and the domestic violence question

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While appearing in court to formalize a plea deal Chad Johnson faced a new and unexpected challenge.  In 2012, Johnson was arrested and charged with domestic violence following an incident where he “allegedly head-butted his new wife during an argument.” Since then he has undergone therapy, and publicly talked about his failings, contributing to this plea deal where he was to avoid jail time.  In a sense, the court appearance was a mere formality.  Yet, that changed when Broward County Circuit Judge Kathleen McHugh asked if he was satisfied with his attorney, that all changed

Chad Johnson: “Yes ma’am.”

Judge McHugh: “Well you should be. He’s an excellent attorney.”

Chad Johnson: “I Know”

As to further note his appreciation and affection for his attorney, Chad did what athletes, both professional and those weekend warriors, often do: he gave him a pat on the backside.

While others in the courtroom laughed, the Judge saw little humor in his behavior (watching the video it doesn’t seem as if Chad Johnson saw any humor either), responding in kind:

I don’t know that you’re taking this whole thing seriously. I just saw you slap your attorney on the backside. Is there something funny about this? The whole courtroom was laughing. I’m not going to accept these plea negotiations. This isn’t a joke.

Despite an apology from Chad Johnson, the Judge held firm, sentencing him to 30 days in jail.
Wow

In other words, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail not for domestic violence, not for head butting his partner, not for causing a huge gash but his “attitude” and “demeanor.”   Whether or not this was a smart thing to do or whether it was appropriate (watching the video, I think it is hard to see it as disrespectful) is surely up for debate, but 30 days in jail is more than a bit excessive.  And if the issue was the court, why not contempt charges for all those who laughed.

Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless quickly weighed in on the situation.  Smith offered the following:

I can’t even put into words how disgusted I am right now at this man. This guy is out of the NFL right now because of his mouth, because of his absence of discipline, because he took things for granted. This show has been incredibly fair to this man, and you do the kind of stuff that you do, I can’t express how ticked off I am right now. You slap your attorney on the behind playfully in court? You are a BLACK MAN in court for headbutting your wife. A female judge is presiding over a case where you allegedly headbutted a female that just happened to be your wife, and you don’t have the common sense to know that you do not need to be in court playful about anything?? It doesn’t occur to you?

What is wrong with him? I don’t get it. I don’t understand it and it doesn’t make sense to me. All I know is this, you are officially a statistic for the next 30 days […] If that ain’t the height of idiocy, I don’t know what is […] “I don’t want to even say anything else. I’m scared of what else I’m gon’ say.”

Beyond the acceptance of a stratified criminal justice system, beyond the tone that positions Johnson as a stupid child, beyond the deployment of the politics of respectability, and beyond the issue being framed as one of “discipline,” Smith (and Bayless) do little to reflect on the meaning of locking someone up for 30 days for “making a mistake” or being too “playful in court.”

The sentence and the “First Take Duos” response seems to be based in this idea that Johnson was not respecting the court; his sense of entitlement was showing its face.  Those with power, celebrity, whether athletes or Wall Street executives, Hollywood stars or politicians, white college students or suburbanites are often afforded levels of privilege, impunity, and power otherwise unavailable to others. That of course isn’t available equally across the board, and race, class, gender, power and profession matter.  In this instance, it actually seems as if Johnson is being punished because of his celebrity, because of the presumptions about his sense of entitlement.  It seems that what he embodies, racially, what he signifies as black male athlete, black male celebrity, is playing out in harmful ways.  30 days isn’t nothing.

Most importantly, the Judge’s decision to punish him for his playful “ass pat” is yet another reminder that the criminal justice system doesn’t take the issue of domestic violence seriously.  He was punished with jail time not for domestic violence but for inappropriate behavior in court.   He isn’t being punished for his disrespect of women, for his perpetuation of violence, but for disrespecting the court, the law, and the powerful.   The fact that as you read the many articles in the press there is little reporting as to what happen in 2012 is telling.  The fact that the Evelyn Lozada is barely mentioned is revealing.  Little about domestic violence in this case and the broader issue; little about Johnson’s therapy.  We need to deal with the issue of domestic violence throughout society, and the judge’s decision not only feels excessive and the ultimate exhibition of power but worse it further displaces the domestic violence from the conversation.

In the end, it seems as if the court and the Judge didn’t take the proceedings seriously, didn’t take the issue of domestic violence seriously, since in the aftermath what are we all talking about . . . not domestic violence.  And that is the true shame.

 

Kasandra Michelle Perkins: We Must Say Her Name | The Feminist Wire

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Kasandra Michelle Perkins: We Must Say Her Name

December 3, 2012

By David J. Leonard

 

In the aftermath of the tragic murder of Kasandra Michelle Perkins, and the subsequent suicide of Jovan Belcher, much of the media and social media chatter have focused on Belcher. Indeed, Kasandra Michelle Perkins has been an afterthought in public conversations focused on questions regarding the Chiefs’ ability to play, concussions, masculinity, guns, and the culture of football in the aftermath of this tragedy. Over at the always brilliant Crunk Feminist Collective website, one member described the situation in sobering terms:

Headlines and news stories have focused on the tragedy from the lens of the perpetrator (including speculation of potential brain trauma, his involvement, as an undergraduate, in a Male Athletes Against Violence initiative, and his standing as an allstar athlete), in some ways dismissing or overshadowing the lens of the victim, who in headlines is simply referred to as “(his) girlfriend.”

Mike Lupica, at the NY Daily News, offered a similar criticism about our focus and misplaced priorities:

That is why the real tragedy here — the real victim — is a young woman named Kasandra Michelle Perkins, whom Belcher shot and killed before he ever parked his car at the Chiefs’ practice facility and put that gun to his head.

She was 22 and the mother of Belcher’s child, a child who is 3 months old, a child who will grow up in a world without parents. At about 10 minutes to 8, according to Kansas City police, Jovan Belcher put a gun on the mother of his child in a house on the 5400 block of Chrysler Ave. in Kansas City and started shooting and kept shooting. You want to mourn somebody? Start with her.

Kasandra Michelle Perkins

While disheartening and indefensible, I get the turn towards concussions, guns, and the masculinity of sporting cultures. The murder-suicide shines a spotlight on a number of issues that many have been grappling with for many years. It encapsulates people’s discomfort about a culture that condones on-the-field violence that may contribute to so much pain off-the-field. It highlights society’s moral failures whereupon profits are put in front of people. There will be a time for these conversations, but for now the spotlight needs to be on Kasandra Michelle Perkins.

Upon hearing about this tragic murder of Kasandra Michelle Perkins, I too turn my attention to these issues; I am guilty of this failure, having tweeted about concussions, suicide, and the culture of the NFL. These issues are real, but so is the tragic death of Kasandra Michelle Perkins.

Kasandra Michelle Perkins cannot be a footnote. She cannot be an afterthought.

Continue reading @ Kasandra Michelle Perkins: We Must Say Her Name | The Feminist Wire.

Super Spectacle: Race, Gender, and the Hawking of Products | The Feminist Wire

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Super Spectacle: Race, Gender, and the Hawking of Products

February 15, 2012

By David J. Leonard

The Super Bowl is a spectacle. Whether talking about the pregame festivities, the hype, the halftime show, or the game itself, it is the embodiment of a spectacle. Its commercials, however, especially given the ways that gender, race, and sexuality are circulated, are the embodiment of our contemporary spectaclized society.

By spectacle I am not referring to the everyday use of spectacle as an important or memorable event that a sizable portion of the population views, but instead in the tradition of Guy Debord. Debord, whose Society of Spectacle identifies the dialectics between late capitalism and mass media in the production of mediated spectacles, highlights a condition whereupon the relationship between commodities and people take precedent over any other sort of relationship. According to Debord, “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” While the game itself embodies this ritualistic process, the commercials themselves embody and perpetuate the spectacle. “Spectacles are those phenomena of media, culture, and society that embody the society’s basic values, and serve to enculturate individuals into a way of life,” writes Douglas Kellner. Mediated spectacles “dramatize[s] our conflicts, celebrate[s] our values, and project[s] our deepest hopes and fears.”

The spectacle of Super Bowl commercials are evident in the ways in which consumers’ relationships are defined vis-à-vis products. Similarly, the hype, and extravagance is evidence of the ways in which the Super Bowl and the commercials operate as “weapons of mass distraction.” Yet, the existence of a spectacle, illustrated by the presence of Flav Flav and Elton John in a Pepsi commercial, is not limited to size and scope; as Kellner reminds us with the ways in which mediated spectacles “dramatize our conflicts, celebrate our values, and project our deepest hopes and fears.”

The denigration and sexualization of women during the Super Bowl is indicative of the ways in which spectacles operate within our cultural landscape. From the first quarter right until the end of the game, the place of women is made clear: as sexualized objects whose presence figures in eliciting pleasure from the male gaze. Those women who cannot or refuse to reaffirm male sexual pleasure, who deviate from the standards of sexual beauty, are rendered undesirable. While not limited to the Super Bowl, the “Go Daddy” commercials embody the sexualized spectacle of the Super Bowl. Virtually naked women are represented as little more than eye-candy, existing in the mediated space, ready, willing, and able to appeal to the sexual wants of (white) young men. Women enter the spectalized space to provide pleasure to both the males in the commercial and those watching at home. Equally important, the two most visible women of these commercials are Jillian Michaels and Danica Patrick, whose physical strength and presence in the masculine worlds of physical fitness and car racing are muted because they don’t disrupt the dominant values concerning femininity.

There is something revolting about a corporate sponsor taking a woman who has made it in a highly male-dominated and masculine field, car racing, and putting her back in a woman’s rightful place: in a skimpy costume under the male gaze. (Chloe from Feministing)

Dramatizing conflicts about the purported breakdown of male and female spaces, reflecting both hopes and fears, all while validating patriarchy, Go Daddy is the quintessential spectacle. A commercial from Kia further reinforces the sexualized place of women within the male world of sports, celebrating a narrative of female subservience:

The ad from Kia sends a pretty clear message that men and women are totally different species with totally different dreamworlds. A woman dreams of riding across a meadow on the back of a white horse with a handsome fairytale prince under a rainbow sky. But a man dreams of driving a race car while Adriana Lima and thousands of hot bikini-clad women cheer him and Motley Crue plays, and something about a giant sandwich and a boxing match. And these two worlds are so separate and different that a Kia is the only thing that can bring them together.

The sexualized representation of women, and specifically white women and those luminally white ethnic bodies (Italian, for example), is as central to the Super Bowl as the teams themselves. The absence of commercials that turn women into sexual objects would be as impossible as having a Super Bowl without a football. This is evidenced by the barrage of commercials, including an NFL prize commercial that defines the American Dream through access to millions of dollars and scantily clad cheerleaders, and a Valentine’s Day commercial that depicts this holiday as a simple relationship based on exchange. The idea is this: men exchange gifts for sex (“Give and you will receive”). Or there is the Fiat commercial that treats women as if they are interchangeable with cars–both objects to be consumed, sexualized, and fantasized about by men.

Continue reading at Super Spectacle: Race, Gender, and the Hawking of Products | The Feminist Wire.

A Super Failure: Domestic Violence and Football’s Big Game | The Feminist Wire

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A Super Failure: Domestic Violence and Football’s Big Game

February 3, 2012

By David J. Leonard

For the longest time I have heard that Super Bowl Sunday was a day of heightened domestic violence. Linked to alcohol consumption, frustrations over the game outcome, and a day of uber masculinity (as opposed to hyper masculinity), the narrative has identified Super Bowl Sunday as one particularly dangerous to women. Thus, with the Super Bowl approaching, I decided to look into this issue in broader detail.

As one searches Super Bowl and domestic violence, one is confronted with a clear theme: that any connection between the two is a myth and a hoax. Citing a 2007 study from Oths & Robertson that “examined 2,387 crisis call records covering a previous 3-year period,” Dr. John M. Grohol identifies the claim as urban legend, a “largely debunked myth that domestic violence calls spike around Super Bowl Sunday.” Similarly, in “Super Bowl or Super Bull? Six Super Bowl Myths Busted,” Sarah Weir disputes the often-uttered claim:

This story stemmed from a Public Service Announcement that aired at the beginning of the televised broadcast of the 1993 Super Bowl match between the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills that warned, “Domestic violence is a crime.” Although a number of articles debunking the claim appeared in various newspapers, the idea has persisted. Football is so overtly macho and physical it’s no wonder that it gives some people, especially those who don’t enjoy or understand the game, the chills. However, in 2006, Richard Gelles, an expert on domestic abuse from the University of Pennsylvania said, ‘This kind of ‘urban legend’ trivialized the causes and consequences of domestic violence.’

The efforts to dismiss, deny and minimize the issue of domestic violence and its relationship to hyper masculine sports spectacles is revealing; the efforts to oversimplify it as a source of opposition is reflective of the right’s anti-feminist agenda. For example, according to Christina Hoff Sommers, who the Daily Caller identifies as the “American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and equity feminist,” an oxymoron to say the least, “Women who are at risk for domestic violence are going to be helped by state of the art research and good information,” she said. “They are not going to be helped by hyperbole and manufactured data.” Similarly in “Super Bowl Sunday and domestic violence: A hoax,” Dr. Charles Corry laments the Super Bowl myth is yet another example of how feminism is corrupting society through denying the attacks on men.

Unfortunately, the Super Bowl Sunday violence myth is just one of many myths surrounding domestic violence. Most studies are suspect and highly skewed. Men and women initiate domestic violence in roughly equal proportions, yet judges and police are trained and intimidated politically not to question a woman’s claim of domestic violence, effectively passing judgment on the accused man.

Ignoring facts, such as “One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime,” or “majority (73%) of family violence victims are females,” Corry, whose National Justice Foundation focuses its attention on seeing men as victims of sexism, is reflective of the anti-feminist opposition discourse.

In examining the reports and the literature, it is unclear as to the relationship between domestic violence and Super Bowl Sunday. While there is no causal relationship, there is clearly anecdotal evidence from shelters that suggest that Super Bowl is a day where domestic violence is an issue. Yet, it is important to look beyond causal relationships to reflect on the structural factors that contribute to the issue of domestic violence. As Jackson Katz, co-founder and director of MVP Strategies, noted to me, the issues of alcohol abuse, gambling, the ubiquity of parties and social interactions increasing the opportunity for conflict, and the presence at home (people are less likely to be working on the weekend), provides a structural reality to reflect on the issue of domestic violence.

Continue reading @ A Super Failure: Domestic Violence and Football’s Big Game | The Feminist Wire.