Before the Badger football showdown with Michigan, AOL Instant Messenger away messages, T-shirts and dialogue among Badger football fans were flooded by puns depicting Ann Arbor as whore-personified??-deserving to be beaten, conquered and dominated.
Rivalry and football are not new obsessions at the University of Wisconsin.
The blatant, violent feminization of football rivals however, strikes a different chord-or rather, none at all. Students at UW appear scarcely phased and downright amused, in fact, with such dialogue surrounding the game.
Too often that which is characterized as weak, in need of domination or shameful is inevitably feminine, while the opposite goes for how we characterize the strong.
Language has the inestimable power to shape thought and action. UW professor Jo Ellen Fair, who specializes in journalistic coverage of wars throughout history, said, \The way we talk about [a] group of people [indicates] how we value them.""
Fair said, as with war, by diminishing one group through the use of sexual characteristics, we are diminishing an entire class of people, specifically women, as a way of bolstering another group. We have always done that historically, and while we appear to know better now, society always looks to denigrate.
By equating the opponent with something sexual and female, it is logical to make the categorical leap to the opponent's femininity equaling weakness or wickedness.
How we talk about the relationship between sex and competition, love and war, sexual property and violence has an effect on how we think about those topics.
The seeds for violent normalization find increasingly inconspicuous breeding grounds because of how we condone violent language in our everyday speech. Namely, football is the best modern arena we have for violent speech.
Football serves as our best form of enacted war. Players, elevated to heroic status, tackle and demolish their opponents all in the name of gained territory and control-cheered on by a coliseum-like crowd screaming and salivating for blood. The heroic masculine archetype is celebrated in all his glory, as curious voyeurs celebrate his domination through alcohol tainted glasses.
The football field-often likened to the battlefield-sets the scene for a winner-takes-all battle between two nations, or in this case, college-educated warriors, teamed and armed with university pride and hyper-masculine dreams of stardom.
James Hillman, psychologist and former war journalist, discussing the relationship between sex and war in his book, ""A Terrible Love of War,"" says that war's ability to categorize heroes and enemies simplifies life's ambiguities and complexities.
Just as in war, football too, creates a simplifying dichotomy between good and evil. To characterize the opposition as feminine, defeat-worthy, and in this case, rape-worthy, the feminine then occurs in the negative definition of goodness and heroism.
Feminist Susan Falutti, author of ""Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women,"" cites violence against women, with rape in particular, as a war waged against women.
When something is categorized as harmless sport and we talk about violence against women in the same flippant manner, as we did with Ann Arbor in the Michigan game, what message does that give?
One justifies rape through dehumanizing the victim in order to feed one's appetite for power. Not unsimilar from what soldiers go through in mental training to justify and carry out murder in war.
Football fans go through a process of categorizing good and evil as well. This shows up in language surrounding the opponent and domination-especially the most recent characterizations of the opposing team as a whore. One can merely think about associations surrounding the term ""whore"" to understand the danger and consequences for women in general.
Does sport make it okay? Maybe violence against women becomes a form of sport as well.
Fans go through a catharsis of raping the opponents, much like one does when watching a war film, among many other replications of such violent enactment in every day life.
Hillman explains that rape-an act of power-has little to do with sex, but rather domination. In addition, he said, ""[There aren't] limits to the inventive imagination of force. It occurs in fantasy, even wishful fantasy.""
We celebrate our football players like we celebrate our war heroes. We condone violent language against women in the name of good fun and our heroic archetypes.
War and rape have danced this tango for centuries. Isn't it time for people to evolve in their humanity?
Perhaps it is harmless in light of what's being discussed here-football, not war. Yet, when does catharsis become a dangerous green light for society?
Discussion surrounding violence against women and the repercussions of language that condone it far exceed the capacity of this article. However, continual discussion of these issues is one of our only tools in this war against violence.
opinion@dailycardinal.com.
