Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Ben Atherton-Zeman - Feminist, Actor and Husband" <>]

Check out this AWESOME column from our very own Michael Kimmel - the online 
version is at 
http://www.newsday.com:80/news/opinion/ny-opkim275477718nov27,0,7840147.story.
I wonder what kind of creative counter-chants we profeminist men and feminist 
women could do at Gate D when this kind of thing happens?  I'd be willing to 
come down to NYC for a Jets game (especially if they're playing the Patriots) 
to participate in some kind of counter-demo, especially if we sent out a 
press release beforehand to generate some coverage.  

Maybe hold signs that say, "Show us your brains - respect women" to counter 
the chant of "Show us your t-ts"?  Or bring as many older women and men, or 
those of us who are a bit out of shape, and take off OUR shirts when they 
chant?  - Ben
Stop the anti-female chants at Jets games
  BY MICHAEL KIMMEL | Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook 
University, is the author of the forthcoming "Guyland: The Social World of 
Young Men, 16-26." 
  November 27, 2007 
I remember my first Jets game, in 1968. A grateful patient had given my 
father tickets for the game vs. the Cincinnati Bengals at Shea Stadium. The 
crowd was animated and boisterous, and I was thrilled to be part of that 
Super Bowl season. Today I ask myself if I would even consider taking my son 
to a Jets game.

Vicious harassment of women seems to be a regular halftime feature at Gate D 
of Giants Stadium. Instead of shouting "Let's go Jets," unruly male fans 
scream angrily and insistently at women to lift their shirts and show their 
breasts. If they don't comply, they're pelted with abuse or, worse, with 
empty beer bottles.

I don't think this ugly, degrading chanting is something that my son needs to 
see on his way to becoming a man.



According to news reports, it is so institutionalized that everyone around 
the stadium seems to know about it and security guards, charged with 
maintaining public safety, look the other way.

How did Gate D become such a gauntlet?

Make no mistake: The goons are not motivated by sexual attraction to the 
women they target. They're filled with contempt and anger.

Screaming at women to reveal their breasts is not supposed to attract women 
but to repel them, to send them scurrying back to their seats. It's a public 
humiliation that is designed to put women back in their place, to remind them 
that they may be on our turf, but it's still our turf, and that they are 
still "just women."

Which begs the question: Why are these Jets fans so angry that they'd want to 
make women feel so vulnerable? Here's a clue: This doesn't happen to all 
women. Not to the wives or mothers or daughters walking past with their 
husbands or fathers. Not to the women who prepare and serve the food and beer 
at the concessions. Not to the women who sell or take your tickets, or those 
who lead the cheers, or those who hand out the promotional giveaways. It 
happens to the women who have the temerity to believe that they have just as 
much of a right to watch a football game as a man does.

All across our society, women have entered every public space once thought 
inappropriate: from the corporate boardroom to the trading floor, from the 
operating theater to the theater of military operations, from the firehouse 
to the factory, and from soccer pitch to the hockey rink. Women are in the 
house - and the Senate.

One of my favorite book titles in recent years is "The Stronger Women Get the 
More Men Love Football" by Mariah Burton Nelson. A former Stanford basketball 
star, Nelson shows that football has become another "cave" into which men 
have angrily and defensively retreated as women have, in their eyes, 
"invaded" the sports world. The football stadium is one of the last 
treehouses, one of the last all-male clubhouses. Maybe what the Goons of Gate 
D are really showing us is: The more women love football, the angrier men get.

What lies underneath these guys' rage is not the presence of women, but the 
presence of women as equals - as fans who are equally entitled to enjoy a 
game at Giants Stadium. It's not women who get these guys so agitated. It's 
equality. And they need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, that being a 
fan at a football game is a privilege to be enjoyed by anyone.

These guys act like a pack of predatory animals because they know they can 
get away with it, because other guys don't stop them. The journalist who 
broke the story observed security guards watching the proceedings, having a 
smoke and doing nothing to stop it. In fact, when he asked about it, the 
guards threatened him with arrest.

When Patrick Aramini, New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority vice president 
for security, parking and traffic, asks, "What do we do, arrest everybody 
that starts chanting?," you can tell he doesn't take this problem seriously. 
What if the men were all white and screaming racist epithets at blacks? Or 
yelling Nazi slogans to a bunch of Orthodox Jews? Would he be so passive?

Not likely. The Jets' management, security forces and fans all need to learn 
the simplest of lessons: The gridiron knows no gender - anyone can enjoy 
football. Aramini needs to station enough security guards at Gate D to stop 
the chanting immediately. And to arrest those who continue. Do it once, and 
you shouldn't have to do it again.

When they look the other way, at the orders of their supervisors, the 
security guards cease to be security guards. They're just guys, bonding with 
the drunken goons, enjoying the free halftime show. In doing so, they do more 
than collude, more than just enable and encourage. They stop doing their 
jobs. They become "insecurity" guards - fostering a lack of safety for some 
fans for the warped pleasure of others.

Of course, there are thousands upon thousands of male fans at every football 
stadium in the country who treat women with respect. And, of course, any 
rational person wouldn't be caught dead taunting women like that.

Let's hope that the Jets' management and the authority act quickly and 
decisively to penalize all the participants - the fans, the complicitous 
security guards and their supervisors - for unsportsmanlike conduct.


Until the violence stops, Ben.  

Ben Atherton-Zeman, Acton MA USA
Actor, Comedian, Feminist and Husband
Presenting a One-Man Play: "Voices of Men," www.voicesofmen.org (video clips 
take a second to load)
Booking information: 978-263-3254

Quote of the Month, December 2007:
".those of us who are white and want to be a part of movements to change 
these systems and structures of power have to rein in our instincts to feel 
self-righteous and understand that in every human interaction there is the 
potential for connection and transcendence.We have to get angry, stay angry, 
but not let that anger swallow us.  We have to let our passion for justice 
fuel our work but also make sure it doesn't lead us to overlook our own flaws 
and failures."  
- Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White 
Privilege, p. 17.  City Lights Publishers, 2005
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html