Sport has long served as an arena for political and social debate so it has been no surprise that football of both the American and European codes has recently played host to headline making controversy. Though these debates have been markedly different it has been possible to detect throughout a troubling thread; an expression of some of the more regressive tropes around masculinity.
In the US the new football season has brought with it new controversy over the refusal of many black athletes (and many of their white colleagues) to stand for the National Anthem, provoking the ire of their Commander in Chief. While the debate rages mainly around racial tensions some of Trump’s reactionary rhetoric was telling; he denigrated the athletes and administration of the NFL as going “soft”. Referring to new regulation around concussion and brain injury, Trump implores these young men to “toughen up” and continue to hit each other as hard as possible without a thought for the increasing evidence of irreparable damage – and all this in the wake of evidence that deceased athlete Aaron Hernandez had suffered chronic CTE, with disastrous results. The message seems to be “this is a man’s game and men do not and should not feel or fear pain. In fact they should embrace it”.
In the UK the headlines were made by fans of Manchester United, whose song lauding the talents (but mainly the physical endowment) of their striker Romelu Lukaku grabbed attention. Playing as it does on the racial stereotype of the well-endowed black man it had queasy implications of our view of black masculinity and masculinity in general. What quiet insecurities lead thousands of men to sing so loudly about this player’s penis? Why were they compelled to sing the praises of this hyper-masculine symbol? For his part, Lukaku’s hope that we might “move on” was rather lost in the noise and ultimately ignored; not so much room for the man himself once the symbol had been created.
It often seems that sport has been designated a male world – men’s sports are given saturation coverage in comparison with women’s. It’s not the case of course, it’s an illusion created by women’s invisibility in sport – there is nothing inherent in any sport that makes it masculine. It does however seem to attract tropes of masculinity; ideas about gender and masculinity get hung on it. So what can sport teach us about some of the more persistent ideas around masculinity? What exactly do we make of men, or perhaps more appropriately, boys?
The “man’s game” narrative of sports favours a kind of domination of the environment, the self and others through physical strength. Pain, tiredness or lack of aggression are seen as weaknesses and are to be avoided in oneself and, when detected in others, cast out from the team. One’s place in the team is predicated around “not letting the side down” or, in other words, not being the weak one. This often correlates with how men often see their internal world; emotions are problems and can therefore be brought under control or fixed. It is as if distress can be conquered with brute strength – otherwise known in the trade as denial.
Denial can run very, very deep to the point where negative emotions are disavowed completely; they are projected onto others perhaps or locked away within a cycle of addiction. Asking for help is also anathema; that would be letting the side down. I have heard many men who have finally made it to the therapy room talk of how they didn’t want to trouble anyone else with this stuff; sure you just get on with it. They are often more concerned with desensitising themselves to feelings – the aforementioned “toughening up”. The focus is often on fixing, rather than contemplating or understanding.
The point is this – at a certain point it just doesn’t work. As any real sports fan knows, the “man’s game” narrative is nonsense – the beauty of sports is when physical strength and grace allows for moments of outstanding expression and creativity. We admire the hard tackle for sure and we recognise the place of resilience and dedication but we are inspired when athletes use their physical prowess to create out of the ordinary. We delight in sharing those moments as fans.
Similarly, in life, the tool box available to those who play the man’s game sometimes falls short. Often times we men find we can’t negotiate our world by trying to conquer it or by achieving control. We find too that we can’t supress, ignore or “fix” feelings and that we sometimes have to ask for help. Of course many men know this and are open to discussing emotional issues but there remains a pervasive attitude to the effect that emotional intelligence and help seeking are feminine qualities. Similarly, being in touch with feelings and being collaborative in expressing them is seen as somehow feminine. When this attitude is internalised, resentment of these “feminine” aspects of the self can grow and this is often projected outwards against women themselves. To deny those aspects cuts us men off from vital resources we can use to negotiate our lives.
This internal splitting off of emotions and troubled aspects of the self is of course not unique to men. It can’t be assigned completely to ideas around gender but they remain a powerful force and must be challenged if we’re to promote good mental health awareness in ourselves and young people. Denial of emotions is no solution; it merely prolongs suffering and leads to distress and we must be careful of celebrating the kind of masculinity that encourages it. To relieve distress we must listen and learn from it and that requires courage and creativity, qualities that we see in abundance in sports.