Abuse Is Baked Into American Sports – Nobody Said Anything For Fear Of Being Benched
As someone who has been researching, writing and teaching about women’s and girls sports for the past 15 years, I wasn’t surprised by the recent revelations of sexual and verbal abuse by National Women’s Soccer League coaches.
There’s a tendency to explain such horrific behavior in strictly individualistic terms – as a sign of personality disorders or moral deficiencies. But this kind of response misses the larger picture of how organized sports itself contributes to abusive and even sadistic behavior.
My book on the hypercommercialization of girls sports identified many instances of verbal and physical abuse of girls and young women at both the youth and college levels.
More recently, some colleagues and I have been exploring the structural causes of college athlete stress and anxiety....