Penn State's manual for receiving reports of harassment (more notes on a scandal)

College campuses are obliged to have policies regarding sexual harassment/sex discrimination. These very broad overlapping categories include sexual assault and the systemic cover-up of abusive behavior within a department. These kinds of a matters are handled by Penn State's Affirmative Action Office. Each area of the university is also expected to have staff members trained in handling harassment complaints - including the Athletic Department. They are the college's front line - the people to whom staff and students are directed when they need help. The people who are supposed to tell you what to do, for example, if you see a guy raping someone in the showers.

As far as I can tell, Penn State's athletic department has two such staff members - a man and a woman whose names have not come up in reporting on the scandal (neither are part of the football program).  [That said, it's possible this particular system wasn't in place in 2002, when witnesses at Penn State reported Sandusky's behavior to their superiors - the Affirmative Action office was certainly in place, however, and identified as the office to which one reports such things.] No one in the football program followed the rule book on this one.

There is a reason institutions have offices for handling allegations of sex/gender harassment. Prejudice, shame and fear can be overwhelming in these cases. Victims find their experiences minimized, people who come forward expect retaliation. Charging a senior staff member with something like this is frightening. For many, coming forward feels like you are putting your personal and professional lives on the line. So - to acknowledge the specific difficulty of this whole category of experience, campuses have offices which specifically handle sex/gender harassment in all its forms.

Unfortunately, lots of university employees sneer at that office - at my own campus, I've heard it described as "a joke" and worse by a senior male colleague, in a university meeting (not in my department). Such attitudes abound - and the more masculnist and patriarchal the organization, the worse these attitudes will be.

People working in such spaces - sexist, homophobic and more - are ill equipped to handle their own feelings about child abuse - never mind child abuse enacted by a straight man (with whom they've worked closely) on young boys.

Penn State's football program has cult-like status - clearly no one wanted to acknowledge to themselves that such a man might actually fit right into the fold. What does that mean? What does that say? I can imagine everyone in that community feels shamed by this.

There is a community of people at Penn State to whom they might turn: feminist and LGBIT scholars and staff members who work regularly with subjects like sexual abuse - with the architectures of shame that make coming forward as a victim feel, for many, life-threatening. But it's naive to think the Penn State football program would be interested in turning to its feminist colleagues for help.

I'm really interested in knowing why the Penn State staff trained in handling these matters were kept so far from it all. (Am I right on this?) The only reason I can imagine for not going to the affirmative action office is that even those reporting what they saw and heard didn't want it to get out - they wanted to "keep it in the family." As is the case with many abusive scenarios.

It's probable that the university administration tried to use the non-student status of the victims to rationalize its decisions. Though all administrators have the training (and common sense) to know better, in this case, they may have wanted to believe it wasn't their responsibility - their sole responsibility in their minds may have been to students and staff - or, more nearly, to the institution itself (by which I mean Penn State football). Again, this is conjecture.

SO, here it is - an excerpt from Penn State's manual for "Recognizing and Responding to Sexual Harassment" - an overview of the things that didn't happen.

III. RESPONDING TO A COMPLAINT

A. Concerns of Complainants
• Many complainants may show hesitation or even fear about coming forward with concerns or complaints of sexual harassment.
• A complainant may need to be assured that she/he will be treated fairly and protected from retaliation.
• Complainants are often concerned about who will learn about the details of their experience.
• Assure the person that only those people that “need to know” to resolve the issues will be informed.
• In cases of sexual assault, stalking or other forms of criminal sexual conduct, inform the
person of their option to file a report with the police, then contact AAO (the Affirmative Action Office).

B. The Initial Interview
• Have a copy of the policy, brochure, and other appropriate information available. Provide copies to the complainant.
• Listen and take the complaint seriously.
• Avoid making judgment and remain neutral and supportive.
• Determine if the harassment has stopped.
• Help the person regain a sense of control by explaining the process and what happens next.
• Determine if the complainant and others are at immediate risk.
• Take factual notes during the conversation for accuracy of recall.

C. What to Say When Receiving a Complaint
• Explain briefly the University’s Policy AD41.
• Indicate that the University takes complaints of sexual harassment very seriously.
• Advise that the University will take prompt action.
• Communicate that although complete confidentiality cannot be guaranteed, the facts will be protected as much as possible including, when possible, the identity of the complainant.
• Explain that the University will protect a complainant in every possible way, including protection against retaliation for filing a complaint or participating in a complaint.
• Explain that your role is to make sure the complainant knows and understands all available options and to help explore these options.
• Stress that the complainant may also go directly to the Affirmative Action Office for consultation and advice.
• Ask what happened.

D. Information to Secure from Complainant
Ask the person reporting the behavior or making a complaint the following:
• What was (or is) the offensive behavior?
• Where did the behavior occur?
• Who is the person doing the offensive behavior? Obtain name, employment status, phone number and description of the person complained about.
• When and where did the behavior occur? Obtain this information for each instance of offensive behavior.
• Who else was present that witnessed the behavior? Obtain name and phone numbers.
• Were there any others who have had the same or similar offensive behavior directed at them?
• Did the complainant tell anyone else about what happened?
• How long has this been going on? Did the complainant keep a journal or notes about what happened?
• Did the complainant indicate that the behavior was unwelcome? If yes, what was that person’s reaction to what the complainant said or did?
• What was the effect of the behavior on the complainant?
• What does the complainant want as the outcome?

E. During the Initial Interview
• Ask only open ended questions - “why” questions put people on the defensive.
• Remain neutral - voicing opinions or reaching conclusions prematurely is inappropriate.
• Don’t make promises or guarantee any particular results.
• Don’t ask leading questions or multiple-choice questions.
• Avoid making assumptions.
• Complete confidentiality can not be promised (you can not resolve the complaint if you can not talk to anyone about it); indicate that only people with a “need to know” will be consulted.
• Don’t reveal information which would violate the privacy of the person accused (i.e. “this is not the first time I’ve heard a complaint about this person.”)
• Summarize what the person has told you.
• Make sure that the person knows she or he will be kept informed.
• Explain the next step. Ask for complainant’s contact information.
• Indicate that she/he can call you to provide additional information or for an update.
• If the issue does not appear to be sexual harassment, refer the person to the appropriate resources.
• Complete your notes, keeping them factual.

IV. WHAT TO DO NEXT

A. Review the Information Received

Call the Affirmative Action Office for advice and assistance after gathering the preliminary information and before conducting further interviews, if possible. Consider the following:

• Do you need to take immediate action?
• Is the person potentially in physical danger?
- Has the complainant expressed fear or concern about ongoing behavior?
- Do the parties need to be separated while an investigation is conducted?
• Is the person’s employment or education status in jeopardy due to the situation?
• Who needs to be involved to resolve the situation?

B. Follow-up with Complainant - Explain/Discuss Appropriate Options

Discuss strategies the complainant might want to use in responding to a sexual harassment situation.

It may be helpful for the victim to inform the harasser directly that the conduct is unwelcome and must stop. However, this is not required and in some circumstances it is not the appropriate approach.

• Describe direct action the person can take:
- Let the offender know that their behavior is unwelcome and it must stop
- Verbally
- In writing - by sending an email or a letter by certified mail to the harasser.
(See more information and sample letters at the end of this booklet)

• Describe informal actions the institution can take:
- Have conversation with the alleged harasser to discuss the behavior and review the Policy.
- Send administrative letter addressing adherence to the Policy to unit/office.
- Provide an educational program on sexual harassment prevention to the unit.
- Place a copy of the University policy in offender’s mailbox.
- Suggest other types of assistance.

• Describe formal actions the institution can take:
- Administrator or supervisor speak with alleged harasser about the behavior and
require that behavior stop.
- Refer to the Affirmative Action Office.
- Conduct a formal investigation that could possibly result in appropriate disciplinary action.

Reflections on Penn State: A Brief Look Back, to Colorado

As we read one editorial after another expressing outrage at Penn State's failure to respond to complaints regarding Sandusky, and try to wrap our minds around the consequences of this "scandal," we should step back and remember that U.S. universities have a long history of failing victims of sexual assault. That was the general point of an editorial I wrote for The Guardian yesterday. I thought I'd follow that editorial up with some more focused "unpacking" of the issues that this story raises.

My first impulse regarding the Penn State story is to look back at that long-problematic football program - The University of Colorado, Boulder - and the legal precedents it created via its "deliberate indifference" to the behavior of its players.

The University of Colorado football program has spent the past two decades up to its neck in trouble - so many women have accused its football players of rape that it became hard not to think of the program as the living embodiment of a "rape culture."

In 2007, the university settled a complaint filed by two students who were raped by football players. The students had been encouraged to invite four players over one evening. 20 players and recruits turned up - they raped both women, and a third later that evening. Other women also reported being harassed at the same party.

The students chose not to file a complaint within the university. Instead, they filed a federal lawsuit against the campus. (Given how poorly such complaints are handled, one can hardly blame them.)

The complaint argued that the players had been told to expect sex; that the football program knew that sending the players to their apartment might put those women at risk. They accused the university of deliberate indifference to the environment of harassment and sexual abuse they created through their football program.

That case was initially dismissed because the students did not use the university's procedures for filing Title IX complaints. The students appealed the district court's decision. The court of appeals reinstated the case.

In its decision reinstating the lawsuit, the court found that there was evidence that the football program had a policy of showing recruits a 'good time,' that the sexual assaults happened because the campus failed to supervise its players and the recruits they were entertaining, and that it was reasonable to expect that such misconduct would result from these conditions - in failing to supervise its players, the administration showed "deliberate indifference" to the problem. For that reason, the women could press their case. The National Council of Higher Education Risk Management describes the results economically:

By the time of the assaults on Ms. Simpson, Ms. Gilmore, and others, the CU football coach had general knowledge of the serious risk of sexual assault during college football recruiting efforts and that the need for more or different training of players and hosts was so obvious that the failure to respond was clearly “deliberate indifference” to the need. The court found:

1. The head football coach had general knowledge of the serious risk of sexual harassment and assault during college football recruiting visits;

2. The coach knew that sexual assaults had occurred during prior recruiting visits;

3. Even with this knowledge, the coach continued to maintain an unsupervised player‐host recruiting program designed to show recruits “a good time”; and

4. The head football coach was aware of prior incidents of sexual assault both because of incidents reported to him as well as the fact that he refused to work toward changing the culture regarding recruiting visits. 

Thanks to these bravery of these two students - who made their case not only about the individuals who raped them, but the institution which basically facilitated the assaults - we have this legal standard of "deliberate indifference" by which a campus can be held responsible for its passivity.

Next: The Problem of the Compliant

Picturing Hope Solo

Hope Solo survived her fifth week on Dancing with the Stars. I'm glad: she is a smart, outspoken athlete and the challenge of that program requires that she confront the different ways by which her image, as a woman, is regulated. I, for one, am glad she's willing to do so publicly.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, some USWNT fans hate the way DWTS treats Solo: Judges complained for weeks about how unfeminine her movements are, and every week they cite her physical strength as a weakness. I've explained why I don't think that is necessarily wrong. (It's a gendered performance, Solo seems uncomfortable in heels and also unsure of how one executes a routine without powering through it.)

It is worth pausing, however, to remember why fans of women's sports can get very defensive: we've been abused. We've been abused by the media blackout on women's sports, which is interrupted only occasionally by stories of exceptional victories (in lieu of regularly coverage of a season, for example) or by portraits of female monsters. So we flinch when we see the media turn its eye towards us. It's a conditioned reflex.

Add to that the paternalistic attitude with which administrators and even (sometimes especially) supporters of women's sports treat women athletes. Leagues have banned players for getting pregnant out of wedlock (imagine doing that to men! in this case, the athlete filed a suit so she could play,  she won but the controversy ended her promising career); fans tsk tsk when they see players off the court who pile on make up or wear a short skirt. National Federations compel athletes to grow long hair, and prefer that those women keep their opinions to themselves. (Look feminine! But not too much! Play hard! But not like a boy! Or too much like a girl!)

Most of us don't know where to start when talking about the image of the female athlete, because every step seems to take us in a bad direction. So when in 2009 ESPN Magazinefirst produced "The Body Issue," featuring portraits of naked men and women athletes, fans of women's sports started sharpening their knives.

It turns out that a lot of the portraits directly challenge conventions regarding the feminization and sexualization of the female athlete - this is particularly true for the image of Solo used as one of the magazine's covers.

Practical matters make photographing nude women tougher than photographing men: Women are obliged to pose in ways that covers their chests. This means that the poses are more static and defensive. Solo's cover photo is an exception. The pose reveals much about her body while also refusing, aggressively, to capitulate to conventions regarding the female nude. She is in motion, moving forward toward the viewer - her curves (and she does have them) are not hidden so much as engaged, put to work.

I think this must by why a Washington Post writer recently described Solo as androgynous. Hope Solo is as far from being androgynous as one can be: When you look at Solo, you do not wonder if she's a boy. Not even close. If she were androgynous, she couldn't have played the broad shouldered, big haired 80s Bon Jovi bitch so perfectly on this week's episode. (She landed in 4th, her best finish to date.)

But the photographs of Solo treat her body in a way that is very close to gender-neutral. It's not Solo that's androgynous, but the composition of the portraits - it's the way she is being looked at. It the way she is not being looked at.

"The Body Issue" gives us a lot to think about. Those portraits are cool, but when you look at the rest of the issue you'll see a TOTAL absence of coverage of women's sports. The only place women figure in this issue is in the nude portraits. So, the project of "The Body Issue" seems to be completely independent of any effort on the magazine's part to move towards parity in terms of its coverage. The truly sad fact is that the editors of the magazine probably think putting that wonderful portrait of Solo on the cover "counts" as coverage of women's sports. Not in my book. And, I suspect, not in Solo's either.

Lament for the Injured, Pt. 2

Riyas Komu, from exhibit "Safe to Fight" (Azad Art Gallery, Tehran, 2010)

Fear of ACL injury has replaced fear of intimacy as my number one issue. Plenty of people come back from an ACL tear and still play in leagues and pick-up games. But plenty also leave the sport forever.

If I turn a cold eye on my fear, I see that I am less afraid of never playing soccer than I am of the rehabilitation that it would take to go from a torn ACL to playing again. It isn't the tear that scares me, but being off my feet, not being able to run - sinking into depression and giving up. Not having the emotional strength and discipline to take on something like that.

I called my HMO the morning after my injury and pushed to see someone that day - I was clear: "I am afraid I tore my ACL." I was determined confront my fear - or rather, I should say, my knee insisted.

I said the magic word to describe my pain ("acute") and soon gained entry to orthopedics (I had asked for Sports Medicine, but was re-routed). I am not a difficult patient, but I have something to say about what's going on with my body. Unfortunately, this doesn't always make one's journey as a patient smoother.

A detour through past medical trauma

In 1984, I was hospitalized for eight days. A couple days before I found myself in an ambulance, I had gone to the student health clinic at Rutgers College because I was afraid I had a kidney infection.

A good friend of mine became deathly ill from this when we were first-year students. I knew the symptoms, and mine were identical to hers.

An affable young male doctor saw me. He didn't seem to take my concerns seriously. I had constant, deep pain in my lower back - off to one side exactly where the kidney is located. I had a low-grade fever, symptoms of a UTI, I was starting to feel like I had a flu or something. I could feel that this back pain wasn't muscular - it was deep, and constant.

He asked if I lifted heavy things - maybe I sprained my back. I worked in a kitchen and lifted heavy things all the time - but didn't recall hurting myself. "And how would that explain the fever, anyway?" I asked.

He told me to take extra-strength Tylenol. I said I wanted to be sure I didn't have a kidney infection. Would he please run a test? Could I please pee in a cup so we could just be sure - I was really concerned because kidney infections are really serious, and if you get to the point were you need to be hospitalized, the recovery is slow. As a working student, I couldn't afford to be out of commission for a month. I peed in a cup and went home. I took the Tylenol and felt better, but the symptoms kept returning as the pills wore off.

The next day I called the clinic to ask about the test results - they said: "The test came back negative." I bought nice food for myself because I hadn't eaten a decent meal in days. I took more Tylenol - I ate cheese and crackers, some fruit, and went to bed.

That night I was violently ill. There was a reason I had no appetite: my body couldn't handle food. I soaked the sheets with sweat. My fever kept climbing, dipping, and climbing again. By the morning I couldn't keep down water. It was the last week of the semester, and I couldn't imagine not going to my feminist political theory seminar. Being young and delirious, I went to class.

I sat on the floor in the hallway with the other students and waited for the professor. My classmates (an intense collection of college activists) insisted I go directly to the nearest university health clinic (attached to the women's college, different from the one I used). I must have been a sight - gray and sweaty. Having trouble staying vertical, and having little will of my own by this point, I went. It was about three blocks away, and I remember walking there being really hard.

I more or less collapsed when I walked in the door. My fever was 104. I remember telling the staff taht I'd been to the other clinic about fearing I had a kidney infection, and that this clinic said I was fine. The doctor on duty at the women's college clinic was soon yelling into the telephone, swearing. She shouted "You did what?!" and said "What fucking assholes," or something like that when she hung up. She then ranted to her colleagues.

I later learned that the doctor I'd seen (a resident) had decided that I w as trying to manipulate him into giving me a pregnancy test, on the assumption that I was too ashamed to ask for one. So, when I called about my test results, I had gotten the result of a pregnancy test I had not asked for.  This is bad enough. But when I went to that first clinic, I had told the resident who treated me that I had my period.

The picture I should have presented to that doctor was that of an articulate young woman, who was quite frank about what was going on with her body, and who was worried that she had a kidney infection. The doctor, I guess, saw me as a dumb slut trying to manipulate him. I don't think that's too harsh a way of reading his actions.

As I was being rushed off to the hospital in an ambulance, as the school worked on locating my family, I was far too sick to care.

I only learned the full story about what happened from a nurse, just before I graduated, when for some reason I had to go back that clinic. She saw my name and pulled me into an office to give me the full breakdown on what had happened. (Until then, I thought it had been a lab error, or something like that.)

The residency program at Rutgers was overhauled as a direct result of this incident: residents were not allowed to see especially women patients without supervision. If that nurse hadn't told me what happened, I'd never have known why what happened to me happened, or that the university had cared enough to prevent it from happening again.

The whole experience left me with one rule: Never let a resident talk to you without a doctor in the room. Never trust a doctor to really understand what you are saying about your body - they have their own feelings about the body you are in, and you can't control that. You have to help them see where those feelings interfere with their ability to see and hear you, just as they are there to do the same for you.

The only branch of medicine where I've found this to be less true - where careful listening to the patient is pretty much a base-line from which the doctor works, is, as it happens, Sports Medicine.

Sadly, that wasn't where I found myself the morning after I heard that tearing sound from my right knee. I was at Orthopedics. In a room with a resident.

Flat footed Solo!

I would love to know how often DWTS women are allowed to wear flats.

Solo was much lighter on her feet. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the performance - she was playful. The team is moving up the ranks even as the competition gets tougher.

Note that rehearsal footage shows Solo in heels. Someone made a decision. I feel heard.

Lament for the Injured, Pt. 1

Yrsa Roca Fannberg, The Death of a Former Giant (watercolor on paper, 2009)

For most of my life, I've had very specific flying dreams. My sleeping self unlocks gravity with a perfect physical coordination. I'll be running, or dancing, and then somehow both at once - suddenly I feel weightless. The struggle is not how to leave the ground, but how to find it again.

The nightmare version of this: I am running, and I feel something pull my feet out from underneath me - I fall down while my feet are being pulled backwards, and wake just before my face hits the dirt.

My athletic unconscious orbits around the scene of physical freedom - its gift, its loss, its recovery.

Last spring, I played a game with that dream-like weightlessness. There was no will, no thought - just the pure physical expression of intention.

I scored, assisted, played great defense. My body knew where the ball was, all the time. I played out of my socks, and felt, for the first time, that I knew what that phrase meant.

I loved every second of that night - months later, I can recall the game in flashes, a residual sense of a perfect (for me) economy of movement.

But the morning after, I woke up with a swollen knee - I don't remember hurting it. This was not something I'd seen before. I did the things athletes do, wrapping, icing, etc. I stayed away from the field for a few while. After three or four weeks I was back in the game - but it didn't feel right. More months off the field - a glorious summer devoted to cross-country running - and my legs felt great. Then I tried playing.

My first week back, my knee felt wrong. Easing into a game, I took up a defensive position in relation to player attacking down the right wing - he faked this way and that. I tried to go with him as he cut to my left. As I pushed off with my right foot - nothing unusual - I heard a crunch, and my knee immediately went funny.

This was a loud crunch - very different from the crackles that knee has made since I was in my 20s.

The knee didn't swell up immediately (one of the big indicators of a torn ACL), and I could put a bit of weight on it. But it hurt, and it felt so wrong - like I'd tangled up all the cords. 

A sense of dread washed over me.

Walking off the pitch was really tough. I hoped that I was being stoic. But, really, I was numb with dread.

In my heart of hearts I knew that my leg hadn't been normal in months: where my age has generally manifested itself as me needing more and more time to warm up in the game, here, it was showing in a different way.

Since that amazing night in May, my right leg would actually get worse as the game wore on. It would get weaker. My knee would be unpredictable. I couldn't tell where my right foot was when receiving a pass on the floor. My right leg below the knee would feel increasingly wooden over the course of a match. It wasn't tiredness, it was something completely different - something mechanical.

That night I stood on the sideline and watched the guys play for a while. This only made me feel more sad, more alone. 

I was staring at the field but I wasn't watching the game. I was trying to look like I wasn't totally freaked out. 

The guys in that game are my friends, but our friendship lives there, on that field: What is our connection to the people we play with, when we can't play with them anymore? Even those attachments which extend beyond the field are transformed by not being practiced on it. 

It is not easy to maintain a connection built in the game beyond your ability to play it. Making that transition is not much easier than it is to maintain the intimacy of lovers, once one has declared to the other: "Let's just be friends." I know this, if only for having played in different generations of games - Saturday morning collectives dissolve and then people you've known for a decade disappear from your life.

I limped to my car and went home.

Actually, I went to a neighbor's for ibuprofen and sobbed at her kitchen table.

Hope Solo Makes Sexy Face

There is no getting around the subject of Hope Solo's song choice.  This week the contestants were supposed to dance to a song that meant something to them personally. She chose Enrique Iglesias's "Tonight," which she described the "team's song."

Really? Because, if true, that is AWESOME.

No wonder she made a (wonderfully) dorky 'sexy-face' through practically the whole number. It's the kind of face that any of us might pull under a disco ball, after a couple of shots of tequila and especially if the Ludacris version of that Enrique Iglesias tune was on deck.
 
Anyway, Solo looked fantastic. But the competition is really tough.

My fellow critics of the sexist industrial complex will unite in making their pleas to the judges: "Can you just stop telling her she isn't feminine enough, that she's too strong yadda yadda?"

Good luck with that. Dancing with the Stars is all about routine, routine. So I don't expect to see them depart from the script unless Solo wins the whole thing - in which case her victory will be all about her triumph over her own strength.

As my last post indicated, I'm less circumspect about the gender politics of Dancing With the Stars than I am about the gender politics of, well, just about everything else. DWTS is, to repeat myself, a drag show. So, I get interested in the technical information the judges share with us regarding what it takes to walk like a girl. Because shy of Ru Paul, the information the judges offer on this point is as good as you'll get.

Bruno Tonioli, for example, usefully observed that Solo needs to walk much more on the balls of her feet. As anyone who has really worn high heels knows, the heel itself doesn't carry you in a proper "walk." That's why your grandmother, who was probably forced to wear them to work, has crazy bunions - that joint was flexed, and her weight was shoved right into the heart of it. Anyway, landing on the balls of your feet rather than your heels is a tip right out of runway walking 101. 

Regarding Solo's performance: Solo doesn't lift from her center - the judges are right to observe that her walk is kindof heavy - there really is a big difference between how she moves and how the other women move.

Also - I noticed that the more successful women dancers do a lot of posing.

Chynna makes pretty lines out of herself. At the moment when she switches from moving away from her partner, to moving toward him, she strikes a pose, asserting "Look at me! I'm pretty!"

Hope Solo, at more more less the same point. Rather than strike a pose, she dives into the next move, thinking, no doubt, "I am SO going to nail this."

Chynna looks like she has a string pulling her body up from the floor. Her weight is more or less just on that right foot, but you can hardly tell.

Solo is doing a different dance, of course, one with a more carnal vibe. But her back is hunched, and you can see her weight is resting in her hip. More barroom than ballroom.

More ethereal posing from Chynna.

Hope Solo does not pose. Hope Solo is on this show because she likes to party dance. And, this week, the judges appreciated that. So did our friend Abby.

One of these days I will get back to soccer. I promise.

Hope Solo, on her toes

Could they please just let her dance in flats? That's what I thought as I watched Hope Solo fight her way through a jive in high-heeled converse sneakers. Letting Solo dance in flats would make this whole Dancing With the Stars thing less anxiety provoking. Who isn't worried about her turning her ankle? Those joints are of national importance! 

I have been so preoccupied by her feet I've scarcely noticed this season's gender drama.

A few bloggers have already critiqued the big deal the program makes about Solo's strength and her struggle to get what reads as feminine grace into her movement. One judge couldn't help himself, and declared that Solo has "thighs that could crack a walnut." He basically called her a ball-breaker. Before we make a federal case of this, let's remember: This is Dancing with the Stars.

Everybody on that show is in drag. All contestants whose personae are at odds with ballroom comportment appear to be at sixes and sevens with their own bodies. This is especially true for certain kinds of athletes - those for whom appearing to float, for example, might go against everything they know about their bodies. Exit Metta (formerly known as Ron Artest).

Although this season features entertainment royalty transman Chaz Bono and the Queerest Eye for the Straight Guy Carson Kressley (whom we all hoped would be allowed to dance with a man), the most explicit gender panic has fallen on Hope Solo's magnificent shoulders.

Solo, stepping over her partner.

Much is made of Solo's musculature and power. There are lots of jokes about who is stronger, Solo or her sleek bear of a partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy. He quite visibly thrills at being so near to a woman who can top him.  This was the explicit content of their last dance number, in which he basically plays her water-boy. The number opens with her shoving Maksim to the ground and then stepping over him with those high-heeled shoes.

Hope Solo must surely be up there with Anna Kournikova, now, as the woman guys would most like to lose to. Steve Nash, for example, is on board for the ride. 

EA knows that we like watching women beat men. They seem to know, in fact, that men like watching men be dominated by women. In very contained forums.

Dancing with the Stars is an interesting case, for although men and women compete directly against each other, that competition is mediated by their partners - and also by the fact that they are all competing as intensely unnatural, stylized versions of really specific embodiments of femininity and masculinity. It makes interesting television.

What makes Solo's presence interesting television is the fact that her physical power and ability allows for the pleasures of the spectacle of female domination to be played out with her dance partner in particular ways. Is this the week when Solo plays it like a Bond girl? Is this the week she elbows Maksim Chmerkovsky in the face? Or is this the week she does both?

Solo can move, she makes nice lines out of herself, and she is tireless. She partners well with Maksim: they both have a physical style, and it will be interesting to see how they explore their collaboration. Watching them dance, it is hard to see who leads. She seems to push him back - and I suspect their choreography will work best when they go with that tension. Even if they are awkward, they are a genuinely sexy couple precisely because they seem to be constantly negotiating who is leading whom.

Theatrical play with the idea of female domination is a staple of Dancing with the Stars choreography. Over and over again, a dance arcs from combat to submission, as one seduces the other. As the producers of the show make a big deal out of Solo's athleticism and physicality, they help create the script for her performance - a context for reading this pair's dynamic.

The judges help us to understand, too, that a successful performance of one's gendered role here is an intensely regulated physical performance.

People who play this particular game straight don't do well. This is especially true for the male dancers, who are always at risk of becoming little more than props. Chaz (son to Cher, the world's most famous Drag Queen) and Carson (pioneer gender coach) both know this, and thus have the sense of the showmanship required for the male dancer to be even visible when paired with a woman dressed like a trashy Tinkerbell.

An athlete like Solo will have such a different relation to her body than most of the women who appear on the program. Her movement is rooted in years of practice - it has a physical economy. How she knows where her center of gravity is, how she turns a foot, or claims the space around her - this is all developed through a body keyed to a purpose - that purpose being the opposite of feminine comportment. She is agile - a goalkeeper is usually the most athletic, most agile player on a team. But she is solid: she is not a bowl of cream, a cloud, a feather - to cite the language used by the judges to describe those dancers who successfully perform ballroom grace. But she will also understand her movement, her bearing as technical - the rehearsal footage is interesting, for the ways that she and Maksim talk to each other. (M: "What are you looking at, when you have your head down like that?" H:"The ball at my opponent's feet.")

I can roll with the gender drama played out around Solo. But I also can't help but wonder if what we are seeing is a general working-though of the nervousness people feel when confronted by a woman whose unnerving confidence is not anchored by her spectacular beauty.

I don't see Solo as compromising herself by playing with what she can do in this media format. I would rather the show play her strength and athleticism up than play it down.

Her appearance on Dancing with the Stars seems to be of a piece with a multi-platform attack on the public consciousness, in which USWNT players appear in contexts that embrace their athleticism - that, in fact, treat them as athletes without, however, losing sight of the interest-value that attends to almost all female athletes. By which I don't mean their femininity - but rather the way that the image of the female athletes surfaces gender itself as a thing.

Sports Center has been producing amusing ads around the USWNT. These bits play with soccer and gender drama. Take this video, in which a pre-haircut Abby Wambach responds to a hallway "dive."

Part of its humor is her cold indifference to his shouts of pain. He's the wuss here, and it's a woman who is calling him out on it. (Abby Wambach's importance to the team also means that the team can't be represented only by its more girlish players - much as the media would love to edit boyish players from the picture, they can't - and the public doesn't want them to.)

In another "This is Sports Center" spot, Solo and Alex Morgan play keepie-uppie with the Miami Dolphins mascot. Their vibe is ruined by anchor Stuart Scott, who plays the part of that guy:

The problem here is the man who thinks he can keep up with the women and the dolphin. Which is to say that gender isn't the main problem: it's the sense of authority that a sports anchor has in relation to the game - a sense of authority that he loses the minute he tries to enter into it. One can't help but wonder if he feels entitled to enter into this conversation because he underestimates the skill required by it. Gender might have something to do with that - not because the players are women, but because the sportscaster's sense of entitlement is rooted in little more than his masculinity. The joke, in other words, is on patriarchy. And there is a real pleasure to watching Scott participate in making that joke.

Gender enters into the story of Dancing with the Stars because the competition is only a few degrees shy of RuPaul's Drag Race: It is completely fair for the producers and the judges to underscore the ways in which various performers struggle to channel the light footed nobility of Fred Astaire and easy grace of Ginger Rogers, and to use a language of masculinity and femininity in offering their critiques.

It would be nice, however, if dancers had the option of playing their part in a cute pair of ballet slippers.

Heads Up Academics - Call for Papers: The Athletic Issue

Call for Proposals, Special Issue of GLQ: The Athletic Issue

Jennifer Locke, Black/White (2009) 

This issue aims to collate interdisciplinary queer scholarship on sports and physical culture. This work should engage major issues in contemporary criticism – e.g. discourse on nationalism, autonomy and escape; neoliberalism esp. in relation to global economic and media flows; new media/art practices, creative and activist.

We are interested in topics like the following:

*The complicated legacy of the US’s Title IX (which impacts both sports studies and the gendered space of the academy more broadly)
*Discourses of race/sex/gender provoked by the public figure of the athlete
*The dizzying array of systems that manage the obvious homoerotics of sports culture (for good and ill)
*Transgender matters in sports/physical culture
*Disruptions of gender segregation, intersexuality and the athletic body
*Movement-based scholarship attending to sex/gender in relation to sport/physical culture
*Situated analysis of queer sporting communities
*Studies that speak to anti-homophobic activism in sports
*The athletic as a domain of queer performance

Also welcome are essays that center on athletes and athletic performances themselves.

These suggestions are meant to indicate the general scope of this special issue, and should not be taken as describing the limit of our interests. The aim of this issue is to explore how queer criticism expands our sense of what "sports studies" might be.

Authors should send two-page proposals (single space is OK) to Jennifer Doyle, at jennifer.doyle@ucr.edu before December 1, 2011. 

Completed essays should be no longer than 8,000 words (including notes). Essays solicited from proposals will be submitted to peer-review.

Another Reason to Love Pia Sundhage

I wish I could take credit for finding this video of Pia Sundhage playing the guitar and singing a Swedish Joan Armatrading-ish track. My archive isn't that deep, however. So we owe a big thank you to Jen O'Neil of She Kicks (via twitter @SheKicksdotnet) and also @DandalBs, who explained that this is a "happy revolutionary song from the 1970s" and shared the following translation (of the title? lyrics?): "we are the legends for those who come after us." Indeed.

How I wound up being "special to Fox"

Finally, someone reading my articles on Fox Soccer asked the big question: RealMD posted the following comment yesterday:

Why Fox Sports would partner with the author of this essay is obvious.  Why she would partner with Fox Sports is the question.

Go up to the top masthead on this website and click on Fox Sports.  It brings you to their main web page.  Run your cursor across the subsections with their dropdown menus.  It goes something like this:  NFL, MLB, Nascar, etc. Pause on "Soccer", and one subsection says Women's World Cup.  Then keep going one by one, all the way to the last one, which says "More" Under More you will find the other two subsections that have anything to do with women,  NCAA WBK, and Babes. Professor Doyle, is this the right partner?

So, to reassure FaLW writers who might be concerned about the wild compromise implied by my being "special to Fox" (as the site declares), I thought I'd answer the question by telling the story of how I came to have this strange bedfellow.

Shortly before the start of the Women's World Cup, I was surprised by an email from Richard Farley, Fox Soccer's new website editor. We are familiar with each other's work, but had never met.

He asked if I would consider contributing to a section on the Women's World Cup. He frankly admitted that when he came in, there had been no plan at Fox Soccer to cover the tournament. Unlike a lot of newspapers and mainstream sports sites, he wanted to commit to detailed reporting on the tournament from the first game out.

I have been complaining for years about the lack of attention to the women's game and to the harder issues within it. Recently, in a personal effort to do my part, I have begun to project my perspectives into media spaces - I co-hosted  podcasts for KPFK throughout the men's World Cup, and have contributed one story on India's women's program to the New York Times Global Edition, and two sports-related "comments" to The Guardian.

I tried pitching a series of newspaper articles on the Women's World Cup in keeping with this work. All liberal papers. None were interested. This is partly because I do not have personal contacts in sports departments (the one editor I knew was laid off), and also because a pitch from a minnow like me - about women's sports, written from a feminist angle? Well, it doesn't fit any existing 'demand.' Most of the things I write about aren't 'stories' from a mainstream media perspective. (But a ponytail pull is??)

Sometimes I think that sports editors can't handle feminist or anti-homophobic writing about women's sports unless it's from a guy, with an established "guy" voice. Dave Zirin is one of the few sports writers able to make strong, even radical arguments about gender and sports - and I am not sure he'd have the visibility that he does if he were a woman, who wrote at least half her material about women's sports and always had. (I am guessing he would support this point, being the feminist that he is.)

Anyway, this is just to say that the more I've been writing about sports, the more I've noticed that the complex structures that maintain the sexism and homophobia in the sports world regulate not only what gets said, but who gets to say it - how, and where. And I've thought - I shouldn't assume the worst - until I try to put my own work out there, I won't know what is really possible, and what isn't.

As a tenured professor with a healthy and stable career (as much as that is possible in this economy), I feel a certain call - if I can't "risk" putting myself and my writing out there, who can?  Lead by example - I really believe that.

In any case, if it were Fox News, I would not have taken the request to write seriously - I would not have replied. It wasn't Fox News, but Fox Soccer - I actually watch that network, as do a lot of fans.

Jenna Pel and Jeff Kassouf were already board with Farley's WWC project: I respect both very much for their sustained, reasonable coverage of the women's game. All White Kit and The Equalizer are must-reads for people looking for concrete information and informed perspectives. If I'd been asked to compile a site featuring WWC coverage by my top bloggers, they'd be there - along with Cross Conference.

Given that Fox seemed to have so little invested in the women's game, I don't think any of us felt like there was a "Fox line" for us to tow.

I made no compromises vis a vis my politics - even more incredibly, I wasn't asked to do that, nor was I asked to simplify my writing. I was amazed at how prominently the women's game was featured on Fox Soccer's main page - from the start of the tournament to days beyond its finish. That is huge.

Anyway - to address RealMD's question regarding the "babes" section of the site. Never checked it out. All the "babes" I ever wanted to see were featured prominently in the match reports.

2011 Women's World Cup: Reflecting on the USWNT run

I write this from the train, on the return journey that marks the conclusion of my experience with the 2011 Women’s World Cup. There are sleeping Japanese fans scattered throughout the cars – I imagine they went directly from celebrations to the station. 

The USWNT players are flying home. We’ll be in our own beds tonight, back to normal.

It’s been an emotional ride.

It is hard to argue with the fact that the women’s game is more generous than the men’s. Remember last year’s final in South Africa? It was an awful, cynical display. Spain won not a football match but a bar fight. The world gathered in unison to watch that? All I felt at the end of that game was a faint disgust with myself for having spent so much time covering the tournament.

The USWNT and Japan, in contrast, gave us a game. I come away from that match – from the whole tournament – wanting more.

Sure, there is room for criticism of both team’s performances. But the domain of that criticism is pure football: Strategy, technique. Who doesn’t love to talk about these things?

Fans in the stands were furious with Japan’s tendency to delay the game – they were slow with their goal kicks in particular, and were often content to pass the ball around the back. Quite a few of us found it alarming for what it implied: they were waiting for us to tire ourselves out.

Yes, the USWNT needs a more clinical finish, especially under the kind of pressure applied by the Japanese National Team last night. Wambach in particular seemed to play much of the game in the middle of an accordion, opening and closing around her. She got space in the midfield, but the more she closed in on the goal, the tighter the Japanese grip. 

It was thrilling to see how Wambach responded to this. She cut and ran, she charged and bullied, she took players on, and she shot. It was an erie reproduction of Necib’s performance against the US, though frankly Wambach played with much more gusto, aggression and creativity and didn’t flag though I can only imagine she had wrung every bit of energy out of herself by the game’s end.

But as was the case with Necib and Bompastor (who is probably Wambach's closest international analog in terms of bad-ass prowess), the more energy the US strikers poured into the game, the more this energy sent shots too high, too far. 

Sometimes, the harder you try the harder it gets. 

But to focus on this would be to miss the two wonderful goals the USWNT did score. Morgan and Wambach, both, by doing exactly what they do best – powering in front of the back line and beating the goalie one-on-one (Morgan), and by throwing herself to meet the ball in the air (Wambach) with a clinical finish no one can dispute, never mind touch.  

Rapinoe was as exciting to watch as Wambach: She reads the game brilliantly. Again and again, “Pinoe” (pronounced like the wine) pulled the ball away from Japan and turned the run of play around. She is quite literally a game-changer.

The first of Japan’s goals was a gift from the US defense. An exceptional moment, as through most of the game, the back line really worked. Buehler, in particular, was tough as nails.  

I don’t want to think about that first goal from Japan – it was a lowlight for the USWNT, and Miyama showed great control by capitalizing on it. (The US had these chances, too, but did not profit from them.)

Those goals are the opposite of set-pieces. They are struck by players who have no right to imagine that ball would be in front of them. They take composure, and the ability to think very quickly and act as if by reflex. Japan watches for these kinds of openings, these cracks in the wall and slips right through them. 

Japan’s second goal from Sawa was class. It was the kind of goal that makes one sigh with the elegance and strength of it. She wings into the danger zone as if called down by the gods to sort things out. This is what sent us into penalties.

The rest is history. Again, it was not the USWNT’s finest moment. We had all come to expect better.

And here is where I felt the arc of the tournament narrative most. 

This was the World Cup championship match, and it was a great game. We had everything but refereeing scandals (we even saw a red card issued in the closing minutes of play). We had great goals and opportunistic goals. Terrific saves from both goalkeepers, and shots that by all rights should have gone in (Wambach, in particular, was robbed of a goal by an unlucky bounce off the crossbar.) 

The US played a ferocious game against Brazil, and unlike some fans, I really liked the game they played against France. They played the best team in the tournament and lost to them – but they weren’t walloped, they weren’t dominated. Far from it. For long stretches, the players played the best game they’ve played all year. It really looked like they could win it all.

But throughout the year, we watched the USWNT squeak through. Losing to an increasingly strong Mexican side, they forced themselves into a playoff with Italy (not exactly a women’s football powerhouse). Then they scared us in the first leg of that exchange with an underwhelming match rescued by an impossibly late goal from Alex Morgan who scored in injury time. They won at home in a solid game, played before a small crowd. They lost a friendly to England.

They struggled, and at times it seemed like few cared. Sometimes I wondered if the USSF was relieved – as if the strength of the USWNT were not as a source of pride, but an embarrassment.

The match that would decide if the no. 1 ranked team in the world would go to Germany was not even broadcast on television. ESPN webcast the game, but only to its subscribers. Fans were worried about the team, and about the USWNT program more broadly. 

The women’s national team program has seemed moribund – plagued by the same problems that hold the men back: US athletes grow up playing a very regimented game, one that can stifle creativity. They only play against people their own age, and so don’t develop the improvisational guile that one hones in situations when outmatched. And so on. 

We spent a lot of time lowering our expectations.

Why does Alex Morgan always come on so late? Why doesn’t Pia mix up her starting 11? Why is LePeilbet playing out of position? The physical game isn’t enough! Defense isn’t enough when that defense isn’t perfect! Just about the only person we never complained about was Hope Solo. Even Wambach took flack.  

Alexi Lalas loves the USWNT (photo from his twitter feed)

Add to this the USSF’s horrific publicity campaign for the team – forever holding on to 1999, anxious about the “attractiveness” of the team (the WWC player video portraits used at the start of matches show all the players with their hair down, ‘blown out’ into gentle waves), unsure of how to redress the team’s visibility problem (e.g. 2007’s Nike slogan for the USWNT: ‘the best team you’ve never heard of’), totally ignorant regarding the team’s fan base. The USSF commissioned a kit designed to be “feminine but not cutesy” (their words) - and produced nothing whatsoever that a male fan might wear to identify himself as a fan of the women’s team. 

The USSF and Nike put far more energy into the men’s team’s Gold Cup campaign than into the women’s World Cup appearances. Far more.

These administrative problems sting. They are insulting to fans, to the athletes and to the communities who have damned well heard of the team. We find in the USSF’s desire to feminize the team’s image the kind of thinking which, taken to an extreme, leads to environments from which gender non-conformity itself is banned, as is the case with the Nigerian squad. 

For what is that “feminine but not cutesy” design mandate if not some sort of apology for Wambach’s power and her broad shouldered, confident swagger? You can imagine the boardroom conversations. The sighs of relief that express not gratitude for Solo and Morgan’s talent, but rather for their physiques and long flowing locks. (Which is insulting to them.)

US fans are over it. We really and truly are.

And if the USSF thinks that the team’s image needs feminization more than it needs, say, grassroots outreach – well, it makes me anxious for the sport’s future. 

Last night, I was reminded of how effectively a great match can blow that bullshit out of the water.  The love for the game (in all its elegance and cruelty) was on full display. 

And I was part of a crowd celebrating that: 48,000 people all focused on the actions of twenty-two women. No distractions. Just game, and the pulse of all the people who love it. 

Scarcely anyone left the stadium before the players – we couldn't stand to be parted from either team. It was mesmerizing.