The sports arena,
particularly men’s sports, is a great container to discuss many social issues
as it relates to masculinity and gender-based violence with men. The “off the
field” situations that professional athletes constantly bring onto themselves
is magnified by the incredible cultural and capitalistic machine of sports
media. This gives us many opportunities to discuss important issues like men’s
violence against women. The Derrick Rose situation is no different.
In short, a woman has
anonymously come forward with a lawsuit stating that Rose and 2 of his friends
drugged and raped her in August of 2013. More details can be found by simply
googling Derrick Rose. (More details here,
here,
and here.)
This isn’t the first (and
unfortunately, won’t be the last) time that a high profile male athlete is
accused of rape. We have some evidence of what conversations around these
stories are like, so I would like to take a moment to respond to some of the
common responses that I hear.
