So tell me what you want, what you really really want

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http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2013-11-how-locker-room-behavior-hurts-us-all


Normally this is the kinda thing I'd leave to Merle, but I'm tackling this one.

To start with the author starts out with a rant on football players, pro players at that. She then leaps into a completely different discussion, which is exactly the same thing I do in too many of my blogs.

To follow the path she's laid down:

1) This is PRO football. To pull a quote from her article, "This is a game of high testosterone, with men hammering their bodies on a daily basis. You are taught to be an aggressive person, and you typically do not make it to the NFL if you are a passive person. There are a few, but it’s very hard. Playing football is a man’s job, and if there’s any weak link, it gets weeded out. It’s the leaders’ job on the team to take care of it."

Unlike the article's author, I do not believe, for an instant, that what happened to the football player who quit was an attempt to weed him out. It was nothing more than what very strong men, amped on testosterone and so on do to each other. Weeding out happens on the field and is done by the coach, not the locker room.

What the player who quit heard is exactly what'd he'd hear on the field from opposing players. Yes. It is. It's called psychology.

I give you an excerpt from my all time favorite movie, M*A*S*H:

Cpl. Judson: Bastard, 88, called me a coon.
Spearchucker: Called you a what?
Cpl. Judson: Coon.
Spearchucker: OK, that's an old pro trick, to get you thrown out of the ball game.
Cpl. Judson: Well...
Spearchucker: Why don't you do the same thing to him?
Cpl. Judson: What, call him a coon?

The statements hurled at Jonathan Martin are exactly what I'd expect to hear in pro football.

Some may believe you can have a quality football team without this kind of activity. Sure. Just ask former UGA Head Coach Ray Goff about the light-handed approach to football and football players. Goff was fired. When my own late sainted grandmother said of Goff,  "He's just not mean enough" then you know something was off. Still don't believe me? Ask Steve Spurrier what it takes to be a successful football coach and player.

Suit up or shut up.

Some people will still say it doesn't have to be this way. How many of them played pro football? How many played football at all? In case you wonder, I played football in school, one year. I played what amounted to rugby a lot longer.

"It still doesn't have to be that way."

Play football and come back and talk to me.

Furthermore, show me ANY professional activity with the same team esprit de corps and the same amount of violence and I'll show you the exact same activities taking place.

Next point. The author's true colors come shining clear with this statement: "In a society largely controlled by property-owning, land-stealing, vote-wielding, and law-making white men, we’ve shaped our culture to revere brutal and subjugating behavior, especially when it comes from white guys." Whew. I wish she wouldn't hold back.

She then goes on to make some almost logical points. I'ma use this sentence by way of example: "Or politicians who visit strip joints on fundraising outings, use profanity and name-calling when dealing with female co-workers (including the First Lady), and even our own President who only invites men to chummy pick-up basketball games at the White House."

GASP! Women do go to strip clubs.

Point 1: Why don't women visit strip joints? Sure they do, but in less numbers than men. Why? Furthermore, what's wrong with going to a strip club? I'm sure she has answers, all of which are man-bashing. I wonder what she had to say about Georgia's major embarrassment, Cynthia McKinney.

Point 2 and 3: Make up your FREEKING MIND! Men use profanity and name-calling when dealing with each other! It's WHAT WE DO! If you want to be treated equally, GET USED TO THE IDEA Of BEING CALLED NAMES! It's been going on for millennia. If you don't want equal treatment, then do not bitch about being treated unequally. Of course the president only invites men to the basketball court. Can you imagine what would be said if he popped a woman in the boob on the court? Egad. The press busts (heehee) a guy in the chest and the guy grins and gets payback a bit later.

Make up your mind. Men, real men and responsible men, will treat women the way women ask to be treated. As soon as the women figure it out. Which is no doubt going to be called a sexist remark. G'head. I'm not the one who says "Nothing" when someone asks me, "What's wrong?"

GAAAAAAAAAAH!

Next quote: "Men, in every profession, should be expected to operate off of more than emotions and instincts. They should be expected to be professionals." Professionals. Ms. White is a college journalism instructor who wrote "But I’m over this “boys will be boys” shit." That appears at the lead sentence in the very paragraph in which she demands men be professional.

Play football. Then talk to me. And then when yer at it, apply the same code of standard to yerself Khadijah Costley White. Yassee the very things she accuses men of doing, she does in her profanity-sprinkled tirade lambasting the XY chromosome crowd.

Parity does not live in Ms. White's column.

'Nother quote: "America’s history is built on the destruction and exploitation of others." Lemme let a grand idiot, Axl Rose reply:

"Welcome to the jungle, we got fun 'n' games
We got everything you want, honey we know the names
We are the people that you find, whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey we got your disease."

Here's where she and I do agree. Neither of likes a society ruled by powerful amoral types. "I believe that you can win a football game without being racist, sexist, and homophobic." She and I also agree. But you can't win football games without having enough attitude to be a winner on the field. Ask any pro football coach who has won the Super Bowl.

But we have a fundamental disagreement that cannot be resolved. She is definitely female, probably of recent African descent and a liberal. I am a male composed of so many nationalities any time war is declared on the planet. I beat myself up in a nationalistic fervor and a libertarian realist. She cannot know what it is like to be a male, nor can I know what it is like to be a female.

Unlike Ms. White, I ain't making excuses. I'm stating facts.

Unlike Ms. White, I also know what it takes to be a football player.

And probably exactly like I have done with Ms. White's article, this one will be vastly misunderstood. But WTH, I'm only professional journalist making a living at it for 28 years now. Betcha Ms. White couldn't.