October 16, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Words From Sports
from How Men Talk About Women
by Iris Stewart
Iris Stewart says that, in doing research for her first book, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance: Awakening Spirituality Through Movement and Ritual (Inner Traditions, 2000) she found that, until the intensive research and writings of feminists in the past three decades, there has been little written about women's history. In order to dig out how things might have been, and how and why they changed, she looked at such things as word origins, how they changed with societal changes, and how so many negative words developed. She came up with so many words that it could "fill a book". The following is an excerpt from a book in progress by Iris, What Men Say About Women: and How It Affects Your Life.
The word sport itself has the connotation of an overall sexual nature and has had it for centuries. In Shakespeare's play, King Lear, when he refers to his bastard son Edmund, he says, "There was good sport at his making". A brothel has been called a "sporting house", the "sporting life" often refers to pimps and prostitutes. Kissing and petting has been referred to as a "favorite indoor sport", presumably in contrast to outdoor sports such as football. The word game can also carry the same sexual connotation as sport, or contact sport. "Gaming" is hunting for wildlife or game; "playing games" is what she's accused of doing when he thinks he's not getting his way.
It is abundantly clear that college and professional sports is the religion of our times and their players are the heroes and demigods of modern mythology. Football is the preiminent passion. The Rose Bowl and Super Bowl have become the national festivals without rival. Understanding that football is a male preserve manifesting both the physical and cultural values of masculinity as we know it in this society will make the meanings of its verbiage easier to detect.
The terminology used in football is more than suggestive. The whole language of football is involved in sexual allusions. In the idioms and metaphors about sports, a clear pattern of personal interactions and attitudes towards those interactions is revealed. "Ball" is the first example - he's got balls. Balls also means testicles. Inasmuch as all males have testicles, the statement should be an anomaly, so it must mean a gread deal more. A man who has "balls" is a man of strength and determination, an even more macho attitude than "guts". To "ball" someone is to have sex, but also implies he "got his way", just short of rape.
In football it is common to speak about putting one's opponent "down." This could mean to topple the opponent literally, but seen in the context of sports jargon's connection to sex, it could also imply forcing the adversary to assume a supine position - a "female" position in sex, a humiliating experience for a male. A "touchdown" is a putdown.
The sports announcer might say the player has made a penetration into the opponent's territory. A humilitating experience for a male would be to serve as a passive receptacle for a male aggressor's phallic thrust. Numerous idioms attest to the widespread popularity of this pattern of imagery to describe a loser. One speaks of having been screwed by one's boss or having been given the shaft. The act of "giving the finger" gesture, the so called digitus impudicus, is often accompanied by such unambiguous explanatory phrases as "Fuck you!" "Screw you!" "Up Yours!" or "Up your ass!".
The use of the term end is not accidental. The playing field has two ends (endzones) with a "midfield", each line has two ends with a "center". The relatively recently coined terms tight end and split end futher demonstrate the special emphasis upon this "position" on the team and could easily be understood as possessing an erotic nuance. A good offensive or defensive play results in the penetration of the opponent's "end". While screwing the other team, he held up his end and thereby protected the collective "end" of the entire team. A good offensive or defensive play deserves a pat on the rear end, a practice we so often observe among football players that means more than words can say.
A basic expression in all sports is the word "score". Scoring is winning, in sports and in sex. With each winner, there is a loser. One scores by "going all the way", a phrase as meaningful in sex as in making a touchdown. The term spike may also be germane. As a noun, it could refer to a sharp-pointed long slender part or projection. As a verb, it could mean either "to mark or cut with a spike, or to thwart or sabotage an enemy", the football presumably being the phallic spike. The ritual act of spiking accentuates the successful entry into the enemy's endzone, a climatic moment of triumph.
Football players are told by their coaches to get out there and "fuck those guys"; to take that ball and "stick it up their asses, stick it in the hole" or "down their throats." A player tells that the coaches would yell, "knock their dicks off," "knock their jocks off;" go out there and give it all you've got - shoot your wad." The word jock as phallus is of interest since it is a term for jockstrap (an article of underapparel worn to protect the male genitals) adapted from the word jockey (Scottish nickname for John or Jack, both of which are also used in sexual connotations: john for customer of prostitute, jack as in jack-off - ejaculate). It refers to the act of mounting and riding a horse. Jock is a term typically used to refer generally to athletes. A jocker is used in hobo slang and in prison slang to refer to an aggressive male homosexual.
Much of the sexual slang makes it very clear that the winners are men while the losers are women or passive homosexuals. By the end of the game, one of the teams is "on top", has "scored" most by getting into the other team's "end zone." === From grade school on, the curse words on the football field are about behaving like a girl. If you don't run fast enough or tackle hard enough you are a pussy, a sissy.
Professor Alan Dundes of U. C. Berkely, in his book, Interpreting Folklore, says, "Sexual acts carried out in thinly disguised symbolic form by, and directed toward, males and males only, would seem to constitute ritual homosexuality.
"Evidence from other cultures indicates that male homosexual ritual combats are fairly common. Answering the question of who penetrates whom is a pretty standard means of testing masculinity cross-culturally. Interestingly enough, the word masculine itself seems to derive from Latin mas (male) and culus (anus). The implication might be that for a male to prove his masculinity with his peers, he would need to control or guard his buttocks area while at the same time threatening the posterior of another (weaker) male. A good many men's jokes in Mediterranean cultures (e.g. in Italy and in Spain) center on the culo." I wonder what would have happened if a woman had written that.
There is some suspicion that some T.V. sports addicts "get it off" from watching the game. One male radio talkshow host, interviewing his football hero of the moment about the most recent game, said, "I got a boner (erection) watching that play!" The hero naturally demurred.
The word, bang, as in gang bang or bang, bang you're dead could be tied to the sport of firearms and hunting as well as to rape and violence. And you always want to "get the biggest bang for the buck!"