Content area
Full Text
Sex, Violence, and Male Bonding on Superbowl Sunday
Some Superbowl parties this season featured more than beer and pizza. At high-priced, men-only Superbowl parties, strippers were paid to perform sex shows at half-time. To heighten the midway game tension of scoring and winning, some men looked up from the TV screen and watched a sex show.
Male bonding through heavy drinking and watching a violent sport on TV seems to pair well with male bonding by watching a sex show. The sex show would not make sense without the violence: who would hire strippers during the World Series or the NBA Championship? Nor would a lone man watching the Superbowl hire a stripper -- he would only find it exciting in the company of men to watch a woman remove her clothes.
Football is notorious for its high injury rate, its high cost to university sports injury clinics, and for the misogynistic attitudes of coaches and players. One of the greatest insults a coach can levy on a player is to challenge his masculinity by calling him a girl. A player proves himself to his coach by playing more "manly"; that is, with more aggression and violence.
I am not suggesting we do away with football -- obviously most men do not play college or pro football and so do not learn sexist attitudes and the valorization of violence by playing the game. I am questioning why some men's feelings of camaraderie are enhanced...