Hannah Hecht's Blog

Maybe as a Morningsider and a fellow athlete, it verges on sacrilege for me to criticize the workings of a different Mustang sports team. Or actually, not just another team, the football team. You know, the one that is currently ranked number one in the nation?

However, I feel like this editorial can bring light to something that needs to be said. Across the board, I feel like Morningside is an institution that is friendly and open toward women, especially in the upper levels: the administration, the faculty, the staff. But, the experience I had this morning, coupled with the same one a year ago, has my blood boiling.

Today, our swim team had a dual against Coe College, starting at 1:00 pm. Our coach arranged for us to eat breakfast in the caf’ at 9:00 am with the football team, under the condition that we be very respectful. The football team doesn’t usually want other teams in the cafeteria with them on game days, but we were going to be given a special privilege, so we had better be respectful to them.

When we got there, the head football coach was very kind to us. He made sure that we were able to get our food and sit down before the football team began their before-game proceedings. There were a lot of adult males in the cafeteria with the team, and, after a similar experience last year, I thought I knew why.

Once we had all gotten our food and sat down, the coach began the ritual. All of the seniors were told to bring the men who had had an influence on their lives to the front of the room. It didn’t have to be their dad, but it did have to be a male who had “made them into the man they are today.”

The seniors then introduced the adults to the rest of the cafeteria. “This is my dad. His name is John. He coached me in high school football and if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be the strong man I am today.” Some of the speeches had a little more variety; for example, a couple of guys brought up an uncle or, in one case, a girlfriend’s dad. Some said that they had learned how to be a man from their father figure.

Now, this wasn’t all that bad. I mean, I know that my dad has had a huge influence in my life as well, the scope of which I probably can’t even comprehend. The thing that really irked me was the total lack of women in the room (besides myself and my teammates). No player was allowed to bring up his mother and talk about how she had shaped him. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in three children in America grow up in homes where their biological father is absent. What if one of the players felt that his mother had been a more integral part of his life? The implication seemed to be that mother figures aren’t quite as important, or at least that they don’t deserve a place at the table before the seniors’ last home football game.

After the introductions, the seniors and their father figures sat down, and the coach launched into a speech about “What it means to be a man.” Being a man means taking responsibility. Being a man means doing your best when you think you can’t do it any more. Being a man means leaving it all on the field. Being a man means living a life with a purpose, a life full of meaning. Being a man means having children and teaching them to live meaningful lives. We need to strive to be strong, powerful men.

I had to agree with most of the things that the coach said. I mean, men should take responsibility and do their best and live a life with a purpose. But, I left with a sense of having been wronged in some way. Are those things really specific to men? Doesn’t that all just constitute life as an adult? If being a man means being responsible, doing your best, and living a life full of meaning, does being the opposite of a man mean that you can’t do those things?

At this point, you might think that I am just nit-picking. But I think that my experience this morning points to a higher problem in our culture. The summer after my freshman year at Morningside, my best friend (a women’s soccer player at a college comparable to Morningside) and I signed up for our high school’s summer weights program. It ended up being the two of us, a couple male wrestlers and the entire Lansing High School football team. That experience taught me a lot about masculinity and football culture. Football players, some in much worse athletic shape than my friend and I, would scream at each other “Don’t be such a pussy!” or “Quit being a little girl” or “Why are you such a faggot” whenever a student was having trouble completing the exercises. And, I guess when a bunch of kids aged 14 to 17 are yelling those things at each other (not that I don’t hear the exact same things here at college), it is indicative of a culture that thinks femininity is inherently weak, while masculinity is inherently strong. If I were to call myself a “strong, powerful woman,” the connotation would be entirely different (and it would probably be cause for a listener to laugh) whereas the football coach can earnestly tell the players that they are “strong, powerful men.”

Really, had the coach allowed the players to bring up any adult who they felt was a strong influence and had he simply replaced the word “man” with “adult” throughout his speech, I think that I and my other female teammates would have been a lot more comfortable in that cafeteria. But, much more than that, I think that he could have been taking a step against an overarching American male football culture with twisted ideas about masculinity and femininity.