Proposal presentation

For my semester project, I will be writing about professional athletes and violence, and how sports fans, as well as the leagues these athletes play for, respond. More often than not, athletes who commit acts of domestic violence or sexual assault are not punished as fairly as compared to an average joe who doesn't have the fame or the money and commits the same crime. Professional athletes have the money to hire skilled and cunning lawyers to get around being charged like finding a way to get the victim/accuser to settle. And after, these athletes rarely get punished by their team or league.

But not only are the leagues and teams responsible for handing out punishments athletes deserve, it also falls on the fans of the sport as well as the culture surrounding masculinity and its resulting in victim-blaming, which is also a big problem in regards to domestic violence and sexual assault.

One big case I will be talking about in my project is the case of Kobe Bryant in 2003, where he was accused of rape. It was a high-profile case where essentially there was good evidence against but the charges were dropped. Bryant went on to continue his illustrious career. I will be referring to the book Kobe Bryant: The Game of His Life where it has the details surrounding the case at the time.

I will also be referring to research articles in journals by Harvard Law School to talk about other cases that aren't as high-profile as Bryant. Bethany P. Withers has two research articles about league treatment of athletes who have been accused of domestic violence and sexual assault.

In regards to the problem of victim-blaming and how a lot of focus is shifted to the accuser, I will looking to the work of Jackson Katz. Katz is a major figure in working on the issues of gender and violence. He has many publications but I will mainly be looking into his Tough Guise documentaries and his book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women And How Men Can Help. 

The reason why I am doing this project is because I'm a sports fan and I can't imagine cheering for a team where a woman beater or rapist is playing. I feel that if I do that, I am condoning these kind of crimes. So I think that league and team policies should improve as to where people who commit such acts should receive a just punishment, whether it be serving time in jail or being suspended from play for more than just a year. And obviously, the culture surrounding masculinity and sports plays a part in how people see these athletes and how they see the victims. Once the culture changes, maybe we'll stop focusing so much on the victim and more on why the athlete acts in such ways and make the institutional changes necessary to prevent such acts from happening again.

Also, we the fans play a huge part. We're the base of how these athletes, teams, and leagues make money. We're a big reason why these famous athletes aren't punished as fairly. Leagues and teams are going to try to keep the athletes who help teams win games and sell tickets on the field. And I feel that once the fans are more informed about how often these acts of domestic violence and sexual assault occur and have gone unfairly unpunished, they will be more inclined to take a stance and force the leagues' hands in enforcing a stricter policy. And the fans need to also become more aware of the culture of masculinity and victim-blaming so that it doesn't cloud the kind of judgement an athlete defendant receives.

My project will take the form of an article that I will publish on the website Medium, where I have just created an account. This is free and open to anyone so hopefully this project will get me going in publishing more content and creating a portfolio. And I can further share my content through forms of social media like Twitter and Facebook.