Today, violence against women is rightly abhorred. But we call violence against men entertainment. Think of football, boxing, wrestling; or ice hockey, rodeos, and auto racing. All are games used to sugarcoat violence against men, originally in need of sugarcoating so our team — or our society — could bribe its best protectors to sacrifice themselves Yet even today the violence against men in sports is still financed by our public education system, and by public subsidies of the stadiums in which sports teams play. Violence against men is not just called entertainment, it is also called education. We all support it. Every day
The celebration of that violence can be seen in our naming of school teams after violent societies (Vikings, Aztecs, Trojans) or fierce animals (Tigers, Bears, Panthers). Even our cars are called Jaguar, Cherokee, Cougar, Fury, and Stealth. Imagine your daughter being picked up by a guy driving a Ford Fairy, a Dodge Daisy, or a Ply-mouth Pansy. . . Or (if you’re gening into this), imagine a grown man rooting for a team named not the Giants but the Munchkins; not the Atlanta Braves but the Atlanta Sensitives.
It is not coincidental that a professional football team is named after the Vikings. The Vikings used to enter competitions to see who could best split their male victim’s body from head to groin. In cheering for the Vikings, we honor the process that educates men to sacrifice one another’s bodies for appreciation. We keep the slave a slave.
Imagine how we would feel if 1 began this section saying, "Today, violence against women is rightly applauded.’ We would know I favored the death of women; when we applaud for violence against men, we favor the death of men. We do it because we have learned that the more effectively we prepare men to sacrifice themselves, the more we are protected. The unconscious translation of "our team winning’’ is "our society protected.’’ We applaud violence against men and abhor violence against women because part of the purpose of violence against men is to protea women.