Professional Sports : Disposable Women : Contempt For Women Part Two

©2014 Turtle Heart : Waiting With the Wind. 1998

I do not for a minute understand why people watch professional sports. What are you actually watching? You are not watching athletes. You are watching professionals and their corporations. A business. That is only connected with winning and to making money. No other issues are on the table and no other issues are desired. Where is the sport?

If you are a woman who is a wife or companion to a so-called professional athlete, your job is emphatically to shut up, don’t make waves, don’t complain, don’t embarrass “your millionaire man”. Be quiet.

Even women who are in millionaire sports families have about the same moral and legal rights as poor American Indian women. American Indian women are the highest at risk group for domestic violence, rape, being sold into sexual slavery, and murder by a family member…by a factor of 3 to 1. There may in fact not exist an indigenous tribal woman who has not been abused in some way. No we understand that even the privileged small percentage of women who marry and date professional sports corporate employees have the same rights in cases of violence…which is to say, almost none.

I have never watched any pro sports event.Ever. I am not interested in the entertainments brought forward by multi-billion dollar corporations. Ever. I see nothing interesting in it at all. The large crowds that are fascinated by this situation are incomprehensible to me.

As an operative in American Indian spiritual and ceremonial issues, I spend a lot of my time with women who have been victims of the men in their lives. The damaged men. The lost men. The tough guys. I have seen with my own experience how almost every tribal community of American Indians are held together by the women and the elders. Not the men. Rarely. I have observed with my own experience the courage and integrity of so many fine women. I could count on my fingers the number of men I have ever worked with about whom I could say the same. Ever. All of the liars, cowards, fools, thieves and monsters I have met in my life have been men.

From the CDC: 24 people per minute are victims of rape, violence or stalking : A rape happens every 6 minutes in the USA : the national average is 1 in 5 women : among American Indian women it is 7 out of 10….over 1 billion women each year treated like this around the word….at some point, in an honest society, these facts must penetrate. Yet, in a tightly-controlled corporation, if such an item existed with honor, could in fact have a zero tolerance policy and change those statistics to zero. Ina single day.Right now. They never have.

And if a rich man beats, murders or abandons his “woman”, such as the rich so-called athletes in the NFL, that woman has less chance of justice than a penniless American Indian woman on a remote reservation…that is to say nearly Zero. The paymaster will sweep it under the rug. The high-priced attorneys will make everything the woman’s fault. In some places, the complaining woman, the victim can be killed for “allowing” herself to be a victim. Yes, this is the circumstance of corporation sports. Of billionaire sports. Of the NFL.

Anyone who “blames the victim” is a coward, an empty bag of mostly water. They should always be shouted down. It is a world wide problem about which not enough is being done.

Even by people, we can see now, by example, who could in fact use its power, its wealth, its influence with young people, to help society, to protect women, to increase our respect and tolerance for each other. Even if it is not their job, it is in fact something they could do, and do easily…all the pro sports corporations could do more to protect women, to increase the peace, to encourage us to be tolerant and to tell the truth. It is something they can do. The old American Indians used to sing me an old song, the words to the song are along these lines: “there is always something you can do”…so why not go ahead. This is true for the NBA, FIFA, GM, IBM, NBA and YOU and ME.

What the hell is all this covering up, denying, sweeping under the carpet, passing the buck….what the hell is that all about really? How do we get corporate citizens to actually be good citizens? The US Supreme Court agreed with Mr Romney, “corporations are people my friend”…how do we get their hands out of our pockets and actually onto the streets of our community doing the work of a good citizen, a responsible citizen. They seem to want it both ways, a sure sign of a liar and a thief…..they want corporate deniability but they want personhood rights, which means being accountable. To be a human being means being accountable. 

Where is that accountability to basic human rights and respect for women in any corporation, anywhere?

It is painful to see, to know, to understand that Sacred Women, those fine mothers, sisters, wives and companions would ever suffer the vulgar, pitiful cruelty of the fist of a man, the force of a man. Heartbreaking. It enrages my very soul, inflames my heart, and bends the light around inside my mind. What is lost if we respect women, exclude them from male violence? What kind of man would allow the men around him to abuse women? What supervisor or CEO would want men working under them who abuse women? The CEO of the NFL is one of those men. CEO of a corporation. How many of them are just like this? GM ring a bell? Or “Binders Full of Women” recall a CEO who not only has no interest in respecting women, he has a woman in his life he says it’s OK with her. Yes, some women also believe it is OK. And many of the other voices that could do something: do nothing. When this behaviour is OK with women, as it clearly was with a surprising number of women in the Ray Rice NFL Ravens situation, this is the perfect expression of submission, oppression and subjugation that emphasises and confirms the destructive, insidious power of rage and violence.

Right Now, there is enough money, space, resources for every person on this mother earth to have what they need. Yet corporations and their paymasters have more than they can count, and those who work and say yes to ordinary jobs never have enough. And people are hungry. Homeless. Without work or food. And women are sold as sex slaves. Women are punched unconscious in elevators in Las Vegas and dragged across the carpet like a sack of trash. And that guy kept his job, was protected by the paymaster and had his wife, whom he had knocked unconscious, come on national tv and actually apologise. Instead of supporting this woman, a victim of a severe assault, they chose to place the the weight of all that money, all that bad publicity, all that indifference on her shoulders alone. No a single word of support for her from anyone in the NFL to this day. And the game played on. NFL. America’s most popular entertainment.

Not going to watch. Not going to buy products of their sponsors.

Man Named Stone of Winter

Taos New Mexico