Speaker
Description
It has been over 20 years since Brian Pronger published the highly provocative and insightful article ‘Outta my Endzone’, arguing that competitive sport encapsulated a brutal libidinal economy, in which athletes derive pleasure from “adding to oneself by subtracting from another.” That this is also the “pleasure of rape” was not lost on Pronger. Indeed, he argued that rape and athletic victory both reflected an “enforced hierarchy, dominance, and submission.” For public facing social scientists, Pronger’s work has arguably never been more relevant or important than it is today. Hockey Canada’s recent mishandling of numerous allegations of sexual assault against elite players has once against pulled the curtain back on competitive sport’s brutal libidinal economy. Unfortunately, the actions of Hockey Canada’s CEO and board suggest that sexual violence is very much part of the elite men’s game. Following Pronger, we examine the power relations at play at Hockey Canada over the last two decades, and how these relations allowed administrators to rationalize an abandonment of accountability that continues to reverberate throughout the nation.
