THE RHETORIC OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS: GENDER, RACE, AND WHITE HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY By Copyright 2019 Alexandria Rae Chase Submitted to the graduate degree program in Communication Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _________________________________ Chair Jay Childers, PhD _________________________________ Scott Harris, PhD _________________________________ Beth Innocenti, PhD _________________________________ Dave Tell, PhD _________________________________ Alesha Doan, PhD Date Defended: 14 May 2019 ii The Dissertation Committee for Alexandria Rae Chase certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE RHETORIC OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS: GENDER, RACE, AND WHITE HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY _________________________________ Chair Jay Childers Date Approved: 14 May 2019 iii Abstract Violence, specifically gendered violence, has seemingly become commonplace in professional sports. In recent years, sports and news media have navigated a storm of violence allegations. For example, Larry Nassar, former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor, was accused of sexually abusing hundreds of patients and convicted of seven of counts of criminal sexual misconduct. The extent of the abuse Nassar was accused of reignited conversations about gender, power, and violence in sports. This dissertation addresses one aspect of gendered violence in sports: domestic violence. The following is a sampling of news stories from the last year alone that document professional athletes accused of domestic violence: catcher Derek Norris of the Detroit Tigers, linebacker Reuben Foster of the San Francisco 49er’s, center Willie Reed of the Detroit Pistons, WWE wrestler Rich Swann, and boxer Jermell Charlo. There are countless other cases that could be mentioned in addition to a number of cases of officials, coaches, CEO’s, and teams owners allegedly committing domestic violence. This project seeks to understand how sports media – journalists, commentators, and fans – contribute to broader cultural understandings of domestic violence. I investigate what this discourse tells us about sex, gender, race, and class as they relate to domestic violence as well as the challenges this rhetoric might pose to a progressive political agenda to end gendered violence. Using Ray Rice and Hope Solo as case studies, I perform a critical replay – a feminist critical cultural investigation of domestic violence in sports that follows linkages in conversations about sports and violence – to uncover the ways sports fans, journalists, and casual consumers of news construct a narrative of domestic violence in professional sports. iv Acknowledgements I have so much gratitude for the various people, places, scholarship, social movements, and other sources of support that made this dissertation possible. I want to thank Dr. Jay Childers and the rest of my committee for giving my work their time and energy. I am better for it and so is this project. Jay, thank you for laughing with me, believing in me, and always having my back. I don’t have the words to express how grateful I am for Dr. Harris and Dr. Bricker. You two have answered my calls at all hours of the day, given me invaluable scholarly feedback, and shown me how to coach with compassion. Thank you to the entire KU Debate family; you have been my home the last five years. I would not be in graduate school, I would not know how to write an essay, I would not know about feminist theory, and I certainly would not believe in myself if not for Dr. Cate Palczewski. Thank you for showing me the way. I can only hope to be someone’s Cate someday. I want to express the deepest form of gratitude to my parents for teaching me kindness, persistence, and politics, and how to do them all at once. Finally, this dissertation would not be possible without the decades of activism, scholarship, and community that preceded it. I want to recognize and honor the feminist legacy that made this work possible. It is my sincerest hope that this project, and my work broadly, does its part to energize and forward a progressive political agenda to end gendered violence. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ________________________________________________________ 1 Rhetoric and Sport _________________________________________________________________ 6 A Critical Rhetorical Approach ______________________________________________________ 18 Case Studies _____________________________________________________________________ 24 Works Cited _____________________________________________________________________ 31 Chapter II: Domestic Violence in Professional Sports ________________________________ 36 Domestic Violence as a Cultural and Legal Concept ______________________________________ 38 Violence in Professional Sports ______________________________________________________ 42 Domestic Violence in the NFL _______________________________________________________ 46 Specific Cases ____________________________________________________________________ 49 Conclusion ______________________________________________________________________ 65 Works Cited _____________________________________________________________________ 67 Chapter III: Sports Culture’s Obsession with Ray Rice _______________________________ 76 Race and Racism in Sports __________________________________________________________ 78 Rhetorics of Blackness and Criminality in Sports Media ___________________________________ 85 Ray Rice as Moniker of Domestic Violence _____________________________________________ 88 Conclusion _____________________________________________________________________ 109 Works Cited ____________________________________________________________________ 112 Chapter IV: Hope Solo & Sports Media’s Gender-Neutral Narrative of Domestic Violence _ 121 Discrimination and Misogyny in Sports _______________________________________________ 125 Hope Solo’s Rhetorical Presence ____________________________________________________ 130 Domestic Violence, Sports, and Gender _______________________________________________ 132 Discursive Constructions of Hope Solo as a Perpetrator of Domestic Violence ________________ 135 De-gendering Domestic Violence ____________________________________________________ 142 Conclusion _____________________________________________________________________ 146 Works Cited ____________________________________________________________________ 149 Chapter V: The Normalization of Violent Hegemonic Masculinity and the Scholar-Activist’s Role in Unsettling It _____________________________________________________________ 154 Domestic Violence, Gender, and Sports Implications ____________________________________ 158 Contributions to Scholarship and Activism ____________________________________________ 164 Final Thoughts __________________________________________________________________ 167 Works Cited ____________________________________________________________________ 169 1 Chapter I: Introduction “The mythology and symbolism of contemporary combat sports such as football are probably meaningful and salient to viewers on a number of levels; patriotism, militarism, and meritocracy are all dominant themes. But it is reasonable to speculate that gender is a salient organizing theme in the construction of meanings around sports violence. Violent sports as spectacle provide linkages among men in the project of the domination of women, while at the same time helping to construct and clarify differences between various masculinities.” – Michael Messner, When Bodies are Weapons, 213 Violence is prolific in sports. Some sports are built on it. Sports like hockey and football require in-game violence as fundamental tenets of success. Professional wrestling, boxing, and other forms of fighting-for-sport are attractive primarily because they are violent. In fact, violent is really not an uncommon description of American sports. One article describing a recent hockey game between the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs states that the Bruins “got mean,” and that one player got “bloodied” by another before delivering a “thunderous check of his own” to yet another player who had to leave the game as a result (O’Brien). That does not even include “the most controversial moments of violence” in this game (O’Brien). Nazem Kadri, of the Maple Leafs, was suspended for the remainder of the first round of the NHL playoffs after an especially violent hit in this game, which was the second game of the series. This suspension follows the three-game suspension Kadri received in the previous year’s playoffs, also for a violent hit. Another example is the recent UFC 236, an event held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which is said to have ended with “epically violent championships [sic] bouts” (Iole). While UFC is an obviously inherently violent sport, this particular event was unique because it was characterized by spilled blood and “very beaten up and weary men” (Iole). The most watched sport in the United States is no different. The National Football League (NFL) has been heavily criticized for excessively violent play that results in concussions 2 and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE1 (Resnick). Some NFL players, coaches, and fans have pushed back at this criticism and defended violence in the game. This includes Mike Mitchell, formerly a safety for the Pittsburgh Stealers