d about yourself, that you conquered your own fear.Life is filled with difficulty, danger, and suffering. Many parents wonder what is wrong with teaching boys and men to overcome their fears, to be courageous, to withstand pain. But when a high school football player is drugged up with painkillers in order to play, when he plays with injuries that, if aggravated, could lead to permanent damage, he is learning much more than to withstand pain. He is learning to sacrifice his body unnecessarily and to hide all feelings of fear and vulnerability, however warranted they might be. He is also being taught to sacrifice the bodies of others. If he is willing to risk serious injury to himself, then why shouldnt he be willing to risk injuring others seriously? If he is not allowed to feel sympathy for himself when he is injured or justifiably frightened, why should he feel empathy for anyone else? Their willingness to sacrifice themselves has everything to do with proving their manhood. Another tactic used to decrease empathy and thus increase the propensity for violence in players is initiated by the coach. The tactic is language. While at a superficial level language appears to be harmless, an in-depth analysis reveals otherwise. The language of sport is filled with insults suggesting that a boy who is not tough enough, who does not live up to the masculine mystique, is really a girl or homosexual. Football player David Kopay states that his high school coach like many other coaches, used sexual slurs fag, queer, sissy, *censored* to motivate or intimidate his young athletes. 60 Minutes reports the frequent use of this kind of language even among eight-year-old boys in Little League. Boys use expressions like Youre a faggot or God, hes gay. Each insult means that the target has not lived up to expectations of appropriate male behavior, and is being sanctioned. The significance of this type of thinking, talking, and acting on the...
