A man with a long history of sexually demeaning women and impugning their place in the world was elected as president of the United States on Tuesday.
Donald Trump’s election came just days after Harvard University canceled the remainder of the season for its top-ranked men’s soccer team. That cancellation came after Harvard’s student newspaper, The Crimson, reported that team members created a “scouting report” in 2012 that rated the appearance of women’s soccer team members and made lewd and disparaging comments about them.
The scouting report assigned each female player a theoretical sexual position in addition to her position on the field, The Crimson reported. One position, for example, was “cowgirl.” The male players also gave each of their female counterparts a nickname. They called one woman “Gumbi” in the report, according to The Crimson, because “her gum to tooth ratio is about 1 to 1.” The report summed it all up with a number rating for each female player’s appearance.
An investigation by Harvard’s Office of General Counsel confirmed that those dehumanizing “scouting reports” were an annual and ongoing tradition.
Harvard’s men’s soccer team was ranked first in the Ivy League this season and 15th nationwide. It was one win away from earning a place in the NCAA tournament. A championship was within reach. The university gave up a lot by calling off the remainder of the team’s season.
And that’s precisely the point.
Men on Harvard’s soccer team treated their female counterparts as if they were less than human — as if they were purely sexual objects. And such treatment of women’s soccer team players was deeply embedded in the male team’s culture. The Crimson noted that a team veteran in 2012 called on younger team members to “man up and send out a proper scouting report on the incoming freshman [sic] for girl’s team.” It’s easy to see how a culture that encourages males to disparage their female classmates is a culture that could similarly accept sexual assault.
Men should face consequences for such behavior. Harvard’s decision to call off the remainder of the season demonstrates how an institution can show decisively that such dehumanizing behavior isn’t tolerated.
“The decision to cancel a season is serious and consequential, and reflects Harvard’s view that both the team’s behavior and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned are completely unacceptable, have no place at Harvard, and run counter to the mutual respect that is a core value of our community,” Harvard President Drew Faust wrote in a statement reported by The Crimson.
Harvard’s athletic director has now asked the school’s general counsel to conduct a similar probe of the men’s cross-country team following similar reports of team “scouting reports.”
Meanwhile, Trump — after he was caught on tape boasting about sexually assaulting women, after he said women should be punished for having an abortion, after a long history of assessing women by their appearance and demeaning them — faces no consequences for his dehumanizing behavior toward women.
Before Trump takes office in January, he owes the women of this country an apology — not an apology that dismisses his dehumanizing behavior toward women as locker room banter, but a true apology that also is a pledge that the Trump administration won’t tolerate a culture or policies that treat women as less than human.
