Alexis Peters broke new ground in 1999 when she found that Jr. A hockey players were 'significantly' more likely than their non-athlete peers to hold false beliefs about rape, rape victims and rapists.Jesse Johnston/The Canadian Press
This is the weekly Amplify newsletter, where you can be inspired and challenged by the voices, opinions and insights of women at The Globe and Mail.
Irene Galea is a reporter with The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.
Ever since The Globe and Mail first reported on Hockey Canada’s undisclosed fund used to pay sexual-assault claims, I’ve been reflecting on attitudes toward hockey culture, and my experiences coming of age in a community where the sport was popular.
The last few months have brought a reckoning for the organization, with fierce calls for transparency, a slew of executive resignations and major sponsors withdrawing their support. This summer, and possibly for the first time, Hockey Canada publicly committed to enhancing training for players on “masculinity, consent and toxic behaviours.”
I’m hopeful that this means we can extend this same scrutiny to certain elements of the hockey culture that many former hockey players, academics and government officials have said can have harmful effects off the ice, both on the players and the young women around them.
As The Globe’s Zosia Bielski reported this week, “For many young players, damaging behaviours continue being reinforced at rinks and inside locker rooms – including recklessness, violence, a glorification of pain, pernicious power dynamics and narrow notions of masculinity.”
Her story opens with the views of a young hockey player who left the sport when some players repeatedly made misogynous comments and nobody spoke up.
I remember this sort of talk from when I was in high school just seven years ago. Not from all players, certainly, but from some: Insults aimed at women’s bodies. Derogatory language. Rookie parties, and their fallout. Stories from the locker room, about what players’ coaches called their wives. Players who ignored injuries just to keep going.
To suggest that such a negative “hockey culture” exists can be controversial. Those who speak out often face backlash for drawing too broad a brush. It goes without saying that not all hockey players are bullies, or that the sport itself should be blanketed with a bad name. Hockey, like all sports, can create community, confidence, teamwork. For millions of Canadians, it’s a happy family tradition.
But as such an influential part of our country’s identity – one that children are exposed to from a young age – shouldn’t we pay special attention to the culture of a sport whose leading organization withholds sexual assault allegations?
Especially since a 2021 survey – a whole year before this year’s scandal – by the Angus Reid Institute found that more than half of those who played or coached youth hockey said they perceived the treatment of women and girls by young male hockey players as misogynistic or disrespectful.
It’s also true that these things can happen anywhere, and in other sports. I often see comments – including on Globe and Mail articles – that sexual violence, homophobia and other types of bullying are present anywhere there is an imbalance of power, and that to call out hockey players is to unfairly make them a scapegoat. (Hockey Canada’s former interim board chair Andrea Skinner said this herself in her statement to the Canadian heritage committee).
But as The Globe’s Marsha Lederman recently wrote, there is a perception that hockey players have been able to use their celebrity status in Canadian culture to their sexual advantage.
It’s also in the locker room slang: “kills,” for instance, refers to sexual partners. It’s a term that became normalized at my high school.
Kristi Allain, an associate professor of sociology at St. Thomas University, has conducted a number of studies that have shone a spotlight on what happens behind the locker room door. She found that those attitudes trickle down into younger and less advanced leagues.
“If we think about the language of the locker room, and words that players use to insult other players … this attitude is really about positioning a certain form of masculinity against femininity, and degrading it,” Allain told me over the phone last week.
“When players position themselves in that way, it leads to all kinds of other actions.” In this way, she said, the culture must be studied from a culture-wide perspective, not on the individual level.
Academics have been taking this approach for some time.
Alexis Peters broke new ground in 1999 at the University of Windsor when she found that Jr. A hockey players were “significantly” more likely than their non-athlete peers to hold false beliefs about rape, rape victims and rapists.
Since then, numerous academics have explored the topic of hockey culture. For instance, the U.K.’s Garry Crawford and Victoria K. Gosling suggested that derogatory attitudes toward women transcend hockey teams’ locker rooms, and even impact the ways that male hockey fans come to understand their female counterparts.
The MeToo movement further opened the door for women to tell their stories about sexual assault, and built the platform for them to discuss further discrimination and mistreatment. It set societal precedent, which I feel has amplifies the scrutiny that Hockey Canada is currently undergoing.
I hope we – young people included – can start to ask more critical questions about what elements of hockey culture are unacceptable in hockey culture at all levels.
What else we’re thinking about:
The holidays are upon us. I’ve been making these shortbread cookies every year now for half a decade. Cream together the butter and sugar, then combine the flour. Form into a ball and chill. Then roll out flat, using more powdered sugar to prevent it sticking, and cut out shapes as desired (I use a drinking glass to make circles). Bake on a piece of baking paper at 350 degrees for 16-18 minutes, or until cookies are golden.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
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