Americana and Its Toxic Masculinity Even Has Leftists by the Throat
No one is immune from the propagandized nostalgia of the NFL and it’s toxic masculinity.
A weird thing is happening in a particular friend group of mine this week. It’s something that is happening all over social media and around dinner tables, too.
Feminists, liberals, progressives, and even leftists are performing mental gymnastics to excuse Travis Kelce’s behavior at the Super Bowl - behavior that is Toxic Masculinity 101.
I am unsurprised that people are normalizing his behavior. People normalize all kinds of violence for the NFL - violence against women, animal killings, violence against the players themselves. What surprises me are the people who are defending him.
These are people who consider themselves enlightened and forward thinking. People who lecture others about toxic masculinity. There’s something about the NFL, though, about sports in general, that makes violence okay. It’s “part of the culture of the game.” People who would never utter the phrase, “boys will be boys” have said it in relation to this instance.
People who would never say, “the victim is okay with it, so it’s fine” are saying that very thing because somehow the actions of a millionaire football player are different than anyone else’s.
I think it comes down to what this game means in the American collective unconscious. Criticizing the game and acknowledging the industry’s tolerance of violence is on par with criticizing apple pie. It’s so ingrained in us that even those who acknowledge our government’s problematic behavior cannot separate ourselves from the propagandized nostalgia of football.
Because if we do that, what does that say about us - about the fact that we enjoy watching a game that is propped up by a capitalist industry of violence and the patriarchy.
Watching a game is a pocket of time where you can forget your troubles, even forget that our tax dollars were bombing a refugee camp at the same time Taylor Swift was chugging beer. People think they need that fantasy, so they’ll cling to it with everything they have - even if it goes against their morals outside of the game. If we acknowledge that this fantasy is built on harm, then what fantasies do we have left to cling to? Is there no safe space for us to just not think about how terrible things are?
Congratulations NFL & America, your marketing works.
What fascinates me is that progressives and leftists are supposed to be critical thinkers, right? Isn’t that what we tell ourselves?
Acknowledging that Kelce’s behavior was inappropriate does not mean he is a bad person. It does not mean that the NFL is unsavable as an institution. What it does do is make people feel bad for enjoying a game that they know perpetrates violence off the field. That’s why we so-called feminists are doing summersaults to defend the toxic masculinity that they’d otherwise decry. If they acknowledge that it’s not okay, then they’ll have to examine why they enjoy the sport. They’ll have to acknowledge that every football season they participate in the capitalist, toxic masculinity machine they claim to stand against.
They’ll have to be uncomfortable about their own choices.
There is no ethical consumption of any kind in our society. So, I am not saying that people should stop watching football. What I am saying is that you have to bring the same energy you bring to everything else to the NFL. If you want society to stop normalizing toxic masculinity, that starts with not excusing Kelce’s behavior. It’s okay to enjoy the sport of football, but it’s not okay to ignore its glaring problems. Like I said, you have to get uncomfortable and look at why your instinct is to defend something that you would otherwise not tolerate. That’s truly the scary part - because you’ll have to face the fact that you’re likely a victim of Americana propaganda.
