At least five wrestlers from Ohio State have accused their assistant coach, Jim Jordan, of knowing and ignoring that the team doctor engaged in sexual molestation and exploitation of the wrestlers in his care. This is relevant beyond the sports page, because Jordan is considered a leading candidate to be the next Speaker of the House should Republicans retain control of the House. Previously, Denny Hastert, former Speaker, was found guilty of molesting wrestlers when he was a coach.
As a wrestling coach myself, these accusations are doubly concerning. Obviously, first and foremost, my concern is for the young men who were (allegedly) assaulted. But as a wrestler, this impacts my sport, too. Every fall, I have to try and recuit wrestlers from a student body that doesn't naturally produce wrestlers. I don't get 14 kids in through admissions to fill my lineup. Because of the nature of the sport - its close contact - and the uniform - a tight singlet - it can be hard to get young men to commit to a gruelingly hard sport with a whiff of sexual perversion about it. In fact, I recently changed the uniform to accommodate reluctant athletes.
My sickened feeling over this is that not only were young men betrayed by the men who were supposed to care for their well-being, but someone has betrayed my sport.
More broadly, we need to appreciate the fact that people are who they tell us they are - through their words and actions. This incident is yet another example of the Republicans telling us who they are. They are the party of the Old Boy's Lockerroom, where "those people" are excluded, where privilege is rewarded and protected, where little people are simply unimportant. Jordan's own performance leaves little doubt of his culpability. He has shifted his story a few times, and he is now falling back on the "lockerroom talk" defense that apparently worked for Donald Trump.
The basic contours of the lockerroom defense is that there are places where men are allowed to be animals. Certainly, men are coarser - broadly speaking - than women. They express themselves more physically, they are less aware of how their remarks impact the hearer. There is a strong case to be made that modern civilization has been an effort to strip away from of the violence and cruelty of men's culture from the culture at large.
This has predictably led to a backlash that we see across men in America. Men are fundamentally oppositional in their thinking. "Don't jump of a bridge, Timmy," is inevitably followed by Timmy wanting to jump off a bridge. So efforts to strip away the crueler parts of their culture have led to everything from Trump's 56% approval rating among men to the Incel movement to mass shootings. Men - particularly those who have shut themselves off from education - have embraced the very cruelty that is damaging them and our society.
Jim Jordan is part of that movement. His behavior as coach was to protect the doctor over his wrestlers, to protect the powerful over those whom he was supposed to nurture and help grow. Jordan did not molest his wrestlers. But he embraced this idea of toxic masculinity that typifies so many men...at least 56% of them who have made a loud mouth bully the avatar of their rage and the President of our United States.
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