I don’t want to talk about the Harvard men’s soccer team.
They showed us what they’re made of — ranking the women’s soccer team by appearance and ideal sexual position in annual “scouting reports” and then trying to cover their tracks, causing the remainder of their season to be canceled.
I want to talk about the women’s soccer team’s response.
After The Harvard Crimson wrote about the 2012 report — which was, until recently, publicly available through Google Groups — six members of the 2012 women’s team joined together to write a response.
Reading some of the male players’ comments, you start to wonder whether we’ve made any progress since Title IX — the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities, i.e. sports — was passed in 1972.
Reading the female players’ response, you see: Yes. We absolutely have.
“We are not anonymous,” Kelsey Clayman, Brooke Dickens, Alika Keene, Emily Mosbacher, Lauren Varela and Haley Washburn began. “And rather than having our comments taken, spun and published behind the guise of a fake anonymity offered to us by numerous news outlets, we have decided to speak for ourselves.”
(It’s worth noting that their response was published before the school canceled the remainder of the men’s season, so the women had little indication that the scouting report would be taken seriously by the school or would result in any action. They spoke out anyway.)
“We do not pity ourselves,” they write, “nor do we ache most because of the personal nature of this attack. More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives. … We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance.”
Indeed, the Harvard Crimson published a story Sunday detailing a similar report produced by the Harvard men’s cross-country team, ranking the women’s team.
“This document attempts to pit us against one another, as if the judgment of a few men is sufficient to determine our worth,” the women soccer players write. “But, men, we know better than that. Eighteen years of soccer taught us that. Eighteen years — as successful, powerful, and undeniably brilliant female athletes — taught us that.”
They continue:
“We know what it’s like to get knocked down. To lose a few battles. To sweat, to cry, to bleed. To fight so hard, yet no matter what we do, the game is still out of our hands. And, even still, we keep fighting; for ourselves, yes, but above all for our teammates. This document might have stung any other group of women you chose to target, but not us. We know as teammates that we rise to the occasion, that we are stronger together, and that we will not tolerate anything less than respect for women that we care for more than ourselves.”
They mention the many men they know and love who would never participate in such behavior. They encourage all women and men — “because ultimately we are all members of the same team” — to speak up when they encounter behavior that degrades women.
And they express hope that news of the report will usher in a more humane culture — at Harvard and beyond.
“We cannot change the past,” they write, “but we are asking you to help us now and in the future.”
“Finally,” they offer in closing, “to the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects, in the words of one of us, we say together: ‘I can offer you my forgiveness, which is — and forever will be — the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.’”
Progress, indeed. Perfection, in fact.
• Heidi Stevens is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
