By Stephen Kunk►
Hockey Canada has been recently wracked with scandal on account of allegations regarding group sexual assaults. Approximately a week ago, the organization opened an investigation into an alleged assault on a woman by members of the 2018 World Junior national team in London, Ontario. More recently, Hockey Canada has begun dealing with other group assault allegations involving the 2003 World Junior team. Canadian hockey fans, worshippers of the great god Puck, have faced nothing less than a disruption of the psyche as a result.
Most pronouncedly, they've been confronted with harrowing questions. What members of the 2018 and 2003 junior teams participated in the assaults? What did any given member of the team do to the women involved? In the absence of details, the imagination runs wild.
In 2003, did Carlo Colaiacovo drive hard into the woman, as if she were an opposing defender in the corner? Did Jordin Tootoo gently grip the woman's ankle in his fist? Was Marc-Andre Fleury tender and loving with his thrusts? Did Scottie Upshall place kisses on the woman's mouth? Did Joffrey Lupul tongue the woman's aureole? Did Kyle Wellwood hike up her thighs? Did Matthew Stajan hold the woman's leg, offering Colaiacovo a more fulsome ingress?
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| Cale Makar |
More broadly, is there some kind of ritual group sex involved in representing Canada as a young male hockey player?
Obviously, Hockey Canada has spent a lot of time, effort, and tax-payer money to cover up these details, leaving our burning questions unanswered. And while the answer may be "yes" to many or all of the aforementioned questions, we have to look at the imbroglio through a wider lens, namely that of Canadian majoritarian culture and the kinds of impulses it tacitly sanctions.
Yes, the players who participated in the assaults are responsible for their actions. But we must ask: were they acting/assaulting as a function of a greater overarching impetus? Could it be that each thrust was actually authored by a system of males (and maleness) that must protect its own in the process of protecting a sport driven by male conquest? Most likely. Could it be that the players on the 2003 and 2018 teams were pawns, thrusting headlong simply on account of the momentum generated by a legacy—a lineage—of Canadian hockey patriarchs? It would seem that these young boys enacted a "frat-house mentality" fostered and nurtured by hoary old hockey men bent on preserving the rapacious spirit of their glory days. All told, Canada's hockey heads have almost become like a bunch of heterosexual Catholic priests.
Because in Canada, hockey itself is maleness (at least in conservative quarters). To be male at the highest level in the Great White North is to penetrate women in serial among other men. So yes, the individual players involved do need to be held accountable, but remember that every thrust they took upon the victim was ultimately enabled and compelled by an all-seeing, overarching elderly male gaze. The problem is not just the assault, but more than that the ubiquitous ho-hoing and snickering and arm-nudging with respect to this kind of ferociously homosocial sexuality preferred by hockey players, and the fact that it will go on as long as Canadian boys and men lace up the skates.
No matter who did what, don't expect any substantive punishments for the players, particularly not for the 2018 team. After all, these boy-men aren't people like you, dear reader, or your present author. Many of these men have gone onto NHL careers, and hence they are assets with exorbitant contracts, not to mention advertising deals. There is a lot of money bound up in each of these automatons, thereby precluding them from receiving the kinds of life-altering punishments that would meet your average non-hockey playing sex offender.
Photo Credit: Quintin Soloviev, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
