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Anatomy of a slow-moving scandal: Canada's 2018 WJ hockey team
The "World Juniors", the under-20 international hockey championship, is probably the third-biggest sporting event for Canadians after the NHL playoffs and the Olympics. Played immediately after Christmas each year, it gets massive TV ratings as people are home for the holidays. It helps that Canada wins more often than not, though its hold on being the undisputed champion of ice hockey becomes more precarious year-by-year. The brightest stars of junior hockey in Canada are often already household names before they go onto their professional careers, and people look back at certain years with specific fondness for their wealth of talent, in particular the 2005 team.
Well no one is going to look back at the 2018 team with much fondness: five of its members have been ordered to surrender to police to face charges for the gang rape of a woman after a celebratory gala in June 2018 to commemorate their victory. The move towards criminal prosecution has been somewhat glacial; an investigation was briefly opened in February 2019, but was closed and the story never reached the press. In 2022 the victim sued Hockey Canada; they settled with her out of court, and it was this settlement that sparked media attention as news of the incident had never reached the public. The settlement ignited a real public scrutiny on Hockey Canada, which was revealed to have a special unmarked fund for compensating victims of sexual assault by its players, and using government funds to do so. The criminal case into the affair was re-opened, and the problem of sexual assault within Hockey Canada and hockey culture in general became a national debate.
Hockey culture is kind of weird. I grew up somewhat alongside it; I was good enough to play rep hockey, but my parents were too busy for it so apart from a summer when I was 12 I never got too deep into it. But I knew the guys who played AAA or junior hockey and a few future NHLers, and I got enough taste of the locker-room culture to put me off it. It's really not too dissimilar, from my understanding, to the culture of similar macho, competitive sports like American football; a mix of jokes and pranks and lighthearted misogyny and homophobia (with an undercurrent of repressed homoeroticism). For the really competitive teams hazing was common and could get quite severe, bordering on sexual assault of new players. If you're a really good player (not necessarily a future NHLer, but maybe a pro in Europe or somewhere) you leave your family at 14 or 15 to go play junior hockey in the CHL. Education is very much a lesser priority, you probably don't go to university, and there's generally few people telling you you're anything but hot shit. If you make it to the Canadian WJ team you're practically a national celebrity if only for a brief period of time. I think all of these things add together in not necessarily the most wholesome of ways.
So that this kind of scandal would happen, or that it would be swept under the rug only to eventually reappear later, is not entirely shocking. "Hockey Canada sexual assault scandal a real shock to anyone who has never met a junior hockey player" says The Beaverton, the Canadian equivalent of The Onion, and yeah that pretty much sums it up.
Since the coming to light of the incident in 2022 there's been a flurry of speculation about who might have done it: my understanding was only two of the players (including superstar Cale Makar) had airtight alibis as far as internet sleuths could tell. Every time news came out about one of the 2018 WJC players there was speculation it was somehow linked: a player being traded, or not being re-signed by their team, or rumours about locker room problems, etc. My team (the Ottawa Senators) didn't re-sign a player, Alex Formenton, from the 2018 WJC who had had a good season the year before, and so speculation swirled that everyone behind the scenes knew what was up. There have apparently been a few hunches confirmed: in the past day and a bit five players have been announced by their teams to be taking "indefinite leaves of absence." All five were semi-regular NHLers (except for the aforementioned Formenton who was now playing in Italy). I wonder whether there will be pushback against the teams that employed them, presumably knowing this was coming for a while.
There's no statute of limitations in Canada (except for treason, bizarrely: 3 years!). Presumably the London Police feel they have a strong enough case here: besides the woman there were apparently three others who saw and did not take part. As of yet I've seen no sort of arguments that the alleged victim was lying or something, but there are some conflicting details and perhaps more that will emerge as prosecution moves further along. This is after all what the criminal justice system is for. So as of yet this case has sort-of ignited a culture war debate, without yet succumbing to culture war neuroses quite yet. The last big sexual assault case that got national attention in Canada was gigantic clusterfuck (Jian Ghomeshi, if you're interested) and pretty badly damaged the credibility of the media. We'll see where this goes.
I feel like there it is a bit of a mistake to assume that hazing and macho locker room culture necessarily overlap with "rape culture".
I've been part of the former and I saw no indication of that. Guys were borderline raped by their team mates but treated women with a lot of respect and care. It's not in the same mental world and I don't think the guys considered what they did to their team mates sexual, even if it literally was. I'd argue that it's really bad if the hazing goes overboard or just becomes a sustained severe harassment (and given how hard it is to police it might be better to outright ban it), but that doesn't mean that people are more disposed towards sexual assault towards women. I've not been part of one of these youth academies but I've known and played with people who have, and they've not been worse than anyone else.
What I think is going on is that celebrity makes people behave really badly, both the guys being celebs and the women seeking their favour/attention. It seems to me that the same thing happens with all kinds of stars: sports, music, acting. It's not about whether the people involved do (severe)hazing or not, it's that they're idolized stars, allowing them to do whatever and still be rewarded for it. It creates a really fucked up incentive structure for everyone involved. The younger you are and the more isolated from general society you are, the worse it gets, which points in the direction of these academies possibly making things worse.
I understand that there is a desire to put an = between hazing and "rape culture" but I think that is a mistake and obscures what's really going on. Solving hazing is probably desireable, but that won't solve the sexual assaults and pretending it will is counterproductive.
Agree with this. I have also never, ever seen a coherent definition of "rape culture" that didn't boil down to "young men gasp are interested in having sex with young women." There's this weird craze with the idea that in the inner sanctums of locker rooms and frat houses that otherwise median males are gathering together to trade strategy and tips on sexual assault. This is pants-on-head insane.
I think what rape culture is defined as is the rejection of current year ideas about consent, and the idea is that in locker rooms and frat houses the discussions about sex generally reject such ideas.
Now this is obviously dumb, mainly for the reason that current year ideas about consent are dumb. Like in the matter at hand, this young woman agreed to have sex with five hockey players. This was a bad decision, but she did in fact make it, probably because she wanted to make it, and I’ll wager dollars to donuts that she went to this celebratory gala understanding that she would be expected to have sex with hockey players, and not thinking that they valued her conversational skills.
And that’s the crux of the matter- current year ideas about consent are a repudiation of both patriarchy(which they call purity culture) and 70’s macho man stud culture(which they call rape culture). Young women make moronic decisions about sex relationships and romance which they usually regret and talking them out of those decisions is a key reason for the patriarchy/purity culture axis, and thinking those decisions aren’t a big deal/just a cost of doing business/on the woman is the main argument for the rape culture/macho man axis. Can’t have either, so you spin incoherent ideas about consent to make dumb sexual decisions a woman later regrets out to be rape.
I find current year sexual ethics weird simply because to me they assume that the woman is stupid. Like yes she’d gotten drunk. But she made every decision up to and including sex, knowing the entire time what each decision meant.
It's not that they're stupid, it's that they're hypoagentic, while men are hyperagentic. It is the man's job (on pain of imprisonment) to determine, at every point, what she wants and to make decisions in her best interests, even if she is saying otherwise.
But hyoagentic discourse seems by nature to assume that the person being talked about isn’t capable of being a real agent, because if they could, the discourse wouldn’t make sense. I can’t say that Klingons cannot be held responsible for trashing the place because you pissed them off, and simultaneously believe that said Klingons are capable of not acting out on their impulses. If you can easily bypass their rational agent’s brain, then and only then are they not responsible.
I’m responsible to care for myself as I am an agent. I’m responsible for my sobriety or lack there of. I’m responsible for choosing where I go and what I do. I think that’s my issue. It’s treating women and minorities as if they’re small children that don’t have free will of their own and can be easily tricked by white men into doing something stupid.
Until that goes sideways, and you manage to stick someone else with the bill. This is commonly called "having your cake and eating it too", "privatizing gains and socializing losses", or more commonly just "privilege".
Is it logically consistent, or matching even a small child's understanding of "fairness"? Of course not- either you do not have the responsibility to care for yourself as an agent and therefore should have none of the rights, or you do and have all of the rights(1).
But it is consistent with the Inner Party weaponizing the tendency of Outer Party men to prioritize the well-being of women over themselves (Orwell never explicitly elaborated on where the Junior Anti-Sex League comes from, though extrapolating that the only sexual satisfaction permitted Winston is an explicitly-ugly old prostitute, and considering more women than men believe that "men having sex with young women is bad", I think his conclusion is that it comes from women-as-class... an interest group to which Julia is a gender-traitor) in a sociobiological milieu where that no longer makes any sense.
Their biology hasn't caught up with the facts on the ground, and this creates a power imbalance bad actors are actively exploiting (as they are in this, and other, cases).
(1) Unless you're between the ages of [biological adulthood] and [local age of majority], where you have all of the responsibility but none of the rights- every time you hear the phrase "charged as an adult", or one of this group being charged for something that's only a crime when you're this age (underage drinking/drug use, firearm possession, nude selfies) this is what's happening.
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You're assuming a consistency that isn't there. The idea is that women are fully equal adults when it benefits them, but easily manipulated sympathetic victims of male perfidy when it benefits them. That this views cannot be logically reconciled does not matter.
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I think this is dismissive. What rape culture typically seems to refer to is men strategically getting young women very drunk so they’re less likely to decline sex.
You can disagree that that counts as rape, and indeed often it isn’t, it’s just young people getting drunk and hooking up. But it’s also not the same as young men merely being ‘interested’ in having sex with women. “Girls are easier when they’re drunk” is kind of a universally accepted male wisdom, so it’s useful to have a term for men pressuring women into drinking for that purpose. One could imagine a society in which, for example, getting people blackout drunk so they didn’t object to sex with you was considered generally objectionable behavior.
That's fair.
And if "rape culture" specifically refers to intentional intoxication for nefarious purposes then, yes, it's a thing and I'm against it. I still, however, feel it's bandied about as a catchall for boorish young male behavior - much of which, while perhaps tasteless, is generally harmless to anything besides certain sensitivities. Maybe pointing to "rape cultures" cousin "toxic masculinity" can help here. Generally, anything labeled as "toxic masculinity" is just ... bad behavior regardless of sex. The "masculinization" of the toxic behavior is unnecessary and only serves to "Boo outgroup" Men.
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How do men ‘get’ women drunk? Do they threaten them, do they syringe them in the back? No, women voluntarily pour the inhibition-reducing liquid into themselves. Are they capable of making their own decisions or not?
You say the problem isn’t ‘men being interested in sex’, yet you assume ‘declining sex’ is the right decision. Your whole angle is: men are tricking women into this sinister deed. Let’s say I ‘got’ a woman drunk and used her drunkenness to… teach her spanish. Is that considered generally objectionable behavior? Obviously not. So like the sex-neg radfems which came up with ‘rape culture’ and ‘objectification’, in reality, you don’t object to the tricking, you object to the sex.
Let's say your friend is really bad at managing his money. If he misses his next loan payment, they will repossess his car, and no one is willing to help him out. He comes to you and begs for money, saying you're his only hope. You tell him that you're going to help if he gives you a blowjob for each payment.
Did you threaten him? Did you force him to take all these APR 32% loans? Is he capable of making his own decisions? Would your behavior be considered generally objectionable behavior?
What if I told him to declare bankruptcy, and he countered with the offer to suck my dick? I was going to get a hooker anyway, so the money might as well go to my dear friend. I think he's a stupid and sick man, but yeah it's his decision and i owe him at least my patronage.
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That's still soliciting prostitution, not rape. And not at all a parallel for anything we've been discussing, unless the "women are a meme" meme is true.
Except that I said in my initial post that it's not necessarily rape, just that it's (at least) unethical and thus generally objectionable behavior. In many countries what @orthoxerox describes is entirely and explicitly legal, but most people would still think you were a scumbag for demanding your friend have sex with you in exchange for lending them some money.
Saying it's not necessary rape but it's some generally objectionable thing, which then justifies the men involved being treated generally as if it were rape, is false nuance.
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This is exactly the problem with the whole ‘consent’ framework though, which is an inherently modern thing. Everyone understands that there’s such a thing as getting someone drunk. “I got my friend drunk last night”, or “our boss go us so drunk last night” are statements everyone understands. Yes, someone pouring you a drink, handing it to you and motioning you to drink it don’t mean you have to, but they don’t mean your decision is unaffected by social pressure and general interpersonal dynamics either. It is entirely obviously, transparently possible to ‘get someone drunk’ against their general desire unless they are extremely stubbornly inclined against it. I mean you’re surely not denying that social pressure, perhaps the most powerful human communal force, exists?
Yes, in most cases it is. In the same way I can get a recovering addict drunk and almost certainly encourage them into buying a bag of coke, a man can (sometimes) get a young woman drunk and get her to have sex with him against not only her best interest but the interest of her sober self, an experience that results in the man’s gain of status and the woman’s loss of it, (almost certainly) no sexual pleasure for her and often a clear sense of being exploited or dirtied afterward.
That is not to say that the man in question committed a crime. After all, plenty of unethical behavior is entirely legal. But it is unethical to get a young woman drunk because that way she’s more likely to fuck you because alcohol removes our (often very valuable) social inhibitions.
The ancients knew what rape was, women refused suitors all the time.
Widespread consent of the governed is relatively modern. Modern man, and woman, is considered capable of deciding.
I’d like you to assume the full consequences of your critique of consent. Could you develop? I think reactionaries who seemingly criticize consent, really value the consent of the father above the adult daughter’s, which kind of makes sense from a ‘women as overgrown children’ perspective, but I don’t think that’s your position.
Not in the exculpatory sense you’re using it for women. If you’re stopped for drunk driving, “my boss/friend got me drunk” does not work. The responsibility is yours. The fine is for you. You can reproach your friend for bad advice, being a bad influence, but ultimately, it’s all your fault.
My parents, like I’m sure, most parents, warned me extensively against social pressure as I was growing up, to prepare me for life as adult. Are you saying women are psychologically too feeble to resist that pressure?
Well that seems morally entirely fine. Surely you can’t expect a human to privilege the status of another above his? Any contest, any discussion between people has a status component, and usually one’s gain is the other’s loss.
Subjective state of mind contradicted by their actions. Worthless as an objection to the original deal.
If their consent at the time did not matter, then their withdrawal of consent later matters even less.
I'm going to bite the bullet; yes, they are, and past law codes had that in mind often rather explicitly. "Seduction of a virgin" was often literally a crime in western societies well into modernity, and in fact it's still on the books in some form or another all over the place.
Now yes, this does mean that women shouldn't have all the rights of adults. It's not a coincidence that extra legal protections for women started declining precipitously shortly after the introduction of women's suffrage.
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Adults are generally expected to be responsible for decisions they made, even if there was some social pressure involved. It could hardly be any other way, since there's almost always social pressure involved when two or more people are participating. It is not per se unethical to "apply social pressure" in the furtherance of having sex with someone either; if that were true we'd either have to switch over entirely to arranged relationships, or we wouldn't have any at all. The classic opening line of "Can I buy you a drink?" is not rape, nor unethical in the slightest.
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No it doesn't. "Rape culture" refers to how our culture supposedly trivializes rape and/or shifts the blame on the victim, and he's right about any example of men talking about sex in a crass way is taken as evidence of it's existence.
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