Im absolutely dumbfounded about what can get written.....have a read of this. Disgusting!!
Brett Stewart’s Post-Try Celebration Should Raise Questions
In
OverView on May 20, 2015 at 7:58 am
On the 29th of September, 2010, Brett Stewart was found, by a jury of his peers, not guilty of sexual assault. Stewart and his supporters probably hoped that the message from the decision would be clear and unequivocal:
Brett Stewart is not a rapist. On the 18th of May, 2015, Brett Stewart behaved like a rapist. Yes, for those who are inured to the disgusting, bestial behavior of some of our finest Rugby Le
ague players, I know I sound hysterical. Yet show video of his
post-try celebration against Penrith on Monday night to most women and I strongly suspect it will discomfit them. Some might simply think it disgusting or “gross”; others will know it to be about something else entirely. First of all, let’s try to concretize exactly what Stewart
did. I don’t think this will take too long. It’s hard to find anything about it in the corporate media; maybe their delicate sensibilities preclude them from being too explicit. I don’t have those qualms. As far as I can tell, Brett Stewart scored a try, got up and proceeded to mime the act of masturbation and ejaculating on something. Or someone. I explored the internet the day following the Manly-Penrith game to find any response to Stewart’s behavior and found nothing substantive. On the night, the only thing stated was something from Warren Smith about not being “sure” what the “celebration” was all about. I think Warren Smith is absolutely sure, just as I’m assuming the vast majority of the media knew exactly what they were seeing on Monday night. They just chose not to deal with it, in the same fashion that they continue to avoid a real confrontation of the causes of sexism and off-field violence plaguing the game and its players. Many victims of gang rape report “celebrations” quite similar to those acted out by Brett Stewart. The porn industry has made hundreds of millions of dollars by creating and fostering fantasies featuring men using their penis as a way to to dominate and degrade. It would be remiss of me not to admit right now that I have watched way too much porn in my lifetime;
this article by Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges is worth a look when considering one’s feelings about pornography. But back to the issue at hand. Brett Stewart behaved like a rapist. Now, he might say that I am the one with the filthy mind- and he’d be right; my mind can be as filthy as anyone’s. He might say that he was actually impersonating a gardener watering his flowers with some kind of garden hose that attaches to one’s groin and is operated using some kind of back-and-forth motion with one’s fingers. But I know what he was doing, as he mock-ejaculated his seed all over something. Or someone. The rule should be simple: you behave like a thug, or a rapist, or simply an idiot, you face the consequences. Sometimes that might be prosecution, or banishment from the game, or suspension. And sometimes, there should be another consequence that is often just as effective:
you get called out for for your actions, in public. Unfortunately, punitive measures never solve the core problem. By the time Brett Stewart mimicked what he did on Monday evening, his conditioning had been solidified for decades. We won’t change Brett Stewart. But I’m glad he did what he did: it gives the rest of us a chance to renew a neglected conversation about how we as men view our place in the world, especially in relation to women. Brett Stewart behaved like a rapist. What are the rest of us going to do about it?