Crimes Against Humanity

This ESPN article and SI article have me thinking about the culture of the locker room and the spaces of machismo that are cultivated there away from the view of the rest of society.  This is a rather important topic to me personally because I was victimized and systematically bullied in the locker room as a kid; I see a connection between what happens at the highest level of sports infusing the images that high school and little league kids aspire to have in their lives.  I was driving home listening to this particular Colin Cowherd radio show and was surprised how much I agreed with what he said.  Much of the backlash on this story has centered on the supposed “wussification of society.”  Sports are that great bastion of hyper-masculinity that rewards behavior that in other social circles would never be culturally unacceptable away from the field of play or the locker room.  Most locker rooms are fine, but expecting them to be self-policying is the type of scenario that bullies actively seek.  I think that those that defend the system’s code of silence fail to realize how they are a part of the system that empowers the bullies to victimize and take advantage of those that prefer more thoughtful, civilized interactions as ways to resolve disputes.  Any comment I’ve heard that has criticized Martin usually ends up tells me more about that commenter than it does to explain the situation. 

Isn't hiding and keeping the "locker room" mentality exactly what helped abusers like Jerry Sandusky at Penn State?