Hey, US Men’s Hockey Team, you may not realize this, but you just won the gold medal.
Not just in ice hockey, but in misogyny.
Watching you all hunched around a phone loudly laughing it up while a court-adjudicated rapist and likely serial pedophile unnecessarily (but quite predictably) belittles your female counterparts, I gotta tell ya, the national pride was off the charts.
I mean, I was this close to throwing on some acid-washed jorts, lighting up a bottle rocket, waving a flag, and crankin’ me up some Kid Rock.
Look, I get it, guys: you were in a rough spot: still flooded with adrenaline after having just accomplished the greatest athletic feat of your lives, something you surely worked tirelessly for and should be extremely proud of, I can imagine it was impossibly easy to get caught up in the moment.
But here’s the thing: real men are defined in such moments.
Having the so-called leader of what currently passes for the Free World (whose name appears tens of thousands of times in the Epstein files) shamelessly gushing over you, all while the crazy-eyed head of the FBI guzzles beer like a frat party first-timer who’ll soon be vomiting into the nacho bar, was a lot to contend with.
Women always have to contend with a lot, fellas.
And being young men, there’s a good chance you may not have any clue about the terrible optics of you all yukin’ it up with an Olympic-level predator like Donald Trump; a guy who’s already spent the last couple of weeks attacking your brethren in free skiing and skating for not wanting to claim ownership of trafficking ring coverups and masked death squads—or for having a mouth piercing.
You should have had a damn clue.
It might not even occur to you the message you sent, not only to the USA Women’s Hockey Team, but to tens of millions of girls and young women throughout this country who spend every single day of their lives having to fight tooth-and-nail for their worth, who work five times as hard for half the respect, who are continually made to feel less-than by the men in their lives.
It should have occurred to you if you already lived that way.
There’s a good chance it didn’t even register how this was a deja vu moment where they once again were reminded that this country is not designed for them nor willing to treat them with the dignity they deserve.
It should have registered, unless you’re really comfortable in such a country.
Or, you may simply have been exactly what you looked like to many people. You may be among the terrifyingly large army of young white men throughout this nation who find their identity in a vile, beligerent, spray-tanned knuckle-dragger who’s spent his entire life dehumanizing, berating, and abusing the girls and women in his path.
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Some of you might have been raised by fathers whose voices you recognize in his narcissistic, racist, sexist ramblings, so you don’t wince like the rest of us as we watched this all-too-familiar, boys-will-be-boys dudebro huddle. You may be surrounded in your homes and churches and practices and locker rooms by other men who display the same disregard for the feelings, bodies, and wills of women.
I truly hope that some of you might have simply laughed along, placed in an almost impossible spot in front of the lights and the cameras and the bombast of a bloviating world leader carelessly using you as propaganda fodder.
Just know that as you grow and mature, the test of your manhood is whether or not you can declare the joke unfunny, no matter who’s in the room.
I hope that you define yourselves differently, stand for something higher, and believe in a decency that the man leading this nation is not capable of or interested in.
After all, good men can stand for what is right, even when that means standing alone.
And if so, I hope that in the quiet of your life, in the private and public exchanges you have with women, and in the individual platforms that these medals afford you, that you’ll hold yourself to a higher standard than the subterranean crater Donald Trump daily excavates.
None of you are children, though; you’re grown men. And grown men who can’t police themselves or rise to a moment like this are proving who they are.
As it is, your entire team should at the very least apologize to this nation and to the women who call it home, for your collective lack of judgment, your alignment with a predator, and your perpetuation of the toxic masculinity that is doing so much damage to the country you represent. If not, you’ll have lost where it really counts.
But just know that disturbing and painful moments like these are why women rightly choose the bear.
