On Thin Ice: Toward a New Male Peer Support Theory of Hockey Players' Violence Against Women

• In Event: Theories of Sexual Violence

Abstract

There was a burst of creative social scientific investigation into male athletes’ violence against women in the 1980s and 1990s, but this connection has been ignored in recent years. Further, the extant literature on this problem is, for the most part, atheoretical. It is time, then, to revisit the topic of male athletes’ violence against women, and the main goal of this paper is to highlight the value of using a new male peer support theory to explain the linkage between playing professional hockey, rape culture, and offline and online variants of woman abuse, such as image-based sexual abuse, rape, and sexual harassment.

Authors

• Walter S. DeKeseredy, West Virginia University

• Martin D. Schwartz, George Washington University

• Stu Cowan, Montreal Gazette