Brazilian universities have a tradition of having big sports contests between different colleges from the same study field. It usually takes place in the countryside and happens during long holidays. Besides the sports, these university games are also known for the huge amount of alcohol, illicit drugs, and crazy things happening.
A few examples are JUCA (for those who are majoring in communication or arts), Economíadas (for economics students), Jogos Jurídicos (for law students), Intermed (for medicine students), and much more. This September, videos from the Intermed games from April began to gain more and more attention on the internet.
The reason why such old videos were going viral? Freshmen medicine students from Santo Amaro’s University (UNISA) were half-naked during a feminine volleyball match. The videos are repugnant and disgusting. Consequently, fifteen of those students were expelled from school since the authorities from the university identified who appeared in the video. However, those expelled men resorted to justice and were reintegrated back into their classrooms.
Until when will we have to deal silently with this? Of course, they got away with it, they have never had any consequences for their acts. Remember middle or high school? When you were suffering bullying from them? When those men were aggressive between them in P.E.? Weren’t they glorified? Competition between men in order to assert masculinity: isn’t what we have always seen at school?
So why were we surprised when the Unisa students did that? Those men were taught to have this certain behavior since they were little kids, we should expect that as soon as they got into college and headed to university games, free of supervision and full of alcohol and illicit drugs, these kinds of things would happen.
In a video posted in September of 2021 on Tiktok, the content creator named @jackson.alright proposed the idea of how P.E. classes at school had only one purpose: encouraging toxic behavior between boys. Even though this subject’s objective is keeping you physically active while you learn more about sports it slowly became more of a space of competition for team sports.
And it is where the absurd begins since the teams are decided by presumed “physical prowess and gender”. Thus, the Tiktoker intelligently concludes that if we blend the already patriarchal society, each man has to show dominance, with the fact that boys “end up getting a place in school that not only teaches, but (practices AND) normalizes that toxic behaviors”, the conducts such as the ones that happened with the medicine students will become more common.
Nonetheless, it is not correct and fair to blame the nasty actions committed by adult men only on P.E. classes. It is also extremely relevant to highlight that this way of humiliation just demonstrates to us what men are capable of. What is the limit of masculinity? Is there a limit to masculinity? Self-centered men, without any subjectivity and intelligence, believe that the only form of asserting dominance is by showing their genitals. They didn’t have the maturity or the mind of fair play. They couldn’t compose a funny jingle, a sign, or just scream supportive words for their team. No. It is the men’s world. They are the bosses.
But the thing is: they believe they rule the world, but they don’t know how to do it. The only thing that exists in their minds is showing dominance. Humiliating others, especially women, and placing their ego in the center of the universe.
This nation’s future doctors, whose life goal is saving lives, don’t even know how to behave and acknowledge humanity before others. How will we depend on them to save lives? Our parents are going to be on their deathbed and those doctors will drop their pants and jerk off? That’s it? If they do not know how to deal with a game, imagine how they will deal with a human being, whom they apparently cannot see dignity.
If we, internet users, saw their actions through social media and got disgusted, imagine the mental health of the people, particularly women, who saw it live? The victims of those humiliations and offenses? Harassment must not be silenced and must be more discussed. What those men did is a crime. And a crime must be dealt with by a tribunal. Not just sweeping it under the rug.
These humanityless and disrespectful men were kicked out of university, however, they were reintegrated back a few months/weeks later. Men who do not see humanity and dignity in others aim to save lives. I could call it hypocrisy, but I would rather claim that this case just proves that those who run the world are men and people accept it, they just lower their heads and accept stuff like this happening all the time. They just ignore it so the media forget about it and begin to report other stories until what happened becomes a forgotten trauma in society’s head, brainwashed by the patriarchy.
The article above was edited by Clarissa Palácio.
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