Counterintuitive Spring 2023

Concussions in the NFL

Crack open a cold beer, sits on your cloud-like sofa, and direct your television to the most intriguing football game. Nothing is better than Sunday football and all the perks that tag along with it. As avid fans of our favorite team, we view the players as celebrities. However, what our society forgets to realize through all the hype and excitement of the three hour gridiron battle, is the strain the game of football puts on the bodies of the athletes we idolize. Specifically the trauma to the brain and the head. Recently, concussions have become a more magnified issue in the NFL, but a majority of football maniacs like myself, don’t fully comprehend the extent of a concussion and the long lasting ramifications that come with the concussion process. All we see is the player who felt a bit drowsy after the previous play, standing on the sideline with the team doctor. Suffering a concussion is a lot more serious than many average football crazed fans believe. It is a lifelong injury that will and has caught up to some of the gridiron greats.

Humans are susceptible to suffering a concussion every single day. Much of the society is not aware of that. There are many concussion “myths” that as a society, we may not be aware of. In Jeanie Shulkin’s article “What You Don’t Know About Concussions” posted on the Huffington Post website, she offers insight to the everyday concussion suffered by not just players but by the general population. This article will provide a broader look at a concussion before analyzing the hard hitting game of football and the toll it takes on the players.

Shulkin offers a real life personal experience. Many concussions can come from the softest head impacts. Shulkin explains how her concussion suffered from the blow of volleyball, much softer than the collision of two full force colliding football players’ helmets, really affected her everyday lifestyle. Her recovery from a blow of such a soft object included months reoccurring symptoms. It took a month away from college featuring blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, and disorientation to move her onto her next month and stage of the concussion. Many NFL players are back on the field after a week, much less a month. Not all concussions are the same, but it is clear that even the most non violent, blind side hit, can cause someone months of pain even with the proper treatment. Shulkin’s second month included a return to college however the symptoms were still present. She states she was forced to make “several lifestyle changes”. She was forced to leave her love of the game in the form of tennis and squash, both she played competitively at the national level. It did not take much to set her back. Shulkin states that “even a minor brush to my head could set back my recovery immensely”. That statement runs deep in the argument of NFL concussions. Players are making head contact almost every play. How can we be so sure that the concussion protocol the NFL enforces is capable of giving the player the best results and least time spent off of the field? Surely, the facts and experiences suffered by not just professional football players, but also everyday concussion suffering individuals, do not prove the NFL Concussion Policy effective. We can see through an example that it can take up to months for someone to recover from a concussion whether it is suffered on the football field or out in the real world.

It seems that the only NFL affiliated people taking the concussion issue serious are the ones who are retired. However this is untrue. There have been multiple instances when young and bright future NFL players have taken a step away from the game. Anthony Davis, who played for the 49ers and after suffering a concussion in Week 11 of the season he, explained how scary it was to live with an injury that does not allow the brain to work correctly. He took his retirement early at age 25. Not many players will address the concussion issue as a serious because walking away from millions of dollars and a successful career is not the most attractive option to these young adults. However, the decision that Anthony Davis and others who have decided to take a different career path after suffering a concussion, may add years onto his life and serve as a very healthy decision. In the article “Concussions in the NFL: Are players beginning to value their brains more than the game?” author Dani Bostick includes the story of Anthony Davis and former Steelers player and current ESPN analyst, Merril Hoge’s perspective. Hoge, like Davis, took an early leave after the 1994 season. Bostick takes a portion of a 2009 Arrowhead Pride article in which Hoge explains his experience. Hoge explains how his heart stopped when he was brought back to the training room after suffering his concussion. Trainers were forced to resuscitate Hoge. He then explains the hardship of being forced to recover in an ICU and “was basically trapped in my home for six weeks”, says Hoge. He was forced to learn how to read again and Hoge says it took two years for him to recover the cognitive issues he lost from the injury.

Merril Hoge’s story may be one of the most extreme cases; however it is still very relevant to the process of ensuring that our society is educated with the process and consequences of a concussion. A man who had a great career ahead of him with millions of dollars to follow was cut short because of a concussion. He is very successful in his current career as an ESPN analyst, but this does not take away from all that he put into the game of football and the very little he got out. Years of recovery, with no guarantee of a full recovery, does not seem worth it. Even if it is worth it, the players and the fans need to be educated on how serious a concussion really is.

Football has become more than a Sunday spent on the couch with your friends. It has become a smart phone app, a 10-12 man league filled with trades, and draft days. Fantasy football. Fantasy football has become a huge part of the everyday football maniac’s life. It is a form of gambling by drafting a team consisted of players from different teams and cheering them on to produce stats that turn into points for your team. Just like most games, the team with the most points wins. Obviously the best players will be drafted onto teams by these fantasy owners. However, we tend to forget as fantasy football owners and general managers, that the players we draft are human beings. They go through life with a little more to it than the general population, but nonetheless they also suffer injuries. Some injuries that require a simple tape up on the sideline or some injuries that require season ending surgery and/or evaluation. In a Bleacher Report article titled “The NFL Isn’t Fantasy: Those Injuries Are the Real Thing”, author Mike Freeman offers his perspective on how the gambling fantasy football maniacs are not aware of the extent of injuries. According to Freeman, after two weeks of this year’s NFL season (2015), 15 percent of the NFL suffered injuries. Through two weeks that is a very high number. Last year the NFL suffered more than 1,300 injuries total. “There are many brave men and women who do incredibly dangerous jobs and aren’t paid a fraction of what NFL players get. But that doesn’t change that number. There are few jobs where 15 percent of the workforce gets hurt-many of the injuries being serious ones-after just two weeks.” (Freeman). This statement does not go through the minds of fantasy owners. They only see the 13-20 guys listed on their roster and if they are injured it causes havoc of trying to figure out the best replacement to win the week. Gambling is really creating a distance from the sport and the viewers. Players are categorized as probable, questionable, or out if they are listed on the injury report for that week. In the fantasy football world a player listed as probable has a very high chance to play that week. And that’s all the fantasy football world sees. They do not see that he is suffering a lingering injury, which possibly could be a concussion. They do not see the hard work that player has put in all week to try and make it possible to be on the field with his team. They only see the money they put into the league either being sat out for a game or toughing it out for the team. Freeman ends his article with a very bold and accurate statement regarding those who don’t take the injuries these players suffer seriously. “Never before, to me, has football been so…gladiatorial.”

As avid sports fans we seem to forget that the players admire on the television screen have psychological feelings and emotions just like we do. They go home to their families after they play their games and attend their practices. They go through daily routines, maybe with different tasks, but they do have a life with feelings. A local superstar, Allen Robinson Jr. who played his collegiate ball at Temple University in Philadelphia, took his own life at the age of 25. After studies were performed on his brain at Boston University, it had shown Robinson had suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The article posted to Associated Press states “Family lawyer Ben Andreozzi said that Robinson had several concussions during two seasons in the league.” Obviously players will suffer concussions. It is a contact sport that players are getting paid to play. It is a career, but the awareness of the snowball effect of concussions is not high enough. The league is not taking enough action to try and help those who suffer concussions that lead to depression and even suicide. The families of the players who are currently suffering or have suffered from CTE, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and suicides related to football are going to receive a payment from the NFL, but does that bring back the life of Allen Robinson Jr.? Can a payment really fulfill the rest of his life when he only died at 25 years old? It seems money can solve many problems in this world and in this country. However, when someone takes their life due to mental and emotional issues suffered while playing professional football, money is not the answer to gain respect or forgiveness. It takes a collaborative effort through mental and health experts. There should be therapists to help cope with the conditions these players are facing.

On October 9, 2012 the struggling Kansas City Chiefs lost a football game to the Baltimore Ravens with a score of 9-6. The Chiefs were not having a great year and of course, it was displeasing to the fans of the organization. Throughout the year they had scolded their quarterback and leader, Matt Cassel. In that game he committed three costly turnovers that may have changed the outcome. But in the fourth quarter of that game he was hit hard by Ravens defensive linemen Haloti Ngata. He remained on his back for several minutes while trainers and team doctors attended to him. While he was on the field being attended to, fans in Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium began to cheer and for all the wrong reasons. They were not cheering because he had hopped up and seemed to be in good shape. They were cheering because they knew he had a concussion and would be sat out with doctors for the rest of that game if not for several other games. In an interview with the media after the game, Eric Winston an offensive linemen commented on the fan reaction to Cassel’s injury. He called the reaction “100 percent sickening.” He stated that he had felt embarrassed because Matt Cassel is a human just like the rest of the team that “work their butts off”. Cassel remains in the NFL today as quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys but as fans of the game, we need to understand that there is more to football then the 45 minutes that are played every Sunday. As professional football players they understand that they “signed up” for this game. Winston stated in his interview “I’ve already come to the understanding that I probably won’t live as long because I play this game but that is okay because that is a choice I’ve made. That is a choice all of us made.”

            When parents sign their children up for a sport for the first time one of the first questions is: Who is my child’s coach? Who will lead my child to success? Who will teach my child the necessary technique it takes to become a good athlete? But most importantly, who will watch out for my child while he or she is taking part in the game? Coaches are looked at in many different ways. Some coaches are even parents, but in the end coaches should all have the same goal. They should be interested in helping the child succeed in the sport they are playing but also teach them about life along the way.

Marvin Lewis has been coaching the Bengals since the year 2003. Prior to his tenure with Cincinnati he made numerous stops at several locations including Idaho State, Long Beach State, New Mexico, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Washington. He has always been regarded as one of the best coaches in the NFL. He has posted a record of 109-92-2 record while head coaching the Cincinnati Bengals. He won Coach of the Year in 2009 and won the Super Bowl as an assistant. However in 2014, Lewis made comments about Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict’s concussion. According to Huffington Post’s article titled “NFLPA President Rips Bengals Coach over Questionable Concussion Comments”, “Lewis seemed to suggest that the media is to blame for the concussions lingering longer.” Lewis then referred to his coaching resume saying “I coached defense and linebackers for a long time and concussions didn’t linger.”

As a coach, especially as a professional sports coach where Marvin Lewis is looked at as a role model, there is no right for him to make these accusations. Concussions are a much more serious thing than ever before. As a society we cannot blame the media for a physical injury that shortens the lives of these players. He is supposed to be there as a support system for his player and especially support the league in raising awareness. There is a chance Lewis was just not educated enough about the topic of concussions. His job title does not force him to learn medical procedures which could lead to him making these comments. This is where the league needs to take action. There is no reason for coaches to say these types of things. The league should be educating every coach, official, and player in the game. This should not only take place in the NFL either. It should be passed down to college, high school, and youth leagues.

In America sports are taken very seriously. From the tailgates to the parades, the citizens of the country love their sport. The players love it even more. They are aware of the long lasting ramifications the sport of football has on their lives and their family’s lives. They accept the challenge and provide us with unlimited entertainment from September to February. However this is no excuse to the NFL not being aware of how concussions play the biggest role in the NFL. Just because the players are willing to be paid to suffer concussions, does not give the league a reason to not show any attention to the topic.

Works Cited

“What You Don’t Know About Concussions.” The Huffington Post. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.

“Concussions in the NFL: Are Players Beginning to Value Their Brains More than the Game?” Behind the Steel Curtain. 7 June 2015. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

“Fantasy Football Is Teaching Us To Dehumanize Players In Pain.” The Huffington Post. Web. 7 Dec. 2015

“Autopsy: Another NFL Ex-Player Who Killed Himself Had Brain Disease.” The Huffington Post. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.

“NFLPA President Rips Bengals Coach Over Questionable Concussion Comments.” The Huffington Post. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.

The debate on whether a man or woman has the right to decide whether or not they want to end their lives has become more popular in the past few years. Recently states have been legalizing the right to be able to allow the physician to assist in the death of the person in critical condition. I, for one, strongly believe that an individual should have the right whether or not they can stay on this Earth. A kind of decision like that should be one that is completely up to that person. The person that is extremely ill didn’t choose to be put in the position they are in. Someone who is diagnosed as fatally ill should have every right to be able to end their life to keep the pain as minimal as possible for themselves, family, and friends.

Oregon was one of the first states to legalized physician-assisted suicide in 1997. There has been reported data on residents in Oregon who were deathly sick and received lethal prescriptions which is okay because it’s protected under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. Thirty-three people were reported died in 1999 do to the prescriptions received that were meant to bring death to the patient. Twenty-six died after taking the lethal injection, 5 died from their illness, and 2 were alive after 1999 but died shorty later. The average age of these patients were 71 and the most common cause for the treatment was cancer. All of the patients were covered by health care and according to the patients family members the patients requested assistance with suicide for many reasons. Some of these reasons included loss of autonomy and control of bodily functions. These two things alone make life unlivable and not enjoyable. No one wants to be told they are going to die and no one wants to watch their body’s slowly fail.

A significant number of sick people are maintained alive due to the progression in medicine however, these techniques create an wall between life and death. The cost of these treatments is very costly for the patient when he or she is going to die eventually. So in the end the patient or the patient’s family members are paying thousands of dollars to keep their loved ones on this Earth when in the end the patient is not doing anything but sit in a hospital bed all day and night. Not only does the patient not move, but also he or she is in a lot of pain due to the death that is inevitable. It just isn’t ethical to keep a patient that wants to die because they are in an extreme amount of pain when it is their body.

An article I found very supporting towards my case was called “ Tell Congress to Support Death with Dignity”. It talks about how voters across the country support giving terminally ill, mentally competent adults the option to access life ending prescription medication but 45 states in the U.S.A. do not have it authorized. They are denying the option to put people out of their miseries and instead force people to suffer through their final days of life when knowing it is coming to a quick and painful end.

No case was more moving to me then Cora-Lee Horner’s. On Aug. 2, 2004 her was placed into a medically- induced coma and a home-care burse removed her feeding tube. Exactly 3 days later the poor 22 year old had passed away and she left behind three children. She was suffering for two years with cervical cancer and was brought back home from the hospital about one month before her death. The father mentioned how horrible it was to watch his daughter suffer. Gough eventually found out from the house nurse that the daughter requested for the nurse to pull her feeding tube out so she can die sooner. Gough, the father, again restated that “watching his child slowly deteriorate convinced him medically assisted dying (known more commonly as doctor-assisted suicide) is a humane approach to death,”. If he had knowledge of how much pain and suffering his daughter was going threw because of her illness, a lethal dose injection of narcotics would have been his obvious choice. That house nurse did the right thing in everyone’s mind but the laws. Soon after that information the nurse was put in prison for assisted suicide. This father daughter case is a huge example of dying with dignity because it is unjust to keep someone living in pain when they could be resting in peace.

Times magazines wrote a story on a woman named Brittany Maynard who was deathly ill due to terminal brain cancer. She was 29 year old how took her own life on a Saturday because she wanted to die with dignity rather then have everyone, including herself, watch her die. After hearing this an Oregon lawyer began meeting with a group of physicians and businesspeople in Portland who shared his belief that terminally ill people should be able to decide when to die. By 1993, they discovered the Death with Dignity law and this was to be the first state to give people with months to live the right to access lethal medication. States like California and Washington failed to pass similar laws. If one state can realize that death with dignity must become real then the rest of the country can realizes this as well.

Another website called Before I Die offered some real life stories and many issues about why physician assistants should have the right to ably by the patients wishes to die if the patient had only months to live. A new father was in critical condition after he had gotten into a serious car accident. He spent a month in the intensive care unit and he was hooked up to life support that included a respirator. After a month of being in a coma the doctors tried to break him out of his sleep but there was no hope. Don had always told his wife that he never wanted to end up in a coma, hooked up to a respirator. His wife had to come in almost every day to see her husband t=and the things she saw was just sad and depressing. She would view him seeming dead everyday, sometimes even with his own feces on him. This is no human way to hold someone when they are inevitably going to pass.

After viewing all these cases its pretty clear that the states need to open their eyes and realize that physician should be able to assist in their patients death if that patient had months to live. No body wants to watch themselves slowly die and neither does the family. Everybody should have a right on whether or not they want to end their own lives, it should not be up to the government to decide such an important decision. It should be up to the people because they did choose to die in months due to a horrible sickness or terrible accident. Let the people die with dignity and not suffer.

Little Lies Cause Huge Consequences

Every day, patients come and go through the doors of hospitals where they can find hope for treatment, healing, and gentle care from the physicians. When patients enter to get treatment in the hospital, there is a sense of trust in the doctors and that the doctors are highly equipped for the job. Not only are the physicians are skilled in the medical field through vigorous studies and training but the hospitals in America today have advanced technologies, enabling doctors to do intensive research, use high-tech equipment, and provide effective diagnosis for patients.

With all of these privileges that hospitals have in America, these physicians can do great things to help people like curing sicknesses that haven’t been cured before through the discovery of new medicine and understanding of science we have today. But there is a problem that can prevent physicians from working sufficiently. Lies.

Ideally, patients would enter the hospital or doctor’s office and describe exactly how they feel and answer the doctor’s questions truthfully so it can be easier for the doctors to figure out the problem, and make the right decisions. However, the process typically is more complicated than that because most patients tend to bend the truth in their answers, which may lead to wrong decisions from doctors, wrong prescription of medicine, and confusion.

For instance,  in Dr. Val Jones’s “Why Do Patients Lie To Doctors?” he writes about an experience with a patient who had  a serious condition of brain damage and the doctor wanted to figure out the cause. Dr. Val Jones asked the patient if she had consumed any drugs and alcohol and she denied it, causing the Dr. Val Jones think of possible errors like the neurology had missed something when they tested her. Another confusing factor is her signs and symptoms were showing that she did consume alcohol. The doctored looked further into the patient’s urine toxicology screen and had to confirm with the patients repeatedly if she had ever consumed any alcohol and drugs. Since Dr. Val Jones did not have clarity at the moment, he feared that he could make a decision that could harm the patient or even take her life like the other doctors he has heard of who was not careful enough. Dr. Val Jones had to ask her again and again until finally when the doctor showed how serious the impairment was, she confessed that she did consume alcohol.

Through this situation we can see the confusion in doctors in their decisions, we can see their worries for another person’s life, also how everyone who was involved in her care was affected too like the neurology team. The doctor had to spend extra time investing in the other data when the solution to the patients problem could have come to pass if only she told the truth.

Unfortunately, this situation where patients lie is common in hospitals. According to a survey, 77% of healthcare professions say that “one-fourth or more of their patients omit facts or lie to them about their personal health.” In Sumathi Reddy’s article, “‘I Don’t Smoke, Doc,’ and Other Patient Lies,” Sumathi shows how physicians of all kinds, from cardiologist to dentist experience patients lying to them when the results say otherwise. For instance, people will lie about their flossing routine when the dentist could easily tell how much they floss by the measurements of the gums in each visit. Other common lies in a hospital setting is the exaggerate their issue for more attention, which Dr. Val Jones like to call “million dollar work up.” A million dollar work up is when patients over exaggerate to experience ongoing concern because it may be the only chance where they may feel this way. “If she admitted to drug use, then the only people who seemed to care about her (sadly, even if it was mostly because she could make a “great case for Grand Rounds”) would probably turn their backs”(Jones 1).

Additionally, people may exaggerate their condition for benefits. There have been some cases where patients have claimed to have a disability for benefits. It is also possible to  obtain affordable health insurance also may receive secondary gain for hiding health concerns from their doctors, knowing that future insurers will review the doctor’s records according to William Morgan’s “Why Do Patients Lie to Their Doctors.”Furthermore, a patient who exaggerates symptoms may get an appointment sooner than if he or she tells the truth. ==Patients may provoke their doctors to order more extensive diagnostic procedures. They may lie to obtain secondary gain, to protect their careers or to acquire affordable health insurance.

While some patients exaggerate, others minimize to keep their actions in secrecy and procedures minimized. An example would be trying to hide the usage of alcohol if it could affect employment or going to jail. Medical records could be needed by employers, companies, and military opportunities. Therefore, people want to keep their medical history clean.

However, not all patients think that way. WedMD surveyed their readers and found that http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=46985&page=2 majority of the people lie simply because they do not want to feel judged my the doctors. They want doctors to see them as more disciplined as they really are so they can feel good about themselves and not feel shamed or guilty.

As small as the lie can be, it can lead to big consequences. People do not realize the power they in the treatment they get. many people think because the doctor is skilled in the medical field that he can figure symptoms and diagnosis. But when it comes to treatment it truly requires the teamwork of both parties because doctors are, well, human. Therefore, it is clear that the communication between doctors and patients is essential in the kind of treatment the patient get, whether it is efficient or not.

Communication between the physicians and the patient play a huge part because with that communication, it helps the doctors make decisions and  figure out how to help the patient. According to American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the benefits of effective communication is that “the patient and physician have developed a ‘partnership’ and the patient has been fully educated in the nature of his or her condition and the different methods to address the problem.” By forming this partnership, patients will have more of a say of what they want, which has shown more satisfactory. Studies by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons show that a more effective partnerships include doctors who are good listeners and the patient’s communication skills. Furthermore, with good communication between the doctors and patients, it will be made clear between the doctors and patients what to expect, the goals, and what is going on in the processes of the care.

An argument to why patients are not communicating truthfully could be because it is the doctor’s fault for not making them comfortable enough.

incidents  where white lies of the patients cause confusion and major complications in the procedures have been so common and happens to so many healthcare professionals that they could have at least figure out a way to avoid making those mistakes over and over again. There is a clear problem where patients are not comfortable enough to tell the truth, why not address that problem? Patients shouldn’t take up all of the blame if they are uncomfortable and unaware of how important their input is. Therefore, it should be the doctor’s responsibility to make patients feel open enough and pull information out of patients to get the most accurate information. In addition, doctors should let it be known to the patients the consequences of not telling the honest truth so that patients can be more careful.

Steps doctors can take to improve the patient’s care is taking the time to develop a friendly,  laid back relationship with the patients and establish trust.

Though doctors often do not get honest replies from patients, resulting in unnecessary procedures and mistakes, it is time for doctors to step up and improve their performance by working harder to form an honest partnership with patients.

However, the decision of telling the truth is still unchangeably up to the patient. Doctors can try all they want to create a comfortable atmosphere but it does not guarantee honestly from patients, some patients will still hold firm to their privacy or even continue to strive to lie for manipulation to get what they want.

Therefore, there is nothing the doctors can do to stop patients from lying.

Ultimately, people are unaware of the power they wield in helping the doctors diagnose them and so we find that people lie to their healthcare providers more tan they should for a variety of reasons from fear of judgment to benefits. Therefore it is important for doctors to continue to inform patients the consequences of lying and power that patients have in their treatment.

The American Patriarchy and Rape

(Preface: I will be simplifying reality somewhat. For the purposes of this essay I will not be discussing rape of men, though it does indeed happen – the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network says that between 1995 and 2010, 9% of rape victims were male. This is not meant to discount the reality of male rape victims, it is simply meant to acknowledge the fact that the overwhelming majority of rape is perpetrated against women by men.)

Our culture is built on a very strong foundation of institutionalized patriarchy that, while sometimes covert, informs virtually every aspect of modern American life. Throughout American history, varying insular groups of men have historically been the primary driving forces behind legislation, including legislation regarding what constitutes rape. Because women are raped in much greater numbers than men are, it seems counterintuitive that men have legislated the definition of rape. This counterintuitivity stems from a larger societal basis of misogyny that permeates American culture.

Women have traditionally been disenfranchised in America; 1920 was the first year women could vote in the general presidential election. The first woman to be elected to Congress was elected in 1916, 140 years after the first Congress met.

There are people who deny the existence of a patriarchy in America; Cathy Young says in an article for Real Clear Politics that most people trying to prove patriarchy “focus on women’s abuse by men and on pervasive cultural biases against women, from beauty pressures to so-called ‘slut-shaming.'” She says of such internalized misogynistic tendencies that “such nebulous statements are nearly impossible to prove or disprove.” That may be true; body-shaming and beauty pressure are very difficult to quantify. However, we do have at our disposal several quantifiable statistics that clearly show the exact extent of the American patriarchy.

We see an underrepresentation of women in American politics to this day; the most obvious inequality is that America has had 44 heads of state, and 44 of those have been male. However, we see inequality in lower levels of government as well, as recently as 2014; Information Research Specialist Jennifer Manning makes this clear in a report on the demographic information of Congresspeople, where we can see that a record (!) 19.0% of Congresspeople are female. The Atlantic contributor Phillip Cohen says that looking at top political leaders are”low-hanging fruit” if you’re looking for a patriarchy, but he does concede that “…they probably are in the end the most important—the telling pattern is that the higher you look, the maler it gets.”  We also see this in business — the Economist says that women, despite making up 46.5% of America’s total workforce, make up a mere 8% of all the top managers in this country. Cohen also brings up the seemingly-quaint custom of newlywed women changing their last names to match their husband’s. To us, that doesn’t seem strange at all; after all, that’s just “what we do.” However, Cohen observes “to an anthropologist from another planet, this…would be a major signal that American families are male-dominated.”

The simple fact of the matter is that we do in fact have a staunch patriarchy in America. That statement holds true in institutions as small as a nuclear family and as large as a national government. But how has such a patriarchy continued in this nation?

Erin McKelle, writing for Everyday Feminism, says that it comes down to socialization:

The ways in which we sit are gendered (like pretty much everything else that we do) and is something we learn through observation, or perhaps even direct education. Have you ever had someone tell you to “sit like a lady?” That’s socialization.

When you hear your mom talk about how fat she is or your uncle make a sexist joke; when you see diet pill commercials on television or listen to your babysitter call someone a slut – these instances don’t just go over your head, as many people like to believe. In reality, you’re taking in these messages.

She goes on to make the greater point that the millions of tiny misogynistic messages that are sent to women every day can add up; and when a woman lives her whole life hearing them, she can internalize that misogyny despite being a woman herself. Those messages, though, are not just sent to women; all of the examples that McKelle gives apply equally as well to males in American society.  “Systemic inequality doesn’t just happen,” Phillip Cohen says. “People…get up in the morning and do it every day.” The American patriarchy is perpetuated by all of us.

One of the side effects of this patriarchy is that traditionally men have been the driving force behind making many of the laws in this country. While it might be preferable to have a more even distribution of genders, any reasonable person would agree that this inequality is not directly harmful to women. However, if we turn our attention to the legislation regarding rape the inherent patriarchical misogyny rears its head.

Statistically, according to RAINN, 1 in 6 women will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. This compared to 1 in 33 men makes rape firmly a “woman’s issue.” It seems very counterintuitive that males, the sex which primarily commits rape in this country, are the ones primarily voting on legislation which legally defines the very act.

How did we come to live in this reality? This is yet another manifestation of the patriarchical culture in which we live. Erika Eichenberger, writing for Mother Jones, tells us that Mississippian laws regarding sexual assault are straight out of the middle ages:

During the 13th century, the severity of punishment under Saxon law varied according to the type of woman raped—whether she was a virgin, a wife, a widow, a nun, or a whore. That’s appropriately medieval. But in the United States, well into the ’90s (yes, the nineteen-nineties) some states still had laws that held statutory rape wasn’t rape if the woman was “impure“. Mississippi was the last state to ditch such a law—in 1998.

I mentioned earlier that 1 in 6 women will be raped in her lifetime, versus 1 in 33 men. This statistic makes the patriarchy that much more ubiquitous; it means that the same inherent misogyny that affects lawmakers also affects regular citizens.

We can clearly see that from the statistics presented by Amelia Thomson-Deveaux at Five Thirty-Eight; she tells us that a 2015 study reported that 10.8% of men on college campuses could be considered rapists by the FBI definition (“[p]enetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” Source). That is up from the 6% that a 2002 study reported. One in Four, an organization that raises awareness of sexual assault, cites a 2011 study that says 1.27 million women experience rape yearly in the United States.

Suzannah Weiss, writing for Bustle, cites a study published in Violence and Gender:

In the previously-referenced survey published in Violence and Gender, 32 percent of college men said they would have “intentions to force a woman to sexual intercourse” if “nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.”

If that seems exorbitantly high, that’s because it is. Weiss explains the reason behind it perfectly when she says “[m]en are taught to pursue sex at all costs, and only take “no” as a “no”…women are taught that they are not capable of violating anyone’s boundaries, so they don’t even need to think about it.”

That’s exactly the reason, and it ties perfectly into the point made by McKelle about socialization; men are taught that sex is highly desirable, but they aren’t taught explicitly that the consent of their partner is paramount to that sex.

This is not to say that all men are rapists or potential rapists — far from it. Only 13.6 percent of the men in the study that Weiss quotes said they would have “any intentions to rape a woman.” The root of the problem is that these men simply don’t know what constitutes rape, because they aren’t taught that. It isn’t important enough to our society that young boys are taught good sexual ethics, but it is very important that they have a lot of sex.

If there is a bigger symptom of a deeply misogynistic society, I haven’t seen it. Speaking as a male who attends college, there is a very definite emphasis placed on someone’s “number,” the number of female sexual partners a man has had. Men look up to others who have a higher number, and in many cases ask for tips on “how to get girls.” This is deeply troubling — our society has trained these men to view women as something to “get,” something to acquire. That is the root. Until that changes, until all men view women as individuals and not as simply warm orifices, we will not see any meaningful difference in rape numbers or legislation or Congressional demographics, and we will not see any meaningful change in the counterintuitivity of men defining rape.