Despite the well-recognised benefits of sport, there are also negative influences on athlete health, well-being and integrity caused by non-accidental violence through harassment and abuse. All athletes have a right to engage in 'safe sport', defined as an athletic environment that is respectful, equitable and free from all forms of non-accidental violence to athletes. Yet, these issues represent a blind spot for many sport organisations through fear of reputational damage, ignorance, silence or collusion. This consensus statement extends the 2007 IOC Consensus Statement on Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Sport, presenting additional evidence of several other types of harassment and abuse-psychological, physical and neglect. All ages and types of athletes are susceptible to these problems but science confirms that elite, disabled, child and lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans-sexual (LGBT) athletes are at highest risk, that psychological abuse is at the core of all other forms and that athletes can also be perpetrators. Harassment and abuse arise from prejudices expressed through power differences. Perpetrators use a range of interpersonal mechanisms including contact, non-contact/verbal, cyber-based, negligence, bullying and hazing. Attention is paid to the particular risks facing child athletes, athletes with a disability and LGBT athletes. Impacts on the individual athlete and the organisation are discussed. Sport stakeholders are encouraged to consider the wider social parameters of these issues, including cultures of secrecy and deference that too often facilitate abuse, rather than focusing simply on psychopathological causes. The promotion of safe sport is an urgent task and part of the broader international imperative for good governance in sport. A systematic multiagency approach to prevention is most effective, involving athletes, entourage members, sport managers, medical and therapeutic practitioners, educators and criminal justice agencies. Structural and cultural remedies, as well as practical recommendations, are suggested for sport organisations, athletes, sports medicine and allied disciplines, sport scientists and researchers. The successful prevention and eradication of abuse and harassment against athletes rests on the effectiveness of leadership by the major international and national sport organisations.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/50/17/1019.full.pdf

International Olympic Committee consensus statement: harassment and abuse (non-accidental violence) in sport.

Public health is currently focused on childhood obesity, and the associated behaviors of physical activity and nutrition. Canadian youth are insufficiently active and do not meet nutritional guidelines. This is of particular concern for adolescent girls, as they are less active than boys, become less active as they age, and engage in unhealthy weight control behaviors. The purpose of this review is to determine what is known from the existing literature about how gender norms are understood in relation to the health-related behaviors of PA and nutrition in young girls. This scoping review follows the framework of Arksey and O’Malley, involving defining a research question, study identification and selection, charting, interpretation, summarizing, and reporting. In total, 28 documents are reviewed, and characteristics are summarized quantitatively and qualitatively. Five major themes are identified: (1) Girls’ relationships with PA are complex and require negotiating gender roles, (2) the literature focuses on dieting rather than nutrition, (3) appearance and perceptions influence behaviors, (4) “body” focused discourse is significant to girls’ experiences, and (5) social influences, institutions, and environments are influential and may offer opportunity for future research and action. Gaps in the literature are identified and discussed. It is concluded that young girls’ activity and nutrition is affected by gender norms and feminine ideals through complex negotiations, perceptions, body-centered discourse, and societal influences.

/pdf/understanding-gender-norms-nutrition-and-physical-activity-gc3wjn4tq6.pdf

Understanding gender norms, nutrition, and physical activity in adolescent girls: a scoping review

Ritual is popularly associated with ceremonies, though in real life it plays a significantly more important role, reinforcing what people perceive as the appropriate moral order of things, or challenging what they perceive as the inappropriate flow of events. This book introduces the reader to how people use ritual in interpersonal interaction and the interface that exists between ritual and politeness and impoliteness. As rituals have a large impact on the life of people and communities, the way in which they use politeness and impoliteness in a ritual action significantly influences the way in which the given ritual is perceived. Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual examines this complex relationship by setting up a multi-layered analytic model, with a multidisciplinary approach which will appeal to interaction scholars, politeness researchers, social psychologists and anthropologists, and moral psychologists. It fills an important knowledge gap and provides the first (im)politeness-focused interactional model of ritual.

Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction

In recent years, the pervasive practice of student initiation ceremonies into university sports teams has become widely reported in the British media. Such initiations have been likened to the practice known as hazing, which is prevalent in universities across the USA. Although there is some research that has considered how and why hazing occurs in American universities, less attention has been paid to the initiation ceremonies that regularly occur in British institutions. This article provides an overview of some of the literature that has examined the practice of hazing in the USA in order to set the scene for much needed research in the UK.

Hazing and initiation ceremonies in university sport: setting the scene for further research in the United Kingdom

The purpose of this study was to investigate hazing in collegiate marching bands. Specifically, the researchers were interested in marching band students’ experiences with hazing behaviors, to whom they were reported, attitudes toward hazing, and level of awareness of institutional hazing policies. Using a multistage cluster sampling approach, we distributed an online questionnaire to college marching band members attending National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I schools. Participants (N = 1,215) were representative of 30 different states and included college freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Nearly 30% of respondents indicated they observed some form of hazing in their marching band. The most common acts of hazing involved public verbal humiliation or degradation, which generally went unreported. Reticence to report hazing was largely due to fear of social retaliation or perceptions that the hazing behaviors were innocuous. The vast majority of participants had negative attitudes regarding hazing and most learned about their institution’s hazing policy through a marching band orientation. Implications for the college marching band, contextualization of results, and future directions are discussed.

Hazing in the College Marching Band

Hazing rituals and ceremonies have been described in traditional, historical world cultures, junior and high school, the military, private schools, paramilitary organizations, fraternities and sororities as well as sport (Allan and Madden, 2008; Bryshun and Young, 1999; Campos, Poulos and Sipple, 2005; Fields, Collins, and Comstock, 2010; Linhares de Albuquerque and Paes-Machado 2004; Nuwer 1999; Winslow 1999; Zacharda 2009).
	
Despite the often humiliating and abusive nature of hazing practices the hazing ritual is often perceived to be a necessary stepping stone in the movement from outsider to insider. Student-athletes often endure hazing practices with 80% of NCAA athletes having reported being initiated in some way (Hoover 1999) in exchange for membership affiliation.
This paper uses Van Gennep’s three stage model (1960) of transition as basis of comparison and deviation between contemporary initiations and historical traditions defining both the importance of cultures to establish “Rites of Passage” membership gateways and metamorphous from non-member to group member (irrespective of potential harm frequently inherent in sport initiations).

/pdf/across-the-threshold-a-comparative-analysis-of-communitas-4ub4oifj3e.pdf

Across the Threshold: A Comparative Analysis of Communitas and Rites of Passage in Sport Hazing and Initiations

(2009). Gender and Hazing. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance: Vol. 80, No. 5, pp. 6-9.

Gender and hazing: The same but different

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of girls and boys about the effects that body-based harassment would have on girls' eating habits and engagement in physical activity. Five scenarios were read to focus groups comprised of 12- to 14-year-old students in grades 7 and 8. Each scenario represented behaviours that fall within the definition of body-based harassment. The students were asked how they thought the target of the behaviour felt when it occurred, how they would be likely to respond and why they thought the harasser engaged in the behaviour. Results corroborated previous literature that body-based harassment can have a negative effect on eating patterns of young girls and can be a contributing factor to disordered eating. Additional results suggested that body-based harassment could play a role in altering participation in physical activity and sport in two negative directions; impetus for dropping out of activity and motivation to become a pathological exerciser. These dat...

Jay Johnson

Papers

Across the Threshold: A Comparative Analysis of Communitas and Rites of Passage in Sport Hazing and Initiations

Gender and hazing: The same but different

Sticks and stones: the multifarious effects of body-based harassment on young girls' healthy lifestyle choices