Could Women Have Saved Penn State?

Article here. Excerpt:

'“There’s a gender element to everything,” says Andrew Shubin, a central Pennsylvania civil-rights attorney who is representing a number of the victims. He notes that, even in an opposite situation—had somebody said they walked in on Sandusky raping a young girl, instead of a boy—“it might have been an easier thing to understand.”

There are other questions, too: Might the victims have been more willing to come forward had they been female, where, some might say, the idea of talking about a rape is less taboo? Had this not been football, where pats on the ass and lurid locker-room talk are routine—yet to be “gay” is roundly condemned—might these boys have recognized the abuse earlier? (As Naomi Mezey, a Georgetown law professor who studies cultural identity, puts it, “Sports is one of those places where male physicality with each other is allowable, yet is simultaneously deeply homophobic.”) And, lastly, would this horrifying narrative have turned out any differently had the culture surrounding it not been so chauvinistic?

“I don’t think we are going to see women coaches raping 10-year-olds any time soon, and if one did, I think she would be out on her ear in no time,” says journalist Katha Pollitt, a columnist at The Nation. “And female students leading a riot in defense of child molesters? I doubt it. This whole thing is just patriarchal from top to bottom.”

Whether or not we agree, it’s easy to make the argument that close-knit, insular groups of men have been known to do bad things (think: the Catholic Church). Studies show that dissenting voices are crucial to countering group think—especially in realms where pledging allegiance to a hierarchy are the norm. In the business world, companies with equal numbers of men and women on their boards are more successful. We’ll probably never know if that would be the case in football.'