It’s been more than 50 years that hockey was created and fighting has always been part of it but it has changed over the years. Everyone has different opinions on fighting in hockey, some of them encourages that and some others wishes that fighting was never part of this sport due to the tragedies that happened to them and their families. Even though the percentage of hockey athletes suffering from fighting is not really high it still leaves a big impact on the society when something bad happens to one of these players like suicide or dead from a fight.

In the game of hockey, the enforcers role is to protect his teammates from getting injuries. The enforcers job isn’t to be the star of the team, for him scoring a goal isn’t by putting the puck in the other team’s net, is it by fighting and taking down the other team’s player who disrespected one of his teammates. This can refer to a characteristic of masculinity in one of kimmel’s text which is: “aggressiveness”. (Man box, 6)  Hockey coaches love aggressive players but the only reason why these players have a chance to stay up and play pro is by being the team’s enforcer and play by “the code” which is if someone take out one of your players you back him up and protect him. Don Cherry says that: “you can’t hit someone when he is down on the ice, “the code” is simply to fight with honour without any cheap shots or sucker punches”.(fifth estate) Some of the players like Nick Kypreos who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they got drafted decided to do whatever it takes to be able to pursue their dream. This also refers to masculinity just like said by Kilmartin in Men studies: “a man takes risks and doesn’t back down”. (What a man does, 6)  Kypreos says that he didn’t want it to be the guy that gets kicked off the team because he couldn’t do anything else than fighting so he said that he’ll do anything that it takes to be able to have a career in the NHL.

Bob Mckeown from the fifth estate says that: “fighting is a way to keep hockey from being more violent since it’s a sport played with steel sticks” (2010). A good example to that would be the act of Marty Mcsorty during the game that ended his hockey career as an enforcer. It was a fight he lost against Donald Brashear so he tried again and again to fight him but Donald didn’t want to. Marty’s solution was to hit Donald’s head with his steel stick which got him the longest suspension in the hockey history and a criminal record with 18 months of prohibition. This refers to big statement said by Christopher Kimmel which was “willingness to take physical risks and become violent if necessary”. (6) Marty took a big risk that cause his entire career and even more, he had a criminal record at the end of this game.  All this caused Donald to have a 3^rd degree concussion which mostly will have a big impact in the future. This isn’t the only way these enforcers have tragedies like these. Don Sanderson who played in the Ontario senior league after getting cut at 21 years old by the Toronto York university hated fighting but it was the only way that he would still be playing hockey. After one of his games, Don told his dad that he fought to protect his captain because his captain was more important to the team then he is. December 12, 2008, Don got into a fight that caused his life. During the fight, his helmet came off and he lost balance and slammed his head first on the ice. He was in a coma for 4 months then passed away.

Chronical traumatic encephalopathy which is CTE is a disease cause by the repeated head injuries. CTE isn’t a disease cause by concussions only, it is processed slowly by little head injuries players like Todd Ewen who played 11 seasons in the NHL and have fought over 145 times will mostly developed CTE in their 40’s. CTE could cause difficulty to connect the dots in the brain like in the case of Todd which one day called his wife telling her that he had no clue where he was and needed her to be able to find his way home. Todd’s wife said that he would be a different person every day. As an example he would be angry one day, mad another day, sad the day after that. Todd’s wife said that he would never talk about how he feels or more precisely he would never talk about his concussions. This refers us again to Kilmartin’s men’s studies text where he says that: “men are directed to not show emotions…because emotion is often considered a central and defining characteristic of femininity”.(men’s studies)  In other situation like Wade Belak it could go as far as suicide. Toward the end of his career, he told his wife that during one of his trips when he was on top of a building, he thought about how it would feel like to jump down the building and end everything there. After his career ended, Belak decided to start figure skating. Before one of his trips to Toronto, he went to his doctor to get more of his happy pills but the doctor didn’t tell him how many pills he needed to take every day so he read the instructions and took 2 pills daily. This caused Belak a change in his feelings and acts with his family. Belaks wife says that one day while he was brushing his daughter’s hair, he suddenly started hitting her head with the brush. He might have thought that he was in a hockey fight again with another enforcer but when his wife came and took away the brush, he was unconscious of what just happened. During his trip to Toronto he called his wife and told her that he was going crazy. This was the last time his wife spoke to him because he took his life away after that call.

Hockey enforcers decides to take this path because they have no clue what is waiting for them. They’re trying to act tough, be a man and not back down even though they didn’t want to have this kind of career. If we ask any of these retired enforcers suffering CTE if they would’ve still played in the pro league if they knew they were going to suffer from this disease at the end, they would all have one common answer and that would be no. Now every hockey enforcer knows about these tragedies, do you think they will be less fights?

Cited source

“The Code – Episodes – The Fifth Estate.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2009-2010/the-code.

“Hockey Fight: Wives Reveal the Cost of Concussions – Episodes – The Fifth Estate.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2019-2020/hockey-fight-wives-reveal-the-cost-of-concussions.

Kilmartin, Christopher, and Andrew P. Smiler. “Defining Men’s Studies.” The Masculine Self, Cornwall On Hudson, NY, Sloan Publishing, 2019, pp. 1–7. 

Last week was international Women’s week and I have attended two sessions at the auditorium with my class. During these sessions women that play a big role in our society spoke about indigenous women and Muslim women facing racism, discrimination and, the bill 21 which made me learn a lot of stuff that I didn’t know before.

First of all, I have learned that climate change mostly affect women in those areas. It doesn’t affect only women in rural areas but globally they are more likely to experience poverty and also to have less socioeconomic power than men. In this case, it makes it difficult to recover from disasters which also affects infrastructures, jobs and also housings. In my opinion, men will always be less affected since if they lose a job, it will be easier for them to find a new one compared to women since in some areas people still think that men are superior to women. Some companies in those areas will not hire a woman for example in construction since they think it is a men job but Women’s also work in construction in our days.

Secondly, I have learned that the bill 21 mostly affects Muslim women’s since they wear the hijab. It only affects them since in the other religions people only wear something like a necklace that they could easily hide from the others. I have also learned that most women who wears the hijab get treated like shit. They get treated differently than everyone else and they mostly get comments like being a terrorist. Everyone has a bad first impression towards them. In my case, I have witnessed people in real life say bad things about Muslim Women’s without even speaking once to them. Muslim women are more likely to get intimidated in the work field compared to people form other religions. 

In conclusion, I have learned that climate change affects women more than men in most cases and also that the bill 21 mostly only affects Muslim women’s and doesn’t really do anything to any women from other religions.

For my 5^th blog I decided to interview my best friend peter. I’ve been best friends with him since grade 8. He’s a really good person and we always do crazy things whenever we’re together. I asked him the questions from the instructions.

My first questions to him was “What makes us best friends?”. he said that since we met, we always got each other’s back what ever happens. We both play hockey in the same team and every time one of us gets into a fight, we always have each other’s back either on the ice or in real life. He also said that we have a different friendship compared with his other friends. Me and Peter could be in the same house in difference rooms and it will be perfectly fine, we don’t need to worry about anything since we trust each other. He feels like he’s free to talk about anything personal with me. Peter always call me whenever something happens or whenever he just wants to act retarded on camera. He said we are so close together since we don’t need to put a distance to our friendship since we can do and talk about anything.

Then I asked him what he likes to do in our free time together. he said that he likes the most when we just drink together and do crazy things since that’s one of the best time, we get really good memories together. He also said that one of the things he like to do the most is to pull an all-nighter in the hot tub because that’s when we have deep talks about the personal stuff in lives. Peter and I hang out together almost every day even though we have school and work.

Since I interviewed my own best friend, I couldn’t really ask him if he has ever told me how much I mean for him but I think I can answer that question on my own. Whenever me and peter talk about personal things we always say how much we actually mean to each other and what would we do if we never met.

When Michael Kimmel says “ institutions accomplish the creation of gender difference and the reproduction of gender order through several gendered processes” in my opinion, he is talking about the discrimination between man and women at work since a lot company owner’s will see men as superior compared to women and they will often give more benefits or a higher salary to men. In a workplace it should be gender-neutral since the person who hustles the most to get work done should get a better salary but like it says in the text when there is a male as the owner the norm becomes invisible. This is often because men think that women are not right in what they do or say. This brings me to relate to the scene in “Man Enough” when the old lady got abused and she asked for help from a group of men, they didn’t believe that she got abused.

The use of the word “Masculinities” recognizes the variation in how different groups define masculinity. Kimmel uses the plural since everyone has a different definition of the word masculinity which is why he wants to refer to all of them. I can relate “understanding how we do masculinities…opens up the unimaginable possibilities of social change” to the “Man Enough” episode when at the end they talk about how they will listen to other people’s problems so they can help them have a better perspective of life and treat women better which will make a social change in the future .

The theme of masculinity that was assigned to me was aggressiveness. Masculinity is a theme that represents willingness to take physical risks and become violent if necessary, to have access to something or to get something that they can’t get without being tough. In most cases, masculinity would always get comments like “don’t be feminine, be tough, gain power”. I picked tom in tom and jerry since it is a perfect example of someone aggressive.

Tom and Jerry was an animated series created in 1940 during the golden age of American animation, which started in 1928. Tom and Jerry is based on a slapstick comedy. Tom in this series represents aggressiveness since he would always use power whenever he would get pissed by jerry. Tom wouldn’t be able to catch jerry so he would get upset whenever he sees him again and the only thing, he had in mind was to use force and power to catch him but he would never be able so he would always try again and again. Masculinity is the same thing, once u can use power, you always want to use it since you that you can get way more with power.

A man is known as strong, a fighter and as someone who solves problem. In this documentary, they asked the little boy in the football team what would he feel if his coach told him he was playing like a girl. In my opinion that boy would get destroyed by what his coach said since in our society boys think that girls are weak, soft and sensitive. That young man doesn’t want to be seen as weak next to the other players since that would often contribute for him to get bullied and get called a “pussy” or a “faggot”.

What also caught my attention was the guy that was explaining why he shoot someone six times in a row. As a kid he would get bullied by his father. He started smoking weed then he joined the weed business and had a conflict with someone in there. He killed him because in his head he thought that if he didn’t do it, all his friends would’ve taken away everything he has. He also said that it was the only time he felt like he had power. In my opinion, he only want it to take revenge since as a kid he would always get beat up by his father. Often guys wants to hurt someone else the same way they have been hurt.

In the Carlos Andres Gomez text, Carlos say that in the U.S two guys holding hands or even a little touch would be considered as been gay but when Carlos went to Zambia touching hands between guys was absolutely normal. In my opinion, in the U.S guys are really scared to get called “gay” since in the documentary we see that people often bully gay people since they are afraid of becoming like them.

My name is sergen and i like pizza