An act of symbolic self-violence in a most masculine sport

Rugby league is synonymous with many forms of violence: physical, sexual, and symbolic. In their study of the sport’s place in Australian society from the 1970s to the 1990s, Brett Hutchins and Janine Mikosza (1998) describe rugby league, with its “positively sanctioned violence,” as the nation’s “‘flag-carrier’ of masculinity” (p. 246). The pair’s study, which is an exercise in “historical sociology,”11 concludes that the violence inherent in the sport functions as a “cultural exemplar of hegemonic masculinity” (p. 250).12 A similar conclusion can be drawn from the Carney image since it is the record of an on-field violent act—a gash on Carney’s left cheek that serves as immediate “anchorage” (see Barthes, 1977) between the blurry photo of a young Caucasian male drinking his own urine and a well- known footballer. Carney’s sleeve tattoo also confirms his identity while affirming Carney as a masculine symbol, as full-length tattoos on arms that large often do (see Tom, 1997, p. 73).

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Carney is marked in blood by the field and able to be identified because of it. While these signs serve as indisputable photographic evidence of him having been there and performed the act, I suggest that much of the controversy stems from potential fetish elements of the image. This is a point that seems obvious to participants on JustUsBoys. On the “Todd Carney pissing into his own mouth !!!” thread, comment 2 notes, “I actually thought of putting it under fetishes.” Comment 7 states, “he’s not the only athlete with a kinky habit.” While on “A new fad from Aussie-Land” the first reply challenges the original post’s claim that “Aussie bogans have got a new fad called Bubbling” by writing, “I’m fairly certain water-sports is a fetish.”

Correlation between the Carney image and fetish or any form of sexual act is largely absent from the SharksForever forum, however. Some suggest the image is a work of Photoshop trickery—“Its fake. ****in relax” (#4890), “it is fake same photo did the rounds years ago in the uk with a english soccer player” (#4892)—while others defend it as nothing more than drunken stupidity, and some label it an act that is routine in certain situations, as will be examined later. One exception is the comment: “He’s been caught pissing on a bloke before. Seems to have a thing for it” (#5393). However, generally sexual implication is absent, and when mention is made of the visibility of Carney’s penis—“Hey, at least we got to see carneys shlong” (#5351)—such a gesture is swiftly rebuked as out of place: “sex pest” (#5356). This point of difference between the two forums demonstrates the value of considering the discourse that emerged in the critical moment in the unfolding of the controversy from two very different perspectives and agendas (sporting and sexual to name just two).

As a sign himself, Carney possesses the “archetypal heterosexual male body,” and his sport offers the ideal medium through which that body can be portrayed (Drummond, 2011, p. 103). Murray Drummond makes the point that notions of “being” and “doing” are useful in understanding the heterosexual male body (Drummond, 2011, p. 103; also see Connell, 1983). In particular, these notions help us to understand what the archetypal heterosexual male body is “supposed” to look like and what masculinised acts it is “supposed” to engage in (2011, p. 103). This speaks to the challenge posed by the Carney image, as evidence of a body that “looks” archetypal and yet “engages” in a nonmasculinised act. Fetishistic elements of the image sexualise the act being performed, challenging a certain archetype of maleness and a generally more accepted image of the league male as being violent in a masculine sense. That reporting on the image breaks from usual, more forgiving treatment of league males who engage in violent masculine acts off the field is a point that veteran Australian journalist Peter FitzSimons (2015) seems to be making in January 2015 as he reflects on the incident and its resultant disciplinary action six months on:

I hold no brief for Todd Carney at all [. . . .] But the pissing in his mouth thing? I wish he wouldn’t do that. You wish he wouldn’t do that. But ultimately it really is none of our damn business. More troubling is that while this victimless activity gets instant dismissal from the NRL, rugby league players who bash women can expect a quick suspension and then forgiveness. By all means, rugby league must rid itself of those who just don’t get it, but can it start with women bashers, assaulters, drug cheats, match fixers and then get to feral idiocy?

As one fan writes on the SharksForever forum without the need for hindsight:

Who cares if it’s real or fake people do stupid **** all the time. Ill let him drink my piss if he keeps getting 3 try assists and a try every game. [. . .] Oh so when Todd Carney does it it’s “disgraceful” and “career-ending” but when Bear Grylls does it it’s “Thursday nights on SBS.” (#4896)

Gestured to in the above comment is the situated significance of Carney as a sign that connotes a sport (rugby league), of the act of self-urination as somehow corrupting the value of that sport (its family- friendly image, for instance), and the absurdity of this logic given Carney’s star performance. The point about the creation of family-friendly perceptions of elite sportsmen links onanism (the erotic use of genitalia for purposes other than reproduction) to a discourse of self-pollution and homoeroticism, traces of which can be found in the analysed discourse. The above comment also points out the hypocrisy in elite sport of privileging a certain sanitised image of its players over their raw talent, and the skills they bring to the game—of valuing how men “appear” and the impact of certain “victimless behaviours” that shape that appearance rather than how they “perform.” As one fan writes, “Surely you can [not] shoot down a bloke, who has trained almost every day of his adult life to become one of the best five eights in the game over 1 silly photo. No criminal act behind it, no one got hurt” (#4910).

Worth acknowledging here are the larger patterns and problems that my argument partici- pates in, particularly, how the Carney controversy touches on important and well-developed issues around technology, privacy, and moral regulation, for example, the role of the camera phone; Vice’s article on bubbling, which represents a fascination with cultural margins and a certain proclivity for “webby” phenomena; and onto running themes of victimlessness and privacy and questions of moral clauses in athletes’ contracts. The case study intersects here with literature (see Greenwood & Young, 1980; also see Newburn, 1992) on shifts in the 1960s and 1970s in moral regulation (of sexuality in particular), whereby a limited but significant domain of freedom for once-problematic practices arose, provided that these remained private, invisible, and victimless, without threatening offense against the “moral contract.”

Violence, and its connection with rugby league in the Australian context, exists on and off the field. The violence associated with the sport off the field is one that also incorporates a sexual element, for it is here, at the sidelines and during the nightlife, that women are permitted. Gender violence and rugby league is an object of study that has attracted particular media, industry, and academy attention in Australia in recent decades. Following media reports of allegations of sexual violence perpetrated by rugby league players in the mid-2000s (see Mewett & Toffoletti, 2008; Toffoletti, 2007), the NRL began investing in education programs for players teaching about ethical sexual behaviour (see Albury, Carmody, Evers, & Lumby, 2011; Dimitrov, 2008, who examines fan advocacy campaigns against sexual assault in football) and attitudes (see Waterhouse-Watson, 2007) toward women. While allegations of assault and rape by footballers continue to appear in the Australian media with concerning regularity (see Nurka, 2013; Waterhouse-Watson, 2012), what is intriguing about the controversy surrounding the Carney image is not only the absence of a womanfrom the “sex” scandal, as a “victimless crime,” but the decidedly homoerotic overtones of the image, of a well-formed man, scarred and hardened by brute masculine force, with his penis exposed and held at a public urinal, consuming his own excrement while a “mate” watches on and documents it.

A key observation that emerges from the contrasting discursive contexts of SharksForever and JustUsBoys are the antics and subterfuges whereby heterosexual men perform thinly veiled quasi- sexual actions for their male mates (Carney for Robinson in this case). The work of Mark Simpson (1994, 2002) and Steven Zeeland (1993, 1996) is useful in reflecting on the queer phenomena of heterosexual men performing actions that are both redolent of homoeroticism yet overtly not-gay at the same time. The Carney image also has unescapably “beat” (see Dalton, 2012) connotations that challenge the iconography of hegemonic maleness and, more to the point, the somewhat sanitised role model status that Carney-as-NRL-elite was contractually bound to uphold. As one fan notes on the SharksForever forum:

Some say it is harmless but that is not the point—it is inappropriate behaviour. He is being paid unbelievable money for his skills and that money comes with conditions including being a role model in the public eye especially for young kids—and families. . . (#4925)

Jeffrey O. Segrave’s (1993) work on sport as a cultural hero-system bears relevance here, particularly in light of certain industry statements, such as by Cronulla Sharks Chief Executive Officer Steve Noyce, which reflects standard contractual expectations of athletes:

When Todd was first signed to the Sharks he was made well aware of his responsibilities both on and off the field, to himself, the club and to the game in general, however the photograph that appeared last night on social media does not meet the values and standards the club is looking to uphold and take into the future. (Cronulla–Sutherland Sharks, 2014; also see NRL, 2014 for a statement from NRL Chief Operating Officer Jim Doyle)

It is a sentiment shared by some members on the SharksForever forum, as one writes in response to the comment “What law did he break?” (#4902): “Nothing to do with laws” (#4903). “It bring the game and our club into disrepute” (#4906).

I suggest that the Carney image, when viewed through the rubric of hegemonic masculinity (see Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) and the Australian-rugby-league-player-icon, can be read as an example of sexual, symbolic self-violence (see Bourdieu, 1991). If symbolic violence is “violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity,” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 167) that Carney “is only doing it to himself” (Andrew Johns quoted in Chammas & Powell, 2014) is part of the issue. Even though “he hadn’t hurt anyone, he hasn’t sexually assaulted anyone (besides his own mouth), he hasn’t disrespected anyone” (SharksForever forum, #4907), it would seem that the fact he chooses to degrade himself in this way, to “bring the game [and all it stands for] into disrepute” (Cronulla–Sutherland Sharks, 2014), is the offence. As NRL 360 host Paul Kent explains in the aftermath of the scandal:

Some things are tolerable, some things the club will defend their players on, this was just one they could not find an explanation for. This is just a matter that’s so distasteful to people, just so appalling.13

It is worth noting that the act depicted is constructed via discourse as distasteful in two regards. First, due to its elements of fetish because it is taboo; it is “unclean” to consume urine and the act connotes a distinctly homosexual practice (“watersports”), which is also still taboo, “unclean,” and at odds with a distinctly heterosexual game and culture. Second, the public release of the image breaks from a “mates code.” Both of these regards have something to tell us about the Carney image itself and the controversy surrounding it.

Concerning distaste, much of which seems to relate to the implications of Carney’s body as a fetish, a degree of indignation on the SharksForever forum is evident in the wake of the controversy, as illustrated via quoted comments above. This construction of the “distasteful” act connects with conservative views of homoeroticism as abject. However, also present—in a majority, I should add—is the view that Carney had done nothing wrong and that the act itself was even typical and appropriate in its setting. This final point is evidenced by comments such as, “Let’s be honest, we’ve all tried it” (#5264) as well as suggested gestures of solidarity, which include: “I say we just all start pissing into our mouths at the game” (#4999). Further, the overall discourse on this forum seems to suggest that it is not the act itself that is offensive, but rather the capturing and distribution of it, the “getting caught.” That going public with the release of the image breaks from a certain “mates code,” as demonstrated by comments such as: “Was something funny between mates on the piss together, should never have got past the door out of the shitter” (#5009), and “Who the **** made it public and why aren’t they eating through a straw?” (#4921). Thus, in the following section I frame the environment that might allow the “bubbling” incident to have taken place, drawing on scholarship on homoeroticism in team sports and the “circle jerk.”