Sports metaphors preserved military-style masculine dominance in sanitized form

Evidence

In the 1970s and 1980s, Falwell used military and sports analogies interchangeably. By the 1990s, however, as some evangelicals began to back away from militaristic rhetoric, sports offered a more palatable alternative. In 1996, for instance, Ralph Reed sent a memo instructing grassroots leaders of the Christian Coalition to “avoid military rhetoric and to use sports metaphors instead.” Still, sports and military metaphors could function in similar ways, critics pointed out. In a world destabilized by modern feminism, sports offered disaffected men a masculine haven. Like military metaphors, sports called to mind a world in which men, by virtue of their superior physical strength, still dominated. Both sports and the military, too, reinforced a dualistic view of the world. In athletics, as in battle, there were winners and losers. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 358

Categorization

• SEED: The shift from military to sports rhetoric as a discursive rebrand while preserving the dualistic winner/loser structure — essay angle on how institutions launder violent ideologies through palatable metaphors when public tolerance changes.
• XREF: connects to: Sade’s sexual orgies prefigure and mirror the regimentation of modern sport