Suspended Ethics and the Team: Theorising Sportsplayers’ Group Sexual Assault in the Context of Identity

Men's elite team sports in Australia have recently been the subject of considerable public scrutiny subsequent to a series of instances of group sexual violence against women. Both scholarship and policy work have noted how homosocial institutions such as sporting teams have a greater likelihood of gender-based violence and have proposed the need for more ethical relations. This article explores some of the ways in which group sexual assault can be approached from the perspective of Judith Butler's theories of performativity. Arguing that the performance of subjectivity occurs differentially in highly bonded group contexts, cases of sexual assault by team sportsplayers can be understood as the result of a team's group subjective suspension of ethics occurring in the temporality of off-field bonding. By developing alternative ways in which to understand the distinction between individual responsibility and local group subjectivity, it is argued that sportsplayers are well-placed to recognise the vulnerability of victims through their own vulnerability to injury and loss, thereby presenting the space for an ethics of non-violence that is grounded in recognition of the vulnerable other.