Brett Favre's Season

In case you aren't a football fan and don't know what's going on, Jenn Sterger, online columnist and sideline personality, accused Brett Favre, now on the Minnesota Vikings, of sexual harassment. She claims he sexted her, harassed her with explicit photos of himself. The NFL just fined Mr. Favre $50,000 because he didn't cooperate during the investigation.

It is still likely that Ms. Sterger will file suit, and others may follow.

The psychological spin here is that Mr. Favre had his worst season ever following the accusations. He threw 19 interceptions against 11 touchdowns finishing the season with a passer rating of 69.9, the lowest of his career. He also suffered numerous injuries.

Some are saying it's his age, but it could be that he's been a little down, too, never dreamed he would be outed for his overtures to women. When a person is depressed, and we're not saying he is, just hypothesizing here, preferring this to the aging theory, but when a person is depressed, putting out an optimal performance is hard. And if the performance is physical, as it is with athletes, coordination can be compromised. We therapists see people become "accident prone" while depressed and forever are saying, Take it easy. Don't try to do so much. Rest a little more.

At its worst, dissociation is a symptom of depression, and can be pretty scary. You don't control your body as well. You feel apart from it, even while inside your head.

So it's possible this happened to Brett Favre. The wrong kind of attention might have brought him down. Not the kind of way to end his career. We're hoping he rises up from this in any case, owns it if it's true, and no matter, comes out against sexting and models stellar social skill for the fans. It's not that hard, really.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

Tyler Clementi's Suicide

Tyler Clementi killed himself. But we could say, if we were honest, that two other people, college kids, pushed him off the bridge.

File this one under diversity education/cyber-bullying/empathy training/and what a waste.

The first time a patient told me about a college roommate who videotaped someone in a residence hall doing something he/she wouldn't have wanted publicized, I was shocked. And it isn't easy to shock a therapist.

The second time, I raised an eyebrow. Similar circumstances, apartment.

The third time it was a high school teacher who had been exposed on the Internet, an angry student caught him swearing at the class. Not the same level of embarrassment, obviously.

But we're all vulnerable. Most of us have dreams of being caught undressed, wake up and say, It was just a dream, a fear dream. Dreams are about fears or wishes. They express our vulnerability.

But there are classes of individuals who are considered to be even more vulnerable than others. Add shame, embarrassment, exposure, humiliation and bullying to a life destined to get used to fighting prejudice, and any sexual minority person might feel life isn't worth living.

Yahoo story:

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The parents of a Rutgers University student who killed himself after his roommate allegedly used a webcam to spy on him during a tryst with another man have filed notice that they're considering suing the school.

Joseph and Jane Clementi, parents of Tyler Clementi, filed notice Friday preserving their right to sue. They have to wait six months after the notice to file a lawsuit over their son's death, which became a symbol in a national outcry over the bullying of young gays.

Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old violinist, only in school a few weeks, jumped off the George Washington bridge.

The suspects left school, are charged with invasion of privacy. There may be charges of bias intimidation.

Is the school really responsible? Probably not. And looking for a settlement won't bring back their son.

We could say that parents have to warn their children, have to prepare them, discuss these things, but the schools should, too. I'm not sure where to start, at what age exactly, but I think diversity education should begin before kids are old enough to use cameras.

Add it to the list. What a waste.

Linda Freedman, PhD

The Sexualization of Teenage Girls

Lea Michele, star of Glee, along with her co-star, Dianna Agron, posed in quasi-pornographic photos for the October issue of GQ magazine. She's supposed to be a high school role model.

We all become acutely aware of our sexuality during puberty. This isn't what sexualization is about. The definition of sexualization, according to the American Psychological Association:

(1) a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or sexual behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;

(2) a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

(3) a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or

(4) sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. (Especially relevant to children).

We therapists tend to see the issues with sex and teenage girls as multivariate, meaning it isn't only one thing, certainly not television that is the problem, when it comes to kids and sex. What we worry about is the trauma associated with sex, the violence, the pain, dysfunctional relationships, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, rejection, family conflict. Not an exhaustive list, but something to discuss with our teenage children.

And yes, sexualization. Ask a teenage girl if she gets pleasure out of performing certain sex acts that she has told you she does with her boyfriend and she'll look at you like you're crazy. Why would she get pleasure? This is what she's told a girl is supposed to do. Why question that?

One of the workshops we're doing at Relationship-Wise, Inc is educating kids about sex in relationships, and another, timely apparently, is about television. We help them think critically about what they see on TV, and talk about what they watch, discuss how dead-on or how completely off programs can be. We even do this with little children, but on their level.

It's good to think about what you're laughing at, sometimes, at all ages.

The parental complaint about television is that it normalizes sex and violence, two dynamics in our lives that Freud talked about a hundred years ago. Our basic human drives come down to these two: love and aggression, meaning sex and violence. We're supposed to tame them both. We can only imagine what Freud would have said about television grooming teens for sex, feeding the soft porn industry.

The Parent Television Council is on it, is disseminating findings of a new study conducted under the auspices of the APA, the American Psychological Association:

Sexualized Teen Girls: Tinseltown’s New Target--A Study of Teen Female Sexualization in Prime-time TV

. . . mass media messages miscommunicate the true definition of what it means to be female. . . . the message is that their sexuality is their primary identity and most valued commodity.

The findings:

Being underage and female, as opposed to being an adult and female, is associated with more sexual content on television. Older female characters are more likely to have sexual dialogue, but younger female characters portray more sexual behavior.

98% of the sexual incidents on TV involving underage female characters occurred with partners with whom they did not have any form of committed relationship.

Only 5% of the underage female characters communicated any form of dislike for being sexualized. (They don't comprehend what this means).

One or several instances of implied nudity and/or sexual gestures (e.g. suggestive dancing, erotic kissing, erotic touching and/or implied intercourse) were in every onscreen scene that contained sexualized depictions of underage girls.

Conclusion in layman's language

We know from previous research that girls exposed to sexualizing and objectifying media are more likely to experience body dissatisfaction, depression, and lower self-esteem. They look at themselves and think, I'm not pretty enough, not thin enough, not sexy.

It is only a matter of time they'll be talking about breast enhancements.

And "the most powerful medium in the world – television – is exacerbating rather than reversing that trend."

We have work to do.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT

AWSM Joins Jets

It is happening, football is changing.

Not the sport, but the players.

In September, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell promised Amy Moritz, president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) that the AWSM would be there when the Jets begin to dialogue about female reporters in the locker room.

Ms. Moritz attended a meeting at the Jets' practice facility this week. We're quite sure the attendees were sensitive to gender and biological sex.

Although some might credit feminists for the rise in women in sports and athletic enterprises, a woman need not be a card carrying feminist to want fair treatment, equal treatment on the job. Most women in the workforce, including, we imagine, the women of the AWSM, don't start out wanting to change attitudes. They just want to do their jobs.

Sexual harassment hurts, is the point, and does make it hard to do the job. It hurts in a way that a sport injury (an elbow to the lip, ask President Obama about those) does not. We'll never stop the sports injuries, but verbal abuse? That players can do something about.

Meetings like these can only bode well for sportsmanship, won't hurt anyone's game.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT