Review: Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport

Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport by Anna Krien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am slightly conflicted about this book. Okay, it is good, and does in many ways, what a book should do - raise conversation about a subject. Krien is writing, on one hand, about the sexism in Aussie football, and on the other hand, about one particular rape case that was a the result of the sexism. The parts about the football culture that includes rape, abuse, or bad treatment of women are the most interesting parts of the book. The sections about the rape are a source of conflict.

To be fair, Krien herself realizes this.

In part, this conflict is caused by the Aussie justice system itself, and in part because the woman in the trial did not grant an interview to Krien. Not that I blame her. Krien points out that due to lack of interaction with the woman, she [Krien] found herself getting closer to the man's family. Part of what Krien seems to be trying to work out here is her own self of lost objectively (which she does own and question right from the start) as well as what is a legal definition of rape - especially with all the misinformation about rape that circles around. In other words, she invents the reader along to figure this out. Though, at times, she almost seems to endorse the men are from mars, women are from venus cliche. In many of her examples, it seems more of a case of ingrained sexism, ingrained by society.

It is uncomfortable reading, but important reading.

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