How the Harvard Women’s Soccer Team Responded to a DISGUSTING Report About Their Bodies

Last week, The Harvard Crimson reported that the 2012 Harvard men's soccer team had written a disgusting "scouting report" of the 2012 women's soccer team with new recruits ranked by attractiveness, assigned sexual positions, and nicknames. The report is supposedly a longtime annual tradition for the men's team. And on Saturday, the six freshman recruits from the 2012 women's team — Kelsey Clayman, Brooke Dickens, Alika Keene, Emily Mosbacher, Lauren Varela, and Haley Washburn — published a response in the Crimson, as New York magazine reports.

Instead of remaining anonymous, the women wanted to speak out about the report. The women said that the full report included the descriptions of their bodies, the numbers that they were assigned, and the comparison to each other and previous recruit classes. They stressed that locker room talk isn't an excuse for something like this — and they also issued a call to action for everyone to come together to combat the behavior demonstrated in the "scouting report.”

In all, we do not pity ourselves, nor do we ache most because of the personal nature of this attack. More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives. We feel hopeless because men who are supposed to be our brothers degrade us like this. We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance. We are distraught that mothers having daughters almost a half century after getting equal rights have to worry about men’s entitlement to bodies that aren’t theirs. We are concerned for the future, because we know that the only way we can truly move past this culture is for the very men who perpetrate it to stop it in its tracks.

And these women are right: It's disgusting that in this day and age, women are reduced to their appearances, and that despite their many accomplishments, they can still be perceived as sex objects. That there is an underlying (and false!) idea that your body does not belong to you, that it is purely for the objectification by another. This is the basis of rape culture — the concept that someone else is entitled to your body, when really, no one has any sort of right to your body except yourself.

It's unfortunate that this "scouting report" even existed in the first place, but we applaud the 2012 women's team for speaking out against it and calling it out — after all, as they write:

We know what it’s like to get knocked down. To lose a few battles. To sweat, to cry, to bleed. To fight so hard, yet no matter what we do, the game is still out of our hands. And, even still, we keep fighting; for ourselves, yes, but above all for our teammates. This document might have stung any other group of women you chose to target, but not us. We know as teammates that we rise to the occasion, that we are stronger together, and that we will not tolerate anything less than respect for women that we care for more than ourselves.

They end their piece on this powerful note:

We are hopeful that the release of this report will lead to productive conversation and action on Harvard’s campus, within collegiate athletic teams across the country, and into the locker room that is our world. But ultimately, we hope this will catalyze the cultivation of an environment and a culture that strives to lift up all of its members.

Finally, to the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects, in the words of one of us, we say together: “I can offer you my forgiveness, which is—and forever will be—the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.”

Related: Penn Students Hand Out Flyers to Combat Rape Culture on Campus

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