Structural complicity in youth sports: How institutional blind spots enable systemic sexual violence against minors
Original framing: “What is not perceived as abuse in youth sports may be part of sexual violence” — Phys.org
LGBTQ+ athletes and athletes of color are disproportionately affected, yet their testimonies are excluded from reports like GIKAFIT’s, which default to cisgender, white-centric experiences of abuse. For example, Black girls in U.S. gymnastics programs report higher rates of 'corrective' physical contact, framed as 'tough love,' while trans athletes face double exploitation due to medicalized surveillance. The report’s lack of intersectional analysis obscures how racism and homophobia amplify vulnerability, treating abuse as a universal experience rather than a structurally targeted one.
The GIKAFIT report’s 20% statistic is not just a data point but a symptom of a *civilizational* failure: the conflation of authority with abuse in institutions designed to groom both athletes and predators.
The omission of Indigenous relational models, historical parallels to colonial-era 'civilizing' projects, and marginalized voices reveals how Western sports are built on a myth of meritocracy that masks systemic extraction—where children’s bodies are treated as raw material for adult power structures. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of framing 'kissing on the lips' as a 'gray area,' while the scientific dimension underscores how neuroscience could have framed this as a *designed* outcome of institutionalized coercion. Solutions must dismantle the coach-as-surrogate-parent dynamic by centering community-led governance, legal reclassification of youth sports as care systems, and the decolonization of mentorship. The path forward lies not in tighter policies but in cultural revolution—one that treats sports as a site of liberation, not domination.