Journal articles on the topic 'Sexual abuse victims Spiritual formation'

As a distortion of God's created designs, sexual abuse (SA) carries a unique devastation-factor. Abuse that is sexual in nature damages a spectrum of internal and external aspects of personhood. In particular, the core realities of: (1) self-identity, (2) community, (3) and spiritual communion with God can be deeply fractured through SA. In light of the significance of the image of God, movement toward healing includes strengthening personal agency, processing profound boundary ruptures, and managing disillusionment with God. Due to the multi-faceted trauma of sexual abuse (i.e., physical, social, spiritual) spiritual formation programs must not only plan for the unique profile of abuse victims, but also need to incorporate a fuller understanding and praxis of the realities of embodiment, ritual, and theocentric metaphor into their transformational goals. Analysis includes first-person experience, anthropological science, and theological reflection.

The Roman Catholic Church has received a remarkable amount of press attention regarding clerical perpetrated sexual abuse with child victims as well as other clerical behavioral scandals in recent years. Much has been reported in both the popular and professional press about the various aspects and elements of priestly formation and ministry that might contribute to behavioral problems among clerics. Additionally, much has also been written and discussed about the challenging religious, spiritual, and behavioral struggles among clerics when clerical misbehavior significantly contradicts expected behavior in terms of sexual, behavioral, and relational ethics. Since Catholic priests are dedicated to chastity, obedience, and, among religious order clerics, poverty, both Catholics and non-Catholics alike expect and demand highly virtuous behavior from these men that they believe should be beyond reproach. Clericalism contributes to the gap between expected and actual behavior and creates an environment and culture where problem behavior and struggles are too often ignored. This article seeks to unpack some of the challenging dynamics of clericalism and demonstrate how it negatively contributes to religious, spiritual, moral, and behavioral struggles among Catholic clerics.

Sexual abuse against minors is already one of the social ills in people’s lives. Victims of sexual abuse are often exposed in the public and even closed. The victim feels that it is something taboo and can even damage a person’s disgrace. Therefore, they need treatment from institutions that are concerned with social issues that deal with child victims of sexual abuse. This research aimed specifically to determine the impact of the case on child victims of sexual abuse through a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach and to explain the strategy model of psychosocial-spiritual treatment, together with institutional accompaniment, referring children to doctors and being accepted by children of victims of social abuse under age. The method used in this research was a qualitative descriptive study with the type of case study. The study was carried out at the Ambon City Women’s Empowerment Circle (LAPPAN). Data collection was carried out by in-depth interviews and direct observations to the victims in the field and LAPPAN officials. This research shows that victims of sexual abuse occur in underage children in Ambon City aged 9 -12 and 13 -16, which have an impact on biopsychosocial-spiritual. The psychological impact is that the child feels mentally disturbed, while the social impact is related to the child’s relationship in the social environment, both at home and school. The spiritual impact makes children embarrassed to attend worship meetings in places of worship. In addition, LAPPAN provided serious assistance in reducing the psychological problems experienced by the victims.

This paper considers constructions of institutional culture and power in the cover-up of child sexual abuse (CSA) by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church of Australia. The issue of cover-up has previously been considered in international inquiries as an institutional failing that has caused significant harm to victims of CSA by Catholic Clergy. Evidence given by select representatives of the Catholic Church in two government inquiries into institutional abuse carried out in Australia is considered here. This evidence suggests that, where cover-up has occurred, it has been reliant on the abuse of institutional power and resulted in direct emotional, psychological and spiritual harm to victims of abuse. Despite international recognition of cover-up as institutional abuse, evidence presented by Roman Catholic Representatives to the Victorian Inquiry denied there was an institutionalised cover-up. Responding to this evidence, this paper queries whether the primary foundation of cover-up conforms to the ‘bad apple theory’ in that it relates only to a few individuals, or the ‘bad barrel theory’ of institutional structure and culture.

Anecdotal data, known widely to missions administrators, missionaries and missions-related mental health professionals, support the view that sexual immorality does occur in some measure in the missions community. The missions family comprises missionary couples and their children as well as singles quasi-related not by blood or contractual ties but through roles assumed in a system with family-like functions and responsibilities. Because the missions community takes on the character of a quasi-family system, occurrence of sexual immorality carries with it similar components of incest experienced in natural families, including family dysfunction, reactions to exposure of sexual immorality, victims’ self-blaming, power differential between victim and perpetrator, betrayal of victims’ trust, and secrecy. Elements in the quasi-family missions community that foster vulnerability to incest-like sexual harassment and/or abuse are considered together with moral, ethical and spiritual implications.

Sociologists have identified many factors that mitigate the progressive effects of the legal mobilization to end sexual violence. Within this body of research, however, there is little interrogation about the social construction of sexual harm. I use the case of child sexual abuse to investigate how prosecutors make sense of sexual harm. Data are qualitative interviews with 43 prosecutors. Findings reveal that prosecutors use a framework of sexual identity to construct sexual injury on the child’s body. The perceived harm centers on the anticipated loss of the child’s heterosexual potential. Girl victims are thought to grow into sexual promiscuity, and boy victims are thought to grow into sex offenders. Prosecutorial constructions of child sexual abuse cases are future-oriented, which increases their urgency, and these constructions also imagine the child as a person in formation, rather than a fully actualized person with intrinsic rights. In revealing how the state of sexual victimization is not only deeply gendered but also heteronormative, this research has theoretical implications for childhood studies, queer studies, and anti-violence advocacy.

Indonesian child protection commission or Komisi Perlindungan Anak Indonesia (KPAI) data bank showed the case of children as perpetrators as well as victims of sexual violence were very high in comparison to perpetrators or victims of physical and psychic violence. Intervention in schools is necessary to educate the children to behave according to the norms in society. This is the objective of the program and was realized by forming a peer counselor, optimizing the School Health Unit (SHU) services, educating children and parents about the early sex education, and conducting a spiritual approach by formation of psychosocial characteristics. The program was undertaken for approximately 2 months with the methods of training, community education, and advocacy. The program resulted in increased knowledge of early sex education in children (85%) and the parents (75%), increase of student PHBS (pretest: 76,9%; posttest: 92%), and decrease of children delinquency (pretest: 45%; Posttest: 30%).

The article deals with objective social determinants of sexual violence, special importance is given to the terms of this type of crime. The study was conducted by compiling the sample survey of victims of sexual violence, as well as those serving sentences for violent sex crimes or committed similar crimes in the past. Determined are the conditions of violent sexual crimes, according to the author, it is understood background criminogenic effects that are not related to the criminal activity of the individual manifestations, but nevertheless, at the present stage of development of society are considered immoral and undermining the ethical foundations of society as a whole. In this case, we can not say that they are the cause of violent sexual criminal assault, but play a significant role in the formation of the motivational sphere of life not only encroaching person, but their victims, significantly increasing the level of victimization and, consequently, facilitating the commission in relation to the crime. Among these phenomena are three main ones: alcohol abuse, prostitution and pornography. These background criminogenic phenomena - the formation of a powerful provocateur defects for socialization of the person under whose influence they had a distorted attitude and mentality. The article defines the concept of the norm of sexual behavior of the individual and can be traced to changes in the concept of the person under the influence of normal background criminogenic effects and inclusion of the individual in these extremely destructive processes. The problem of correlation of background criminogenic phenomena between the concept of norms of sexual behavior, as well as provides psychological and social characteristics of background criminogenic phenomena and to determine the degree of their influence on the behavior of the mechanism of victims of sexual violence and encroaching persons.

AbstractThroughout the second half of the twentieth century, Latin America became something of a dumping ground for U.S. priests suspected of sexual abuse, with north-to-south clerical transfers sending predatory priests to countries where pedophilia did not exist in any kind of ontological sense. This article, in response, engages the case of Father David Roney of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. After a career of accusations and payouts, with Roney entering and exiting Church-mandated therapy programs, Bishop Raymond Lucker retired this notoriously predatory priest to rural Guatemala in 1994. By placing Roney beyond the reach of psychiatrists, psychologists, and spiritual directors, the Roman Catholic Church leveraged a psychological and juridical difference between two geographical settings in order to render the pedophilia of this priest effectively non-existent, thereby insulating itself from further reputational damage and additional litigation. Given that the Roman Catholic Church has long been an empirical point of reference for studies of subject formation—from pastoralism and mysticism to ritual and the confession—this article adds that the Church also provides ample evidence of an opposite process: of unmaking people.

History and overview of Stop Abuse for Everyone (SAFE), a nonprofit developed in the 1990s initially to help males and other underserved victims of domestic violence. The article describes the original founder’s experience as a nonabusive male in a marriage with a violent female spouse and his recognition that his marriage did not fit ideological feminist theories or the Duluth model treatment approach to domestic violence, both of which emphasize male culpability for violence in intimate relationships. The article discusses the creation of a Web site and then the formation of the nonprofit. Four founders of SAFE are interviewed, and SAFE’s brochure program, speakers bureau, and state chapters are discussed. SAFE’s contribution to the national debate about the role of gender in domestic violence, involvement in the revision of the Violence Against Women Act, and efforts to develop a more nuanced, dynamic model of domestic violence in the context of various gender/sexual orientation configurations are reviewed.

ABSTRACTIn the aftermath of social conflicts and urban violence between autochthons and migrants in Italy in recent years, the question of how to control the growing number of illegal immigrants is increasingly discussed in the language of zero-tolerance anti-crime campaigns. Traffic in women has been a ‘structural’ social reality in the Italian migration landscape over the last 15 years, and is a prominent aspect of illegal female migration. These women are qualified as ‘victims of human trafficking’ when they denounce their pimps. Most of their suffering – involving psychological or psychiatric symptoms and requiring psychosocial support – is expressed through an emic vocabulary that talks about fetishes, spirit possession, witchcraft, sacrifice, debts, and spiritual and moral deliverance. This study – based on extensive field research in Turin into an Ethno-Psychiatric Service (provided by the Frantz Fanon Centre) in which 50 Nigerian women participated – addresses the following anthropological issues: the relationship between emic vocabulary (so called ‘voodoo’ or ‘juju’), migration, and moral economies of violence; and the intersection between symbolic violence and coercion, as experienced through sexual abuse and/or ritual violence (occurring both in Nigeria and Italy, and also during the migration itself in different countries such as Benin, Mali and Libya). In the conclusion of this article, I underline the limits of psychiatric and psychological therapeutical methodsvis-à-visthe symptoms and traumatic experiences that ‘mark’ these female bodies; and I discuss in particular the emergence of new forms of post-colonial disorders affecting subjects who are at the mercy ofcompromiseddesires.

The purpose of the study was to highlight the factors associated with violence against women and girls and how they can benefit from therapy. The study was guided by the following objectives: to establish the factors associated with the occurrence of violence, determining the effectiveness of therapy in dealing with survivors of violence, exploring factors influencing or blocking effectiveness of therapy. A cross sectional research design was used in which questionnaires, an interviewing guide, focus group discussion and psychological assessment scale were used to collect study data. A sample of 75 women and girls was purposively selected from health facilities, counselling centres, chief camps, police station, NGOs and CBOs within Kibra Constituency. All respondents were females aged 18 years and above. The findings showed that all the respondents (100%) had been exposed to violence. The respondents who reported physical abuse were 30%, sexual abuse was reported by 10%, psychological and emotional abuse was reported by 16%, financial coercion was reported by 15%, neglect of children and duty by 13%, and verbal assault was reported by 16%. Further, the results showed that the most common victims of violence are expectant mothers and children who are under the care of irresponsible persons. The most reported people to perpetrate violence were cited to be men. The responses given by the respondents as factors that trigger violence are: Previous assaults (61%), cultural expectations (61%), alcohol abuse and other drugs (49%), poor communication skills (49%), poor problem solving skills (49%), perpetrator outstretched demands on resources (49%), infidelity(37%), unemployment (37%), peer pressure (37%), frustration emanating from blocked goals (24%), childlessness (24%) and personality traits (12%). Violence against women and girls impact negatively on their lives. The most common negative impact mentioned are depression by 75 respondents, children suffering cited by 65 respondents, family disintegration cited by 56 respondents, non-productivity, physical injury, and anxiety respectively cited by 46 respondents. The survivors of violence have knowledge of where they can access help in order to cope with the consequences of violence. Of the 75 respondents, 75 of them said that counselling is very helpful. Perseverance is another coping mechanism mentioned by 75 respondents. Separation and keeping quite are strategies mentioned by 65 respondents. Going to hospital is another support and help available mentioned by 56 respondents. The respondents who opted for spiritual intervention were 47 while those who opted to start a business for sustainability were 38. Those who preferred sharing with significant others as a coping mechanism were 28. Last but not least, 18 women indicated that support groups are helpful in dealing with violence. The study recommended that women and girls should be empowered financially and policies put into place to curb violence. The government and other stakeholders should partner to support women and girls to overcome violence in the society.

AbstractThe church in Africa like its counterparts elsewhere in the world is called to fulfil the mission of Christ which is basically two fold; to liberate humankind on the social-political and economic plane and to lead them to salvation on the eschatological plane. This is self-evident for Christ was not only concerned with the spiritual needs of the people, but material as well. The question therefore arises how does the church in Africa bear witness to the spirit of God and conduct her mission with integrity in its contextual realities of HIV/AIDS, refugee crises, poverty, corruption and abuse of human rights? This paper argues that though the church faces this onerous task it is vibrant, alive and dynamic but for her to be relevant and effective she must develop more imaginative ways of doing mission, being church and theological formation. She needs to be a reconciler, mediating peace and healing due to the deep hurts and painful experiences the continent has encountered over the years. This calls for an ecumenical mission and vision that entails partnering in suffering by accompanying those in pain. She needs to disciple the members through surrendering herself to Christ to be purified, sanctified and renewed. She needs to provide courageous, empowered and effective leadership with moral integrity. She also needs to embody the spirit of unity and reconciliation in a pluralistic context and extend the biblical shalom of peace, justice to the marginalized poor, women displaced people, children, disabled and victims of all forms of violence. Mission with integrity also calls for listening to the other, dialogue and speaking out against all impediments to the gospel.

The literature permit eloquence to the writers for jot down in the respect of class, race, religion, culture and wealth. Although, it is also a dedication of a literature to elevate the darker side of society in their compositions to spears awareness, motivation, humanity to victims and encouragement to the survivors. Feminism and women's right has been controversial and revolutionary subject in every corner of the world since long. This paper will throw a light on the three poems of the twenty rst century arguing with the issue of domestic violence (also named domestic abuse and family violence) by analysing them, which are named as- 'Domestic Violence' by Eavan Boland, 'The Last Time' by Rachel Mckibbens and 'Pioneers, First Women in Construction' by Susan Eisenberg. As there has been scarcity of works especially in the manner of poetry, which talked and raised the issues sexual, emotional, spiritual, physical harassment on victims by their own family or loved ones. The present article deals with reading the themes of helplessness and loneliness along with the theme of a rebelliousness. With the end, this paper depicts that how the poets boosted their voices for becoming a survivor rather than a victim.

Frequently in sexual crimes, certain injuries are formed on the body of the victims. The features of forensic assessment of genital injuries have been studied relatively well. Investigations of injuries located outside the genitalia are reduced only to the determination of their duration and the mechanism of formation. Attempts to identify statistical patterns in their location and other characteristics to speculate about the circumstances of their causation, were not made. This study analyzed the forensic medical expertise of the socalled «sex crimes» against female children. The total amount included 516 observations. In 245 cases, according to the investigation, physical sexual abuse took place, and in 271 cases there was no such orientation. The statistical signifi cance of the diff erences was determined using the Chi-square test. Diagnostic coeffi cients and informatively important indicators were calculated.

The article presents an overview of the problems of child violence, a wide range of its variants-physical, sexual and psychological violence, etc. It is shown that child violence has the quality of transgeneration, in one form or another, is reproduced in the next generations. The experience of violence is also a negative predictor of violent behavior that will manifest itself in the upbringing of their own children. Indicators of the epidemiology of violence are presented. The data vary greatly, for example, the prevalence of sexual violence ranges from 3% to 36%. Sexual violence mainly affects children between the ages of 6 and 13. Children under the age of 4 are most likely to suffer from physical and psychological abuse. Up to a third of victims of sexual violence may show appropriate behavior towards their own or other children. An overview of the factors that predispose / retard the formation of child violence is presented. These are factors such as age, gender, ethnic origin, disability, and social status of the parents. Prevention work should be based on a multi-level concept (multiple participants or institutions are involved). Appropriate measures to prevent violence should not (cannot) only target children / young people, but should also affect, in particular, parents and schools.

Introduction: Bubbles and Sport The ephemeral materiality of bubbles – beautiful, spectacular, and distracting but ultimately fragile – when applied to protect or conserve in the interests of sport-media profit, creates conditions that exacerbate existing inequalities in sport and society. Bubbles are usually something to watch, admire, and chase after in their brief yet shiny lives. There is supposed to be, technically, nothing inside them other than one or more gasses, and yet we constantly refer to people and objects being inside bubbles. The metaphor of the bubble has been used to describe the life of celebrities, politicians in purpose-built capital cities like Canberra, and even leftist, environmentally activist urban dwellers. The metaphorical and material qualities of bubbles are aligned—they cannot be easily captured and are liable to change at any time. In this article we address the metaphorical sporting bubble, which is often evoked in describing life in professional sport. This is a vernacular term used to capture and condemn the conditions of life of elite sportspeople (usually men), most commonly after there has been a sport-related scandal, especially of a sexual nature (Rowe). It is frequently paired with connotatively loaded adjectives like pampered and indulged. The sporting bubble is rarely interrogated in academic literature, the concept largely being left to the media and moral entrepreneurs. It is represented as involving a highly privileged but also pressurised life for those who live inside it. A sporting bubble is a world constructed for its most prized inhabitants that enables them to be protected from insurgents and to set the terms of their encounters with others, especially sport fans and disciplinary agents of the state. The Covid-19 pandemic both reinforced and reconfigured the operational concept of the bubble, re-arranging tensions between safety (protecting athletes) and fragility (short careers, risks of injury, etc.) for those within, while safeguarding those without from bubble contagion. Privilege and Precarity Bubble-induced social isolation, critics argue, encourages a loss of perspective among those under its protection, an entitled disconnection from the usual rules and responsibilities of everyday life. For this reason, the denizens of the sporting bubble are seen as being at risk to themselves and, more troublingly, to those allowed temporarily to penetrate it, especially young women who are first exploited by and then ejected from it (Benedict). There are many well-documented cases of professional male athletes “behaving badly” and trying to rely on institutional status and various versions of the sporting bubble for shelter (Flood and Dyson; Reel and Crouch; Wade). In the age of mobile and social media, it is increasingly difficult to keep misbehaviour in-house, resulting in a slew of media stories about, for example, drunkenness and sexual misconduct, such as when then-Sydney Roosters co-captain Mitchell Pearce was suspended and fined in 2016 after being filmed trying to force an unwanted kiss on a woman and then simulating a lewd act with her dog while drunk. There is contestation between those who condemn such behaviour as aberrant and those who regard it as the conventional expression of youthful masculinity as part of the familiar “boys will be boys” dictum. The latter naturalise an inequitable gender order, frequently treating sportsmen as victims of predatory women, and ignoring asymmetries of power between men and women, especially in homosocial environments (Toffoletti). For those in the sporting bubble (predominantly elite sportsmen and highly paid executives, also mostly men, with an array of service staff of both sexes moving in and out of it), life is reflected for those being protected via an array of screens (small screens in homes and indoor places of entertainment, and even smaller screens on theirs and others’ phones, as well as huge screens at sport events). These male sport stars are paid handsomely to use their skill and strength to perform for the sporting codes, their every facial expression and bodily action watched by the media and relayed to audiences. This is often a precarious existence, the usually brief career of an athlete worker being dependent on health, luck, age, successful competition with rivals, networks, and club and coach preferences. There is a large, aspirational reserve army of athletes vying to play at the elite level, despite risks of injury and invasive, life-changing medical interventions. Responsibility for avoiding performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) also weighs heavily on their shoulders (Connor). Professional sportspeople, in their more reflective moments, know that their time in the limelight will soon be up, meaning that getting a ticket to the sporting bubble, even for a short time, can make all the difference to their post-sport lives and those of their families. The most vulnerable of the small minority of participants in sport who make a good, short-term living from it are those for whom, in the absence of quality education and prior social status, it is their sole likely means of upward social mobility (Spaaij). Elite sport performers are surrounded by minders, doctors, fitness instructors, therapists, coaches, advisors and other service personnel, all supporting athletes to stay focussed on and maximise performance quality to satisfy co-present crowds, broadcasters, sponsors, sports bodies and mass media audiences. The shield offered by the sporting bubble supports the teleological win-at-all-costs mentality of professional sport. The stakes are high, with athlete and executive salaries, sponsorships and broadcasting deals entangled in a complex web of investments in keeping the “talent” pivotal to the “attention economy” (Davenport and Beck)—the players that provide the content for sale—in top form. Yet, the bubble cannot be entirely secured and poor behaviour or performance can have devastating effects, including permanent injury or disability, mental illness and loss of reputation (Rowe, “Scandals and Sport”). Given this fragile materiality of the sporting bubble, it is striking that, in response to the sudden shutdown following the economic and health crisis caused by the 2020 global pandemic, the leaders of professional sport decided to create more of them and seek to seal the metaphorical and material space with unprecedented efficiency. The outcome was a multi-sided tale of mobility, confinement, capital, labour, and the gendering of sport and society. The Covid-19 Gilded Cage Sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and John Urry have analysed the socio-politics of mobilities, whereby some people in the world, such as tourists, can traverse the globe at their leisure, while others remain fixed in geographical space because they lack the means to be mobile or, in contrast, are involuntarily displaced by war, so-called “ethnic cleansing”, famine, poverty or environmental degradation. The Covid-19 global pandemic re-framed these matters of mobilities (Rowe, “Subjecting Pandemic Sport”), with conventional moving around—between houses, businesses, cities, regions and countries—suddenly subjected to the imperative to be static and, in perniciously unreflective technocratic discourse, “socially distanced” (when what was actually meant was to be “physically distanced”). The late-twentieth century analysis of the “risk society” by Ulrich Beck, in which the mysterious consequences of humans’ predation on their environment are visited upon them with terrifying force, was dramatically realised with the coming of Covid-19. In another iteration of the metaphor, it burst the bubble of twenty-first century global sport. What we today call sport was formed through the process of sportisation (Maguire), whereby hyper-local, folk physical play was reconfigured as multi-spatial industrialised sport in modernity, becoming increasingly reliant on individual athletes and teams travelling across the landscape and well over the horizon. Co-present crowds were, in turn, overshadowed in the sport economy when sport events were taken to much larger, dispersed audiences via the media, especially in broadcast mode (Nicholson, Kerr, and Sherwood). This lucrative mediation of professional sport, though, came with an unforgiving obligation to generate an uninterrupted supply of spectacular live sport content. The pandemic closed down most sports events and those that did take place lacked the crucial participation of the co-present crowd to provide the requisite event atmosphere demanded by those viewers accustomed to a sense of occasion. Instead, they received a strange spectacle of sport performers operating in empty “cathedrals”, often with a “faked” crowd presence. The mediated sport spectacle under the pandemic involved cardboard cut-out and sex doll spectators, Zoom images of fans on large screens, and sampled sounds of the crowd recycled from sport video games. Confected co-presence produced simulacra of the “real” as Baudrillardian visions came to life. The sporting bubble had become even more remote. For elite sportspeople routinely isolated from the “common people”, the live sport encounter offered some sensory experience of the social – the sounds, sights and even smells of the crowd. Now the sporting bubble closed in on an already insulated and insular existence. It exposed the irony of the bubble as a sign of both privileged mobility and incarcerated athlete work, both refuge and prison. Its logic of contagion also turned a structure intended to protect those inside from those outside into, as already observed, a mechanism to manage the threat of insiders to outsiders. In Australia, as in many other countries, the populace was enjoined by governments and health authorities to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 through isolation and immobility. There were various exceptions, principally those classified as essential workers, a heterogeneous cohort ranging from supermarket shelf stackers to pharmacists. People in the cultural, leisure and sports industries, including musicians, actors, and athletes, were not counted among this crucial labour force. Indeed, the performing arts (including dance, theatre and music) were put on ice with quite devastating effects on the livelihoods and wellbeing of those involved. So, with all major sports shut down (the exception being horse racing, which received the benefit both of government subsidies and expanding online gambling revenue), sport organisations began to represent themselves as essential services that could help sustain collective mental and even spiritual wellbeing. This case was made most aggressively by Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman, Peter V’landys, in contending that “an Australia without rugby league is not Australia”. In similar vein, prominent sport and media figure Phil Gould insisted, when describing rugby league fans in Western Sydney’s Penrith, “they’re lost, because the football’s not on … . It holds their families together. People don’t understand that … . Their life begins in the second week of March, and it ends in October”. Despite misgivings about public safety and equality before the pandemic regime, sporting bubbles were allowed to form, re-form and circulate. The indefinite shutdown of the National Rugby League (NRL) on 23 March 2020 was followed after negotiation between multiple entities by its reopening on 28 May 2020. The competition included a team from another nation-state (the Warriors from Aotearoa/New Zealand) in creating an international sporting bubble on the Central Coast of New South Wales, separating them from their families and friends across the Tasman Sea. Appeals to the mental health of fans and the importance of the NRL to myths of “Australianness” notwithstanding, the league had not prudently maintained a financial reserve and so could not afford to shut down for long. Significant gambling revenue for leagues like the NRL and Australian Football League (AFL) also influenced the push to return to sport business as usual. Sport contests were needed in order to exploit the gambling opportunities – especially online and mobile – stimulated by home “confinement”. During the coronavirus lockdowns, Australians’ weekly spending on gambling went up by 142 per cent, and the NRL earned significantly more than usual from gambling revenue—potentially $10 million above forecasts for 2020. Despite the clear financial imperative at play, including heavy reliance on gambling, sporting bubble-making involved special licence. The state of Queensland, which had pursued a hard-line approach by closing its borders for most of those wishing to cross them for biographical landmark events like family funerals and even for medical treatment in border communities, became “the nation's sporting hub”. Queensland became the home of most teams of the men’s AFL (notably the women’s AFLW season having been cancelled) following a large Covid-19 second wave in Melbourne. The women’s National Netball League was based exclusively in Queensland. This state, which for the first time hosted the AFL Grand Final, deployed sport as a tool in both national sports tourism marketing and internal pre-election politics, sponsoring a documentary, The Sporting Bubble 2020, via its Tourism and Events arm. While Queensland became the larger bubble incorporating many other sporting bubbles, both the AFL and the NRL had versions of the “fly in, fly out” labour rhythms conventionally associated with the mining industry in remote and regional areas. In this instance, though, the bubble experience did not involve long stays in miners’ camps or even the one-night hotel stopovers familiar to the popular music and sport industries. Here, the bubble moved, usually by plane, to fulfil the requirements of a live sport “gig”, whereupon it was immediately returned to its more solid bubble hub or to domestic self-isolation. In the space created between disciplined expectation and deplored non-compliance, the sporting bubble inevitably became the scrutinised object and subject of scandal. Sporting Bubble Scandals While people with a very low risk of spreading Covid-19 (coming from areas with no active cases) were denied entry to Queensland for even the most serious of reasons (for example, the death of a child), images of AFL players and their families socialising and enjoying swimming at the Royal Pines Resort sporting bubble crossed our screens. Yet, despite their (players’, officials’ and families’) relative privilege and freedom of movement under the AFL Covid-Safe Plan, some players and others inside the bubble were involved in “scandals”. Most notable was the case of a drunken brawl outside a Gold Coast strip club which led to two Richmond players being “banished”, suspended for 10 matches, and the club fined $100,000. But it was not only players who breached Covid-19 bubble protocols: Collingwood coaches Nathan Buckley and Brenton Sanderson paid the $50,000 fine imposed on the club for playing tennis in Perth outside their bubble, while Richmond was fined $45,000 after Brooke Cotchin, wife of team captain Trent, posted an image to Instagram of a Gold Coast day spa that she had visited outside the “hub” (the institutionally preferred term for bubble). She was subsequently distressed after being trolled. Also of concern was the lack of physical distancing, and the range of people allowed into the sporting bubble, including babysitters, grandparents, and swimming coaches (for children). There were other cases of players being caught leaving the bubble to attend parties and sharing videos of their “antics” on social media. Biosecurity breaches of bubbles by players occurred relatively frequently, with stern words from both the AFL and NRL leaders (and their clubs) and fines accumulating in the thousands of dollars. Some people were also caught sneaking into bubbles, with Lekahni Pearce, the girlfriend of Swans player Elijah Taylor, stating that it was easy in Perth, “no security, I didn’t see a security guard” (in Barron, Stevens, and Zaczek) (a month later, outside the bubble, they had broken up and he pled guilty to unlawfully assaulting her; Ramsey). Flouting the rules, despite stern threats from government, did not lead to any bubble being popped. The sport-media machine powering sporting bubbles continued to run, the attendant emotional or health risks accepted in the name of national cultural therapy, while sponsorship, advertising and gambling revenue continued to accumulate mostly for the benefit of men. Gendering Sporting Bubbles Designed as biosecurity structures to maintain the supply of media-sport content, keep players and other vital cogs of the machine running smoothly, and to exclude Covid-19, sporting bubbles were, in their most advanced form, exclusive luxury camps that illuminated the elevated socio-cultural status of sportsmen. The ongoing inequalities between men’s and women’s sport in Australia and around the world were clearly in evidence, as well as the politics of gender whereby women are obliged to “care” and men are enabled to be “careless” – or at least to manage carefully their “duty of care”. In Australia, the only sport for women that continued during the height of the Covid-19 lockdown was netball, which operated in a bubble that was one of sacrifice rather than privilege. With minimum salaries of only $30,000 – significantly less than the lowest-paid “rookies” in the AFL – and some being mothers of small children and/or with professional jobs juggled alongside their netball careers, these elite sportswomen wanted to continue to play despite the personal inconvenience or cost (Pavlidis). Not one breach of the netballers out of the bubble was reported, indicating that they took their responsibilities with appropriate seriousness and, perhaps, were subjected to less scrutiny than the sportsmen accustomed to attracting front-page headlines. National Netball League (also known after its Queensland-based naming rights sponsor as Suncorp Super Netball) players could be regarded as fortunate to have the opportunity to be in a bubble and to participate in their competition. The NRL Women’s (NRLW) Premiership season was also completed, but only involved four teams subject to fly in, fly out and bubble arrangements, and being played in so-called curtain-raiser games for the NRL. As noted earlier, the AFLW season was truncated, despite all the prior training and sacrifice required of its players. Similarly, because of their resource advantages, the UK men’s and boy’s top six tiers of association football were allowed to continue during lockdown, compared to only two for women and girls. In the United States, inequalities between men’s and women’s sports were clearly demonstrated by the conditions afforded to those elite sportswomen inside the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sport bubble in the IMG Academy in Florida. Players shared photos of rodent traps in their rooms, insect traps under their mattresses, inedible food and blocked plumbing in their bubble accommodation. These conditions were a far cry from the luxury usually afforded elite sportsmen, including in Florida’s Walt Disney World for the men’s NBA, and is just one of the many instances of how gendered inequality was both reproduced and exacerbated by Covid-19. Bursting the Bubble As we have seen, governments and corporate leaders in sport were able to create material and metaphorical bubbles during the Covid-19 lockdown in order to transmit stadium sport contests into home spaces. The rationale was the importance of sport to national identity, belonging and the routines and rhythms of life. But for whom? Many women, who still carry the major responsibilities of “care”, found that Covid-19 intensified the affective relations and gendered inequities of “home” as a leisure site (Fullagar and Pavlidis). Rates of domestic violence surged, and many women experienced significant anxiety and depression related to the stress of home confinement and home schooling. During the pandemic, women were also more likely to experience the stress and trauma of being first responders, witnessing virus-related sickness and death as the majority of nurses and care workers. They also bore the brunt of much of the economic and employment loss during this time. Also, as noted above, livelihoods in the arts and cultural sector did not receive the benefits of the “bubble”, despite having a comparable claim to sport in contributing significantly to societal wellbeing. This sector’s workforce is substantially female, although men dominate its senior roles. Despite these inequalities, after the late March to May hiatus, many elite male sportsmen – and some sportswomen - operated in a bubble. Moving in and out of them was not easy. Life inside could be mentally stressful (especially in long stays of up to 150 days in sports like cricket), and tabloid and social media troll punishment awaited those who were caught going “over the fence”. But, life in the sporting bubble was generally preferable to the daily realities of those afflicted by the trauma arising from forced home confinement, and for whom watching moving sports images was scant compensation for compulsory immobility. The ethical foundation of the sparkly, ephemeral fantasy of the sporting bubble is questionable when it is placed in the service of a voracious “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe, Global Media Sport) that consumes sport labour power and rolls back progress in gender relations as a default response to a global pandemic. Covid-19 dramatically highlighted social inequalities in many areas of life, including medical care, work, and sport. For the small minority of people involved in sport who are elite professionals, the only thing worse than being in a sporting bubble during the pandemic was not being in one, as being outside precluded their participation. Being inside the bubble was a privilege, albeit a dubious one. But, as in wider society, not all sporting bubbles are created equal. Some are more opulent than others, and the experiences of the supporting and the supported can be very different. The surface of the sporting bubble may be impermanent, but when its interior is opened up to scrutiny, it reveals some very durable structures of inequality. Bubbles are made to burst. They are, by nature, temporary, translucent structures created as spectacles. As a form of luminosity, bubbles “allow a thing or object to exist only as a flash, sparkle or shimmer” (Deleuze, 52). In echoing Deleuze, Angela McRobbie (54) argues that luminosity “softens and disguises the regulative dynamics of neoliberal society”. The sporting bubble was designed to discharge that function for those millions rendered immobile by home confinement legislation in Australia and around the world, who were having to deal with the associated trauma, risk and disadvantage. 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