ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s media attention has focused on professional football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative type of traumatic brain injury. The multiple formal, institutional responses to CTE speak to intersections of the sports-masculinity complex and the biomedical industrial complex, each deeply embedded in the politics of race, gender, and capital. Examining brain injury both in and out of the National Football League (NFL), including among survivors of intimate partner violence, this chapter offers a sociological analysis attentive to gender, bodies, and power. The goal is to amplify the issue of violence against women, asserting that intimate partner violence is every bit the public health emergency that CTE among players is alleged to be and is also more widespread. The chapter highlights significant disparities in media attention and funding between different types of brain injury, showing the ways in which violence against women is doubly eclipsed in (and by) the NFL.
