"Skin In The Game" And Its Cousin, "Skin On The Line" -- Being Among The First To Speak Out Against Larry Nassar
I love bigmouthed people, and especially, bigmouthed women.
Women are supposed to be classy and go quietly.
Women (as well as men) who go bravely bigmouthed typically know they'll meet some ugly consequences -- but they speak up because they understand that it's just the right thing to do...the thing that must be done.
This, of course, is skin on the line -- a thing we're seeing in the hijab protests in Iran.
To some degree, this is a cousin of what, in decision-makers, Nassim Taleb calls having "skin in the game" -- to have real risk and consequences from some action. To understand what "skin in the game" is, it helps to understand what it is to have NO skin in the game.
Here's Taleb from an interview Google-translated from French:
Look at the case of Bob Rubin (former secretary of the Treasury Bill Clinton and former president of the bank Citigroup he left the bankruptcy while pocketing tens of millions of dollars.) He has an option on gains and profits with no obligation on losses. Our societies operate on these risk transfers, which poses an ethical problem, but also practical in the longer term.
Taleb notes the moral asymmetries of this -- how the person with no skin in the game, no costs they'll share in, has little incentive to be prudent when investing others' money.
Or to put it another way, as I described Taleb's "skin in the game" in a column:
[Skin in the game is] what's missing when, say, a hedge fund honcho advises you to make some big-bucks investment. If he's guessed right, he'll share in your profits. However, any losses are all yours -- as in, you'll find him up in his penthouse, not two cardboard boxes down from your new "home" on the corner.
Again, he's talking about this vis a vis decision-makers.
I'm describing people who lack any potential upside. In other words, there's "skin," but there's no "game."
What they have in common with a financial decision-maker with skin in the game is simply the cost...the cost they know they are likely to get slammed with -- as in these cases below, for doing the right thing.
Courtney Love had skin on the line. She was public about Harvey Weinstein when he was a powerhouse -- all the way back in 2005! -- and never mind that it was to her professional (and probably personal) detriment.
Amanda Thomashow had skin on the line. She was the young woman who filed the MSU Title IX report in 2014 about Nassar's sexual assaults on her. Listen to her moving, eloquent statement:
More about her report -- and MSU's terrible, lax response that she says made her feel "disposable and worthless."
There are other examples of skin in the game from the Nassar timeline in SBNation.
Rachael Denhollander had skin on the line. She's a former gymnast, now a lawyer, who was the first to publicly come forward about the horrible sexual assaults by Larry Nassar on more than 200 girls. She writes in The New York Times that on Aug. 29, 2016, she I filed the first police complaint against Nassar "for sexually abusing me when I was a 15-year-old girl":
My education as a lawyer prepared me for the process and presentation. But absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the pain of being the first to go public with my accusations in The Indianapolis Star.I lost my church. I lost my closest friends as a result of advocating for survivors who had been victimized by similar institutional failures in my own community.
I lost every shred of privacy.
When a new friend searched my name online or added me as a friend on Facebook, the most intimate details of my life became available long before we had even exchanged phone numbers. I avoided the grocery stores on some days, to make sure my children didn't see my face on the newspaper or a magazine. I was asked questions about things no one should know when I least wanted to talk.
And the effort it took to move this case forward -- especially as some called me an "ambulance chaser" just "looking for a payday" -- often felt crushing.
Yet all of it served as a reminder: These were the very cultural dynamics that had allowed Larry Nassar to remain in power.
I knew that the farthest I could run from my abuser, and the people that let him prey on children for decades, was to choose the opposite of what that man, and his enablers, had become. To choose to find and speak the truth, no matter what it cost.
She finishes with this:
Predators rely on community protection to silence victims and keep them in power. Far too often, our commitment to our political party, our religious group, our sport, our college or a prominent member of our community causes us to choose to disbelieve or to turn away from the victim. Far too often, it feels easier and safer to see only what we want to see. Fear of jeopardizing some overarching political, religious, financial or other ideology -- or even just losing friends or status -- leads to willful ignorance of what is right in front of our own eyes, in the shape and form of innocent and vulnerable children.Ask yourself: How much is a child worth?
Every decent human being knows the answer to that question. Now it is time to act like it.
Skin on the line.
You don't have to feel comfortable about it -- and you don't have to be fearless, either. You just need to decide to take action because it's the right thing to do -- because it's so important and so right that the cost to you is simply a smaller price to pay than allowing others to victimized.
I'd like to see some more blame tossed towards the girl's gymnastics cultural generally.
This stuff took off after Korbut in '72, when I was about to enter high school. Even then the weird poses and tight uniforms for the sport seemed pretentious and pervy in a way that nobody wanted to talk about.
While the athleticism of these performers has accelerated tremendously, it seems to come mostly from a blind competitive fury more than any thoughtful consideration of sporting. They're burned out at 18 or whatever... Nobody cares.
Hundreds (thousands?) of parents allowed their daughters to be diddled this way either [A.] without knowing about it or [B.] deciding the uncomfortable vibes from these assaults were worth it for entry into realm of a brutal championship. And for decades, the kids were to overwhelmed by the entirety of the context to make it stop.
This doesn't say good things about anyone involved.
Crid at January 26, 2018 10:14 PM
Culture, not cultural.
Couple other mistakes too... Hate that. Coulda been one of the Top 1000 Comments here.
Crid at January 26, 2018 10:16 PM
I changed the post a little -- took a little pause as I was recovering from eating some questionable gorgonzola -- since around 10 pm when I posted it.
There was a moving YouTube by Aly Raisman that touches on some of what you mention above, Cridster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6McY8yMdd0
Amy Alkon at January 26, 2018 10:29 PM
"(former secretary of the Treasury Bill Clinton and former president of the bank Citigroup he left the bankruptcy while pocketing tens of millions of dollars.)"
Unwittingly, Taleb makes a claim illustrative of the apathy of a public unconcerned with how things are done until something bad happens to them.
In this case, the company charter, which spells out compensation for company officers in all cases and which is public record on file with the state in which it is incorporated, is available to all who will look. They - we - don't.
Radwaste at January 27, 2018 1:07 AM
Taleb underscores something we don't think much about -- asymmetry of risk. Rubin isn't the only example. Your stockbroker, if you have one, is another.
One thing I appreciate about Taleb's "Black Swan" is that a lot of successes, especially on Wall Street, that hedge fund managers and others attribute to expertise is really due to luck.
Amy Alkon at January 27, 2018 5:46 AM
Relates to a discussion in an earlier thread (years ago?) about social welfare removing the risk in sex and pregnancy, changing behavior because that risk was reduced.
Conan the Grammarian at January 27, 2018 6:39 AM
People want to have all game and no skin, for very understandable reasons. But then the people with all skin and no game react and refuse to play the game.
As Conan mentioned this is a huge part of why people don't get married. And why they don't have kids. Men know they bear all the responsibility but women get all the right. So women have little concern with ending a marriage and men have little interest in starting one. One quick way to improve the frequency and stability of marriage is to give men an equal right to primary caregiver status over children.
This is also a hallmark of communism. Workers get paid the same no matter how much work they produce. I.e. all game and no skin. So why bother working? It isn't long you end up with that famous quote 'We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.'
People are far more loss adverse than they seek gain. Very disproportionately so. Hence most people would prefer to end the game than have any risk of losing some skin. Guaranteed failure is usually preferred to a risk of failure.
Ben at January 27, 2018 7:17 AM
He's going to prison, having been sentenced to 175 years, and barring a miracle in the appeals court, he will never breathe free air again. What more needs to be said?
We can talk about this all we care to, but the most effective measure toward preventing things like this in the future came from the bench, from the judge who declared, "I have signed your death warrant."
We could discuss what made him like this, and how much responsibility he should bear for his actions based on that, and even debate that he shouldn't have been sentenced so harshly, but there are times when it's just plain useless to get into the whys or hows and just say, "Because if you do this, you will go to prison for the rest of your life. End of discussion."
Patrick at January 27, 2018 1:48 PM
Nicely said, Patrick. Better to be a little too harsh than a little too lenient.
(I couldn't believe it when Nassar tried to cut the impact statements short and just move to the finish line - everyone knew he wasn't feeling guilty, he was just bored to death and didn't want to risk showing contempt for the court by falling asleep over the next few days. Not to mention the gall he showed in his letter to the judge. How could he be stupid enough to write it at all?)
Unfortunately, Vox's Rachel Marshall has a point when she wrote: "Nassar’s victims deserve an advocate. But that advocate shouldn’t be a judge."
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/1/25/16932656/judge-aquilina-larry-nassar-line-between-judge-advocate-sentencing
Crid, I was wondering - wasn't it just 60 years ago or so that gymnastics weren't even considered properly feminine by the majority of the population? Sort of like soccer or softball?
And, to get back to Patrick's comment, let's not forget that, as adults at least, we all have ways to stop perps in their tracks before they do something much worse - whether to us or to someone else. We shouldn't be charitable and let one-time housecleaners (or other temp workers) get away with it when we find out, days after the employment ends, that they stole something. What if they steal someone's identity next - and the victim finds out about the prior offenses which you didn't prosecute? How would you feel if you were that victim?
In the same vein, even if we can't afford to lose our jobs or even afford not to get promoted (like most minimum wage workers), there will likely be other occasions where we CAN speak up, find allies, and stop offenders from becoming bolder. Do it.
Finally, I wish Nassar were going to be put on a chain gang. (Too bad they can't force him to use his medical knowledge in prison to pay off his prison expenses - aside from his lost license, that wouldn't be fair to the other prisoners anyway, if he were to examine them directly.)
But I know what's likely to happen to him in prison.
lenona at January 28, 2018 12:29 PM
I would like to see the list of parents who yanked their girls from gymnastics and went down to the local police station to attempt to press charges against Larry Nassar.
I bet it is just as long a list as the women who called the police after an encounter with Harvey Weinstein.
Isab at January 28, 2018 1:49 PM
I suspect the ones who would have done that did it long before they made it to that level. It has been my experience that by the time you get to the 0.0001% best in a sport everyone is a nutjob about that sport.
Ben at January 28, 2018 3:53 PM
"While the athleticism of these performers has accelerated tremendously, it seems to come mostly from a blind competitive fury more than any thoughtful consideration of sporting. They're burned out at 18 or whatever... Nobody cares."
That's where figure skating has devolved to. The only thing that matters is jumps. There's a lot of clunky skaters at the high levels now, but they can do quad lutzes all day long, and that's all that matters. Which is why you see so many waif-like skaters -- lighter skaters get more air and can complete those quads easier.
"People want to have all game and no skin, for very understandable reasons. But then the people with all skin and no game react and refuse to play the game."
A thing in government employment is maneuvering so that you can exercise power, while foisting the responsibility that accompanies that power off onto someone else. If you can dictate policy and then have someone else sign off on it, you're in high cotton. People will look up to you and envy you, and you will advance through the organization rapidly (until you hit your Peter Principle level).
Cousin Dave at January 29, 2018 7:12 AM
For years whenever I saw the olympic women's gymnastic team on TV, I felt uncomfortable with all the hugging going on. What the hell? It looked for all the world like PDA of teenagers who don't know people are watching. The kind that the principal at high school would send someone out in the hall to prevent from happening. All out in the open and no one noticed?
cc at January 29, 2018 8:56 AM
Isab, you DO know, don't you, that plenty of parents never knew in the first place and so they couldn't report it, since the victims were pretty young and were afraid to TELL their parents what was really going on? See what I said in the other thread about Nassar tricking the parents even when They Were In the Examining Room. Not to mention Kyle Stephens' disbelieving parents, and she wasn't even a would-be athlete; her parents were just friends of Nassar. The man is a master manipulator.
lenona at January 29, 2018 9:33 AM
Isab, you DO know, don't you, that plenty of parents never knew in the first place and so they couldn't report it, since the victims were pretty young and were afraid to TELL their parents what was really going on?
lenona at January 29, 20
And based on the trial testimony I read, plenty of them did know, and left their kids in his care.
I had a friend who was one of those nutty gymnastics parents. She was perfectly willing to let her daughter live six hundred miles away from her to train with a certain coach. The dad finally put a stop to it. But I suspect the craziness would have continued if the girl had not been injured at 15, and lost her shot at the national team.
Isab at January 29, 2018 6:49 PM
What percentage are we talking about, compared to those who knew and tried to stop Nassar from victimizing other girls - only to get threatened into silence?
Btw, why should they have to "yank their girls from gymnastics" altogether? Suspend them from it, maybe, if no other doctor was available, but...
lenona at January 31, 2018 2:19 PM
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