5 Smart Takes on Chiefs Kicker Harrison Butker's Anti-Woman, Anti-LGBTQ, and antisemitic Commencement Address
Featuring Dave Zirin, Melissa Jacobs, Jill Filipovic, Jessica Valenti, and Samer Kalaf.
Hi, all. Parker here.
On Saturday, May 11, 2024, Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker delivered the commencement address at Benedictine College. There, he decried “abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media,” called on women to set aside career aspirations to instead “embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker,” and ranted about LGBTQ people. You can read the full speech here.
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It was all pretty abhorrent, but thankfully, there were quite a few responses that I thought were worth sharing with you all. You can find links to those below.
“Harrison Butker Is a Jerk, a Bigot, and a True Representative of the NFL” (The Nation, Dave Zirin, 5/16/24)
Yes, the NFL wants female fans, and yes, they want fans of color, and yes, going soft on Butker risks that. But above all else, NFL executives exist to appease the whims of billionaires in the owners’ boxes most of whom—judging by their bankrolling of Donald Trump—agree with Butker. The destruction of Black bodies for white consumption and profit is an ugly business. Normally the NFL wants to keep the underlying ideology of its owners under wraps. The biggest problem with Butker is that he vomited it up for everyone to see.
“Don’t tell Harrison Butker working women helped him win three Super Bowls” (The Guardian, Melissa Jacobs, 5/16/24)
There is Kirsten Krug, the Kansas City Chiefs’ executive vice-president of administration. She oversees player services and, during the height of the Covid pandemic, ensured the Chiefs were healthy and safe while serving double-duty as one of the club’s infectious control officers. There is Tiffany Morton, an assistant athletic trainer who keeps the players stretched, iced, and taped up so they can maximize on-field performance. There’s also Rosetta Shinault, a security officer who helps keep the peace so the players can do their jobs without incident. These three employees of the Chiefs are just a handful of the many women who keep the organization thriving. They are pieces of the framework that has helped the Chiefs win three Super Bowls in five seasons and allow Harrison Butker to do what he does best: kick a football.
“Harrison Butker's misogynist speech is a symptom, not the disease” (, , 5/16/24)
It’s all a bit rich coming from a man whose own success in life was enabled by a mother who worked as a medical physicist to provide for him. And he certainly deserves all of the criticism he’s getting. But there’s a reason Benedictine College asked him to speak, and why he wasn’t booed off stage, and that’s because Benedictine College and other conservative religious institutions like it teach this kind of misogyny and homophobia all year long — and restrict speech and expression that contravenes their narrow ideology.
“Men’s Rules on Abortion” (, , 5/15/24)
I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like for the Benedictine women listening to all this. After four years of late night studying, student loans, and dreaming of what their life would look like, to be told on your graduation day that it was all a waste of time. Think about how degrading that must have felt: On a day meant to celebrate their successes, these young women had to sit through a man telling them that their college careers weren’t just pointless, but “diabolical” and not “God’s will.”
Incredibly, Butker’s mother appears to be one of those pesky career women that the football player holds in such low regard. Elizabeth Butker is a medical physicist in the oncology department at Emory’s medical school. I don’t know what kind of mommy issues Butker is working through, but it would have been nice if he did so with his therapist rather than from behind a podium.
“Chiefs Kicker Harrison Butker’s Inspirational Message To Graduating Catholics: Be Worse” (Defector, Samer Kalaf, 5/14/24)
A fatal problem for any bad commencement speech is when the speaker is more concerned with talking about themselves, rather than imparting useful advice, and Butker's suffered from the same issue. If the Catholics in the audience truly wanted to live their faith, they would've objected to a speech this masturbatory. Butker took the regression of the American Catholic Church as a point of pride. He made sure to repeatedly clarify that he was denouncing a lot of widely accepted aspects of society not because he was better than anyone, but because he had "leaned into my vocation as a husband and father, and as a man." Butker is merely a humble, God-respecting male who wants to "embrace tradition" by making life worse for a lot of other people. It's never a good thing when a guy like that, with a haircut like that, begins to talk about restoring values.
Updated on 5/18 to add additional Harrison Butker takes:
Oh my god this line cracked me up "wanted to live their faith, they would've objected to a speech this masturbatory.".
I wish we didn't have to think about this garbage, but your point about this is what the owner's represent behind the veil is exactly one of the myriad of reasons I stopped following and even watching any games. And I am a meat eating cis white dude that played college sports. And I'm not making a hollow threat like the whining we heard about kneeling. I have better things to do that are more fulfilling than watching commercials three day's a week or listening to talking head's bloviate the rest of the week.
I keep telling myself - and maybe I'm whistling past the graveyard - is that all of this is a reaction, not the main current of our society, which is changing in many positive ways that drive these religious freaks to be even crazier than they already were.