LGHS Football Team Hand Gesture Reignites Rape Culture Debate

LOS GATOS, CA — In the wake of last summer’s #MeToo movement at Los Gatos High School, community members have expressed concern about a sexually explicit hand signal openly used by members of the football team.

Wildcat football players have been documented displaying the gesture — which they refer to as “two-in-it” — in public settings such as school dances and town events.

The hand gesture, commonly known as “the shocker,” references a specific sexual act involving digital penetration; the gesture consists of holding the ring finger down with the thumb while pressing the middle and index fingers together.

Photos and videos dating back to 2019 depict LGHS football players throwing up the hand sign in Instagram posts and during public events such as the annual Los Gatos Holiday Parade. Despite the postponement of the football season due to COVID-19, the gesture is still prevalent on social media.

Online, athletes reference the gesture with certain phrases such as “in the pink,” plays on words like “stink” and emojis widely associated with sex.

Players’ Views And Advocates’ Criticism

The gesture “never had any sort of sexual connotation among football players,” said one football player who graduated last year and spoke on condition of anonymity. The gesture originated as “an homage” to Baltimore Ravens running back Mark Ingram, the player said. Ingram popularized the gesture in an interview in which he referred to it as “big truss.”

The phrase “two-in-it” came from the symbolism surrounding the number two, the player added. “The number two was symbolic to our team for multiple reasons, partially the fact that we would be the second [California Interscholastic Federation-Central Coast Section or CCS] championship since the head coaching change earlier in the decade,” the player said. “Another big reason was the challenge we faced as a team to bring the two classes together as one. It came about organically. There was no meeting or anything to decide what our motto would be. We just kept winning as we said it, so it stuck. It was compounded by the fact that we won the Division II CCS championship and finished with a 12-2 record."

A football player from the class of 2021 had a different take in a separate interview. “A few people were doing it before the ‘big truss’ thing,” he said. “It wasn’t like a teamwide thing; it was just between a few not-super-upstanding characters on the football team.” This player also wished to remain anonymous to avoid backlash from the team.

After the gesture became more popular, the way players used it was “very context-dependent, ... and it also meant different things to different people,” the player added. For instance, “in a game where someone would get a touchdown, and we’d all put the ‘two-in-it’ up, it wasn't sexual. I'm sure for some people, there was a sexual implicit meaning, but it was not explicitly the sexual meaning.

“There are obviously bad apples who had a very different personal meaning for the gesture,” the player added, reflecting on how the Los Gatos community now perceives “two-in-it.” “Anyway you look at it, it was not the hand gesture that should have been used."

Though the former player said the gesture had “no sexual connotation,” the younger athlete said the football coaches felt there was an implied sexual meaning.

Mark Krail, the head football coach at LGHS "was not a fan of it,” he said. When the football team won the CCS championship in 2019, “Krail threatened to put the Picture Day team photo on the wall with the other CCS champs’ photos instead of the post-game photo if we did [the gesture] in the post-game photo.”

Sophie Adams, a founder of the student organization From Survivors, For Survivors and the owner of the @metoolghs Instagram account, said that her issue was not so much with the gesture itself but rather with how it plays into the general culture at LGHS and the lack of accountability on the football team.

“It's not horrific. It's not awful,” Adams said. “But it leads into the horrific and awful things that are happening that are also going unpunished. … Your team is your family. I get that. I was on a team. I love my team. I would defend my team. But when there’s an inherent issue in your team, and your response is to attack instead of even thinking for a moment, that shows a clear culture of just not listening, not thinking, not hearing anyone but yourself.”

She added: “It bothers me that the coaches don't take issue with it.”

“Possibly the worst part is that you know teachers and admin know that [the gesture means something] offensive,” FSFS co-founder and 2020 alumnus Gavin Finkle said. “If there was no such thing as a rape culture [at LGHS], that hand gesture would be shut down immediately.”

"We Are All Complicit"

On June 29, 2020, a single Instagram post published by a rising LGHS sophomore swiftly catalyzed a deep examination of a wider culture of enabling sexual abuse within LGHS and the surrounding community. Students, alumni and numerous other stakeholders soon mobilized via social media and in demonstrations to advocate for increased consent education, streamlined and updated Title IX policies and more substantial punishments for students convicted of sexual harassment or assault.

Following the original Instagram post, which alleged sexual assault committed by an unnamed football player and the survivor’s ensuing emotional trauma, dozens of survivors within the LGHS community contributed personal testimonies to a public account with the username @metoolghs. The account published its first survivor testimony on July 8; as of March 18, the account had 239 posts. Some 118 are stories of sexual assault and harassment; 18 of them alleged that members of the school football team perpetrated the assaults or harassment.

After the creation of the account, a team that would grow to encompass 10 LGHS students and alumni, including Adams and Finkle, founded FSFS. The group describes its mission as creating “a safe space for survivors and allies” and pushing for students to be properly “equipped with the necessary tools to fully understand consent and healthy relationships.”

Abbi Berry — an LGHS alumna from the class of 2018 — came forward on July 7 as a survivor and launched an email campaign demanding that the school football team implement a “zero-tolerance policy that takes action based on a survivor’s statement.”

Krail addressed Berry’s demands in an email to football players and their families following Berry’s email campaign. “We have been labeled as a program with a culture of ‘toxic masculinity,’ and one that is shielded from consequences for an individual's inappropriate behavior,” he said, adding: “I find those statements to be untrue. ... I personally am a believer in ‘the system.’ I hope that wherever the truth lies, it comes out. I have been asked through email and social media that I implement a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy. I believe we have a zero-tolerance policy.”

Krail added: “I am not saying that all football players always act as we would hope, and I fully understand that we cannot control or be responsible for all of the choices our players make, but I am fully committed to being a positive force in the improvement of the school culture.”

Around the same time, Andrew Holland, an LGHS football coach and English teacher, responded to a staffwide email chain that included a copy of Berry’s demands.

Holland cited Berry’s statement that “we are all complicit in this” and added, “Wrong. If this young lady has had something bad happen to her in the past, she should take it up with the individual who is responsible. You will excuse me if I take offense to receiving an email in the morning that is filled with the broad strokes of hurtful and inflammatory generalizations that have the potential to harm many innocent and hardworking individuals. I am politely asking to leave me off any mass emails of this kind.”

Krail declined a request for comment. Holland could not be reached for comment.

Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District Superintendent Mike Grove acknowledged the unrest in a schoolwide email on July 17. “We have begun an inquiry into the serious allegations made to sexual harassment and assault on our campuses,” he said. “This inquiry will look into any specific allegations as well as broader perceptions regarding cultures of fear and silence or a culture that ‘allows’ inappropriate behavior.”

Grove also discussed district action on sexual harassment and/or assault and announced plans to introduce an anonymous crime reporting system called WeTip that the school officially implemented in September.

A July 26 sit-in organized by FSFS at the LGHS football field drew hundreds of attendees who listened to student speakers and performers, including the survivor who sparked the movement with her Instagram post earlier that summer. Among the speakers was Sheila Pott, whose 15-year-old daughter, Audrie Pott, took her own life in 2012 after she was sexually assaulted and nude photos of her were distributed without her consent.

Three boys — two 16-year-olds and a 17-year-old — were convicted in Santa Clara County Juvenile Court of felonies in the assault and distribution of the photos. Audrie and two of her assailants attended Saratoga High School, located in the same district as LGHS.

Paul Robinson, who served as principal at SHS throughout the Pott case, began his term as interim principal at LGHS this school year. The Audrie Pott Foundation in 2015 shared a public statement expressing frustration with Robinson’s refusal to formally punish the perpetrators.

“After Audrie died, [the assailants] continued to ‘slut shame’ other minor female girls by disseminating nude or semi-nude pictures of them,” the statement read. “Despite this, none of these assailants had to miss a single day of school and were permitted to fully participate in high school athletic programs.” Though tens of thousands of people rallied behind the Pott family’s pleas to punish their daughter’s assailants, SHS still granted the two male students the privilege of walking across the stage at their graduation ceremony.

Last July, Robinson discussed student safety and the wider #MeToo movement taking place in Los Gatos in an interview with El Gato News, the LGHS student newspaper. “I don’t necessarily believe that there is a rape culture at Los Gatos High School,” he said. After receiving multiple emails from concerned viewers, he later clarified his perspective in a message to the community.

“I did not intend in any way to deny that sexual harassment and/or assault is a prevalent issue faced by many young women who attend LGHS. My intent was to say that these are issues that exist at the local, national, and global levels. ... I am also very concerned that we not paint an entire school or whole groups of students, such as all athletes, with a broad brush. To do so taints the many upstanding young women and men and staff members who do not accept or perpetuate the inappropriate behavior of some.”

Robinson declined to comment about the school administration’s response to “two-in-it.”

Since the sexual violence advocacy movement started in the summer, several LGHS students have advocated for an audit — proposed by former county supervisor and current state Sen. Dave Cortese — that would review Title IX compliance at K-12 and post-secondary schools within Santa Clara County.

After an initial delay and a student-organized protest directed at Supervisor Joe Simitian, who voted against passing the proposal on Sept. 22, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the audit on Oct. 20. Simitian also successfully motioned to double the initial budget for the investigation to $1 million.

After the board passed the measure, FSFS released a statement: “This is a landslide victory for local survivors, and it gives us hope for the next generation of students in our area. ... Today, for the first time in a very long time, we can celebrate. Today, we took back our power.”

Deeper Implications

Despite recent strides made by survivors and advocates, Adams said that the football coaches’ continued inaction regarding the sexual meaning of “two-in-it” contributed to a deeply ingrained sense of impunity among their athletes.

“What bothers me about [Krail] claiming to have a zero tolerance policy is that you see things like ‘two-in-it,’… and then you go further, and you keep seeing more and more things like boys on a senior bus chanting very inappropriate things about freshmen at our school,” Adams said, referencing a video that circulated among the student body last summer. “There’s a coach on the bus, and you don’t hear them say anything. ... They are completely aware of this. It’s happening on the buses, in their CCS pictures. They know what it means. … And they don't say anything.”

In Adams’ eyes, enabling players to use “a gesture [coaches] know is meant to be lewd” is consistent with the coaches’ broader leniency towards misconduct. Many members of the LGHS junior varsity and varsity football teams can be seen drinking alcohol in photos and videos posted to students’ accounts on Snapchat and the VSCO social media app. Although underage drinking is a violation of the LGHS athletic code of conduct, Adams said she has witnessed the coaches repeatedly neglect to punish athletes for publicly breaking team rules. “[Players post] on their public stories of them drinking copious amounts of alcohol,” Adams said. “And the coaches — they're aware of this. I've heard them say word for word, ‘We know they go out and celebrate afterwards. As long as they're safe, it's fine.’”

Neither Krail nor Holland responded to a request for comment regarding claims that underage drinking went unpunished.

The athlete from the class of 2021 said the football coaches “discouraged partying” and that “It was generally not anything super extravagant when it was just team related. [But] things got very wild at other parties.”

He added: “The coaches aren’t stupid, but our lives outside of football are not their problem unless it begins to have an effect on our ability to be a member of the team and participate in the game. ... They are not paid to babysit our lives.”

Adams said such complicity affected the current football team culture. “When they don’t say no to the little things, they stop feeling the need to say no to the big things.”

Finkle feels “two-in-it” is a symptom of a “rape culture … that permeates every space of the school.”

“There’s no excuse to be doing that in public or in private,” Finkle said. “There are so many other different gestures or things you can pick to be an inside joke. You really don’t have to pick that one. Women are completely within their rights to feel uncomfortable when somebody uses that gesture around them. It’s disrespectful.”

Jason Baumann, an LGHS 2019 alumnus and a former varsity football captain, attested to the sexual connotations behind the gesture. “I think that the gesture should be condemned,” Baumann said. “I don’t think gestures like that — anything sexual — should be done by a football team as jokes or poses.”

Such behavior is problematic because “doing that kind of thing is teaching the younger guys — the freshman football players — to carry that on,” he added.

Inaction on the part of the football coaches is a contributing factor to the gesture’s presence on the team, he said. “The coaches know a lot,” he said. But he added he doubted that “they think much of it because it’s the culture. It’s so normalized.”

“It’s not #MeToo versus football,’” Baumann said. “Football should side with #MeToo. Football should stand up against rapists. Sexual assaulters are not family anymore. Football should be semi-family-like, but you shouldn’t just allow bad things to go on.”