2
Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| Something that surprised me was that the athletes were randomly told to completely undress and were not told why or explained what was happening. This is not morally right for any justification. Just to be disqualified from running with people from their own gender because of different hormone levels. I didn’t know that could happen.
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B) Timeline of History
Exercise 2: Notebook Prompt
What other significant case/milestone would you add to this timeline? Note it in your notebook along with a brief (one or two sentences) explanation of why you feel it is important.
| I would add gender passports, the year that women were finally included in every olympic sport, or when competitions were separated by sex instead of integrated. I believe these are significant moments in history that reflect the progression of the experiences athletes faced, like the requirement of gender passports. I also feel it highlights the different challenges and barriers faced by each individual athlete based on their gender. For example, it’s a powerful moment for women to finally be included in each olympic sport and then everything changes when sports are separated by sex.
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C) Gender coding in Sports
Exercise 3: Notebook Prompt
Has the gendering of sport ever been a constraint on your involvement? How?
Or, if not, why do you think this is?
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The gendering of hockey has been a constraint in my involvement in playing hockey. For example, I have always played in a female’s league because that’s what society’s norms were. Because of this, when given opportunities to play hockey with mixed teams, I have always hesitated or stepped down because of what others would think of me being one of the only females on the team. I would have my own separate changing room, which is fine, but limits the social involvement and the feeling of being included. I would also feel more anxiety because of comments like “you skate like a girl” or “you need to toughen up to play with the guys”.
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D) How is sport gendered in the popular imagination?
Exercise 4: Padlet/Notebook Prompt
While most sports are in fact unisex, gender coding remains pervasive, particularly at the professional level, although with a foundation established in youth competition. Participate in the poll below to share your views on how popular sports are gendered in the popular imagination. Also feel welcome to add or suggest sports that you feel strongly conform to the gender binary!
After you contribute to the padlet prompt, record your response in your notebook AND briefly discuss in two or three sentences how these responses and the polling figures in general confirm or contradict your assumptions about gender-coding and sports. Did anything surprise you?
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I voted on a few polls to find my suspicions of gender-coding are correct. It is aggravating but true, that certain sports are perceived to be played by certain genders. For example, even with 100 votes 99% of votes chose cheerleaders as a female sport. This does not suprise me because of the over sexualized nature of being a cheerleader for the boys football teams.
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Section Two: Breaking it down
A) Title IX
Exercise 5: Notebook Prompt
In a longer version of the interview excerpted in the video above, Leah Thomas states “Trans women competing in women’s sports does not threaten women’s sports as a whole because trans women are a very small minority of all athletes and the NCAA rules around trans women competing in women’s sports have been around for 10+ years and we haven’t seen any massive wave of trans women dominating”?
Do you agree with this statement? See also the image above suggesting that the issue may be overblown by politicians and influencers who don’t actually care that much about women’s sports.
Please share any thoughts you have in your Notebook by clicking on the audio button above or writing a few sentences.
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As a women, I believe it does threaten women’s sports as a whole because although it may not be a huge contribution and they will not win everything, I still think it takes away chances for someone with my build to win the sport I would have dedicated my life to practice. Personally, I understand gender and sex is not black and white and each individual is created uniquely, I just find it frustrating when it takes me so much more training, work and dedication to meet the abilities of the male sex. For example, no matter how much I train to do push-ups or pull-ups, my younger brother will always be able to do more.
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B) Unfair Advantage?
Exercise 6: Notebook Prompt
What does the host and writer, Rose Eveleth, have to say on the issue of unfair advantage?
Can you think of other examples of unique biological or circumstantial advantages from which athletes have benefitted enormously that have nothing to do with gender?
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Rose eveleth explores what it means to have an unfair advantage in sports, what the qualifications are and who gets discriminated against so the rest feel ‘protected’. She also talks about the reality of the human body and how using lab values to describe humans is inaccurate because the human body does not work like that. There are at least 20 genetic mutations that studies have found make people better at sports. For example, people who produce more red blood cells get a better oxygen flow giving aerobic exercise athletes more of an advantage, as evidenced by one guy winning 7 olympic medals. Some more obvious examples may include people having more height resulting in better basketball players, or people with a bigger build may have more success in contact sports like football or rugby.
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Again, let’s turn to Katie Barnes who points out that we tend to forget amidst all the debate that “sports, by design, are not fair” (235), that “the reality of sports is that we accept unfairness all the time” (235).
Do you agree? Why? In your experience, how fair are sports? Feel welcome to add a video response in the padlet and provide an example if you’re willing. Make sure you include a screenshot of your response in your notebook.
| I agree that sports are not fair, just as all things in life are not fair. For example, some people have more money than others. A lot of people on my softball team had nice bats or gloves that they would bring with them. It wasn’t until recently I finally got my first bat which may have affected my batting ability. In addition, as a pitcher, I loved practicing my pitching in my backyard with my dad a couple times a week. Not everyone had that opportunity because of potential factors like they couldn’t make time, or they had nowhere or no one to practice with. Finally, girls are built differently than other girls and we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Some girls were super fast runners and others were better hitters. |
B) The Paris Olympics
Optional Response:
What does Robins mean when she argues that:
“The aims of transvestigating an Olympic athlete are not, in any meaningful sense, anything to do with sports, or fairness, or even with women (cis women, at least) as a social category. Rather, they have everything to do with transness, and the public expression of transfemininity.
For my money this has never been about sport.
What it has always been is an excuse to publicly relitigate the existence of trans women.”
Make a note in your Notebook.
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