2 Chapter Two: Playing with Gender
Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| I was introduced to the Barr Body test and its application in sports. Although I am a biology major and am aware of Barr body cells, I had never connected their use to sports classification. The Barr body test, which also includes the sex chromatin test, allows the second X chromosome to appear as a dot in female samples while it does not appear in male samples. In fact, both sexes have one inactive X chromosome, making it misguided to use this test to determine gender.
A Barr body is an inactive X chromosome in a cell; therefore, it does not provide determining characteristics of male or female DNA. Instead, it represents a chromosomal foundation of human biology that we all share. This occurs through a process called X-inactivation, wherein one of the two X chromosomes in females is randomly inactivated. This mechanism equalizes gene dosage between the sexes by ensuring that females do not have twice the amount of X-linked gene products compared to males. Despite this biological basis, using the Barr Body test for gender classification in sports is fraught with issues. Anyone with an academic understanding of biology knows that a person’s sex cannot be singularly identified through chromosomal testing. Gender identification is a complex phenomenon; various species in nature can exhibit sex changes, known as transsexuality, where they display behaviors characteristic of the “other” gender. For example, female lions have been known to grow manes, roar, scent mark, and mount other females—all behaviors typically associated with males. In humans, there are women with a male karyotype pattern (XY) who nonetheless identify as women, facing challenges regarding gender classification in the sporting world. We are part of nature, which does not discriminate or classify species based on gender. |
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.
| Not a case or milestone, but it would have been nice to see social perception at each point in time, complemented by some statistics. Public perception normally drives the Overton Window, or the framework describing how public opinion shapes what policies and ideas are considered acceptable or feasible within society. Showing us how society reacted to these various events and milestones would have added a whole new level of depth regarding the cases and provided a greater historical understanding of the events.
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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?
| As a retired university volleyball player who played at the level of Division 1 in the United States, I strongly believe that one of the great problems concerning this sport is the politics of the female body. The sexualization of female volleyballers is real, not only regarding our thoughts about the sport but also in how we feel about it as a game. A very good example is our uniforms, which are designed to be revealing, accentuating our physical attributes. The emphasis on bodies rather than athletic accomplishments has led to the sexualization of our efforts, in which we are regarded as objects, not dedicated athletes striving for excellence in a sport we love.
Personally, what has been a bother is the male attention, which was uncalled for; even worse was the sexualization of children in sports. What makes this really disturbing is that the effect it might have on these young girls will be especially shocking as they get subjected to such hypersexual standards from such tender ages. I gave seen, during beach volleyball tournaments, girls below 12 years wear very revealing, not family-friendly bikinis to play the sport. As much as I understand how hot it might be outside, the disparity between male and female uniforms is egregious. It would appear that female outfits have been designed for the viewing pleasure of the spectators, whereas men’s uniforms have been tailored to perform, to be comfortable, and to last long. This disparity is not only evident in the design of the uniforms but also in the way female athletes are marketed and perceived by the public. Based on stats, female athletes are more likely to be portrayed in a sexualized manner in media, with a focus on their physical appearance rather than their athletic achievements (Kane, LaVoi, & Fink, 2013). This could further affect the self-esteem and body image of young girls who participate in sports, as they may often be under pressure to live up to unrealistic beauty expectations. Moreover, sexualization of women athletes has further reaching implications, including objectification, harassment, and even abuse. The Women’s Sports Foundation found that 1 in 5 female athletes reported experiencing sexual harassment or abuse in sports (Women’s Sports Foundation 2016). This therefore calls for changing the culture in the way we perceive and treat women athletes, focusing on their athletic abilities and achievements rather than their physical appearance.
Citations: Kane, M. J., & Lenskyj, H. J. (1998). Media treatment of female athletes: Issues of gender and sexuality. In L. K. Olson (Ed.), Media and social inequality (pp. 185-202). New York: Routledge. Women’s Sports Foundation. (2019). Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Sports. Retrieved from https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WSF_Sexual-Harassment-and-Abuse-in-Sports_Report.pdf
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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?
| Based on the Padlet polling, none of the answers surprised me. From a very young age (about five), my mother taught me the ins and outs of feminism and how our society assigns gender to most items, events, and ideologies. This tendency to label and conceptualize is deeply ingrained in Eurocentric culture, and the patriarchy is rooted in this Eurocentrism, along with imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, I am never surprised by these findings; they merely confirm my assumptions about how societal and cultural materialism has shaped our perceptions of gender in relation to specific sports and activities. |
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.
| Yes, I agree with this statement. In recent years, the emergence of right-wing populism has gained strength, always centralizing the claims on gender around the slogan ‘Are trans women women?’ However, when it is about trans men, there is always another discourse whether they are men or not. I always tend to question why this discrepancy exists, and here lies the hypocrisy of politicians’ claims. They are not interested in women’s sports; what they are interested in is the persistence of dominance over female bodies. The exclusion of transgender women and non-conforming female-appearing bodies in sports is proof of that.
This again is reminiscent of socialist feminist theory that situates the oppression of women in their role as a reserve army of labor and their reproductive capacities. Indeed, excluding trans women from female sports is another way politicians reinforce the understanding of female bodies as essentially inferior and in need of strict regulation. This is not only about keeping gender norms intact, but it is also rooted in the persistence of the patriarchal, capitalist system based on the exploitation of female labor and the commodification of female bodies. For all too apparent purposes of the ultimate objectification in sports, with the “perfect white woman” an “other,” which they shouldn’t see in all their discomforted homophobia/intentional homosexuality. Most often, feelings of discomfort toward gender queering-transgender women and women from the non-orthodoxly-conforming spectrum-arises from the lack of a proper place for trans individuals within one or the other compartment of the social dichotomy since those create an illusion that male and female are fixed, socially coherent essences. In so doing, politicians are trying to keep the dominant ideology of cisheteropatriarchy intact, which is deeply enmeshed with both capitalist and imperialist systems. This is also an exclusionary approach that evidences the intersectional oppressions faced by trans women and non-conforming people. As it has been suggested by socialist feminist theory, these are not parallel but rather intersecting and compounding oppressions that create a singular experience of marginalization. The erasure of trans women from female sports is part of a more general systemic issue in which women’s bodies, especially those of color, trans women, and non-conforming individuals, are policed, controlled, and commodified.
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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?
| In “Tested,” Episode 5, host and writer Rose Eveleth takes viewers on a quest of the most popular debated topic regarding the testing of the sex in sport, giving life to vital questions about this “unfair advantage.” Eveleth explains that support for arguments claiming sex testing typically relies on assumed biological features said to grant athletes an advantage over their competition. In the process, she however presents an alternative narrative to show complexity and flaws in the criteria, on the grounds of which there is an unjust advantage if a single sex and gender is considered one sex and a single gender. Any such scientific understanding of sex and gender is obsolete but too uninhibited to make a consideration for various biological and physiological variations that manufacture athletic performances. It is therefore not possible to make a case of competitive unfair advantage when most of the things that give an athlete an edge, including height, body composition, training facilities, and mental toughness, are not subject to similar scrutiny or controls.
Eveleth focuses a great deal on sex testing; however, that leads to some greater reflection on the other unique biological or circumstantial advantages that athletes throughout history have leveraged in their careers, ones that have absolutely nothing to do with gender. Think about the elevation advantage of such athletes from Kenya and Ethiopia where high-altitude training can result in increased stamina and performance in long-distance competitions. On the other hand, the long limbs of good swimmers, the explosive muscle bulk of sprinters-all these come with genes that make them exceptionally good in their respective sports. Again, elite training facilities, coaches, and nutrition together affect an athlete’s performance to a great extent, thereby establishing that socio-economic factors can give rise to inequalities in competitive sports. In other words, the discussion on advantages in sports is multilayered; thus, limiting the focus to testing based on gender overlooks the wider perspective on what really constitutes an advantage in the highly competitive world of sports. |
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 the proposition of unfair advantage in sports is correct, with a bit of qualification-the context and structure in society where the sports are taking place. I would go even further to assert that in Eurocentric sports engagement, there is an inherent unfairness within the way it was intentionally created to benefit those that have the resources and privileges of Western societies. Evidence of this in sport history is that, for instance, the modern Olympic Games were founded on a set of ideals reflecting Western values and reinforcing hierarchies based on race and economics. While the early Olympics celebrated strength, endurance, and athleticism, these were typically valued in European male bodies. The inclusion of indigenous and colonial subjects was often relegated to exhibitions and performances that reinforced Western superiority (McLachlan, 2018). Additionally, for example, the Olympic Charter is one attempt to impose the western ethics of sportsmanship, discipline, and fair play against those of Non-Western Culture that placed a greater emphasis on co-operation and communalism somewhat than individual competition (Al-Tauqi, 2003) From the context provided for the western culture, indeed it is true, organized sport enhances racialized as well as socio-economic inequalities. Research has consistently shown that access to quality coaching, training facilities, and resources is often restricted to elite, affluent athletes, while marginalized communities are underrepresented and excluded from opportunities (Hursh & Martina, 2003). This lack of representation and access contributes to a culture where athletes like Steph Curry can thrive, while countless other talented individuals are overlooked and undervalued.All arguments for Curry being the best basketball player in the world are blind to systemic disadvantages among athletes from poor backgrounds. Now, it is not right to call that all talent when anyone who has ever had a wealthy upbringing and facilities to train in his craft has been given every conceivable road to success. Currys’ privileged circumstances allowed him to focus on his craft without the burden of financial stress or social anxiety, which deos not diminish his achievements, but rather to recognize that his success is a product of his environment, rather than simply his innate ability.In summary, although the claim that Eurocentric sports engagement is by nature unfair and was deliberately constructed to favor those possessing Western privilege is not an absolute fact, it carries a great deal of weight both in historical and contemporary perspectives concerning organized sport. I do not consider that the inequalities in terms of access, representation, and opportunity in sport are a natural but rather a constructed result of systemic injustices which can be challenged and changed through critical thought, education, and reform.References:Al-Tauqi, M. S. (2003). Olympic Solidarity: Global order and the Diffusion of Modern Sport between 1961 to 1980 (Doctoral dissertation, © MS Al-Tauqi). Hursh, D., & Martina, C. A. (2003). Neoliberalism and schooling in the US: How state and federal government education policies perpetuate inequality. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 1(2), 1-13. McLachlan, F. (2018). Gender politics, the Olympic Games, and road cycling: A case for critical history. In Olympic Perspectives (pp. 103-118). Routledge.
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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.
| In her statement, Robins argues that this scrutiny and criticism of non-conforming female bodies/ transgender athletes-particularly trans women competing in women’s sports-is not genuinely concerned with the premises of fairness in athletics, nor with a concern to support cisgender women. Instead, she contends that such discussions are conducted to mainly challenge and question the legitimacy of trans identities, particularly transfeminine identities.
Robins says the reasons for “transvestigating” or investigating the identities of trans athletes derive from societal anxieties and prejudices about transness, and not from a consideration of athletic performance or sports inclusion. When she says, “For my money this has never been about sport, she means that the debate about trans athletes is often just a proxy for debating the existence and rights of trans people, not actually a debate about sports. That is to say, such discussions on inclusion for women in sport would reflect larger societal tensions related to gender identity and expression, exacerbating stigma against transgender individuals, not less, without offering substantial evidence to address real competitive equity. In other words, the discussion is wrongly oriented, according to Robins, to reinforce those existing prejudices against trans women instead of offering progress in terms of fairness in sport. |
