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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| In this episode I was not aware that the first modern Olympics has just 2% women along with it taking until 2012 for women to be able to compete in every Olympic sport. I also learned about “nude parades” and “gender passports” as I was unaware that they would go to such great lengths to ensure only people assigned female at birth were eligible to play.
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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.
| 2020: Laurel Hubbard is the first transgender woman to compete as a woman in the Olympics. Hubbard met all of the prior requirements and competed in weightlifting women’s +87kg.
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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?
| I do not believe gendering of sport has every been a constraint on my involvement because I have never played sports competitively. My experience with sport is playing with my friends where everyone is welcome and the goal is to have a good time. we have subconsciously avoided gendering of sport by not joining any competitive leagues or clubs where we may be treated differently based on our gender.
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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?
| Hockey: It is a sport that dates back over 100 years and in most history was played by men. Thus, by this rich male history I will believe that the general population will believe that hockey is more of a male sport. In the votes male got about 3/4 of the vote while neutral got about 1/4. I believe this confirms my hypothesis but I do also agree with the 1/4 of the vote that the general public may see hockey as neutral because as of 2025 women’s hockey is played at the novice, high school, college, professional, and international levels. Along with the PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) being shown frequently on cable television and women beginning to make full careers through playing hockey.
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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.
| I believe in terms of having an unfair advantage in women’s sports, the small sample size of trans athletes as Leah Thomas describes would not be a good judgement on trans woman dominance. For example, if Leah Thomas was the only Trans woman competing at that time and she came first the narrative would be that she is too dominant, but if she did not reach the podium this would be seen as evidence that trans women do not dominate women’s sports. In terms of women’s sports as a whole I agree that trans women are not a threat because there are many other examples of trans woman being welcome in women’s sports and having safe and enjoyable competition. |
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?
| Rose Eveleth describes unfair advantage as nothing new. She uses examples of elite athletes having unfair advantages based on their genes. I would add that these advantages are not just seen in elite athletes but in all athletes. Something as simple as a players height in basketball may give that player an advantage in rebounding and shooting over a defender. A specific example is Joey Chestnut, a competitive eater who is assumed to have a stomach that can expand four times the size of a non-competitive eater.
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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.
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I agree that sports a generally not fair and every athlete has a different experience with training and playing the sport. This can be shown by an athletes genetics, their life outside the sport, if they can afford to play the sport consistently, when they were introduced to the sport, if they have access to good coaching, and the athletes health. In my own experience long distance running I have been very injury prone in the last 2 years forcing me to do lighter running sessions or skip them all together. This gave my friends months to improve while I could not, and when I went on a run with them after my injury I could not keep up with them. This is not fair as I have done everything in my knowledge to prevent these injury’s, yet everyone else long distance running that has not experienced similar injuries has been able to train while I could not. I would not beat myself up for it though because subconsciously I have accepted this unfairness as part of the sport.
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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.
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