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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| Episode 3: Card-Carrying Females on Tested Podcast
Make a note of anything that surprised you in this episode or something new that you learned.
In the episode Card-Carrying Females on the podcast Tested, explained the innerworkings of sex testing in sports, with specific examples in the experience of Kenyan sprinter Maximila Imali, who was barred from competing in certain distances and races due to abnormally high testosterone levels. From this critical perspective of sports from in DSD athlete, we get to know more about the policies and decision-making processes of sports organizations. What surprised me in this episode is just the lengths these organizations go to adhere to their agendas, and how violating they can be in their pursuit. As Imali accounts her story of being excluded from women’s sports, she speaks on how she was given the ultimatum of taking drugs to lower her testosterone, which would violate her own feelings of her God-given body. As well, when she was amidst the process of getting tested, it was so heartbreaking to hear her account as a woman, of being alone as a young adult, getting tested suddenly without information why, in an again, violating way of a male doctor undressing her and opening her legs. I could barely listen as she talked repeatedly about the questions in her head over and over of why they would do this to her, and how her mother later would ask the same question. It was not only surprising to hear this recount, but also not, as I imagine how much fear of the unknown drives prejudice people to do things as such. I was surprised however to hear later on in the podcast just how little realization of these effects of intersex and differing athletes, still remains in today’s policies in sporting organizations, as there is still such a focus on genetic testing that remains to be invasive to athletes.
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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.
| Among the notable milestones along the timeline, I would include 1977, the year a transsexual woman tennis player, Renee Richards won the right to compete in a New York Supreme Court ruling against the United States Tennis Association, after they had barred her from competing as a woman in the 1976 US Open. I feel like this was a particularly pivotal moment in regards to LGTBQ achievements in sports because when Judge Alfred Ascione gave his ruling, he wrote on both how great the desire must be in how he “finds it necessary for his own mental sanity” to undergo this reassignment, and “how unfounded fears and misconceptions of defendants must give way to the overwhelming medical evidence that this person is now female”. This is a precedent setting ruling for sports organizations and policies, as well as an understanding response that resonates with the public.
History.com. “Transgender Athlete Renée Richards Barred From U.S. Open.” HISTORY, 9 Aug. 2021, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/renee-richards-us-open-tennis-barred.
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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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From the very opening lines of Katie Barnes’ Fair Play, I resonated with the author as they account how their “first memory is of playing basketball in my driveway…in one on one games with my dad” (Barnes, 1). They go on to recount how not only would their dad not let them win in the efforts to teach them, my dad had similar lessons of humility and resilience, and Barnes as well recounts how they “continued to carry basketball through every place of [their] life” (2). Again, I have had the same experience with the sport myself, especially as a small figured girl, and in this exact example, I am able to pinpoint how I feel about gendering in sport. It has been a constraint on my involvement and it always has and this has always bugged me. As a young and skinny girl, who was decently tomboy, I really liked sports, hanging out with my dad, and playing basketball in my driveway or wherever. To this DAY, I keep a basketball in my trunk of my car. However, I rarely have ever gotten to play, at least with people, because as a girl, it is truly very difficult to integrate with boys, but particularly in sports. There is an assumption that the game will not be as good with a girl playing because that girl will not be able to keep up, and thus everyone will have to play down to the female’s capability, so they rarely integrate that. This was always my experience, so the only time I would get to play would be on a segregated team, but that implies that you make the team. I could never just play a regular game, off-hours. I do believe that we need to deconstruct these norms and emphasize the importance of sports and games for everybody, and make these practices more assessible in schools and growing up. Especially in the case of basketball, I call on Barnes’ interpretation that “while adolescence brought pressures to be more feminine, basketball didn’t require that of me” (3), and this is an important example of a sport that is perceived rather neutrally, and can be a gateway into sports for groups that have historically had a hard time integrating into sports. This was my experience, and since that gateway, I continue to use my knowledge of basketball into another sector of sports that is quite gendered and that is watching sports. This is a rather male-perceived activity as well, but since I had a gateway sport experience, I am able to better integrate into sport talk as a female adult. I hope to see a future where sports can be an interest for everyone without such a gendered lens. Barnes, Katie. Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates. St. Martin’s Press, 2023.
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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?
| Ping Pong/Male
Baseball/Male English Football/Male Track and Field/Neutral Lacrosse/Male MMA/Neutral Javelin/Shotput/Neutral Hockey/Male Cricket/Male Racing (Motorsports)/Neutral Martial Arts/Neutral Boxing/Male Golf/Male Dance/Female Surfing/Neutral Netball/Female Figure Skating/Neutral Rugby/Neutral Tennis/Neutral Swimming/Neutral Cheerleading/Female Baseball/Male Softball/Female Gymnastics/Female Volleyball/Female Basketball/Male Power Lifting/Neutral American Football/Male
This exercise was very absolute in confirming my assumptions about gender-coding in sports as I was not surprised at all in what I felt my answers would be, and how my answers match in general, to the answers of everyone else as well. This confirms the overall biases we all share, and this exercise was fantastic in showcasing them. It does not surprise me that historically male-dominated sports would still have connotation as a male sport in general, such as football or hockey. As well, I am unsurprised when everyone answers dance and gymnastics as an overwhelmingly female sport, as these are examples where females have been historically over-represented and often sexualized in these roles, so it is not surprising the general biases of these sports as female sports. However, in regards to gender identity, the individual experience is different for all in how we experience gender, and this can different from the assumed sex assigned at birth. Sports should be inclusive of the potential for differing identities than what can be assumed, and being open to this in sports, helps break down these gender-coding assumptions we have in sports.
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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 absolutely agree with this statement, mainly in the shared notion that the general public and media response to transgender athletes in sports is more definitely extreme based on the absolute minority of the sport that these people have. It is a great deal of attention and hurtful discourse on the athletes themselves, as these are deeply personal issues. The discourse leads to quick resolution to appease the outcry from the public. Lia Thomas became the first openly transgender person to win an NCAA event when she won the women’s 500 freestyle, and just the following day protestors showed up to the event either in opposition or in favour of Thomas, and this show, regardless of which side one is on, caused a quick resolution when just later that year, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a ban on transgender women from participating in women’s collegiate sports. In my opinion, a situation like this requires great analysis and panels and committees to determine a more proper solution that doesn’t exclude an entire group of people from participating in sports, a basic liberty. The system needs to change.
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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?
| Host and writer, Rose Evereth, In Episode Five of Tested, regards how ironic it is that unfair advantages is talked about so much in regards to transgenders in sports, however, other figures with special mutations are regarded as icons. She questions why some biological advantages are fine, but others require rules. This potentially is because sports are divided by sex, and so sex-based advantages are fair game to be scrutinized. However, it had to be proven that the advantaged for DSD athletes, had more of an advantage that those with special cases and the advantage levels they have. It was not found that the advantage of dSD athletes surpassed this, as no studies have been done.
Another example of a unique biological and in this case, also circumstantial, is Usain Bolt, as it has been theorized that due to a special soil compounds in Jamaica, he developed a muscle mutation that attributes greatly to his success.
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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.
| In my opinion, sports will never be completely fair, and that is okay, because that is the spirit of sports. At the end of every game, the purest idea is in the final handshake, where sport is recognized, fair play was had, and that is expressed in the expression ‘Good game’. In the example of sports being nation building, and in regards to the question of how fair sports are, we see through a plethora of sports tournaments, year after year, that as countries compete, we often see the same ones in the top spots. However, the games are not fixed, and while there will never be a perfect allocation of resources and support, sports as a whole will never be perfectly fair. This fits within the spirit of sports to have the most genuine attempt at fair as humanly possible, and I think organizations as a whole do a decent job in emphasizing that ideal. In regards to top-performing countries, which can be seen with great resources and thus an unfair advantage, regardless of these, time and time again, key players emerge, or really good coaches, that turn things around for underperforming teams and bring them to the top. Sports are constantly moving and evolving and within this notion we can see essences of fairness, especially as we are moving towards recognizing marginalized groups, and giving broader range of media attention to previously under looked organizations.
Hi, Thank you very much for your response, as you reminded me of the systematic cycle of socioeconomic differences in regards to sports being unfair in that regard. I completely agree and it got me thinking about how even exposure creates an unfair balance in sports. In certain communities, let’s say hockey for example, can be a really popular sport, but it is expensive. Those that have financial differences, are not able to be involved at nearly the same level as others, and as you point out, these kids could possess fantastic natural talent and deserve just as much of a shot as those with the privilege to join. It is unfair to children of lower socio-economic status that they have a lower opportunity to play and hone these skills.
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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.
| What Robins means when she argues how cis women have everything to do with transness, she is arguing how in regards to trans people trying to claim their own experiences, cis people keep wanting to interject with their take on the situation. In this particular scandal, it was a cis-woman who was at the centre of it, however, the scandal itself was in no way connected to cis womanhood. The media and rage took the situation and the true message was overshadowed by cis women thinking the situation was about themselves. Robins explains how “if cis people want to be trans allies, they need to stop putting themselves at the centre of every issue…If cis people want to be allies, they need to stop enshrining ‘biological womanhood’” (Robins). In cis women demanding the reclamation of their identities when it wasn’t being taken away from them, it actually ends up taking away from trans people, as these practises are “people using a very public instance of vitriolic transphobia as the basic on which to make memes” (Robins). The true message of the scandal is of what generation growing up will see and take with them, as they watch in sports a cis woman be prodded over the presumption of her trans-ness, what implications does that hold for actual trans kids? It instills fear in them, and closes them off from wanting to join sports.
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Exit Padlet.
3 things learned.
- I learned about the key differences and focuses of different kinds of feminism.
- I learned about the processes of ‘othering’ and how even in our school systems from a young age, there is a certain neoliberal western standard of health and fitness, called ‘healthism’ that actively is excluding marginalized groups that do not fit this standard.
- I learned about how aggressive and invasive sports organizations have historically been in regards to sex testing of athletes. I never knew of these practices before and how violating they are physically and emotionally, but also how extreme the policy is due to the general transphobia that is held in sports.
2 things I wish to learn more about.
- I wish to learn more about sporting practices in other countries, and particularly the policies of other major sporting organizations in regards to inclusiveness. I would like to compare these policies to the policies of western civilization in sports, and review any differences and discrepancies. I would like to see what inclusion policies have worked well, and policies that could be implemented in Western organizations.
- I would like to learn more about post-structural feminism, and the implications of that type of feminist theory. I’d like to learn about what their goals and priorities are, and how they plan to destabilize traditional notions of sex and gender.
1 question I still have.
- Throughout the readings, the feminist theory of essentialism was regarded to as problematic. The question I still have is, why exactly that is?
