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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
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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.
| If I had to add another case to this timeline, I would add the events of February 6 2025. On this day, President Trump signed three orders that would restrict transgender rights. One is called the “No Men in Women’s Sports Executive Order” that bans transgender women from competing in women’s sports. I feel that this is important to add as it shows that society has not progressed as much as people want to believe and that it still has serious deep routed transphobia, showing that we must fight to make a difference.
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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?
| In my personal experience, the gendering of sport has never really been a constraint on my involvement. I believe this is due to my sport of choice being dance which was often deemed a ‘girls’ sport and I am a cis white girl. I think that I fit the so-called expectations of what was understood as the norm in dance culture therefore I was lucky enough to face no issues.
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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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My responses: Football: male Soccer: neutral Power lifting: neutral Volleyball: female Basketball: male Softball: female Gymnastics: neutral Hockey: neutral None of the polling figures really surprised me, they all came out with the responses that I expected. I chose neutral from some of my responses while knowing that the majority would differ from my opinion. For example, powerlifting and soccer, I chose neutral due to my exposure to those sports, but I knew that majority would say male.
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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.
| Yes, I agree with the statement above. I believe that there has been a resurgence of transphobia in recent years that has been aided by social media and its ability to spread misinformation like wildfire. I think that politicians and influencers severely exaggerate numbers to fear monger people into believing that there is a larger issue at hand. I think that when Trump took office back in 2016, he allowed people to believe that it is okay to spew hatred beliefs, creating a trend that has followed through to current times.
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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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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 with Katie Barns that “sports, by design, are not fair”. There are a variety of issues that reside within sports as an institution that cause unfairness starting at youth levels. For example, there is often a lot of favouritism in youth sports. I witnessed this through my brother when he was younger, many times the son of the coach was chosen for captain of the hockey team, a clear sign of favouritism. I think that one’s social economic status also plays a part in the unfairness within sports as many athletes may not have access to higher quality training and opportunities, hindering their abilities within a certain league.
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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.
| Robins is arguing that ‘transvestigating’ has basically nothing to do with people’s passion for women’s sports and everything to do with transphobia. It seems as though people are not focusing on women’s sports and the ways to better their organizations but rather just using it as a scapegoat for their hatred.
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