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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| Make a note of anything that surprised you in this episode or something new that you learned.
Something that I learned from this episode was about the bar body test that was done in 1967. This test aimed to identify female athletes’ chromosomal patterns, and those who passed were issued “femininity cards” to prove their eligibility to compete in women’s events. |
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 (Tokyo): Achieved near gender parity, with 48.8% female participation.
This is important as it shows that there is equal participation when it comes to the Olympics between both men and women’s sports. There is almost equal numbers between the men and women’s participation.
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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 female athlete who played soccer at a high level, I saw firsthand how gender inequality affected my experience. In college, the men’s soccer team had more support, better resources, and more opportunities than the women’s team. They had more trainers, better access to facilities, and extra chances for development, like funding for travel and recruitment. The reason given for this was that the men’s team had done better in the past. But that didn’t seem fair—f the women’s team had the same support, we could have improved just as much. Instead, the school kept investing more in the men’s team, making the gap even bigger. It felt like no matter how hard we worked, we weren’t valued the same way.
It was frustrating because both teams were varsity athletes and represented the same school. We put in just as much effort, but we didn’t get the same opportunities. This is a clear example of how the way sports are structured can hold female athletes back instead of giving them a fair shot.
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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?
| After completing the padlet I found that most of my answers that I voted was what majority of people also voted for. Two sports that I was surprised with was martial arts and golf. I voted that these two sports were more neutral but majority of the votes was male. I was happy that soccer was a neutral majority as a female soccer player myself.
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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.
| This is a complex issue that brings up important questions about fairness, inclusion, and the way women’s sports are treated in broader conversations. Leah Thomas’ statement points out that trans women make up a very small percentage of athletes and that NCAA rules allowing their participation have existed for over a decade without a major takeover of women’s sports. Some politicians and influencers suddenly claim to care about protecting women’s sports, but they’ve never fought for equal pay, better media coverage, or more resources for female athletes. This makes people question if they actually care about women’s sports or if they’re just using the issue for their own agenda.
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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?
| Rose Eveleth points out that top athletes are often born with special traits that help them perform better. For example, some have genes that make their muscles stronger, help them use oxygen more efficiently, or give them other physical advantages that make them naturally better at their sport. Eveleth explains that fairness in sports is complicated because many athletes have natural physical advantages that have nothing to do with gender. This raises questions about what really counts as an “unfair” advantage and who gets to decide.
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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 Barnes that sports aren’t really fair, especially when it comes to things like resources, training, and natural advantages some athletes have. For example, men’s sports often get more funding, and some athletes have advantages just because of when they’re born. But that’s part of what makes sports interesting athletes pushing through these challenges and still performing at a high level, which makes their achievements more inspiring.
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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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