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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| It really surprised me that they were treating these athletes like that. I was surprised that they could not come to a final decision, in letting these women run in only some races but not other races. I don’t think that is fair at all to the athletes. Hearing that women had to carry around a card “proving” that they were a woman is extremely insane. I don’t think it is fair that women had to do this, but men did not have to deal with half of these issues.
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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.
| I think they should include when they decided to stop screening females in a degrading way to determine if they were “actually female”. I believe that knowing how long they did this for could impact people much more. It would be able to portray how big of an issue this was and how many years and how many people this effected.
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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?
| When I was in high school, I played volleyball. I loved the sport and often found that our games caught a lot of the high school boys attention. I always wondered why, because boys often think they are too good to watch women play sports, especially at the age we were at. After asking questions, and talking to some of my boy friends, I learned that the reason why they loved watching us play is because of what we were wearing. Our uniforms were a tight tank top along with tight short shorts. After that, I always felt a bit uncomfortable playing in front of boys, because I felt like we were judged more on our appearance, rather than skill and ability at the sport.
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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?
| Figure skating: female, rugby: neutral, tennis: neutral, swimming: neutral, cheerleading: female, baseball: male, gymnastics: female, hockey: neutral, softball: female, basketball: male, powerlifting: male, volleyball: female, soccer: neutral, football: male
These polling responses for the most part confirmed my assumptions about gender coding in sports. It surprised me that hockey wasn’t a gender neutral sport as I believe it is becoming more popular with women. Other than hockey, nothing surprised me, especially football, gymnastics, and figure skating.
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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 agree with Leah Thomas statement to an extent. I believe that there is not a threat as of right now to woman’s sports as a whole because trans women are a small minority of all the athletes. I believe that right now, it is not a massive threat and that it is being made into a larger deal. I can see both sides of the argument, but overall I think many people (politicians and influencers) may get involved with topics such as this to “prove a point” although they do not know much about the topic. I think that Leah Thomas’s statement is understandable, and many people are going to have different opinions, but it is important they find a proper way to include trans women into the sport, that is fair for everybody.
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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 had a lot to say about the issue on unfair advantage. She started off by explaining the “perfect athlete” and related it to like being created in a lab test tube. It takes many differ5ent aspects to become a great athlete, she explains, and that these issues aren’t the number one advantage that good athletes have. It takes proper training, good shoes, and good diet. Herself, and others explain that they can see peoples arguments, but how the association is dealing with this issue is far from fair to the athletes who are being misgendered and not allowed to compete in their sport.
In women’s sports, such as hockey, some women naturally are much taller, stronger and faster than the other players. This has nothing to do with how they have been trained, but instead just a unique biological difference than the others.
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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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In Favor- I completely agree that sports are not fair, whether we like it or not. If sports were “fair”, everyone would have to wear the same footwear and same equipment. Everyone would have to be the same weight and the same height along with the exact same diet, and training. To tie into this subject matter, everyone would have to have the exact same biological differences. When you take a deeper look into the situation, sports are already unfair and that’s what makes it interesting. I believe that you sign up to play sports to play against a variety of different people, some who may challenge you, and some who you may challenge. In the end, following the rules in sports is the only part that is “fair” and if you aren’t following the rules, it is understandable to not be able to perform in your sport. Other than rules, I think that sports will always be unfair and that is exactly (to certain extents) what people sign up for.
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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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