2 Chapter Two: Playing with Gender
Kelly McGuire and kimberleymcgrath
Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| Card Carrying Females
What surprised me the most is the blatant discrimination against females athletes with the card carrying policy in general. Men were not subject to a card carrying discrimination and oppression. The most surprising was the length of time being from 1968 to 1999 that the chromosome testing for gender identification was used in elite sport. The fact that it took so many years and included push back from several medical and scientific sources to end the practice of gender identification is shocking. The pushback from the media, postcards from athletes and numerous medical and science professionals finally ended the unfair and unfound practice of chromosome testing. Surprising that the governing bodies of elite sport chose to ignore the science when they were supposedly relying on science in the first place. It is sad and surprising that over those many years of 1968 to 1999, a lot of female athletes were unfairly disqualified from competing after spending years in training.
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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.
| A significant event in sport was held in 1973, it is referred to as the “Battle of the sexes” when Billie Jean King won a professional tennis match against Bobby Riggs. Riggs was a former number one ranked male tennis player. The event was important as Riggs use to taunt and badger women tennis players that they were inferior to the male athlete. The event proved Riggs was wrong and sexist in his attitude towards women and women athletes.
It was important at the time because the second wave of feminism was happening in 1973. It was a different time for women’s feminist movement and women did not have many of the rights we have today. The win of female versus male in sport was a boost to feminism and women in general. The win by Billie Jean promoted women’s tennis and proved that women were competitive and could win on the court. Women were not feeble and weak in sport. It was important for all female athletes to showcase the talent of women.
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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?
| The gendering of sport was a always a constraint for females years ago. I grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s when sports activities such as soccer or rugby was not offered to female students at all. There were no school or recreational opportunities for girls other than the female gender coded sports of softball, gymnastics and figure skating to name a few. My brothers were offered the opportunity to play rugby, football, hockey, and wrestling along with volleyball, basketball at school. None of these sporting activities involved or welcomed girls.
On the other hand, girls could be the cheerleaders, or they were welcomed to play skipping rope. :0( I am so glad to see young girls more involved in male gender coded sports.
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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?
| Softball = female
Gymnastics = female Hockey = male Volleyball = neutral Basketball = male Power lifting = male Soccer = neutral Football = male There is no surprise that the polling answers are tied and match the popular imagination surrounding sport. This confirms the bias still exists in gender sport coding. The majority of sporting activities listed are male dominated or neutral. The polling figures confirm that the sports requiring more muscle, endurance and aggression are male gendered coded sport. This remains true at a school and elite athlete level.
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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.
| Trans women competing in women’s sport is a complex and complicated issue. The complexity is how to assess advantage and be fair to all the athletes involved. Sport is a passionate part of people’s lives.
I agree that there is minimal impact of a small majority of trans women competing in women’s sport. The statistics from the CSPAN interview with Charlie Baker stated 10 in a field of 510,000. To put this number into perspective that is .0000196078 which is .0019961 percent. This is a very small number. Therefore, on a macro or whole basis trans women are not dominating and trans women do not win every sporting event they enter. Therefore, we can fairly say trans women do not threaten women’s sport. Right wing and ultra right wing politicians use transgender in sport to create moral panic. However, on an individual basis, how do we determine advantage? When the field of athletes are competing, the question becomes does the trans woman have an advantage or disadvantage in a sporting event. This is the complicated part of the issue. Again, how can we be fair to all the athletes involved.
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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 presents strong arguments in the unfair advantage issue for athletes. Eveleth argues there are numerous advantages in sport. After listening to the hypothetical test tube advantage analogy, I think there are many more genetic factors that contribute to advantage than testosterone levels. The genetic pool we are born with is more or less a lottery. Some people win and some do not. An important fact that Eveleth makes is that all the other biological advantages are not tested and do not exclude athletes. This is because sport is divided by sex.
Other examples of biological or circumstantial advantages are the body type you are born with. For instance, the ectomorph body type is small frame and slim, they make good long distance runners. Athletes with the endomorph body type have a larger frame and more muscle and they make good wrestlers. Also, athletes have different lung capacities, for example the swimmer Michael Phelps has an advantage in lung capacity with his ability to breathe in and expel a larger volume of air from his lungs. This is not tied to gender, it is a biological advantage. Circumstantial advantage is when you have the opportunity to grow up in a home environment were athletes is promoted. For example, your parents are athletic and promote sport from a young age. Also, parents who have the financial means to involve children in sport from a young age.
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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 “sports, by design, are not fair. Fair is about advantage and this is certainly true in sport. Advantage comes in many forms, biological, economical and class. Society does accept the reality that sports are unfair. It seems to be an accepted part of the game and the winning. If sport was fair and there were no advantages, then the decision to use doping to increase performance would go away.
In my experience, the elementary school physical education teachers did a good job of making sports fun and fair. There was an equal chance to win and for everyone to be successful. However, in my experience this all changes in high school and beyond. The gifted athletes are awarded huge scholarships (in the USA). Athletes are held in high esteem, admired and often worshipped by society. Evidence is the outrageous salaries paid to professional athletes.
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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.
| I think what Robins means is that transvestigating is a word used for the permissible discrimination against transgender in sport. This is evidenced by the very small number of athletes involved. Trans athletes are targeted and used to exaggerate advantage and to serve the purpose of promoting transphobia.
Instead of focusing on trans advantage, albeit small, it is time to look outside the box. I think other advantages in sport are celebrated and noted, for instance, very tall basketball players or elite swimmers with long arms. Perhaps, professional leagues should examine all athlete advantages either biological or circumstantial and award handicaps in sporting competition. That would certainly shake up the sporting elite.
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