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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
The first thing that I learned was about the bar-body test and how it was protested by many people, including activists and people in the medical community to try and get them to stop the chromosome tests, and even published journals and went to the IOC to say that it is wrong and unethical. Also that the creator of the test wrote to the COC to tell them to stop using the test. Worse still, the sports organizations did not heed these protests. Next, the IOC commissioner defended the test, saying that it gives a definite answer and that it is ideal for them. Also, some athletes supported the test, which is upsetting because I feel like they should not care much who they are competing against and instead, that they can compete at all. I was also surprised that athletes were required to carry around a certificate, and had to present it who prompted. I was not surprised to know that this test drove many women away from sports. As always, I was impressed that people stood up to to sports committees on the grounds of inclusiveness and it never ceases to amaze me that these protests catch traction and that it works on a large enough front to eradicate it and cause policy-level changes, including the IOC to fold its screening effort. I was surprised that after such an effort, that sex testing came back in 2009, though the show did not elaborate. I find this very disturbing as it is a backwards step in the fight for gender-inclusiveness.
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.
| An important event that I would add is that in 2000, the IOC agreed to suspend sex testing for the year, as mentioned in the podcast. I think this is an important step in moving towards inclusion, as the olympics should because sex testing literally prevented many highly qualified athletes from participating and stopping this would have allowed them to participate. It also gives women more dignity as they did not have to present their gender passports to people anymore, allowing them a bit more privacy and preventing their fear of being unjustly disqualified. |
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?
| It has not stopped me from participating in the sports for the most part, for example, hockey and tennis. Playing these sports as a male, I never felt the pressure to adhere to their stereotypes as Barnes did (8). Also, in my minor hockey career, the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF) implemented their inclusion policy, saying that any gendered violence and bullying was cause for removal from the league, which allowed people to feel more safe to express themselves on the ice. Relating to tennis, there was no formal verification of sex that could stop me from playing like what the IOC conducted on women’s sports. I do think that gendering changed my experience in hockey, though it did not stop me playing. Especially as I aged, I noticed that players were conforming to the “guys should bulk up” stereotype, and I did not seem to get any bigger. This resulted in being an easy target to hit, as I weighed substantially less than my opponents. I did not want to bulk up for hockey as I needed to keep my cardio endurance up for tennis, so in this way, I think gendering minimized my enjoyment of hockey as I was always being hit in my upper years. A way that I believe it has stopped my involvement is that when I was younger, I wanted to play club volleyball as we played in gym class I a lot and I always enjoyed and was quite good at it. However, due to growing up in a small town, gendering is still a ramped issue in most contexts, especially for sports like boys volleyball. There was no team anywhere near me as when there was one, it would get shut down because most people that lived around us would not tryout because volleyball was not a popular sport as it was seen as more feminine as Barnes Mentioned (8). As a result there was never a team, or even a league close enough for me to play. |
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: male tennis: neutral swimming: neutral cheerleading: female softball: female gymnastics: female hockey: male volleyball: female basketball: male power lifting: male soccer: neutral footback: male
In almost every case, the majority people voted for the same gendering direction as me. One instance that suprised me was that more people than I thought picked neutral for power lifting. Overall, these results confirmed my predictions about gendering in sports. The sports that are coded as more feminine are voted as such. Another thing that surprised me was the variety of responses in the softball poll as I feel like I’ve heard more about women’s softball than men’s. |
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 think I agree with this statement. To begin, I have not heard of many instances of transgender women dominating female sports. I do not think that Gaines was justified in being upset, despite the fact that she lost the race, but I believe she lost fairly, as Thomas is, by every definition, a female. The testosterone suppressants that she is on will put her testosterone at a level similar to her competition, which will lower her muscle mass and not allow her to become significantly stronger than her competition. Next, regarding the question relating to whether transgender athletes are taking spots from cis-gender athletes, I believe this is not true because most transgender women are taking testosterone suppressants, rendering any biomedical advantage they had over a cis-gender woman useless because testosterone is associated with muscle mass and increased strength and suppressing that means that they will not not differ in strength. This means that transgender women have no advantage over cis-gender women and losing to them is the same as losing to any other competitor. Relating to the image, I believe that this means that politicians such as Baker do not care about women’s sports, and as a result of less attention, more transgendered athletes are slipping under the radar, or just not many of them are openly transgender, due to fear of repercussions of coming out. |
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?
| There are several parts that contribute to getting and advantage, such as time, money, mentality, weight, muscle mass and body types. Some of these are genetic factors that have been shown to predispose people to do better, such as EPOR, which allows them to make more red blood cells and have more oxygen in the blood, as well as other genetic factors. Some of these athletes are viewed as icons, because they are so good at sports, when it was just given to them through genetics. World athletics does not think they are cheating, but will not allow them to play. Sports are divided by sex, so advantages that are connected to sex are regulated. When sex testing was suspended, companies were given 2 years to find evidence that these advantages are too much to justify keeping, which is similar to giving tobacco companies time to suggest that smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer. When WA researchers published a paper that found that testosterone levels could impact performance of events, but critics rebutted this due to conflict of interests, and untrue data. They made a policy that testosterone levels had to be lowered for those that want to compete at the women’s events, and WA did not do anything, despite the new study results that found less of an advantage. This had to be challenged again in 2019. Despite this, males do not fake being female to compete in the female sports to have a better chance of winning. In response to losing the case, they used language that depicts transgender women as males as a way to stop the need for studies that compare women to women, but can instead compare men and women, which they already have the data to do. The question of unfair advantage cannot be answered by just looking at the lab data. The WA won the second case, upholding the discrimination against transgender women and not letting them play, expanding the rules to apply to all events.
Other examples of biological advantages, is left handed tennis players tend to fare well, as most of the tennis world plays right handed, and is used to playing against right handers. Left handed people spin the ball the opposite way, their backhand will be on the opposite, which is usually the weaker stroke, so the opponent requires more brain power to play against left handed players. Kawhi Leonard has massive hands, which help him hold the ball with more control, which gets him more points than most. |
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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I agree that sports are not fair and that we accept a lot of unfairness at both the elite and children’s levels. For instance, most of the calls that a referee makes in hockey tend to be quite subjective. If a different ref sees the same play, there is a good chance that they would make a different call, or even no call at all. Even with all the instant replay in use for hockey, there is still no way to make those calls 100% objective. Regarding the example above about Phelps, I would say that is a definition of unfairness, despite the lack of control he has. He is one of the most decorated athletes of all time, and a dynasty in the olympics, at least in part due to the biological advantages he has, even over other male competitors. It got to the point, that when he would race, he would be expected to win, and usually, he did. In terms of sports being designed to be unfair, I think the best examples of this relates to finances, of which tennis is a good example. The better the play is, the more they will win and the more prize money they will earn. On top of this, the more popular names appear in more commercials, can form bigger partnerships with sponsors and other companies, thus bringing in more money that they can put toward more training and better coach and so on. All the while, the lower ranked players are unable to afford these expenses, and will therefore have a slower development so its sort of like a “rich get richer” situation. A similar situation at a lower level is that financially well off families that I know through people are able to put their kids through elite level sport training programs and private schools just because they can afford it, despite their children being a lower caliber than other, poorer children that could make it if their parents could afford it. To circle back to sex testing, and other parts of this module, even though the point of it was to make sports fair and “even the playing field” the exclusion of many highly qualified athletes due to higher testosterone levels made it very unfair to them because they were unable to play the sport they loved at the high level they wanted to. |
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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