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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) History and Context
Exercise 1: Notebook Prompt
| I didn’t know it took till 2012 for women to compete in every sport in the olympics.
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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.
| 2024 – Imane Khelif wins Olympic Gold Medal in Boxing
This story is significant because there was outrage about Imane Khelif boxing against women with both competitors, fans, and certain organizations saying she shouldn’t be allowed to compete. In 2023 the international boxing association claimed Khelif failed unspecified gender eligibility tests though Khelif was born a woman and there has been no proof that she isn’t.
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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?
| I wouldn’t say the gendering of sport has ever been a constraint on myself. I’ve never even thought about the gendering of sports until taking this class and learning about all these concepts that have been quite eye-opening. Looking deeper I can see how I was involved in gendered sports like football and hockey growing up, which was all about being masculine, tough, dominant, and competing to be better than the other men I was against. But the word constraint refers to being limited or restricted and I never felt that while playing sports. I enjoyed playing all the sports I did and wasn’t worried about the gendering of them because I just liked what I was doing.
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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?
| Football – Male
Power lifting – Neutral Basketball – Neutral Volleyball – Female Soccer – Neutral Hockey – Male Softball – Female Gymnastics – Female These results confirm my assumptions about gender coding because on 6 of the 8 sports I have the same answer as the majority of people and the two I don’t is just because that the amount I’ve seen it on tv. The two most physically competitve sports where athletes hit eachother are hockey and football and I have assigned those to men whereas sports like gymnastics and volleyball where athletes don’t come in physical contact with their opponents, its more just about strategy I have assigned to females. That pretty much confirms I’m gender coding and basing sports off traits I think men and women possess.
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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’m really torn on this statement. I do believe the issue is way overblown because at the end of the day, all these athletes are just trying compete in their respective sports and at the level they compete at they are all striving to be the best. So if you want to be the best you have to beat the best so to go and complain it’s not fair because an athlete is trans I don’t think reflects the mindset of a high performance athlete and I don’t think alot of athletes are worried about that.
Where I draw the line is for highly physical and combative sports. Mixed martial arts like UFC and boxing where you have two individuals competing directly against eachother I do believe need to be very strict with their guidelines and the idea of allowing trans people to compete in a womens division could ruin the sport. I say this out of a safety perspective cause quite frankly no matter how you slice it a natural male is going to be bigger and stronger than most of the females they compete against if they become trans and switch divisions. If you have a full grown man hitting women that is so dangerous that plenty of people would get hurt so I just don’t think that can be allowed. I do not think trans women competing in womens sports threatens womens sports but I do believe it needs to be monitored when and where they compete.
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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?
| fast twitch vs slow twitch muscle composition
bone density joint flexibility high pain tolerance location such as being born at a high altitude can give endurance advantages access to resources
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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 that in reality we accept that sports are not fair. From the time kids are young the amount of resources they are given, the amount of playing time they get, the opportunities some kids get based on their parents income or favouritism is all unfair. Then as you get older into high level sports once again there is unfairness in the resources teams have. For example Real Madrid having an annual payroll of 272,960,000 Euros competing against Real Sociedad who has a 42,960,000 euros payroll. Or Michael Phelps having Marfan Syndrome traits and hypermobile joints which left him with long limbs and hyperflexibility, which gave him a huge advantage over his opponents. Sports are not fair and as much as we like to say we want them all to be fair, it would take away from the dominance we’ve witnessed and cherished from athletes like phelps and bolt. So I am in favour with that sports are in fair but I’m not against them being unfair depending on the conditions.
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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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Robins is saying that the scrutiny of athletes gender which is posed as concerns about fairness in women’s sports is not actually about the sports. Instead, she believes that “transvestigations” are motivated by anxieties and prejudices about trans people. Pretty much their not protecting women’s sports or ensuring fair play, they are just a socially acceptable way to question and challenge the legitimacy of trans women’s.
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