Athletic Bodies and the Discipline of Culture
Muscle Moll & Butch Ballplayer: Women's Bodies and Athletics (Cahn)
- Looking at the development of women's athletics from 1900-1960 (and beyond) one can see that women's participation is sports has always been fraught with questions about FEMININITY.
- Athletics were defined as a MALE enterprise: competition, strength, aggression, physicality, athleticism all had a MASCULINIZING affect.
- men played games together in this all male domain, but also affirmed their manhood
- women who displayed these features risks some as of their womanhood/femininity.
- the fear of lesbians in sport is mirrored by the rise of relative homophobia in society (as is illustrated in the changing views through WWI and WWII).
- Figure of the mannish lesbian athlete during times of scrutiny is always countered in some way by the corrective image of the feminine, beauty queen
- CHRIS EVERETT vs MARTINA NAVRATALOVA (e.g.)
- some version of this since the 1900s
- had beauty pageants at women's sporting events
- Early questions about the impact of sport
- endangered women and threatened the health and stability of society
- become manlike adopting masculine dress, talk and mannerisms
- damage female reproductive capacity
- cause reproductive organs to harden and atrophy vs make them more fit for bearing children (eugenics-when it is appropriate for women)
- sterility/menstrual dysfunction
- inferior offspring
- cause women to lose moral control (sexual excess-heterosexual)
- emotional breakdowns
- ALL these FEARS made policies which curtailed womens athletics and forbade them during menstruation
- protecting women's procreative value (commodification)
- medicalizing menstruation
- Could get out of gym for menstruating
- Black Female Athletes different perception
- linked to hyper-sexuality, fecundity, animal nature, promiscuity
- were not presumed to be lesbian, but black-aided by greater homophobia in the black community
- allowed black female athletes to control early sports?
- MUSCLE MOLL (1930s)
- disqualified as candidates for heterosexual appeal
- backlash against the roaring 20s female as independent and powerful (post-war)
- post war times always met with a period of conservativism (rebuild family, repopulate, regain original power structure).
- BUTCH BALLPLAYER (1950s)
- homosexual menace meant a crackdown on and criminalization of homosexuality
- women's sports was one target
- national security issue (WHY????)
- raiding of bars, new rules outlawing certain sexual behaviors, increased lesbian stigma
- 1960s answer: regain womanhood by surrendering to men (and traditional relationships)
- prove you are not a lesbian by getting married and having children
- adopt heterosexual female beauty standards
- focus on APPEARANCE (desirability) as a definition of women's health
- evolution of athletic dress codes for women/shaving/etc.
BLACK MALE ATHLETES and our perception of Race
- Our view that black men are better athletes and physically and sexually aggressive (as seen in sports) colors the way that we see black men
- aggressive, threatening, superhuman physical strength, unpredictable, volatile
- For many whites our perceptions of black males — of “blackness” — are derived from sports and entertainment culture.
- We’re accustomed to witnessing black men who, week in and week out, display their imposing physical superiority in front of tens of millions.
- the athlete who doles out and absorbs extraordinary pain — often happens to be black
- studies have shown that of the positions that deliver the biggest hits — defensive ends, safeties, linebackers — the percentage of African-American players is even higher
WHAT IMPACT DOES THIS HAVE ON OUR UNDERSTANDING OF BLACK MEN (and women)?- associating blackness with sports and popular culture gives a skewed perspective of black men and leads to a meaning making of black bodies that centers on hyper-sexuality and aggression.
- seeing black players as people instead of superhuman physically superior and aggressive bodies is made difficult through this lens
- black men are seen as inherently aggressive and able to withstand intense force (accounts for police brutality, killings, vigilante defense, etc.)
TAKING A KNEE: Who Owns Male Athletes Bodies?
Sports is an arena that is very visible And if you can discipline a black body in this space, it sends a message to disciplining black bodies across the country.- Sport has often been a site for not only the expression of tensions in society, but it's also been a laboratory of sorts.
- Self-determination of black athletes has always been a challenge and infringed upon
Mohamed Ali and Viet Nam- Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze track medalists respectively, who stood with upraised fists as the anthem was played during the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968
Kaperneak taking a knee- what happens when black bodies don't conform to what white spectators and consumers want them to be or do or say
punishment by white fans and culture writ large- players as rich, spoiled brats, who don't conform
- revised IOC policy also lifted the requirement for sex reassignment surgery.
- Less settled, however, is the debate about the appropriate upper limit of women's testosterone levels in elite athletic competition. The current IOC policy dictates that transgender women must have a testosterone level less than 10 nanomoles per liter, roughly the low end of typical male values.
- But because more than 99% of women have testosterone levels less than 3 nanomoles per liter, some researchers have suggested that limit is too high.
- CONTROVERSEYS
- South African runner Caster Semenya, who has always competed in women's races and won Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016, recently refocused attention on the testosterone issue. In 2009, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)—the Monaco-based, world-governing body for track and field—controversially required her to take a sex-verification test after she breezed past competitors in the 800-meter race at the IAAF World Championships. The results, leaked during the competition, allegedly revealed that Semenya was intersex and had three times the testosterone of a typical woman. Neither she nor IAAF has ever confirmed that publicly, however
- Within the next few months, IAAF is expected to issue updated testosterone-based regulations for transgender women as well. IOC also plans to announce new testosterone limits for athletes in women's events, which will be in effect for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
- DUTEE CHAND (from other article) given an un-prescribed ultrasound to confirm sex (female)
Transgender women show little to no advantage in studies of transitioning and post-transitioning in athletics- The treatment of female athletes, and intersex women in particular, has a long and sordid history.
- For centuries, sport was the exclusive province of males, the competitive arena where masculinity was cultivated and proven.
- Sport endowed men with the physical and psychological strength that “manhood” required.
- As women in the late 19th century encroached on explicitly male domains — sport, education, paid labor — many in society became increasingly anxious; if a woman’s place wasn’t immutable, maybe a man’s role, and the power it entailed, were not secure either.
- Well into the 20th century, women were discouraged from participating in sports.
- Some medical experts claimed that vigorous exercise would damage women’s reproductive capacity and their fragile emotional state and would make them muscular, “mannish” and unattractive to men.
- Critics fretted that athletics would unbind women from femininity’s modesty and self-restraint.
- Sports has always been the province for manhood and performing masculinity. Sex testing on females serves to preserve this filed of advancement to men. Not protect women's sports.
- Female exertion in sports violates white middle class values for femininity. (acceptable as POC women or lesbians).
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