This is the third part of a three part article on the evolution of masculinity, femininity, gender, and sexuality in sports.
Societal norms and behaviors are refracted through the sporting body, and athletics often act as a reflection of socially constructed representational politics. While sports can reproduce pre-existing gendered ideologies, external perceptions of the athletic body and its effect on gender specific self-consciousness also actively shapes discursive understandings of self-identity and transverse, or deepen, constructions of gendered athletic spheres.
Sports act as a representative medium for the formation of individual manhood, and the valorization of the heroic ethos allows for the construction of a glorification of the masculine body. Throughout history, sporting discourse has explored the sexualized classification of sporting figures, and how the gendered body of male athletes negotiates within, or functions against, underlying social understandings and pre-conceived perceptions of masculinity and sexuality. By constructing separate athletic spheres, males have inherently marginalized the self-identity of women through their sexualized objectification and their dissociation from masculine-defined sporting glorification and social agency.
Over time, individuals have gone from explicitly exploiting the sporting body in a systematic embrace of cultural manifestations of a gender specific self-identity to more implicitly policing any representations of a feminized sporting body that is not aligned with socially accepted heteronormative masculinity. While not beholden to a monolithic gendered classification, the culturally contrived and dictated formulation of the male sporting body has been used to codify masculinity and male dominance, while also being composed as a dichotomous construction to feminine sexualization and objectification.
In the contemporary sporting world, gender specific identity concerns have constructed a hetero-normative social order. During interviews at the NFL Combine, Atlanta Falcons assistant coach Marquand Manuel asked Ohio State cornerback prospect Eli Apple in an interview, “Do you like men?” The fundamental perverseness of the inquiry was the underlying connotation that it took a specific type of “manhood” to make it to the top in “manly sports.” The Falcons were attempting to ensure Apple’s compliance to a self-prescribed league dictum of the specific internal male testosterone needed to compete at the highest level. The question also implied that the basis of male sports was an attachment to a very specific type of sporting sphere, detached from any remnants of effeminacy or perceptions of physical or sexual weakness. It confirmed a sporting standard of thinking based upon the culturally constructed concept of patriarchal “hegemonic masculinity.”
Before NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay in 2013, he was recognized as one of the toughest players in the league, but after his announcement, he had to prove that his sexuality did not make him soft. Travis Waldron said Jason Collins had "to affirm that there isn’t a relationship between his sexuality and other signs of masculinity” because the league assumed that homosexuality was antagonistic to physical success.
The image of a specific type of manhood is so well imbedded into the fabric of the sporting culture that Odell Beckham lost his self-control after opposing players on the Carolina Panthers reportedly hurled gay slurs at him. In an attempt to defend his aggressive black masculinity from the stigma of any feminized traits, Odell reinforced an embodiment of strength and toughness by acting recklessly on the field. Michael Irvin defended Beckham, saying, “Everybody goes after him with gay slurs. He's a different kind of dude. He has the hairdo out, he's not the big muscular kind of dude... I can’t promise you that [I would have handle it correctly.] That is why they give you leniency for crimes for passion.” Irving justified Beckham’s actions through the notion that he had to conspicuously protect his manhood when he felt like the victim of an assault on his identity.
Beckham is a threat to conceptions of forceful black masculinity because he has dominated the league for two years (see: one-handed catch against the Cowboys), but he does not conform to masculine standards of athleticism off the field. Beckham is in videos all over the internet dancing with former LSU teammate Kavahra Holmes, he dyes his hair, and he had a moment when he was caught looking at teammate Landon Collins's butt. Rafi D’Angelo claimed in the magazine Slate, “We need more black men who aren’t afraid to live outside of the box of black masculinity built for us by society.” The Panthers players assumed that Beckham had to have a compromised sexuality because sports understanding of heterosexuality limits any expression beyond established norms. While Beckham's reckless actions during the game cannot be justified by what the Panthers players may have said to him before it, the bipolar masculine construct of not being able to "live outside the box" while still reproducing individual manhood was one of the reasons why Odell lashed out during the game.
Men
have constructed a social attitude towards the femininity of female athletes in
such a way as to reconstruct their own gendered self-understanding. Similar to how the NCAA created a construct of "student first, athlete second" to maintain their claims of amateurism, the
sexualization of female athletes has asserted “woman first, athlete second,”
and marginalized their place in the sports world relative to men. The dichotomous
construct between males and females in athletics has been challenged by the
dominance of women in sports who are perceived to be symbolic of masculinity.
However, Kate Fagan mentioned, “Women's basketball is maligned for not being as athletic as the men's game, but as women become more athletic, these players are often labeled as unfeminine, and therefore unwatchable.”
Brittany Griner is constantly referred to as a “man” or a “gorilla” because it gives the public a way to justify how her athleticism in a masculine space displaces her femininity and womanhood. Unlike how American tennis player Helen Wills was constructed as maintaining her “girlish beauty” in tennis because she ostensibly accepted her different sporting sphere, women like Griner have carved out a space in a masculine realm. Sporting discourse has had to aggressively assert her basketball ability as a product of a divergent feminine defect in her nature to reinforce perceptions of hegemonic masculinity.
Baylor University was happy to exploit Griner’s feats on the basketball court, but she could not discuss her homosexuality because the school wanted to maintain an image that did not transcend normative lines of sexuality. Waldron said that when Griner came out as gay, “it confirms the idea that a woman who succeeds in athletics does so because she’s breaking with expectations for women, both physically and sexually.” The reaction to Griner’s sexuality was muted because the public assumes female homosexuality in male sporting spheres, and that their success is a product of that masculinization. The connotation was that women could not conform to a gendered self-identity because of their sexuality, and that they could not maintain their athletic prowess and stay within the norm of femininity.
In 2013, hockey broadcaster Don Cherry said, "I don’t believe women should be in the male dressing room.... I don't feel women are equal. I feel they’re above us. I think they're on a pedestal and they should not be walking in when naked guys are walking in. And some guys take advantage of it.” Cherry showed the subconscious male need to concretely separate the masculine athletic sphere from any female involvement. He reinforced the public’s conception of a possible female obstruction to manhood, and argued for unequal access to the male sporting body between the genders, even though excluding female media members from male locker rooms would subvert their ability to carry out their job. Cherry represented the way in which men trivialized the female role in the sporting community to reinforce sports as a “men’s game,” and propagated protectionism over the locker room as an impenetrable masculinized domain of power for a gendered superiority.
Men are not always comfortable with women who exceed their sporting knowledge because it acts as an affront to their masculine identification within the athletic arena. For example, on a Fox Sports Radio morning show, Mike North said, "Jessica Mendoza is the worst baseball announcer who has ever announced the game of baseball. Now, if you want to call me a sexist, go ahead. But I'm an observer." While North should not be precluded from judging Mendoza's performance just as he critiqued Dennis Miller and Tony Kornheiser's jobs on Monday Night Football, he gave no actual evidence as to why Mendoza was so terrible at her job. North implied that Miller and Kornheiser were not good analysts because of the content of their message to the audience, but his dislike of Mendoza came off as a mere function of her gender without further explanation of his point.
All sports media members, but specifically women, are subjected to abuse from people on social media. Sarah Spain, a columnist for ESPN, reflected how she receives tweets every day like “Why don’t you take your top off and just make me lunch,” showing that women are not welcomed into masculine spaces and athletic spheres.
Through the prism of sports, external perceptions of the athletic body and its symbolic effect on a gender specific self-consciousness can be acutely examined. Sports act as a representative medium for the formation of masculinity, and to reproduce understandings of self-identity. Gender concretizations have constructed separate athletic spheres for males and females to avoid a pluralistic understanding of sexuality. The male sporting body has been used as a symbolic codification of masculinity, and male dominance is portrayed as a conspicuous foil to feminine sexualization and objectification.
Societal norms and behaviors are refracted through the sporting body, and athletics often act as a reflection of socially constructed representational politics. While sports can reproduce pre-existing gendered ideologies, external perceptions of the athletic body and its effect on gender specific self-consciousness also actively shapes discursive understandings of self-identity and transverse, or deepen, constructions of gendered athletic spheres.
Sports act as a representative medium for the formation of individual manhood, and the valorization of the heroic ethos allows for the construction of a glorification of the masculine body. Throughout history, sporting discourse has explored the sexualized classification of sporting figures, and how the gendered body of male athletes negotiates within, or functions against, underlying social understandings and pre-conceived perceptions of masculinity and sexuality. By constructing separate athletic spheres, males have inherently marginalized the self-identity of women through their sexualized objectification and their dissociation from masculine-defined sporting glorification and social agency.
Over time, individuals have gone from explicitly exploiting the sporting body in a systematic embrace of cultural manifestations of a gender specific self-identity to more implicitly policing any representations of a feminized sporting body that is not aligned with socially accepted heteronormative masculinity. While not beholden to a monolithic gendered classification, the culturally contrived and dictated formulation of the male sporting body has been used to codify masculinity and male dominance, while also being composed as a dichotomous construction to feminine sexualization and objectification.
In the contemporary sporting world, gender specific identity concerns have constructed a hetero-normative social order. During interviews at the NFL Combine, Atlanta Falcons assistant coach Marquand Manuel asked Ohio State cornerback prospect Eli Apple in an interview, “Do you like men?” The fundamental perverseness of the inquiry was the underlying connotation that it took a specific type of “manhood” to make it to the top in “manly sports.” The Falcons were attempting to ensure Apple’s compliance to a self-prescribed league dictum of the specific internal male testosterone needed to compete at the highest level. The question also implied that the basis of male sports was an attachment to a very specific type of sporting sphere, detached from any remnants of effeminacy or perceptions of physical or sexual weakness. It confirmed a sporting standard of thinking based upon the culturally constructed concept of patriarchal “hegemonic masculinity.”
Before NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay in 2013, he was recognized as one of the toughest players in the league, but after his announcement, he had to prove that his sexuality did not make him soft. Travis Waldron said Jason Collins had "to affirm that there isn’t a relationship between his sexuality and other signs of masculinity” because the league assumed that homosexuality was antagonistic to physical success.
The image of a specific type of manhood is so well imbedded into the fabric of the sporting culture that Odell Beckham lost his self-control after opposing players on the Carolina Panthers reportedly hurled gay slurs at him. In an attempt to defend his aggressive black masculinity from the stigma of any feminized traits, Odell reinforced an embodiment of strength and toughness by acting recklessly on the field. Michael Irvin defended Beckham, saying, “Everybody goes after him with gay slurs. He's a different kind of dude. He has the hairdo out, he's not the big muscular kind of dude... I can’t promise you that [I would have handle it correctly.] That is why they give you leniency for crimes for passion.” Irving justified Beckham’s actions through the notion that he had to conspicuously protect his manhood when he felt like the victim of an assault on his identity.
Carolina Panthers players taunted Odell Beckham before the game with a bat and possibly homophobic comments.
Beckham is a threat to conceptions of forceful black masculinity because he has dominated the league for two years (see: one-handed catch against the Cowboys), but he does not conform to masculine standards of athleticism off the field. Beckham is in videos all over the internet dancing with former LSU teammate Kavahra Holmes, he dyes his hair, and he had a moment when he was caught looking at teammate Landon Collins's butt. Rafi D’Angelo claimed in the magazine Slate, “We need more black men who aren’t afraid to live outside of the box of black masculinity built for us by society.” The Panthers players assumed that Beckham had to have a compromised sexuality because sports understanding of heterosexuality limits any expression beyond established norms. While Beckham's reckless actions during the game cannot be justified by what the Panthers players may have said to him before it, the bipolar masculine construct of not being able to "live outside the box" while still reproducing individual manhood was one of the reasons why Odell lashed out during the game.
Odell Beckham was suspended for a game after his misconduct against the Panthers.
Brittany Griner is constantly referred to as a “man” or a “gorilla” because it gives the public a way to justify how her athleticism in a masculine space displaces her femininity and womanhood. Unlike how American tennis player Helen Wills was constructed as maintaining her “girlish beauty” in tennis because she ostensibly accepted her different sporting sphere, women like Griner have carved out a space in a masculine realm. Sporting discourse has had to aggressively assert her basketball ability as a product of a divergent feminine defect in her nature to reinforce perceptions of hegemonic masculinity.
Baylor University was happy to exploit Griner’s feats on the basketball court, but she could not discuss her homosexuality because the school wanted to maintain an image that did not transcend normative lines of sexuality. Waldron said that when Griner came out as gay, “it confirms the idea that a woman who succeeds in athletics does so because she’s breaking with expectations for women, both physically and sexually.” The reaction to Griner’s sexuality was muted because the public assumes female homosexuality in male sporting spheres, and that their success is a product of that masculinization. The connotation was that women could not conform to a gendered self-identity because of their sexuality, and that they could not maintain their athletic prowess and stay within the norm of femininity.
In 2013, hockey broadcaster Don Cherry said, "I don’t believe women should be in the male dressing room.... I don't feel women are equal. I feel they’re above us. I think they're on a pedestal and they should not be walking in when naked guys are walking in. And some guys take advantage of it.” Cherry showed the subconscious male need to concretely separate the masculine athletic sphere from any female involvement. He reinforced the public’s conception of a possible female obstruction to manhood, and argued for unequal access to the male sporting body between the genders, even though excluding female media members from male locker rooms would subvert their ability to carry out their job. Cherry represented the way in which men trivialized the female role in the sporting community to reinforce sports as a “men’s game,” and propagated protectionism over the locker room as an impenetrable masculinized domain of power for a gendered superiority.
Don Cherry commenting on women in the NHL locker room, which just made Ron MacLean cringe.
Men are not always comfortable with women who exceed their sporting knowledge because it acts as an affront to their masculine identification within the athletic arena. For example, on a Fox Sports Radio morning show, Mike North said, "Jessica Mendoza is the worst baseball announcer who has ever announced the game of baseball. Now, if you want to call me a sexist, go ahead. But I'm an observer." While North should not be precluded from judging Mendoza's performance just as he critiqued Dennis Miller and Tony Kornheiser's jobs on Monday Night Football, he gave no actual evidence as to why Mendoza was so terrible at her job. North implied that Miller and Kornheiser were not good analysts because of the content of their message to the audience, but his dislike of Mendoza came off as a mere function of her gender without further explanation of his point.
All sports media members, but specifically women, are subjected to abuse from people on social media. Sarah Spain, a columnist for ESPN, reflected how she receives tweets every day like “Why don’t you take your top off and just make me lunch,” showing that women are not welcomed into masculine spaces and athletic spheres.
The online video campaign "More Than Mean" highlighted the harassment of women in the sports world on social media.
Through the prism of sports, external perceptions of the athletic body and its symbolic effect on a gender specific self-consciousness can be acutely examined. Sports act as a representative medium for the formation of masculinity, and to reproduce understandings of self-identity. Gender concretizations have constructed separate athletic spheres for males and females to avoid a pluralistic understanding of sexuality. The male sporting body has been used as a symbolic codification of masculinity, and male dominance is portrayed as a conspicuous foil to feminine sexualization and objectification.
