CHAPTER 9

Sexualities, Genders, and Bodies in

Sport: Changing Practices of Inequity

Kevin G. Davison and Blye W. Frank

The social realm of sport is particularly well positioned to examine the ways in which
sexuality and gender intersect. This chapter will interrogate how sporting bodies
have been sorted and categorized and how our tendency to rely on rigid categories
of gender and sexuality has affected the lives of many who participate in sport. As
will be suggested, critically examining the concepts of ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ opens
up the possibility of demystifying some taken-for-granted assumptions that help
produce and reproduce practices such as harassment, discrimination, and inequi-
ties in sport. We conclude this chapter with some recommendations for progressive
change in relation to lesbian, gay, and transgendered athletes.

CATEGORY CRISIS
In recent years there has been a shift in thinking about how we understand our
lives as lived in what has been called the ‘postmodern condition’. Many of the previ-
ously dominant foundational theories of sociology, or ‘grand narratives’ as they are
sometimes known, have been challenged on the grounds that they are too rigid,
exclusionary, or simply no longer relevant in a rapidly changing and complex world
(Lyotard, 1989). Their legitimacy has also been called to question on the basis that
they benefit some people at the expense of others. Gender and sexuality are two such
social categories that are based on a rigid binary relationship (i.e., masculine/femi-
nine, heterosexual/homosexual) in which one of the pair is privileged, legitimized,
and valued over the other—specifically, masculinity over femininity, and heterosexu-
ality over homosexuality.
Gender and sexuality are actually much more complex social constructions.
Moreover, and critically, they play an important role in processes of social regulation
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 179

and control (Foucault, 1980). In response to these entrenched relations of power,

‘queer theorists’ are now developing critical analyses that disrupt the way binaries
have been employed. In doing so, they seek to create spaces where these categories
are changed. While the breakdown, or ‘queering’, of tidy and normative binaries may
seem uncomfortable to some, the discomfort may provoke a renegotiation of gender
and sexualities that might help erode social inequalities based on sexuality and gender.
Feminist Trinh Minh-Ha has pointed out that ‘despite our desperate, eternal
attempt to separate, contain, and mend, categories always leak’ (1989: 94). For
example, while gender is often neatly divided into masculine and feminine groupings
within contemporary conventional wisdom, it is unable to encompass other gendered
possibilities such as ‘transgender’ and ‘intersex’. In response to this, theorists such as
Judith Butler (1990) propose alternative, progressive ways of thinking about gender.
She argues that, rather than being a binary, gender is a performance—a ‘doing’—that
can vary within an individual from context to context and from one moment to
the next. The performativity of gender situates it as a dynamic and on-going social
construction. This type of thinking resists the assumption that there is something
‘natural,’ or true or false, about any gender.
Similarly, sexuality is often assumed to rest within two binary categories—
heterosexual and homosexual. Such a neat division suppresses the multiplicity of
sexual desires in a way that favours and legitimates heterosexuality as ‘normal’ and
marginalizes homosexuality as ‘deviant’ (Foucault, 1980; Butler, 1990). Further, this
simplification of desire into two seemingly opposite categories fails to accurately
capture the diversity of how real people might engage in erotic pleasure.
While humans have been engaging in same-sex relations for thousands of years,
the term ‘homosexual’ is actually a relatively new term coined by German sexolo-
gist Richard von Kraft-Ebbing in his 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis. As the Latin
title of the book reveals, the term ‘homosexual’ was coined to pathologize same-sex
love and sex as deviant when measured against the ‘norm’ of heterosexual sex. Thus,
Kraft-Ebbing believed homosexuality to be a perversion, a disease, and an inherited
vice. More recent analyses are far clearer on the extent to which heterosexuality and
homosexuality are social and institutional constructs. As Richardson (1996) has
suggested, ‘if we accept that “the sexual” is always seen through social interpreta-
tion, then the sexual is not something that can be separated from the social but is
rather that which is produced by it; it is the social organization of knowledge that
establishes meanings for the sexual’ (10). Thus, because the category ‘homosexual’
is a social fabrication originally invented to label gays and lesbians as deviant, it is
now important to re-examine and challenge the history of discrimination and the
inequities which are embedded in the sexual binary.
Examining the way we have historically classified homosexuality as deviant
or sexuality in ‘crisis’ is part of the broader project of postmodernism—a ‘crisis’
is defined by those who profit from what is considered ‘normal’. Behaviour that is
considered normal, however, has always been subject to change. It is continually
renegotiated; the margins of ‘acceptable’ behaviour, sexual or otherwise, shift over
time. In the same way that many people in North America automatically put on
seatbelts when they get into a car—a behaviour which was not common thirty years
180 STRATIFICATION AND POWER

ago—the degree of discrimination against gays and lesbians is arguably lessening

over time, if only gradually.
In sum, a critical analysis of the way in which we have come to know the social
world around us can lead to the collapsing of some categories, and the rebuilding of
others. By far, one of the greatest barriers that gays and lesbians face regarding full
and equal participation in both amateur and professional sport is discrimination
based on homophobia. In examining the intolerance of non-heterosexual practices,
this chapter will point to the various ways that sexuality is implicated in everyday
inequities in sport and athletics.

SEXUALITY, GENDER, AND SPORT

While we believe that it is important to collapse the binary categories of masculine
and feminine and heterosexual and homosexual, it is first important to recount the
history of how the categories have been employed to prevent gay men, lesbians, and
transgendered people from fully participating in sport.
In Britain, organized sport in the nineteenth and early twentieth century became
more popular in response to a perceived growing ‘feminization’ of men (Mangan,
1981). Public schools were numerically dominated by female teachers, and many men
were away at war, thus creating a ‘crisis’ in masculinity.1 The response to this ‘crisis’
was the demand for more male bonding through activities like sport and male-only
social groups such as the Boy Scouts (Kimmell, 1996). A renewed popularity of social
and sporting clubs that excluded women was a part of the broader renegotiation of
gender at this time.
During Victorian times it was considered normal for middle-class women and
girls to live their lives predominantly within private spaces such as the home. As
a result, their access to the public spaces such as the workplace or sporting clubs
was restricted. Women were also seen as fragile and delicate (Dowling, 2001). It was
thought that all the energy of young women should be focused on their ‘natural’
childbearing and childrearing capacities. Any distraction from this focus, especially
in the form of physical activities such as sport, would potentially harm their bodies
and likely result in unhealthy or even deformed children (Strong-Boag, 1988).
Mythical fears about possible damage to reproductive capacity caused by physical
activity no longer haunt women in sport, although there remain vestiges of that way
of thinking such as when during the 2006 Winter Olympic Games female competitors
began downhill ski races further down the course than their male counterparts. Despite
feminist gains for women in the twentieth century (Rail, 1998), women who participate
in physically rough and high-risk sport are still commonly seen as ‘unfeminine’ and
their (hetero)sexuality is often considered suspect. It is at this point where gender and
sexuality converge and become intertwined. More successful athletes tend to be either
hyper-heterosexualized, with their femininity emphasized by the media—for example,
tennis player Maria Sharapova—or their gender identity and sexual orientation put to
question—for example, tennis player Amelie Mauresmo (Koivula, 1999). The goal for
an individual woman to do well in sport is eclipsed by the stigma of having to continu-
ally defend or publicly discuss how one is gendered and/or sexually defined.
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 181

When hegemonic (or the dominant view of) femininity is seemingly transgressed
through sport, it is often assumed that heterosexuality is similarly in question. If
someone is perceived as being ‘unfeminine’ they are also assumed to be lesbian
(Lenskyj, 2003). Such transgressions of hegemonic femininity tend to have nega-
tive social consequences. Of course, while women engaging in sport may contest
an ideal femininity, this does not automatically imply that all women athletes are
lesbian. Homophobia demands that both heterosexual and lesbian women in sport be
continually accountable for their sexuality. Griffin (1998) notes that:

Reactions to the lesbian bogeywoman create an atmosphere in which lesbian coaches,

athletes and athletic administrators devote enormous energy not only to athletics,
but also protecting themselves from potentially career-threatening discrimination and
prejudice. (92)

The social stigma of possibly being thought of as lesbian causes some girls and
women to resist participating in sports (Fusco, 1995). Furthermore, the popular
media regularly reinforce the perception that women should not have strong bodies,
and that their bodies should continually be sexualized (Koivula, 1999). Given this
representation, young female athletes may be cautious about working out ‘too much’
lest it impact the perception of their sexuality. Further, those athletes, coaches, or
Physical Education teachers who identify as lesbian often fear being ‘outed’ and the
consequent homophobia that it might cause (Khayatt, 1992).

HETEROSEXISM IN SPORT
The normality of heterosexuality is occasionally challenged and usually reinforced by
sport. Because assumptions about ‘appropriate’ gender and desire is so interwoven
with the public performance of sport, the presence of lesbians, gay men, and trans-
gendered people in sport challenges some of the foundational social functions of
sport. Griffin (1995) outlines five functions of sport:

a) defining and reinforcing traditional conceptions of masculinity, b) providing a

context for acceptable and safe male bonding and intimacy, c) establishing status
among other males, d) reinforcing male privilege and perceptions of female infe-
riority and e) reifying heterosexuality. (54–5)

Sport helps to reinforce the dominant definitions of masculinity through the exclu-
sion of ‘others’—gay men, women, and some of those who are physically challenged.
Sport offers an outlet for men to bond around the exclusion of others and, in so doing,
it solidifies the status and privilege of men over women, straight over gay and lesbian.
These five functions make visible the connections between gender, privilege, sport,
and sexuality while pointing to the inequities that sport produces and reproduces.
Gay male athletes are in a unique position to undercut the way that sport and
heterosexual masculinity are linked to securing gender and sexual privilege because
they are able to disrupt the assumed unity among men in the sport arena (Pronger,
182 STRATIFICATION AND POWER

1990, 1999, 2002). By conforming to gendered expectations of male athletes, some

gay men can ‘pass’ as straight, while at the same time interrupt the way sport is
supported by the powerful authority of heterosexism.
While homophobia is often evoked to police gender transgressions, the presence
of lesbians and gay men in sport challenges all of Griffin’s five functions of sport
and, therefore, is often seen as threatening to both gender and sport as a heterosexual
social space. Not unlike the homophobia that is present in other male-dominated
domains such as the military (Bérubé, 1990), homophobia in sport works to protect
the privilege of a small group of men by carefully policing the membership and
definition of men and masculinity. As illustrated in Box 9.1, even the biological sex of
women athletes has been called into question in order to regulate and control socially
constructed femininity.

BOX 9.1: CHROMOSOMAL GENDER TESTING OF ATHLETES

During the Cold War there was concern by Western countries and the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) that, in order to win more gold medals, the Soviet Union
and East Germany had male athletes compete as women. To address this worry,
and a greater gendered fear that women athletes might exceed men’s records, it
was decided in 1968 that all women competitors—and only women—would have
their chromosomes tested to establish that they were chromosomally women, that
is, that they possessed an XX chromosome.2 Tests established that some of the
female athletes had a chromosomal make up of XXY. The unusual appearance of
an unexpressed Y chromosome indicated, as far as the IOC was concerned, that the
athletes were not ‘officially’ women and could not, therefore, compete against other
women, despite the fact that they had female genitalia. Canadian Olympic athletes
such as fourteen-year-old Nancy Garapick, who won double bronze in the 100- and
200-metre backstroke at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, were included in
the chromosome testing of women. Until the abolishment of these tests in 2002 all
women athletes competing in the Olympic Games had to have their chromosomes
tested and were obliged to wear a badge when in the Olympic Village that indicated
whether or not they were women.
This public, testing, marking, and scientific regulation of gender is just one
example of the degree to which biological sex is an unreliable measure of gender.
Gender may not always correlate to sexed bodies in the way we have come to
assume they should. Furthermore, chromosomal testing of gender in competitive
sport demonstrates how much we depend on gender to mark differences between
athletes and to separate the achievements of men from the achievements of women.

HETEROSEXUALIZATION IN SPORT
Because of the threat that gay and lesbian athletes pose to how sport helps to main-
tain and reproduce heterosexuality and masculinity, the popular media often focus
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 183

on the femininity of the female athlete over her athletic accomplishments (Harris and
Clayton, 2002). Women who challenge gender ‘norms’ are regularly subjected to objec-
tification and sexualization of their bodies as a strategy to limit the degree to which
they may transgress hegemonic femininity via athletic excellence (Quinn, 2002).
The popularity of a number of controversial calendars of nude female athletes—
often created for fundraising purposes—has created debates regarding whether or
not the sexualization of women in sport is yet another way of trivializing women’s
athletic accomplishments. For example, to ease the financial burden of international
travel created by a decrease in athletic funding, the Canadian Senior Women’s
National Rugby Team posed semi-nude for a calendar in 2005. In another example
of the heterosexualization of female athletes, after Quebec hockey goalie Manon
Rheaume became the first woman (in 1991) to play in an exhibition game for the
Tampa Bay Lightening of the National Hockey League (nhl) she was invited to pose
in the nude in Playboy Magazine. Not everyone may be critical of female athletes who
pose naked, yet the re-positioning of public attention away from how women athletes
contest rigid hegemonic femininity reinforces heterosexual privilege. Similarly, gold
medallist Cassie Campbell of the Canadian Women’s Olympic Hockey team is regu-
larly featured in the media with a particular focus on her feminine appearance.
Women in sport are under the gaze of men, and sexualized female athletes are
highly marketable—mostly to men. Thus, it is telling that in 2002 Sports Illustrated/
cnn decided to cancel the publication of Sports Illustrated Women on the basis of
the argument that a target audience of only women would not be able to generate
enough revenue for the magazine to be profitable. In catering to the seemingly finan-
cially profitable gaze of men, many women athletes have to negotiate a highly sexual-
ized sporting environment. Women athletes, especially those who compete in more
‘traditionally masculine’ sports, face a heterosexist climate and the potential of sexual
harassment by coaches (Brackenridge and Fasting, 2002, 2004; Hargreaves, 1994).
Due to the airing of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Fifth Estate investiga-
tive segment on female athletes’ allegations of sexual ‘misconduct’ by male coaches
(a rowing coach in Ontario, two volleyball coaches in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and
a swimming coach in New Brunswick), greater attention to abusive relationships
between male coaches and female athletes ensued. However, since the well-publicized
case of Rachel Marsden’s suspicious claims of sexual harassment against her swim
coach at Simon Fraser University in 1997, the media have been cautious of how they
report on claims that have not yet been brought before the courts. This, in turn,
creates a greater silence about sexual harassment and greater pressure for women
athletes to comply with heterosexualized femininity.

PAYING FOR IT: ATHLETIC SPONSORSHIP AND FUNDING FOR

LESBIAN AND GAY SPORT
Rather than concentrating on their exclusion from sport, many women have histori-
cally resisted male control of their athletic lives (Lenskyj, 1986). Research has shown
that during the past century women were not simply the passive subjects of male
power within the sport realm (Birrell and Cole, 1994). Through the foundations of
184 STRATIFICATION AND POWER

women’s sporting clubs, teams, and leagues across Canada, women actively resisted
men’s control and found ways to create and participate in sport for women (Hall,
1996). Despite the social punishments for engaging in sport that might threaten femi-
ninity and/or assumed heterosexuality, Canadian women have been competing in
sport and breaking records as well as gender stereotypes. Due to a somewhat greater
media exposure of women’s sport, more and more young women are willing to risk
gender non-conformity for the pleasure and personal gain of competing in sport.
While women athletes still receive less funding and less media coverage than
men, there has recently been some growth in the recognition of the achievement of
women in a variety of sports. When women’s athletic achievements are high, or if
they contrast to the achievements of men, the media tend to focus on women’s sports
as a remarkable accomplishment, as opposed to the coverage of men’s athletic perfor-
mances as ordinary and expected. For example, the Canadian Olympic gold medal
win against the American women’s hockey team at the 2002 Salt lake City Games
was widely broadcast and covered by the media—that same year the Canadian Men’s
Olympic Hockey team lost to the US. There was also a media flurry when Annika
Sorenstam competed against professional men golfers in 2003. Similarly, because
of the seeming contrast to gendered expectations of women, paralympian athlete,
Chantal Petitclerc, has received growing media attention since setting the Canadian
records in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, and 1500m wheelchair events. During the
2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, Petitclerc set three new world records and
a paralympic record.
Yet for lesbian athletes, professional or amateur, neither the sporting arena nor
the media typically offer a warm welcome (Lenskyj, 2003). There are only a few
‘out’ lesbian professional athletes in Canada, such as boxer Savoy Howe, and former
coach of the Canadian National Women’s Hockey team, Shannon Miller, because
many still fear anti-lesbian discrimination. Indeed, there is a precedent for such fear
among women athletes, both in Canada and elsewhere. For example, Betty Baxter, a
Canadian volleyball coach and former captain of the Canadian Olympic volleyball
team in 1976, was fired as the head coach of the national program in the early 1980s
due to speculation about her being lesbian.
Professional athletes are often dependent on funding from corporate sponsors.
However, sponsors tend to distance themselves from athletes who are, or are assumed
to be, lesbian or gay. Mark Tewksbury, who won a gold medal for Canada in the
100-metre backstroke at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, had a six-figure
contract for motivational speaking cancelled by a financial supporter who considered
him to be too openly gay. Czech-born tennis champion Martina Navratilova also
shares a long history of being overlooked by potential sponsors who have chosen to
distance themselves from her public image as a lesbian athlete. Yet, Navratilova has
recently become a spokesperson for a San Francisco travel company that is aimed
exclusively at gays and lesbians in order to make the issue of lesbian and gay athletes
more visible, and to address discrimination by athletic sponsors.
In sum, for most competitive gay athletes, coming out often results in the loss
of financial sponsorship and endorsements, and can jeopardize a gay or lesbian’s
élite/professional athletic career.
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 185

MEASURING UP: GAY MALE ATHLETES

Not unlike the homophobia experienced by lesbians, gay men face similar forms of
discrimination. Due to the history of organized sport developing from a fear of ‘femi-
nization’, and because masculinity is defined in opposition to femininity, sport has
become a site where masculinity is taught and repetitively practiced. In mandatory
Physical Education (pe) classes in public schools, at sporting competitions, and in
the locker room, student bodies are ‘sorted’ and refined according to hegemonic male
standards. While pe has undergone pedagogical changes over the last twenty years to
attempt to focus more on fitness and less on competition, it is difficult to deny the
connection between institutionalized schooling and gender conformity (Davison,
2000a, 2000b; Messner and Sabo, 1994). Symbolically, sport has been, and remains,
one of the ‘last bastions’ of heterosexual masculinity and, thus, of the operation of
power over other men, women and the environment (Frank, 1990).
The ‘ideal’ masculine body is groomed in most sports to epitomize some of the
highly valued masculine qualities such as strength, muscularity, endurance, tolerance
of pain, speed, and coordination. The cultivation of hegemonic masculinity is, then,
located in the body, and is articulated by the body. For example, sport encourages
men to take up space in aggressive and domineering ways (Whitson and MacIn-
tosh, 1990). Organized team sport, for example, incorporates the assumption that
through competition, strength, and athletic skill one of the two teams will overpower
the opposing team and ‘win’. In gendered and social relations outside of sport, a
similar position is adopted where particular ‘masculine’ ways of acting, speaking,
and moving in the world are valued more than feminine ways of being and knowing;
admittedly, however, this process is diverse and complex. Through sport, the body
is disciplined to promote and defend hegemonic masculinity. In many sports where
men and women compete separately, masculine bonding through gendered same-
ness and exclusion protects hegemonic masculinity for athletes who are put in a
position to which they may feel obliged to support the gendered ‘team’. As such, the
performance of masculinity through sport creates the illusion that ‘masculinity’ is a
‘natural’ state bestowed on men rather than something that is worked on, continually
negotiated, and defended (Frank, 1994, 1997).
It should be understood that the manipulation of the physical body through sport
is not problematic on its own. What is problematic is the way in which hegemonic
masculinity is rigidly applied to the male body in sport to effectively inferiorize not
only the bodies of many women and girls, but also the bodies of men and boys who
are not able to ‘measure up’ to a standard that conveys masculine privilege (Davison,
1996, 2000a). The physical body, then, becomes a critical factor for individual men
and boys in reaching for gendered expectations and retaining masculine privilege. As
Box 9.2 illustrates, some boys and men have embraced masculinity in psychologically
and physiologically unhealthy ways.
In the same way that masculinity is measured against femininity, it is also
positioned in opposition to homosexuality; that is, when a male is referred to as
being ‘masculine’ he is generally assumed to be heterosexual. Because of the binary
structure of both gender and sexuality, femininity and gay men represent a threat to
186 STRATIFICATION AND POWER

hegemonic masculinity and masculine privilege. ‘Masculinity’ can be said to be that

which is not feminine or homosexual. This is why homophobia works to regulate
erotic desires among men (Messner, 1992). Thus, gay men in sport are often feared,
distrusted, and stigmatized. For example, a well-known former coach of the Boston
Bruins publicly stated that a gay man could not play in the National Hockey League
(nhl). Such a statement makes it clear that gay men are not welcome in the nhl, and
that the hetero-centric environment of professional hockey is still under the illusion
that all gay men are effeminate or unathletic.

BOX 9.2: THE ADONIS COMPLEX

With the growth in popularity of men’s fashion and health magazines in the
1990s a large parallel industry developed at the same time to additionally profit from
men’s insecurities about their bodies. Bodywork has grown rapidly among men and
boys in response to concerns over the shape, form, and musculature of their bodies,
and to other corporeal issues such as shame and fear over hair loss or erectile
dysfunction. In the 1980s public gyms with a wide variety of fitness machines were
relatively uncommon. Yet by the 1990s gyms and fitness centres became common-
place in most North American cities and continue to be frequented by men and
women of all ages. While an unhealthy subservience to hegemonically feminine body
ideals has produced a growth of body image and eating disorders in young women,
in the late 1990s sociological, psychological, and medical research discovered that
hegemonic masculinity also created some unhealthy body image ‘side effects’ in men
and boys. Recent research has documented that some men, both gay and straight,
have developed anorexia or bulimia, and even more men and boys have developed
what has been called ‘reverse anorexia’ or ‘Bigorexia’ (Pope et al., 2000).
When measuring up to the cosmetic demands of hegemonic masculinity or
competing in sport, many men and boys now actively construct a hyper-masculine
physique through weight-training. Despite working out in the gym for several hours
per day and subsequently gaining muscle mass, some boys and men continue to see
themselves as thin. The dissatisfaction with the shape of their physical body leads
some males to even more intensive exercise, or to the temptation to use anabolic
steroids. The ‘disconnect’ between the physical body and the psychic construct found
among those afflicted with reverse anorexia arises from gendered and athletic expec-
tations, and a greater social focus on the muscular body as a desired physical shape.
Gender is central to erotic desire (Pronger, 1990) and the heightened objectification
of the male physical body, in both the media and organized sport, together with the
pressures of conforming to gendered and sexual ideals, can produce unhealthy body
images that may damage psychological and physical health.

Homophobia and sexism are regular occurrences in male locker rooms (Curry,
2002). Stories told about heterosexual ‘conquests’ and anti-gay slurs are common-
place and establish the space as unwelcoming of both gay men and effeminacy. In
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 187

a homosocial space where naked bodies are on display, there is a greater need to
fortify masculinity and to police sexuality (Davison, 2000b). The lack of privacy
in men’s changing rooms and communal showers prevents the potential for a slip
from homosociality to homoeroticism. Of course, the spectacle of men’s bodies on
display also makes the locker room a very erotic place for some men. However, the
tension between homosociality and the regulation of compulsory heterosexuality
in the locker room often creates an intense atmosphere of male bonding, misogyny,
homophobia, and desire. The pressure to conform to a rigid heterosexual standard
can create a tension that can be both painful and pleasurable at the same time.

BOX 9.3: CHANGES IN THE CHANGING ROOM

Many people believe that gender is body-dependent and body-specific. That is,
biologically male bodies confer masculinity and biologically female bodies confer
femininity. However, this is not always the case; babies can be born with indis-
tinguishable sex characteristics. Some people believe that their gender does not
correlate with their body and therefore they perform gender inconsistent with their
biological sex (Bornstein, 1994, 1998). Others undergo sex reassignment surgery to
attempt to match gender and biology in ‘traditionally’ acceptable ways, and some
people parody gender by performing as drag queens or drag kings (Volcano and
Halberstam, 1999).
Transgender bodies radically rupture traditional notions of two separate and
opposing genders. Thus, being transgendered can create conflict in the sport envi-
ronment, which tends to actively promote hegemonic masculinity and rigid gender
performances. For example, sport often creates separate spaces for male and female
athletes to compete, and therefore reinforces gender differences based on biological
differences. Incorporating transgendered bodies into sport would require that the
foundations of sport be reconsidered.
While transgendered athletes potentially occupy an important position to sport
and gender reform, the lived realities of being transgendered and competing in
sport involve daily struggle, harassment, humiliation, and sometimes violence. For
example, changing rooms are almost always segregated according to biological sex
differences. Transgendered athletes who do not conform to a distinct gender binary
are excluded by the signs on the door, and often by the athletes behind the doors.
Now that the International Olympic Committee has decided to permit transgender
competitors it is time for other sporting venues, clubs, gyms, and schools to begin
to rethink the simplistic gender divide in sport and begin to create safe spaces for
transgendered athletes.

While some men may find the rule-bound structure of sport to be a psychologi-
cally safe place to connect with other males—within a context that maintains clear
boundaries (Frank, 1990)—not all men thrive in this environment. The desire for
friendship and bonding is conflated with an alliance against any influence which
188 STRATIFICATION AND POWER

might threaten male superiority and pride—women, gay men, people of other
races, short men, fat men, disabled men, etc. For example, in 2004, nhl player and
St. Louis Blues forward, Mike Danton, was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for his
role in a murder-for-hire plot. The plan to murder his agent was reported to have
been connected a long history of intimidation of Danton by his agent regarding his
promiscuity and alcoholism. This high-profile sport controversy is a further example
of the way that sport is implicated in the negotiation of dominance-based versions
of masculinity that can be harmful to others who are not defined within its narrow
gender parameters.
While sport creates many friendships, it can also separate men and boys. Many
men fear humiliation, exclusion, or the violence of other men if they fail to conform.
This is especially true if one’s gender performance, body, or sexual desire do not
correspond to hegemonic masculine expectations, as Box 9.3 demonstrates.

THE GAY GAMES

While the number of professional athletes who have ‘come out’ as gay or lesbian
is growing, there is still a very ‘chilly climate’ in professional and non-professional
sport for lesbians and gay men (Lenskyj, 2003). Tom Waddell, an American Olympic
decathlete, attempted to address the inequity and discrimination of lesbian, gay, and
transgendered athletes by creating a gay-friendly Olympics. However, the United
States Olympic Committee (usoc) objected to Waddell’s use of the term Gay Olym-
pics—they claimed that it infringed on their exclusive use of the word ‘Olympic’. The
decision by the usoc to take legal action against Waddell over the use of the term Gay
Olympics is a clear example of institutional and systemic homophobia. The usoc
did not choose to sue those who started the Special Olympics for disabled athletes,
the Police Olympics, or even North Carolina State University College of Veterinary
Medicine’s Dog Olympics! Yet, the usoc legally fought Waddell all the way to the
United States Supreme Court, and upon winning the right to forbid Waddell from
using the word ‘Olympic’ with the word ‘Gay’, then attempted to force Waddell to
pay $100,000 for legal expenses. While the legal battle continued until 1987 (shortly
before Waddell died of aids), Waddell and many others participated in the first Gay
Games in 1982 in San Francisco. Gay Games I included 1,350 athletes from 12 coun-
tries competing in 17 different sporting events. Successive Gay Games have increased
in both the numbers of participants and the number of events. By 1994, Gay Games
IV in New York City included 11,000 athletes from over 40 countries competing in
31 events. Canadian figure skater Mathew Hall won gold at the 1994 Gay Games IV.
The event’s popularity continues to grow: the sixth Gay Games in Sydney in 2002
involved over 11,000 athletes from 70 countries competing in 33 events.
The popularity and success of the Gay Games is a testament to the need to
address the climate of homophobia in athletics and sports. In their mission state-
ment, The Federation of Gay Games states:

it is a fundamental principle of the Federation of Gay Games that all activities

conducted under its auspices shall be inclusive in nature and that no individual
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 189

shall be excluded from participating on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, race,
religion, nationality, ethnic origin, political belief(s), athletic/artistic ability, physical
challenge, age, or health status. (Federation of Gay Games, 2003)

It would seem like such a goal would be embraced by everyone, and yet the need
for the Gay Games points back to the way that homophobia and heterosexism are
woven through cultural understandings and gendered practices to the extent that
discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgendered people is rarely seen as prob-
lematic by those who are not on the margins. The Gay Games has both raised aware-
ness about gay, lesbian, and transgendered athletes, and has played an important role
in disrupting categories that allow some people to remain comfortable and privileged
at the expense of others.

CONCLUSION
Sport is a social site where gender is performed and sexuality is regulated. By
promoting hegemonic masculinity, men’s sport systematically excludes women, and
actively encourages homophobia. And yet, despite the inhospitable sporting environ-
ment, many gay men, lesbians, and transgendered people continue to play significant
roles as athletes and activists. As hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality are rene-
gotiated, gay pride is celebrated, and gays, lesbians, and transgendered people gain
more legal rights internationally, there remains a need for a greater recognition of the
inequities that some athletes face which prevents equitable participation in sport.
There is an urgent need for teacher educators and Physical Education teachers
to acknowledge the ways in which dominant understandings of gender and sexu-
ality act to exclude some people from sport. Furthermore, it is necessary to critically
examine the oversimplification of the binary categories discussed in this chapter in
order to engage with the complexity of the lived practices of gender and sexuality.
Addressing the ways in which the categories we use are limited and exclusionary will
require institutional and professional changes in the form of policy reformulation.
As gender and sexuality has been renegotiated over time, sport no longer needs to
remain the gatekeeper of acceptable gender. Just as sport was racially desegregated in
North America in the mid-twentieth century, sport will likely benefit from the talents
of gay, lesbian, and transgendered athletes in the future.

Notes

1. Note how the absence of men is a ‘crisis’ but the absence of women or the invisibility of
lesbians and/or gay men is not seen as problematic.
2. Although Princess Anne, a member of the British royal family competed in the Equestrian
event at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, she was exempt from the mandatory testing because
it was not seen as fitting for a Royal to undergo chromosome testing.

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Recommended Further Reading

H. Lenskyj, Out on the Field: Gender, Sport and Sexualities (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2003). Using case studies from Canada, the United States, and Australia, Out on the Field
critiques the liberal feminist response to women and sports and provides a radical feminist
analysis of the ‘chilly climate’ for lesbian athletes. Lenskyj demonstrates that despite feminist
activism and decades of research into women and sport, the playing field is still not a safe place
for lesbian athletes.

H.G. Pope, K.A. Phillips, and R. Olivardia, The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male
Body Obsession (New York: The Free Press, 2000). The relatively new phenomenon of ‘reverse
anorexia’ for men is examined in this text. Chapters address obsessive gym/work-out practices,
the rise of body image culture, young men, gay men, and women’s perspectives on men and
body image disorders.

E. Anderson, In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity (Stony Brook, NY: suny
Press, 2005). This book examines a broad range of intersections of sport, sexuality, and mascu-
linity. Through interviews with several professional and amateur athletes across various sport
disciplines, Anderson addresses homophobia, coming out, gay stigma in sport, and offers
suggestions for strengthening gay athletics.

B. Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality and the Meaning of Sex (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1990). Pronger interrogates the way gay sexuality is understood,
and illustrates how sex, sexuality, masculinities, and sport are woven through with contradic-
tions and desire for athletics. A philosophy of sexuality is applied to bodies as a social site to
re-examine the erotics of sport.
192 STRATIFICATION AND POWER

P. Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians, Homophobia and Sport (Champaign, IL:
Human Kinetics, 1998). As a former athlete and coach, Griffin examines the many ways that
discrimination impacts the lives of lesbian athletes, how they are marginalized in sport, and
how dedicated athletes are transforming sport. The scope of this book includes the negotia-
tion of identity of lesbian athletes, the complexities of Christian evangelicals in sport, and a
concluding chapter that offers many resources for readers to begin to challenge discriminatory
stereotypes against lesbian athletes and women in sport more broadly.

Relevant Websites

The Men’s Bibliography. Available at http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net. The Men’s Bibliography is

an online bibliographic resource for readings on men and masculinities categorized by subject,
including information on fatherhood, masculinity, homophobia and appearance issues.

The Federation of Gay Games. Available at http://www.gaygames.com/en/. The Federation of

Gay Games includes information about the upcoming games, local events, an archive of press
releases, and a history of the Federation that describes its goals and purpose.

The Project to Eliminate Homophobia in Sport. Available at http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/

all/library/record/1234.html. This website coordinates seven national organizations as they work
to create a society that will respect all athletes regardless of gender identity. The site outlines
the four main goals of the project and provides details as to how people can become involved.

Lesbians in Sport. Available at http://www.lesbian.com/sports/sports_intro.html. Lesbian.

com is a resource for information on a wide variety of issues ranging from family planning
to spirituality to disabilities. The site also provides links to various national organizations,
employment opportunities, and similar sites.

The International Foundation for Gender Education. Available at http://www.ifge.org. While

not specifically about sport, this site promotes the ‘understanding and acceptance of All People:
Transgender, Transsexual, Crossdresser, Agender, Gender Queer, Intersex, Two Spirit, Drag
King, Drag Queen, Queer, Straight, Butch, Femme, Homosexual, Bisexual, and Heterosexual’.

Glossary Terms

Binary: A situation possessing only two possibilities, which are often in contrast.

Chromosomes: Rod-shaped entities found in the nucleus of a cell that appear when a cell
divides and which carry the genes that determine heredity. Humans have 46 chromo-
somes, two of which determine sex characteristics. Biological males usually have an X and
a Y chromosome and biological women usually have two X chromosomes.

Come out: The individual choice of gay and lesbian persons to make their sexuality public.
Because heterosexuality is seen as normative, the sexuality of straight people is always
already ‘out’. ‘Coming out’ for gay and lesbian people is rarely a single act but often occurs
over and over again in a variety of contexts due to both the assumption of heterosexuality
and the social stigma of not being ‘straight’.

Grand narratives: All-encompassing theories such as marxism, liberalism, or humanism that

aim to explain the nature of current social conditions and a path to progress.

Hegemonic: A dominant set of beliefs that is mutually agreed upon, but is not total and
uncontested. It is usually connected to ‘common-sense’ understanding and, therefore, it
is not easy to challenge.
 SEXUALITIES, GENDERS, AND BODIES IN SPORT 193

Heterosexism: The systematic and systemic valuing of heterosexuality as normative in a way

that prevents other sexualities from being seen as legitimate.

Homophobia: An irrational fear of gays and lesbians that furthers the regulation of hetero-
sexuality as normative.

Postmodern condition: A theoretical condition arising out of a philosophical critique of

‘modernist’ and enlightenment ideas about knowledge and reality. Postmodern theory
attempts to account for the contemporary condition where people are surrounded by
mass reproduced images, multiple subjectivities, and the fracturing of identity.

Sexual harassment: Any unwanted sexual attention, physical or verbal, which reinforces
unequal power relations.

Transgendered: A state of being gendered outside of the masculine/feminine binary. Not all
transgendered persons undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. In what ways are gays and lesbians seen as a threat to sport?

2. How might coaches and/or Physical Education teachers address homophobia?
3. In what ways might the sexuality of straight athletes impact sport? Would these
be positive of negative impacts?
4. How might a coach or Physical Education teacher accommodate the needs of
transgendered athletes/students?
5. What are some other ways that sexuality and gender impact athletes’ lives?