Gender Sports Essay

365 Words2 Pages
Why and how might our ideas of gender, sexuality and homophobia serve to limit female athletes’ involvement in sport? From a young age we are taught the differences of femininity and masculinity, boys are aggressive and play with trucks, sports, and get dirty. Girls are passive, soft spoken, non-athletic, and play with dolls. Society disagrees if one chooses to go against this, for example if a female exhibits any type of superiority over a male she is viewed as being too dominate, masculine or worse extremes-a lesbian. Most of us adhere to social standards-we do what is accepted; we stray from going against the norm and this often hinders us. These social standards often limit female athletes in sport because they do not want to be labeled, or judged for participating in sports. According to the lecture; page 20 it states, “The assumed relationship between masculinity and athletic ability is precisely what changes the equation for women. It isn’t feminine, in society’s eyes, to excel at sports”. A woman wants to be seen as a woman, and by a woman participating in sports can often deter society’s view of that. For example, in high school I decided to give up basketball, I wanted to focus on my grades more than I had, even though that was it was time consuming, the biggest issue at the time was worrying about how I was viewed. Even though I had a boyfriend, displayed feminine “behavior” and “appearance”- I did not want to be labeled a lesbian because of my ability to play as well as my association with the other players on the team. I was so worried about what others would say and how I would look, I gave up playing organized sports. The girls who played on our basketball team were called gay/lesbians, and often treated like one of the guys vs. a girl with the ability to play good basketball.

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