A Changing Manscape: Resisting Heteronormativity Within Educational Team Sport Culture

• In Event: 79.011 - Gender and Post-Truth Politics in Education: Shifting Masculinities

Abstract

Historically sport has intersected masculinity, athleticism and heterosexism. According to Wellard (2009) “sporting masculinity” is fundamentally about how the performance of male bodies demonstrate or express other normative requirements relating to gender and sexualities. (see Kehler 2010) The bodily displays and performances of sporty masculinities is centrally located at the nexus of masculinities, homophobia and sport. This paper examines the activist agenda and understandings of a specific group of athletes invested in resisting and challenging heterosexism and homophobia in sport. The paper draws attention to a counter example of athletes challenging heterosexism and homophobia within team sport and beyond.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Drawing on masculinities studies and pro-feminist research, this paper builds on Connell (1995) arguing that some “bodies are more than recalcitrant, they disrupt and subvert the social arrangements into which they are invited.” (p.58) As such bodies are not limited as symbols or signs but rather they are “seen as sharing in social agency, in generating and shaping courses of social conduct.” (p. 60) This paper critically examines the sport context as being “relatively unscathed by activist challenge” and in particular the ways some athletes actively and purposefully create competing and overlapping projects of masculinity that run counter to heteronormative sporty masculinity. Arguably engaged in pro-feminist activism or what Connell (1995), Lingard and Douglas (1999) refer to as “alliance politics”, the author explores the motivation and the means by which privileged white, heterosexual men resist sexism and homophobia through “actively teaching about and organizing to confront and change heterosexism and misogyny within male athletic groups” (Messner,1997, p. 103).
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Drawing on qualitative data including field observations, interviews and document analysis the author identifies a series of emerging patterns to illustrate both recurring and common perspectives but also to highlight where tensions exist between the documents and the perspectives expressed by the rowers. Semi-structured interviews conducted across rowers as well as from within the organizational membership at the Board level for the Sport Allies are examined in this paper. The interviews are examined alongside data analysis of documents and products directly developed in relation to the anti-homophobic stance of the organization.
Results/conclusions or Significance
This research significantly extends current research within masculinities scholarship by examining the counter narratives of some men who challenge homophobia in team sport. This area of inquiry has been overshadowed and under theorized. The participation of white middle class, heterosexual men as allies and profeminist has seen earlier investigations however it is not until recently that organizations within sport have developed public and indeed active policies and practices to address sexism, racism and homophobia in sport. The data illustrates the tensions and the struggles these counter narratives of profeminist men navigate to challenge homophobia. Finally, this research challenges previous arguments that there is a “declining significance of homophobia” and in doing so raises question about contradictory masculinized practices among men and projects of masculinity that position some men as change agents.

Author

• Michael D. Kehler, University of Calgary