#lesbianvisibilityday2019 and stereotyping women athletes
Tennis is
full of lesbians according to Margaret Court. If true, that would be great but,
unfortunately, visible ‘out’ lesbians are thin on the ground. However, there is
one among the last 18 winners of the last 18 tournaments1. Leaving
aside the strangeness of these rotating results, let’s talk about why van
Uytvanck2 is the only ‘out’ lesbian out of the 18 winners.
I was lucky
enough to grow up seeing and admiring many lesbian players, such as Amelie
Mauresmo, Jana Novotna, Hana Mandlikova, Lisa Raymond, Gigi Fernandez, Conchita
Martinez, Rennae Stubbs, and, of course Martina Navratilova later on in her
career playing doubles. So, I find it especially odd that there are now less
visible lesbians on tour. Indeed, it’s become fashionable to advertise and give
media coverage to women tennis players entering heterosexual marriages. We
don’t have an opportunity to celebrate lesbian marriages of current or past
players in the same way, despite gay marriage becoming legalised in many areas
of the world for some years now. Although we have been able to celebrate Casey
Dellacqua giving birth for the first time last month, expanding her family with
Amanda Judd to 5! Great to see her sharing her baby news and helping lesbian
visibility by showing us her lifestyle openly on her social media, not leaving
it all to conjecture.
However,
unlike players such as Wozniacki, Dellacqua was not on the cover of Vogue or
Elle. We could argue she is not as famous as players who have been number 1 or
won a Grand Slam. But, in the name of equal representation, why don’t we see
lesbian tennis players in glamorous photo shoots on the cover of high profile mainstream
women’s magazines? Dellacqua and Amanda Judd are certainly pretty enough for
modelling and magazine features so that can’t be the reason. If lesbian players
were given more off-court advertising and modelling opportunities earlier in
their career it would raise their profile, making them more visible. Whereas,
as it stands now, magazines promote heterosexual players at the expense of
lesbian players which must be putting the latter at a financial disadvantage in
off-court earnings. Surely now that ‘coming out’ no longer automatically means
players lose sponsorship, unlike in Billie Jean King’s day, the next step
forward is positive media coverage of current and past lesbian players in top
celebrity magazines.
It’s time to
move past homophobic stereotyping in sports which results in myths, such as,
all sporty girls grow-up to be lesbians (and no sporty men are gay, a myth
perpetuated by no visibly gay men on the ATP). This stereotyping has resulted
in the bullying of girls before they have even had a chance to participate
fully in a sport, especially one which has an image of being testosterone
fuelled eg football3. So when we talk about getting girls into
sport, how do we do that while still allowing a culture of abuse against sporty
girls? As Olivia Hancock (a girl footballer who suffered homophobic
abuse, both verbal and being physically punched, despite not identifying as a lesbian) points out, it
shouldn’t matter who you are or grow-up to be, everyone should be treated
respectfully as a human being4. Hence, I don’t think that covering heterosexual
athletes more than gay and lesbian ones addresses stereotypes in sport. The
lack of visibility, intentionally or not, feeds into the notion that being gay
or lesbian is something to hide, deny, be embarrassed by or reject. This
perpetuates the culture of using words for lesbians as an insult as though it is
an undesirable identity. Thus, if lesbian athletes are not given off-court
visibility and positive media coverage, then this adversely affects
up-and-coming sporty girls and young women, irrespective of their
sexuality.
This has a
knock-on effect on whether they continue to engage in sport or not, or choose
different forms of exercise which are perceived as more feminine by being less
strenuous, competitive and more sedate eg jogging rather than sprinting, or
yoga rather than tennis. Have we left the 19th century yet? Apparently
not, given a recent study by EIS which thinks breaking down barriers for women
in sport amounts to focusing on how professional sportswomen’s bodies
malfunction during performance eg a tennis match. In my opinion, this does not
remove stereotypes, barriers or stigmas but reinforces the very sexist prejudices
women have only recently somewhat shaken off. In the 20th century,
women were considered so “fragile” that it was not until the 70’s that the ban
on women running the Boston marathon was lifted5. So notions about girls’
and women’s bodies being more weak and feeble than boys’ and men’s and how
their bodies impede their athletic participation and performance is not only
nonsense but is a dangerous route to go down. It already contributes to a poor
attitude towards girls’ ability in sport and encourages bullying eg Hancock
came across parents winding up their sons on the football pitch, ‘Softie! You’re
letting a girl get the ball!’6.
How long will
it take for the argument to go from claiming exercise is too demanding for
women’s bodies causing all sorts of aliments to claiming that they should not
participate in athletic sport? There are worrying generalisations about how the
female body is structured and how it reacts to exercise. I for one do not
identify with any of the problems listed in a recent sensationalist article7
and find them highly implausible as a direct consequence of exercise for the
female body. Just because some women athletes experience certain physical
problems, this does not prove a causal link between having a female body and physical
problems when undertaking athletic exercise.
One, there
could be many reasons why women suffer certain symptoms which may be unrelated
to being female. For instance, why assume a lack of bone density in a woman is
possibly related to infrequent/absent periods? This certainly isn’t the cause
of Andy Murray’s bone density problems, contributing to his hip replacement!
And he’s not the only male tennis player to need major hip surgery. But no one
puts his health issues and lack of bone density down to him possessing a male
body. Quite the opposite, men are still perceived as universally all possessing
greater bone density. Sports science also claims that women are more prone to
knee problems than men due to their wider female hips, something that holds
them back as runners. Well, Nadal certainly can’t say his recurring knee
tendonitis is due to a female physique and wider hips! Nadal has the problem
for whatever reason but were he a female player, would we assume it was due to female
weakness? These gender assumptions could result in approaching injury treatment
incorrectly with women because symptoms will be put down to their femaleness
rather than investigating all the possible underlining causes so nothing is
over-looked. As philosophy of science and metaphysics can show, one needs to
take great care in analysing causal links and making extrapolations before
drawing general or specific conclusions from them. Just because one event follows
another, it doesn’t mean one must have caused the other. For instance, just
because I trip over a matchstick and then the dog barks across the road, it doesn’t
mean my tripping over caused the dog to bark.
Two, it
creates body image stereotypes and assumptions which affect all women whether
it applies to them or not. Bra fitting is not an issue for all women. This
article8 already portrays women as being too stupid to find a bra
which doesn’t suffocate them! Did I read that right? Perhaps they meant women
in the 19th century struggled with athletic performance due to their
corsets and restrictive clothing. Today, there are many high technology bras on
the market which are designed for those athletes who are a larger cupsize. However,
in extrapolating from the smaller sample in their research to sporty women in
general is a leap too far. They do not speak for me when they claim athletic
women struggle with bouncing breasts and physical stress responses such as
incontinence and period problems worsening from exercise. For me, period pain
is non-existent or minimal and if I do have it, I find it improves with
vigorous exercise. Breast bounce is not an issue for me, with or without a bra
and I’m sure I can’t be the only one. There are and have been players who have
very streamline figures such as Justine Henin yet our types of female figures
are hardly ever discussed. Women’s figures vary greatly and athletes are no
exception. Yet it is female athletes who have problems which may arise from the
functioning of their female bodies which are encouraged to speak out. This
makes those, such as myself, who do not feel limited by their female bodies,
invisible.
It also
generates myths and prejudices in sport against transpeople and those who are
intersex by encouraging a very binary view of people and physiques through very
narrowly defining who women are, what the female experience is and what they
are and are not capable of. Science is a complex subject with a range of
studies which can draw different conclusions between them or over time. It is
therefore, for instance, not as simple as merely stating men are stronger than
women so transpeople and those who are intersex should be restricted in how
they compete accordingly. Recently, it has been argued in the British Medical
Journal that the view of how low women athletes’ testosterone should be is
unscientific9. They maintain that “testosterone levels vary
massively in men and women, with higher averages in elite athletes” and
“testosterone is only one indicator of sports performance.”10
So, I don’t
think any taboos can be lifted by propagating gender binary views of what is
so-called normal for women or focusing on so-called problematic features of
women’s bodies while ignoring their positive or advantageous features, such as
greater stamina. After all, how would so many women get through childbirth if
they were so inherently weak? And then on top of that, have a longer life expectancy
than men? Why is it that women in so-called male pursuits eg army and sport are
more likely to be the focus of gender assumptions about their weaknesses and
physical abilities than women who undertake so-called female activities or
careers such as dance? I am unaware of
ballerinas being called too feeble to carry out complex choreography. Indeed
they have more physical demands on their bodies, including dancing on hard
blocks at the ends of their pointe shoes, than male dancers and female
athletes. Ballerinas are all extremely underpaid and undervalued for the
enormous effort they make.
Is it,
therefore, a case of picking over women’s physical capabilities, attributes and
sexual or gender identity once a field, such as sport, begins to increase their pay
and media coverage and with it fame?
1https://www.wtatennis.com/photos/vive-la-difference-18-titles-18-winners-2019-so-far
4ibid
5 ‘Marathon runner Kathrine Switzer’ available
at: https://web.archive.org/web/20150822132200/http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-22/women-shine-as-gender-barriers-continue-to-fall-us-army-rangers/6716888
8ibid
9 Majendie, M., ‘Testosterone rules for female athletes ‘unscientific’’
in Evening Standard, 21/3/19, p59
10 ibid
Comments
Post a Comment