An (Auto)Ethnographic Look at Gay Volleyball G
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Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2011 Gay identity formation: An (auto)ethnographic look at gay volleyball G. Keilan Rickard Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Rickard, G. (2011). Gay identity formation: An (auto)ethnographic look at gay volleyball (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1103 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GAY IDENTITY FORMATION: AN (AUTO)ETHNOGRAPHIC LOOK AT GAY VOLLEYBALL A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree ofDoctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology By G. Keilan Rickard December 2011 Copyright by G. Keilan Rickard 2011 GAY IDENTITY FORMATION: AN (AUTO)ETHNOGRAPHIC LOOK AT GAY VOLLEYBALL By G. Keilan Rickard Approved November 18, 2011 ________________________________ ________________________________ Martin J. Packer, Ph.D. Leswin Laubscher, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Associate Professor of Psychology (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Susan Goldberg, J.D., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Psychology (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James C. Swindal, Ph.D. Daniel Burston, Ph.D Acting Dean, McAnulty College and Chair, Psychology Department Graduate School of Liberal Arts Associate Professor iii ABSTRACT GAY IDENTITY FORMATION: AN (AUTO)ETHNOGRAPHIC LOOK AT GAY VOLLEYBALL By G. Keilan Rickard December 2011 Dissertation supervised by Martin J. Packer, Ph.D. From September of 2004 until May of 2010, I was part of the SCVL, a gay volleyball league in Pittsburgh, PA. At the same time, I was a graduate student, working to advance my status within the Academy. In this study, I use autoethnography to talk about my experiences at the nexus of these two institutions: the SCVL and the Academy. I take the reader through a year in the life of the SCVL (2008-2009) and discuss ways in which its perennial practices contributed to my gay identity development. Well, sort of. It hasn‘t always been clear to me the processes at play in the constitution of my self, but I try to figure some of them out in this dissertation. At the same time, I experiment with writing so as to A) perform the kind of subject I have become (am becoming), and B) challenge taken-for-granted practices and beliefs of the Academy which serve to reinforce a hierarchical system that propagates the effects of domination—over research subjects as iv well as researchers. Along the way, I offer evaluative criteria for autoethnographic writing; I draw from Foucauldian theory to provide an archaeological, genealogical, and ethological look at gay volleyball culture; and I manage to evade veridical claims that would otherwise essentialize or reify gay identity. In the end, I argue for the benefits of gay sporting communities and call upon funding agencies to assist with the movement so as to improve the health and well-being of people marginalized for their non-conformity to gender or sexual norms. v DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the SCVL, the first gay community I‘ve ever been part of. Thank you for your friendship. No. Your kinship. By the power vested in me through no greater an authority than myself, I hereby confer upon each SCVL member, past, present, and future, an honorary Ph.D. in the science of community building. May you use it to advance your cause. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to thank Drs. Martin Packer, Leswin Laubscher, and Susan Goldberg for the ways in which they have challenged my thinking. I would also like to thank Dr. Fred Evans with the Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research at Duquesne University for the 2008-2009 fellowship, enabling me to throw myself headlong into the culture of gay volleyball without starving. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iv Dedication ...................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgement ......................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1: Introduction to Gay Volleyball ...................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: On (Auto)ethnography ................................................................................. 24 Chapter 3: Skills Clinics ................................................................................................ 39 Chapter 4: Team Selection ............................................................................................. 49 Chapter 5: Naming Teams ............................................................................................. 57 Chapter 6: Team Huddle and Cheer ............................................................................... 67 Chapter 7: Team Mentors .............................................................................................. 78 Chapter 8: A Catch-All Metastasis................................................................................. 98 Chapter 9: Iron City Ladies ......................................................................................... 115 Chapter 10: Discussion, Limitations, Conclusions, Future Directions .......................... 130 Epilogue: Are You a Homo? ....................................................................................... 144 References ................................................................................................................... 147 Appendix: Research Summary and Theoretical Comments .......................................... 155 viii Chapter 1: Introduction to Gay Volleyball Circumscribing My Precious Baby It‘s high time I wrote this dissertation. For years, I‘ve cranked out false starts, brain farts—the prelabor pains of a long and tedious birthing process. Now my cervix is fully dilated, the head is crowning, and the doctor is telling me to push. So it‘s time to push this baby out. PUSH!! PUSH!! I have great dreams for this little one. That s/he‘ll grow up big and strong. That s/he‘ll touch many lives along the way. Over the past four years my baby has been gestating. I‘ve ingested tons of material pertaining to my topic—gay volleyball. S/he‘s about as developed as can be inside of me. S/he‘s overdeveloped, in fact. Too big. I need to circumscribe. Circumscription. What shall I cut? I can‘t decide. So instead of stressing myself over what to cut and what to leave in, I‘m going to see what comes of a little writing experiment: I shall write this introduction with no notes, no books in front of me. I‘m going to pretend like I‘m in an exam situation and give myself exactly one hour to crank out this introduction. What? That’s ridiculous. What kind of crap are you feeding us? Trust me. It‘s much better this way. What I intend to cover are 1) the scope of gay volleyball throughout the world, 2) the history of gay volleyball in Pittsburgh, 3) literature pertaining to gay volleyball and gay sporting communities, and 4) what to expect from this dissertation. 1 This is a painful exercise, circumscription. I have to dispense with cherished ideas I‘ve been developing for years. This writing exercise, frustrating beyond belief. You have to deal with my lack of linearity; and linearity you‘ve come to love, your being part of the Academy and all, assuming you‘re part of the Academy. Logic equals your best friend. But I‘m subjecting you to illogic. Caprice. Word salad. Can the Academy allow for such a desultory style? Will my unorthodoxy threaten to undo centuries of academic tradition? I doubt it. In the end, my writing will have been nothing more than child‘s play, the ramblings of a misguided graduate student, too big for his britches, in over his head. This work will find itself on a library shelf alongside hundreds of other dissertations (dissertatia?) whose content is dismissed as mere whippersnappery. Oh my! Keilan’s taken to neologizing. He must be psychotic! Okay. One more thing before I start the timer. I had planned for my dissertation to rely heavily upon Foucault. My 2007 prospectus—and now my Abstract—even went so far as to say that I would do an archaeology, genealogy, and ethology of gay volleyball in Pittsburgh. (Talk about your Foucauldian buzzwords!) But as I have read and reread Foucault, I have determined that it is pointless to try and emulate his methodology. I don‘t understand Foucault (Rickard, 2009). You don‘t understand Foucault (Stevenson & Cutcliffe, 2006). Foucault didn‘t even understand Foucault (Foucault, 1969). The point of Foucault was not to understand of be understood. Rather, the point was for him to ramble, filibuster a whole career, writing book after book in hopes that his prolific thoughts would eventually cohere. He was an academe, after all, and he played the game well. You know that game, the one where you debate another academe in 2 writing or in person, dropping as many smart-sounding buzzwords as possible, not sure what you‘re saying or whether you‘ve