Performances of Gender and Sexuality in Extreme Sports Culture Carly Michelle Gieseler University of South Florida, [email protected]
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University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School January 2012 Performances of Gender and Sexuality in Extreme Sports Culture Carly Michelle Gieseler University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, Communication Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Gieseler, Carly Michelle, "Performances of Gender and Sexuality in Extreme Sports Culture" (2012). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4049 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Performances of Gender and Sexuality in Extreme Sports Culture by Carly M. Gieseler A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Elizabeth Bell, Ph.D. A. David Payne, Ph.D. Garnet Butchart, Ph.D. Kim Golombisky, Ph.D. Date of Approval: March 8, 2012 Keywords: performativity, feminist theory, corporeality, athletes, femininity, masculinity Copyright © 2012, Carly M. Gieseler Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Chapter One – Prismatic Identity: Performative Reflections in Extreme Sports.................1 Introducing Extreme Sports .....................................................................................5 Statement of Purpose ...............................................................................................8 Sports: A Guy Thing ................................................................................................9 Corporeality and “Newbodies” ..............................................................................11 Sporting Sex ...........................................................................................................13 The Theoretical Framework of Performativity ......................................................16 Preview of Chapters ...............................................................................................18 Chapter Two – Primal Scream: Performing Women’s Voices in Roller Derby ................21 Women and Sports .................................................................................................23 Herstory Brought Up to Speed ...............................................................................27 A Growing Audience .................................................................................29 The Athletes of Roller Derby .....................................................................30 The How and Why of Texts – Hell on Wheels and Rollergirls .............................30 Performing Sexuality as Reward and Punishment .................................................32 Commoditizing Sex: Parodying the Oldest Profession ..........................................36 Athleticism and Injury: A Painful Passion.............................................................38 Identity at the Margins: Evil Faces and Superheroes.............................................41 Communitas and Play for Girls who Hate Girls ....................................................44 Made for Each Other: Queering Convention .........................................................47 Jamming Traditional Women’s Sports with the Third-Wave ................................51 Chapter Three – Pranktainment Peter Pans: Performing Playground Masculinities in Extreme Sports .........................................................................................................56 Blueprints of Masculinity ......................................................................................58 On The Mainstage: Men and Sports ......................................................................59 Playground Bottle Rockets: The Ascent of the Extreme Sporting Man ................62 Shame on You: Playground Culture of Cruelty and Humiliation through Hierarchy..........................................................................................................67 Truth or Dare: Making the King of the Playground ..............................................70 No Sissys Allowed .....................................................................................72 Be a Big Wheel ..........................................................................................75 Be a Sturdy Oak .........................................................................................77 Give ‘em Hell .............................................................................................79 Resistance through Adolescent Kinship, Corporeality, and Sexuality ..................82 Friends ‘til the End: Kinship Matters.........................................................82 The Junk Food Diet: Corporeal Adolescence ............................................86 i Seven Minutes in Heaven: S&M, Adolescent Sexuality, and Homoeroticism .....................................................................................89 One Last Trick .......................................................................................................93 Chapter Four – My Eros, My Thanatos: Reflexive Performativity of Ultrarunning .........96 Running and Sports Reviewed .............................................................................102 Tracing the Miles of Ultrarunning .......................................................................106 There’s No Crying for Epicenes: The Elision of Gender in Ultrarunning ...........108 The Proud Flesh of Difference: The Resistance of Ultrarunning Physicality ......................................................................................................117 The Masochistic Sensorial: Negotiating Pain and Pleasure in Ultrarunning .......119 Etherreality Bites: Embodying the Abject and Embracing Self- Actualization ..................................................................................................122 The Abject ................................................................................................123 Peak Experience .......................................................................................126 Ultra Jouissance: A Vocabulary of Pleasure ........................................................127 You’re Almost There!: Final Thoughts and Miles ..............................................133 Chapter Five – Beyond the Finish Line: Lessons in Extreme Sporting Performativity ............................................................................................................137 Purpose of this Study ...........................................................................................138 Lessons Learned from Extreme Sports: Phallocentrism ......................................142 Beyond the Limits of Previous Scholarship and Method ....................................145 Lessons Learned about Embodiment ...................................................................146 Beyond the Limits of Living and Dying ..............................................................151 Lessons on Shredding Taboos of Gender and Sexuality .....................................154 Implications for Future Research .........................................................................157 Class and race ..........................................................................................157 Communitas .............................................................................................159 Imperialism ..............................................................................................160 Homophobia .............................................................................................161 Final Thoughts .....................................................................................................162 List of References ............................................................................................................165 ii Carly M. Gieseler Abstract The purpose of this study is to expose the strategies through which extreme sports constitute gender through exaggeration, parody, queering, resistance, and transcendence of normative gendered binaries. I interrogate how extreme sports operate on the margins of sport, gender, media, and lived experience to better understand the processes and performances that retain, reinforce, and resist our notions of normative gender, bodies, and sexuality. Starting with the claim that performance is constitutive of gender and culture, I will focus on how extreme sporting performances create significant commentaries on mainstream assumptions surrounding sporting gender, sexuality, and corporeality. These commentaries function in extreme sports’ spaces: to critique how extreme sports reclaim oppressive language of gendered binaries; to give voice to sexual silences in performances that lampoon, retrofit, and transcend those assumptions; and, for athletes to reclaim corporeality through strategies of parody, resistance, and elision. Taking up the transcendent possibilities for gender, body, and sexuality in extreme sports, I suggest that these are