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This reproduction is the best copy available UMI ( THE GENDERED CONSTRUCTION OF mE FEMALE ATHLETE Joanne Kay Graduate Programme in Communications McGiIl University, Montreal March,1997 ( A thesis submitted to the Faculty ofGraduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment ofthe requirements ofthe degree ofMaster ofArts © Copyright Joanne Kay 1997 • National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1 A ON4 canada canada Your Ne Vot,. rfjftirenœ Our fiJe Notre ,.f6rf1flC8 The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library ofCanada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies ofthis thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur fonnat électronique. The author retains ownership ofthe L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son penmSSlon. autorisation. 0_612-29496-X Canad~ ( CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknow/edgements iv Introduction 1 The Question 1 Why the Female Athlete? 1 Situating the Question 4 Theoretical Framework 12 Evidence 19 Thesis Outline 20 References 23 Chapter One: Creating The Female Athlete 25 Sport and the Masculine Mystique 26 The Physiological Body and the Female Athlete: Pathologization and Medical Discourse 28 Il Inhibited Intentionality": Learning to Throw Like a Girl 35 'Habitus' and Cultural Capital 38 The Social Interpretation ofFemale Sport Practices 45 ( VisionIDivision ofthe World 46 Transgressions and "Ideological Seams" 48 References 52 Chapter Two: The Female Bodybuilder: Parody and the Performance ofDrag 54 Freud, Fettishism and Difference 57 Parody and Subversion: The Body in Drag 64 Celebrating with Caution 70 References 74 Chapter Three: Cyborgs and the Technology ofFemale Sport 76 The Cyborg in Posmodernity 79 The Techno-Body 82 The Suspicious Female Athlete-Body and Concerns for Eugenics 84 Bodybuilding and the Technology ofthe "Selr' 91 References 95 Chapter Four: Conclusion 96 References 102 Bibliography 104 ( ( Abstract Sport is a particularly ideologically-charged terrain within contemporary gender relations because it is centered on the body. The body is our most 'naturaI' marker of sexual identity, and thus, in our socio-cultural imaginations, ofgender identity. Accordingly, gendered boundaries in sport have traditionally constructed and promoted an ideology of'naturaI' gender differences, and sport is a site- a microcosm- where traditional beliefs and assumptions about female weakness and male strength are promoted and maintained. Sport is understood to be both retlective as weil as indicative ofthe feroale/male dichotomy which exists in the more general social mythology. Gendered boundaries are constructed, and work to ideologically contain the female athlete. However, these boundaries are also the ideological seams, through which one can potentially challenge the normalizing processes ofsport. ( Résumé Le sport est un domaine idéologiquement chargé dans le cadre des relations contemporaines homme-femme puisqu'il est fondé sur le corps. Etant le plus 'naturel' des indices d'identité sexuelle, le corps se lie ainsi dans nos imaginations socioculturelles à notre identité de genre. En conséquence les frontières inspirées du genre dans le sport ont traditionellement fabriqué et encouragé une idéologie de différences 'naturelles' de genre et le sport en est un lieu--un microcosme--où les croyances traditionelles et les données concernant la faihless féminine et la force masculine sont encouragées et entretenues. On considère que le sport reftlète et indique la dichotomie màle-femelle qui existe dans une mythologie sociale plus générale. Les frontières fondées sur le genre sont fabriquées et contribuent à limiter la femme athlète. Toutefois, ces frontières sont aussi des fentes idéologiques à travers lesquelles l'on peut éventuellement mettre en question les démarches normalisantes du sport. ( ( Acknowledgments 1 am grateful to G.G. Robinson who served as my thesis director, and ta my mother, Barbara Kay, for her editorial help. 1am also grateful ta Christine Leibich for her help with translation, and to ail the friends and family who eut out articles and referred me to sources that have helped me write this thesis. 1must also acknowledge ail the athletes, coaches, men and women who have been involved in my athletic life, and who have helped to spark my passion for this tapie. ( ( IV ( INTRODUCTION The Question Gendered identities are both social and historical COflstnlcts, and gendered subjectivities are emhodied hy individuals as they grow from childhood into adult sen/al identities. Masculinity andfemininity become personally embodied and this always occurs in specific social contexts that historically have privileged masculinity over femininity and particular ways ofbeing male orfemale over other ways. 1 Sport is an area in which norms ofmale strength and female weakness have been naturalized and actively reproduced through developmental practices that have taught males and females to live their bodies in active or passive ways. "Sport", as Susan Birrel1 maintains, Ildoes not stand outside the econornic, cultural, political, and theoretical conditions in which it takes forro and reform; Sport and the bodies that stand at its center 1 are always made and remade within particular histories and places."2 The questions to be explored in my thesis, therefore, will be the following: fil which ways is the female athlete cOllstnlcted and how is she therehy affected as an athlete? How can one account for the naturalizing processes ofsport on the female athlete body? and what gendered knowledges and practices are produced through and by sport? Why the Fen,ale Ath/ete? [ am interested in these questions both as a female athlete and as a student in the field ofcommunications studies. First ofail, 1am interested in understanding my own experiences: as a girl growing up a "tomboy"- and as a woman devoted to athletic lSusan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture & the Body (Berkeley: University ofCalifomia Press, 1993) 165. 2Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, Women, Sport and Culture (Illinois: Human Kinetics, 1994) vi. ( pursuits. Secondly, my academic interests, stemming naturally from my personal ones, are focused on exploring theories ofgendered identities in sport: the athlete body as a site of social and cultural inscription, and the area ofsport as a terrain where categorical concepts and critical assumptions ofmasculinity and femininity are reified and reproduced. "There is perhaps no domain where myths, attitudes and beliefs remain 50 persistent as in the world ofsports. ,,3 There are myths related to the female's physical and psychological masculinization, to her menstruation and pregnancy, and ta her physical and psychologicallimits in performance. Most ofthese beliefs are rooted in long-standing socio-cultural attitudes and assumptions. Claims about the physicallimits offemale athletes, accordingly, stem from assumptions regarding the biological inferiority of women. These daims are based on a notion ofbiological determinism- the beliefthat ( biological makeup fundamentally determines human nature. This notion has been widely contested in feminist scholarship which has illuminated the social and historical construction ofthe natural sciences themselves. The dualistic tendencies that science posits are criticized