Gender, Sport, and the Role of Alter Ego in Roller Derby

Colleen Arendt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367492366
• eBook ISBN: 9781351337892
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Gender, Sport and the Role of the Alter Ego in Roller Derby focuses on the resurgence of roller derby by examining the appeal and dedication to a sport that combines the masculine aggression and physicality of sport with a more feminine, or alternative, style of organizing and community building.

No longer a scripted sport filled with fake fighting and hair pulling, derby, though still dangerous, has nevertheless exploded in popularity around the world. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with women players, Colleen Arendt reveals how derby has come to serve as a site of gender rebellion and emancipation that empowers participants. She demonstrates how players find roller derby a place to build friendships and support networks, while giving back to their community. The book also analyzes the adoption of derby personas, or alter egos, which many players use. While many players derive joy and other benefits from their derby personas, others argue that personas and alter egos detract from the athleticism and legitimacy of the sport. Finally, by considering the relationship between gender, sport, society, and power, this book tries to answer the question: Why derby? Why now?

1 Introduction

The resurgence of roller derby

With origins dating back to the 1920s, roller derby has seen a resurgence in the past few years. A Hollywood movie, Whip It, books, social media, and even televised games have renewed interest in the sport. Roller derby is a contact sport combining physicality with strategy as well as a strong sense of community among teams and leagues. The resurgence of flat track roller derby began in 2001 in Austin, Texas with the Texas Roller Girls and has grown to more than 450 leagues worldwide, in part due to the relatively small capital needed to begin a league (WFTDA, 2016). This contributes to the do-it-yourself grassroots appeal of the sport that allows leagues to tailor themselves to their community and the women who participate.

The women who compete in roller derby leagues all over the world are dedicated to this physically demanding sport while juggling the demands of their lives, including families and “mainstream” careers like teaching, finance, and law. Roller derby is often considered to be the most violent of women’s sports, borrowing the term “bouts” for their matches because they are “a fight to the end” (WFTDA, 2016). Many events require EMTs on site and online forums are dedicated to discussing injuries.

Based on nearly 3,000 minutes of data collected across forty in-depth interviews with women players, this book focuses on the draw and dedication to a sport that combines the masculine aggression and physicality of sport with a more feminine, or alternative, style of organizing and community building. In the early years of its revival, derby contained more overt sexuality, seen through their outfits (some women wore tutus and fishnet stockings), logos, and promotional photographs and apparel, that is usually absent from men’s athletic contests. As the sport has grown in popularity around the world, some cultural aspects of the sport, including the counterculture, kitsch, theatricality, and sexuality, has disappeared as streamlined rules and uniforms emerged and participants’ athleticism and skill level increased.

This book examines various aspects of roller derby through five chapters, followed by the methodology of my study in the Appendix.

• Chapter 1 introduces the sport, with a brief primer on the rules, positions, and leagues. This chapter also discusses misperceptions of roller derby, including (a) the misconception that derby is merely staged fighting, complete with hair pulling and throwing elbows and (b) the misconception of derby as filled with hypersexualized, dangerous women.
• Chapter 2 examines obstacles the women face in their quest to play the sport, including the large time and financial commitment, and the promise of serious injuries.
• Chapter 3 follows by examining why the women continue to play – and love – a sport despite the serious challenges detailed in Chapter 2.
• Chapter 4 discusses what many outsiders consider the most interesting aspect of the sport: the derby personas, or the pseudonyms the women play under. When roller derby reemerged in 2001, alter egos, or separate selves, dominated the landscape of the game. Now that the game is growing and evolving, the alter egos are largely disappearing in favor of derby personas, which are less extreme personality differences the women experience by skating under inventive, clever pseudonyms they create.
• Chapter 5 attempts to answer the overarching question of my study: Why derby? Why now? What is it about the sport that has helped it grow and thrive – even during the financial collapse of 2008 – when its athletes report large expenses, a time commitment that is akin to a part-time job, and numerous serious injuries (e.g., broken bones, torn ligaments, reparative surgeries)? Not only do the women remain in the sport, but everyone I spoke with discussed plans to remain involved in derby in some fashion after retiring from competition. Chapter 5 connects my findings to existing literatures in my attempt to answer the question: Why derby? Why now? Chapter 5 additionally explores societal constraints and moments of social emancipation and activism, befitting the critical theory lens employed in this study.
• Finally, the Appendix provides the methodology of the book, including information on qualitative methodology, ontological framework, participants, procedures, and data analysis.

Following this brief synopsis of the book, I return now to an overview of the sport.

A gendered perspective

Throughout this study, I examined my data through a gendered perspective, specifically one that considers gender as a social construct. Gender as socially constructed refers to gender as “an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements, and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society” (West & Zimmerman, 2002, p. 4). Moreover, gender is what defines our “roles, rights, and responsibilities and obligations” (Vasiljević, Marling, & Örtenblad, 2017, p. 4). In other words, gender has been “nurtured” into us by socially constructed institutions that serve to divide the sexes.

The process through which individuals learn these “gender norms” is known as gender socialization. Because gender is a “historical phenomenon” (Alvesson & Billing, 2009, p. 9), gender norms change across time and within and between cultures. Thus, as Wharton (2012) says, to study gender is to take “an interest in a moving target” (p. 103). By studying roller derby at this point in its revival and against the larger backdrop of the current social, economic, and political landscape in the United States means that I seek to understand the ways roller derby and gender inform each other.

While gender norms socialize people to enact differing gender roles, crucially, these roles confer different social statuses. Vasiljević et al. (2017) explain, “Gender difference is also a hierarchy in which practices and behaviors associated with men have historically been valued higher than those linked to women, resulting in women’s disadvantaged status in all spheres of society” (p. 4). Thus, to “see” gender roles and norms, and the power structures inherent in the gendered socialization of men and women, is to call attention to the inequalities and inequities entrenched in a gendered society, and to search for opportunities to subvert this domination.

The sport of roller derby

Rules and positions

Modern day roller derby is played on a flat, oval track. Two teams compete in two, 30-minute halves. Each half is filled with jams that last up to two minutes. During each jam, both teams field five skaters. Of the five skaters, four are blockers, and the fifth skater for each team is the “jammer,” denoted by wearing a helmet cover with a large star. Each team’s jammer starts the jam behind the eight blockers. The two jammers need to fight through the pack of blockers. After that initial passing of the blockers, a jammers then circles around and earns a point for each opposing player she passes. In other words, the jammer fights through the pack at the beginning of the jam and then circles around and passes everyone on the opposing team, earning five points. The blockers, meanwhile, are simultaneously trying to block the other team’s jammer while creating opportunities for their own jammer to break through the pack.

At the beginning of a jam, when the two jammers start behind the eight blockers, the jammer who breaks through the pack first is called the “lead jammer.” This means she can end the jam at any point, which is why a jam can be “up to two minutes long.” Typically, a lead jammer, e.g., Jammer 1, might call a jam just before the other jammer, e.g., Jammer 2, is about to score points. That means Jammer 2 needs to fight through the pack and place herself in scoring position as quickly as possible, because even if the jam is called before she can score, she also held Jammer 1 to few points. Because the oval track is not very large, allowing numerous laps, and because the 60 minutes of competition is comprised of many jams, teams often score in the 100s and 200s.

Though derby is a contact sport, rules prohibit many types of contact. Despite misconceptions, skaters cannot throw elbows, push, pull, or trip opponents, and they cannot block from behind. Rules also prohibit making contact to opponents’ heads, back, knees, lower legs, or feet (WFTDA, 2018). Skaters typically make contact with opponents by bumping each other, which is why one of my participants referred to the sport as a “collision” sport rather than a contact sport. Skaters have more flexibility in how they make contact with their own teammates. A jammer can use an “arm whip,” which occurs when a blocker extends her arm to her jammer and then propels the jammer forward as a transfer of momentum, or a “hip whip,” which is similar but refers to a jammer grabbing one of her blocker’s hips and pulling herself forward.

Because the athletes are moving quickly on skates, the collisions and tripping or tangling of skates can lead to serious injuries, as I discuss in Chapter 2. Injuries can also occur from illegal hits, which are penalized by the skater sitting in the penalty box for 30 seconds of the jam, leaving their team to play shorthanded. If a jammer is sent to the penalty box, the thirty-second penalty is referred to as a “power jam,” as only one team can score points. Sometimes a lead jammer will call a jam when the other team’s jammer heads to the penalty box so they can start a fresh jam, perhaps with a new, rested jammer, to maximize scoring opportunities for those 30 seconds the other team is without their jammer.

Another important element of the game is the pivot. Each team can designate one of the four blockers as their pivot, denoted by wearing a helmet cover with a large stripe on it. At any point during a jam, a jammer can take off her star helmet cover and hand it to the pivot, who then puts on the star helmet cover and is now the jammer and can score points. The star helmet cover must be handed; it cannot be thrown or picked up by the pivot. The previous jammer is now a blocker and is no longer able to score points for the duration of that jam.

“Stars in my eyes”

I asked participants what position of the three – jammer, blocker, pivot – they usually play, or prefer to play, and why. Brooke knew she wanted to jam the first time she saw a bout: “I was like, ‘That’s what I want to be.’ And a friend of mine said she saw stars in my eyes when I was watching it.” When I asked her specifically what it is about jamming that appeals to her, she said: “It’s just the feeling I get when I get through the pack … chasing down the girl in front of me. I really like that.” Brooke sees the pack of blockers as a puzzle:

So you come up to [the pack] and you’ve got all these girls, and four of them have this fire like they’re trying to kill you and four of them are trying to help you and you have to read what all of them are doing, so it’s like you’ve got this sort of puzzle in front of you and it’s constantly changing and you constantly have to adjust.

Eliza also likes being the jammer, because even though getting through the pack is a complicated proposition, she feels more of a singular purpose: “I feel like I have a more singular purpose and I actually can focus on it better.” In contrast, blocking requires multitasking, a weakness for her: “It’s just hard for me to multitask … it’s just there are like eight or nine things that I need to keep track of when I’m a blocker (laughs), and my mind is overwhelmed at times.” Jordan finds it challenging and a bit lonely: “[Jamming is] stressful also but I like the challenge. I find it lonely sometimes.” Maura understands the loneliness of jamming but enjoys when all five skaters are “in sync”:

I think a lot of people miss sort of the teamwork aspect of jamming, because a lot of people think that you’re on your own and you just kind of do your thing. But having a relationship with your pack where you’re leading what they’re hopefully doing for you, I think once that gets in sync, it’s really kind of a weird, mental, cool relationship.

“The action in the pack”

Rae understands why people love jamming, but she prefers the “action in the pack” as a blocker: “I feel like when everybody starts they want to be a jammer because the glory is in the jammer because she’s the one who’s scoring all the points, but I like the action in the pack.” Ruth sees the importance of blockers to the game: “I think jammers have a messiah complex that’s not a good thing because you feel like I can take care of everything myself … [but] a jammer’s only as good as the other four people out there skating with her.”

Some of the women prefer to block because of their size. While Eliza likes to jam because she is smaller than many and cites speed and agility as two of her strengths, Tina likes to block even though she is “5’2 and weighs about 100 pounds.” She explained her strategy: “Rather than me being able to lay big girls OUT I can just get in front of them and sit on them and block them that way. So you just use what you have.”

It was no surprise to me that Natalie loves blocking as her derby name refers to blocking. She explained the appeal of blocking: “It makes me feel really powerful to be like, ‘You’re not going to get past me and you’re not going to score.’ It’s my decision, like ‘I’m better than you. I can stop you.’ ”

Only two women mentioned the pivot position. One merely lumped pivot and blocker together, while Ruth had this to say about the pivot: “Pivot is a very difficult position that might not get as much recognition as jamming … if pivots are doing their jobs they’re calling shots and telling people where they should be.” Ruth does not like pivot because knowing teammate’s strengths and then directing them is not a strength of hers:

I’m not so strong of a pivot. I don’t want to tell someone to hold the inside line or help the jammer through if I can’t be confident they can do that. There’s some people who have no problem asking that of strangers and that’s a good quality.

“Chess on roller skates”

Many women, like Ruth, described the complexity of the game and cited it as a reason they love the sport. Rae used a metaphor common to my participants to describe derby – chess on skates: “You’re playing both offense and defense at the same time, like a fast-paced chess game on roller skates. You have to be really quick on your feet.”

The chess aspect Rae is referring to is the fact that blockers have to simultaneously block one jammer while creating openings for, or sometimes coming to aid of, their own jammer. This is different from other sports. Though people might compare derby to basketball or soccer because of the offense and defense aspect, whether a player is playing offense or defense at any given moment is determined by who has the ball. In derby, skaters play both simultaneously. Even as a blocker might act offensively in one second to help her jammer, she must remain mindful of how a particular movement will impact the opposing jammer.

Hearing their soul when you hit them

Along with the strategy aspect of derby, another reason women cited loving the sport is the contact nature of derby – or rather, “getting to hit people.” When discussing this project with people unaffiliated with derby, I am always surprised by people who do not think women would enjoy a contact sport the way it is taken for granted that men do. Many of the women laughed or qualified their statement saying they know it sounds bad, but they like hitting people in derby. Rae said: “It’s really exciting and I like to hit people. There’s that too (laughs).” Audra also laughed and qualified the following statement, acknowledging how “messed up” it is to say: “I mean, I know (laughs) maybe this sounds messed up to say but my favorite part of derby is getting to hit people. You know, knock the crap out of people (laughs) so I’m definitely drawn to that.” Julie prefers to hit rather than be hit, because a jammer who hits is wasting her energy. Therefore, she prefers blocking to jamming: “Yeah, I mean I like to hit people. Ya know, it’s much more easy to hit people when you are the blocker cause if you’re the jam...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: the resurgence of roller derby
• 2 Obstacles to playing roller derby
• 3 Benefits of playing roller derby
• 4 The role of the alter ego/derby persona
• 5 Why derby? Why now? Roller derby as rebellion and emancipation
• Appendix: methodology
• Index