Philosophical Perspectives on Gender in Sport and Physical Activity

Paul Davis, Charlene Weaving, Paul Davis, Charlene Weaving

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415476614
• eBook ISBN: 9781134023271
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

There are a broad variety of sex and gender resonances in sport, from the clash of traditional ideas of femininity and athleticism represented by female athletes, to the culture of homophobia in mainstream male sport. Despite the many sociological and cultural volumes addressing these subjects, this collection is the first to focus on the philosophical writings that they have inspired. The editors have selected twelve of the most thought-provoking philosophical articles on these subjects from the past thirty years, to create a valuable and much needed resource.

Written by established experts from all over the world, the essays in this collection cover four major themes:

• sport and the construction of the female
• objectification and the sexualization of sport
• homophobia
• sex boundaries: obstruction, naturalization and opposition.

The book gathers a broad range of philosophical viewpoints on gender in sport into one unique source, subjecting the philosophical origins and characteristics of some of the most controversial topics in sport to rigorous scrutiny. With a balance of male and female contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, and a comprehensive introduction and postscript to contextualize the source material, Philosophical Perspectives on Gender in Sport and Physical Activity is essential reading for all students of the philosophy of sport, sport and gender, and feminist philosophy.

Part 1

Sport and the Construction of the Female

Chapter 1

The Exclusion of Women from Sport

Conceptual and Existential Dimensions*

Iris Marion Young

Conceptual and normative issues about women’s relation to sport have not been given nearly enough attention by either philosophers or feminists. Jane English began to take up these issues in her paper “Sex Equality in Sport.”¹ This paper, which is dedicated to Jane’s memory,² develops those issues further.

In Section I, I argue that insofar as our culture defines woman’s body as object, the culture necessarily excludes women from its concept of sport. In Section II, I discuss the institutional and practical exclusion of women from sport in our society. Section III argues that insofar as our culture excludes women from both the idea and reality of sport, it excludes us from full participation in humanity itself. Hence inclusion of women in both the idea and institutions of sport is a fundamental condition of women’s liberation. Finally, in Section IV, I argue that the cultural exclusion of women from the idea and reality of sport has given sport a masculinist bias which prevents sport itself from exhibiting its potential humanity. Hence the inclusion of women in the idea and institutions of sport is a fundamental condition for the humanization of sport.

I

The most basic aspect of woman’s existence in a male dominated society, according to de Beauvoir (1974), is that the symbols and institutions of the society define woman as the Other. Masculinist culture defines woman as immanence as opposed to transcendence, determinate nature as opposed to the self-chosen subject. This symbolic elaboration of woman as the Other identifies the female body as mere body-object, as opposed to the body-subject which is the man.

The ideal of feminine beauty is variable, but certain demands remain constant; for one thing, since woman is destined to be possessed, her body must present the inert and passive qualities of an object. Virile beauty lies in the fitness of the body for action, in strength, agility, flexibility; it is the manifestation of transcendence animating a flesh that must never sink back upon itself … Her body is not perceived as the radiation of a subjective personality, but as a thing, sunk deeply in its own immanence; it is not of the world, it must not be the promise of things other than itself; it must end the desires it arouses (de Beauvoir 1974: 178).

There is little question that the status of women has undergone alteration in the present century, and to a large degree it has been progressive change. There has been little weakening, however, of the masculinist identification of the feminine body as object. Indeed, I believe it can be argued that the objectification of the female body in contemporary American culture is greater than that of many cultures, but I will not make that argument here. In any case, the symbolic media of contemporary society convey an image of the female body as mere flesh. Those aspects of a woman’s body most gazed at and discussed, and in terms of which she herself all too often measures her own worth, are those which least suggest action – neck, breasts, buttocks, etc. Contemporary film, advertising, popular literature and periodicals, and countless other media objectify the female body as sexy, passive flesh. They use this objectification of the female body, moreover, as a means of sensualizing other objects, thus making them desirable. Finally, while norms of dress retain much of the liberality that emerged in the sixties, in recent years there has been a revival of “feminine” styles which tend to make the female body inactive, both in appearance and reality.

Now sport is a notoriously slippery concept, and I do not wish here to enter the discussion about how it should be defined.³ Whatever else it is or is not, however, sport is the achievement of a non-utilitarian objective through engagement of bodily capacities and/or skills. In sport, at least ideally, the body is spontaneous subject and the subject is wholly embodied. The identity of body and active subjectivity reaches its paradigm in sport; the very stance, muscles, movement and directionality of the athlete exhibit directly her or his intentions and projects. To be sure, the body-subject underlies all human activity, and many activities, such as physical labor, require skill, strength, and dexterity in the use of the body’s capacities. Athletic activity, however, abstracts the body’s movement and accomplishment from its natural involvement in the complex web of natural and social goals; sport calls upon the body’s capacities and skills merely for the sake of determining what they can achieve.

By its nature, then, sport exhibits the essential body-subject. Masculinist culture defines women, on the other hand, as the essential body-object. Thus in a culture which defines woman as Other, sport and woman are mutually exclusive concepts. This suggests that the sense of incompatibility between women and sport which still dominates in our society is not a social accident, but a conceptual and symbolic necessity. To the degree that in our society the female body is objectified, women must be excluded from the concept of sport. It follows that if there is a particular female person participating in sport, either she is not “really” a woman, or the sport she engages in is not “really” a sport. These two interpretations of the phenomenon frequently occur in our society, often together.⁴

II

Not only have women been excluded from the idea of sport, the institutions and practices of sport to a large degree still exclude women as well. The causal relationship between the cultural symbols of sport and the institutions of sport are indeed complex, and I do not wish to develop those here. I shall merely describe aspects of the exclusion of women from sport and practice.

The degree to which young girls are discouraged from engaging in physical activity, often in very subtle ways has been noted in much recent literature.⁵ To a large degree the sanction on girls’ physical activity does have the effect of reducing the level of physical activity of girls, especially relative to boys. There is, however, a certain girlhood culture of resistance. Many pre-adolescent girls engage in some physically challenging play such as jumping rope, roller skating, bike racing, various bouncing ball games, hop scotch, and countless other games. Our society does not take these girls’ games seriously as sport, however, and by the time we reach ten or eleven we have put them away as childish things. The sort of physical play in which girls typically engage has institutional form only in the world of the girls themselves; the girls engage in their play “spontaneously” largely without the help, notice, guidance and institutionalized resources of the larger society.

Specifically what our society largely denies girls is access to the organized and institutionalized sport which it takes for granted as an essential part of the boy’s childhood and adolescent environment. Boys generally play at games institutionalized in the larger society. From an early age parents, older children, teachers and coaches provide them the opportunity to develop their athletic skill in a self-conscious way. The society encourages, recognizes, develops and rewards the physical activity and achievement of boys, at the same time it discourages and often ignores that of girls.

The absence of institutionalized sport for girls and women, coupled with the active sanction against their physical activity that girls often experience, does much to develop in us a sense of ourselves as weak, frail, sedentary. Exclusion from sport as the paradigm of physical engagement with the world is not merely something that happens to girls, however. We also actively choose ourselves as inactive bodies.

The female person who grows up in a society which defines the female body as object rarely escapes developing a bodily self-image in conformity with that definition. As she passes through the years of adolescence she increasingly experiences the sexually objectifying gaze of men and the measuring gaze of other women which assess her in terms of her “feminine beauty.” When others look upon us in this way it is difficult not to regard ourselves from the same objectifying point of view. More often than not we actively take up our identity as body-objects. We regard our bodies as mannequins to be pruned, shaped, dressed, and painted.⁶ A number of psychological studies report that women have significantly higher bodily awareness than men.⁷

This body image has a definite impact on our potential for sport. In his book on sport, Paul Weiss considers the question of why women take an interest in sport less frequently than men. He answers that each sex naturally stands in a different relation to its body. Men are more abstract and intellectual than women. While women are capable of intellectual endeavors, in general, ‘a woman is less abstract than a man because her mind is persistently ordered toward bodily problems’ (Weiss 1969: 217). The very process of maturing, Weiss claims, brings women into natural unity with their bodies, whereas the intellectual tendency of men sets them in tension with and separated from their bodies. Men seek to engage in sport in order to resolve this tension and achieve a unity with their bodies. Women tend to be less interested in sport, because we already have this unity.

Despite the obviously sexist and mystifying character of this metaphysical appeal to male and female natures, there is a grain of truth in Weiss’ explanation of why women tend to be less interested in sport than men. The reason does lie in part in the relation in which women stand to our bodies. To the degree that we choose ourselves as body-objects, we find it difficult to become enthusiastic body-subjects and frequently do not desire to challenge our bodies in sport. The mutual exclusivity of women and sport which exists at the ideal level thus enters the experience and self-definition of women themselves.

III

The major symbols and institutions of sport in our society continue by and large to exclude women. This exclusion of women from sport implies our exclusion from full participation in humanity, at both the symbolic and practical levels. Mary E. Duquin has suggested that sport symbolizes human transcendence of nature in the establishment of culture. Following Ortner, she claims that virtually all cultures associate woman with nature and man with culture (Ortner 1974). The exclusion of women from sport, then, symbolizes the exclusion of women from humanity itself as the cultural transformation of nature (Duquin 1977).

Along similar lines, Eleanor Metheny argues that sport symbolizes human freedom. She argues that sport abstracts from the constraints and requirements of the natural and social world in which we seek to enact our particular material goals. In such everyday action one must submit to the constraints of external ends, worldly resistances and unintended consequences. In sport, on the other hand, the conditions, rules and restraints, as well as the goals, are self-chosen, and one engages one’s body capacities purely for the sake of showing them at their best. In this way sport serves as a symbol of freedom.⁸ If sport stands in this way as a symbol of freedom, then the exclusion of women from the idea of sport implies our exclusion from the idea of human freedom.

The dominant ideology of formal equality denies the feminist claim that our society excludes women from full participation in humanity. Our exclusion from most aspects of humanity is subtle and slippery. The explicit conceptual and symbolic exclusion of women from sport, coupled with sport’s symbolization of transcendence and freedom, provide us with one of those few instances in our culture where the equation of humanity with masculinity appears explicitly.

Exclusion of women from the institutions and practices of sport, moreover, has a real effect on our opportunity to develop our human capacities. The female person who defines herself and is defined by others as fragile, weak, awkward and passive, and who receives little encouragement to engage her body in physical activity, will more often than not become weak, awkward, and physically timid. As I have developed elsewhere, feminine bodily existence under these conditions is characterized by contradictory structures of bodily comportment and spatiality. Sexist society excludes us by definition and in practice from developing ourselves as free body subjects (Young 1980).

If, as Merleau-Ponty argues, the basic structures of human existence – consciousness, intentionality, purposiveness, etc. – have their foundation in the body as acting and expressing subject (Merleau-Ponty 1962), then the inhibition of women’s development of our body subjectivity implies a profound inhibition of our humanity.⁹ In our society athletic activity is one of the few institutionalized opportunities a person has for developing a sense of himself or herself as a vigorous, powerful, skilful, coordinated and graceful body. In contemporary advanced industrial society laboring activity, and even to an extent military activity, rely little on physical virtues of strength, agility and coordination. Thus in our society sport has a more crucial role in the founding of body subjectivity than perhaps it has had in the past. The exclusion, including the self-exclusion, of women from participation in sport thus prevents us from realizing fundamental aspects of our humanity.

From the above considerations it follows that a fundamental condition of the liberation of women is our full inclusion in both the idea and reality of sport. For the exclusion of women from sport not only deprives us of important human opportunities, it gives a fundamental advantage to men. The same society which discourages the physical development of women actively encourages man’s exercise of physical strength and skill. There can be little doubt that such differential access to physical power is a significant element in the social power men have over women, as well as the social justification of this power distribution.

From several points of view, then, the call for full inclusion of women in the symbols and institutions of sport may represent a demand more fundamental and far reaching than demands for simple justice, like equal pay for equal work or shared housework, despite the importance of these other demands.¹⁰ If the exclusion of women from the concept of sport symbolizes our exclusion from humanity itself, and if our exclusion from the institutions of sport contributes in a basic way to a sense of weakness, body-objectification and physical timidity among women, then the inclusion of women in the symbols and institutions of sport is a basic aspect of our full participation in humanity.

IV

The exclusion of women from the symbols and institutions of sport has consequences not only for the condition of women, but for the nature of sport itself. Because sport excludes women at the same time that it serves as a foundation of masculinist privilege and ideology, the masculinist bias which permeates the symbols and institutions of sport in our culture blunts and deforms its potential human significance.

English has pointed out how the very kinds of sport which exist in our society reflect this masculinist bias. The most celebrated and most practiced sports put a premium on height, mass, strength and speed – attributes in which on the average men will tend to excel over women. The sport imagination has not even begun to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Sport and the construction of the female
• Part 2 Objectification
• Part 3 Sex boundaries: construction, naturalisation, and opposition
• Part 4 Homophobia
• Postscript
• Index