Gender and Sexuality in Sports

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Gender and Sexuality in Sports

When individuals, male or female, decide to enter a non-traditional sport for his/ her gender, there will inevitably be benefits and costs. Because sports themselves are divided along gender and race lines, one would expect that individuals who intend to play a sport deemed by culture and by society as counterintuitive are bound to be criticized and alienated because of their choices. Difference automatically threatens conventions, traditions, and expectations, and hence, it threatens the individuals who belong to that traditional sphere. Because sports are affected as much by funding as they are by issues of diversity and accessibility, the following questions address those issues: which group of people have access to what sports (the type of resources a school has determines the number of athletic opportunities and leagues that are available), what racial groups are represented more in which sports (African Americans are over represented in basketball but they are under represented in iced hockey, whites are over represented in winter sports but they are underrepresented in football), and how do those two questions overall affect a society and culture's response to "deviations?"

Generally, society has certain gender constructions that apply directly and indirectly to sports. Men are primarily thought of as physically stronger, more aggressive, and more physically active. Hence, men involved in sports are seen as fulfilling part of their experiences as men. Because they are men and because society has all these expectations about men and their physical abilities, sports becomes an arena in which men can prove, assert, and measure their manhood. In past generations, men could assert their masculin...

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...ge, it is important that men and women challenge society's convenient notions about masculinity, femininity, and culture. Men and women in sports must use their art and their talents to question not only the validity but also the premise from which expectations, criticism, and conflict arise. Being involved in sports, regardless of its effects on one's personal life and regardless of the barriers that are created especially to hinder individuals from making choices, opens doors to others who are interested in pursuing a nontraditional sport and who need the support of others like them. Ultimately, the sports world must help validate individuals and their abilities; individuals must defy the sports world and its expectations when its intent is to perpetuate and create divisions among men and women, among homosexuals and heterosexuals, and among races and ethnicities.

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