Trans women in athletics are creating a severe problem within athletics. They hold a biologically unfair advantage when competing against and amongst cisgender women. A descriptive analysis, a rhetorical study, and an examination of unique constraints on the rhetorical artifact of a board of directors’ testimony reveal how this artifact works to illuminate the subject of trans women in athletics. The disparity in the performance of trans women’s physiological advantage is readily apparent regardless of undergoing gender-affirming treatments. The artifact in question aims to persuade the audience by shaping their beliefs. This is a YouTube video featuring a speech by Paula Scanlan during an NCAA board conference. The speech discusses Lia Thomas’s …show more content…
She opens up about her experience and her fellow teammates’ experience and how it affected her and her teammates. She is seeking positive change for all parts of the sport and the sport. The rhetorical artifact is a narrative story sequence that uses logical casual cause/effect with topical parts. As the artifact is a testimony video, discern the sequence, topical, and logical portions of the video. The video is a testimony, a story, her journey, a personal experience unique to the person giving it. She shares her struggles, her trauma, as well as her fellow peers’ similar trauma. The video follows the sequence of effects, which is then written with casual logic. Within the video, the artifact uses the Resource language of Formality and Informality, which is split into a portion of 80 percent Formality and 20 percent Informality. This is supported simply by, again, simply by the nature of the artifact. As it is a testimony, the formality of the speech is evident for most of the speech. However, within the speech, there are portions of informality within the speech where they are more emotionally …show more content…
The video is both a portion of justificatory and logical, leaning more toward justificatory. Again, Paula spoke to the board of the NCAA, telling her testimony and speaking to her teammates. She helps paint the picture of how little the NCAA and the University of Pennsylvania cared about the feeling of the biological woman in the program conforming to Lia Tommas’ gender identity. This conference as a whole sheds light on the damage that is being done to women’s sports categories around the world of swimming and other sports and how, by turning a blind eye, we are killing women’s sports. The well-being and the fair participation and survival of not only women swimming but all women’s sports that are being affected by Trans athletes dominating their gender category. If any man can claim to be a woman and compete in women’s sports, why have women’s sports at all? If the argument is that there is no difference between men and women, why is there gender separation within sports? We cannot continue to allow the destruction of women’s sports. We are robbing the opportunity for women to compete on equal ground within their gender
There is finesse to her arguments, but they are not subtle. They do not need to be. They have the benefit of being right, the history of countless female athletes backing them, and the self assuredness from this to know that sometimes, you cannot simply press a point. You must hit it with a hammer. And that's what Heywood, her essay, and Title IX all do. In A world where the “female athlete triad” (eating disorders, exercise compulsion, and amenorrhea) are alive and well, female athletes need to know that they do not need to compete against themselves and their friends. It is enough to compete against the rest of the world. Heywood, as an athlete who experienced the female athlete triad, feels that she missed out on the true benefits of sports. Friendship, teamwork, and most importantly, “what the books call self esteem: feeling the warm sun on your face, walking across the field like a giant, feeling that just for a moment, the world belongs to you.” The fight to allow females to compete in sports has been won. Now, there is a new fight. To teach females in sports that they do not have to crush everyone else, to knock everyone else to the ground so they can be the one left standing. The new frontier for females will be an athlete who loves her sport, wants to win, and gives it her all, but doesn’t have to destroy herself or anyone else to do
When a woman or man joins a non-traditional sport for their gender or sex, it can have drastic social and cultural costs. These impact not just the individual but also the entire community. When a person challenges the gender roles of society, then they change the perceptions of what men or women are capable of doing, they further androgynize cultural norms, and they open up sports for others.
Rhetorical Analysis of Artifacts: The Ballot or the Bullet? Speech Given by Malcolm X I. Introduction: Though almost half a century has passed, the Civil War. The Rights Movement remains one freshly imprinted in not only the history. books of US schools, but also in the minds of countless Americans.
...ach step in athletics for women is a fight. Title IX did not solve all the problems as colleges and schools across the country have an equal number of sports for men and women. Over time women's athletics have acquired this image that is negative and often times drives women away from playing sports at all. We need to change this negative image so more women will be conformable doing the sports they love. Women playing un-traditional sports are a start in this process. Along with the cost of playing non-traditional sports that are sometimes harmful, there will be a benefit no matter the consequences. The benefit of women playing freely, without the fear of being judged or hurt by other people is a benefit that is superior than all the obstacle women go through. It is my hope that someday women will be able to play freely, and in hopes in having fun playing the game.
...ennis, basketball, soccer, and martial arts—have come from the days of cheerleading and synchronized swimming when she was growing up in the ’70s.” Disparities in media coverage and over-sexualized female athletes on magazine covers is something that needs to come to an end because of its effects on both male and female viewers, young and old, athletes and non-athletes. Both female and male athletics influence young people and shape their personality and morals as they mature. Retired WNBA player, Lisa Leslie credits her participation in basketball with shaping her character, as well as her career. “Sports can also help teenagers during an awkward time in their development.” (“Women’s Athletics: A Battle For Respect”). The solution is to come together as a society and identify how to balance the respect for female and male athletes in the media.
In the world of sports, it is fairly obvious that people have experienced many costs, including insults, ridicule, and lack of acceptance, but the benefits gained are much more vital to sports and the future of athletics. Competing in sports that are non-traditional to one's gender can only make society stronger, and our culture more unified.
“The past three decades have witnessed a steady growth in women's sports programs in America along with a remarkable increase in the number of women athletes (Daniel Frankl 2)” From an early age women were thought to be “Lady Like”; they are told not to get all sweaty and dirty. Over 200 years since Maud Watson stepped on the tennis courts of Wimbledon (Sports Media Digest 3); women now compete in all types and levels of sports from softball to National racing. Soccer fans saw Mia Hamm become the face of women’s soccer around the world, Venus and Serena Williams are two of the most popular figures in tennis, and Indy car racing had their first woman racer, Danika Patrick. With all the fame generated by these women in their respective sports, they still don’t receive the same compensation as the men in their respective sports fields.
Many people in society argue about the unfairness of transgenders competing in sports. Transgenders should be able to be on the sports team that matches their gender identity with medical documents proving they have gender dysmorphia. Many other athletes would argue that transgenders being able to compete in sports is unfair. A transgender woman who has higher levels of testosterone than the other women might seem to have an advantage over the other female athletes. Transgender women might have a little bit of an advantage, but they truly feel as if they are women, so they should be able to compete as women.
Within todays sporting community, certain aspects of sport and its practices promote and construct ideas that sport in general is a male dominated. Sports media often provides an unequal representation of genders. Women athletes are regularly perceived as mediocre in comparison to their male equivalents (Lenskyj, 1998). Achievement in sport is generally established through displays of strength, speed and endurance, men usually set the standards in these areas, consequently woman rarely reach the level set by top male athletes. Due to this, the media significantly shows bias towards male sports while we are ill-informed about the achievements in the female sporting community. On the occasion that a female athlete does make some form of an appearance in the media, images and videos used will usually portray the female in sexually objectified ways (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). This depiction of female athletes can cause males to take focus solely on the sexual assets of the athlete in preference to to their sporting abilities (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). Sexualisation of sportswoman in the media is a prevalent issue in today’s society, it can cause physical, social and mental problems among women of all ages (Lenskyj, 1998).
Krane, V. (2001). We can be athletic and feminine, but do we want to? Challenging hegemonic femininity in women's sport. Quest, 53,115-133.
Most people watch some form of sports, whether it be the Olympics or the highlights on ESPN. The NBA and NHL playoffs are underway and theyit seems to be the only news on ESPN. There is almost no coverage of the WNBA playoffs or any female athletics. Tennis isone of the only big sports on ESPN for women. While during the Olympics the coverage seems to be non-stop and close to equal. Women’s participation in sport is at an all-time high and has almost become equal with men’s, however,. sSports media does notfails to show this equality and skews the way we look at these athletes. Through the disciplines of sociology and gender studies, it can be seen that despite the many gains of women in sports since the enactment of Title IX, “traditional” notions of masculinity and femininity still dominate media coverage of males and females in sports, which is observed in Olympic programming and sports news broadcasts.
Gender inequality in the United States is a serious problem, and it is often overlooked. It is a big issue, especially within sports. We live in a society where our culture prefers men 's sports over women 's. Labeling activities as feminine and masculine is a social construction based on stereotyped expectations regarding gender and perceived gender differences (McCullick, 2012). In 1972 Title IX was passed stating that, no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. This opened up athletics to women and girls (Education Amendment Act of 1972, 1972). Although
The author says that despite the strides that have been made by title IX, girls who chose to play sports must deal with sexism in all facets of the sport (Defeating, 2017). It used the example of a girl being denied the right to play a sport because of her
Whether its baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, or tennis, sports is seen all over the world as a representation of one’s pride for their city, country, and even continent. Sports is something that is valued world-wide which has the ability to bring communities together and create different meanings, beliefs and practices between individuals. Although many people may perceive sports to have a significant meaning within our lives, it can also have the ability to separate people through gender inequalities which can also be represented negatively throughout the media. This essay will attempt to prove how gender is constructed in the sports culture while focusing on female athletes and their acceptance in today’s society.
Cis women athletes who want to compete in a professional level are not going to be given a fair chance to succeed and to work up to the top when transgender women who biologically have the body of a male are competing against them. A born male who identifies as a woman and competes as a woman who does not take any hormones makes the situation even more unfair because this means the transgender women competing as a woman has the body structure of man, same level of testosterone of a man, and strength of a man. The reason why this situation is such dilemma is because high schools clearly states that women are to compete in the women’s sports and men are to compete in the men’s sport but as to how genders are defined remains unclear. The book Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sports by Eric Anderson goes into depth about people have started to identify as transgender, the sport policies placed for transgender athletes, some background, and it is a new concept on how some people identify themselves. Consequently, it makes it difficult to know where to place transgender people when it comes to sports.