Radical Potential Of Women In Sports, The

Off Our Backs, Jul/Aug 2004 by Christian, Sena

Since the passage of Title IX, women have made dramatic inroads into sports previously dominated by men. How has this changed our society? How have women responded? How have men reacted? This special section takes a feminist look at women in sports.

"When I dare to be powerful-to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

-Audre Lorde

Sports are a powerful socializing agent in the United States, so women in sports and female athletes should be a radical force for change in our society. The personal politics of radical feminism taught us that every experience we have or decision we make has political implications, so it would seem that the personal experiences and physical make up of female athletes should add up to resistance to systems of male power and dominance. Yet the revolutionary potential of women in sports remains frustratingly just out of reach.

It is true that today there seems to be more space for girls and women to be athletic, strong, muscular and skilled at sports. Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the number of girls and young women participating in recreational and competitive sports has dramatically increased. Before Title IX, women were 2 percent of college students participating in sports, and by 2001 this rate had risen to 43 percent. The number of girls participating in high school athletics rose from 294,000 in 1971 to 2.8 million in 2002.

These increased opportunities have greatly benefited women and girls. Girls and women have been shown to derive psychological, physiological and sociological benefits from their participation in sports. Girls and women who play sports have higher levels of confidence and self esteem and lower levels of depression. According to the Women's Sports Foundation, female athletes have a more positive body image. Female athletes are less likely to do drugs. High school girls who play sports are less likely to have an unwanted pregnancy, more likely to get better grades in school and more likely to graduate than girls who do not play sports. Participation in sports encourages girls and women to be strong, assertive and independent individuals.

Because of these benefits, women in sports have contributed much to the feminist project of resisting sexist oppression. Through their very existence, female athletes have given us a space to critique the ideology of what it means to be a woman. Every time a young woman participates in sports or displays her athleticism she breaks down naturalized gender categories and expectations. The image of women who are not passive, weak, emotional, noncompetitive and dependent on men shakes up society's perceptions and assumptions about men and women. Bodies are signified with meaning, and female bodies that are athletic, strong and muscular disrupt gender binaries and provide a foundation for deconstructing oppressions grounded in biological difference.

It's no coincidence that I became a feminist largely because of sports. My involvement with sports-as a soccer player for fourteen years-was critical in the development of my sense of self. When I was out on the soccer field, during practice on during a game, I ran fast and far. I got knocked around and pushed down but that only encouraged me to be more aggressive. On the field I learned never to back down from a confrontation. I learned how to be passionate about things I cared about. When it was the eighty-ninth minute of the game and I was too tired to take another step, being an athlete meant that I had an obligation to my team and to myself to take one more. I learned to persevere. What I did on the field translated into, and connected with, the other areas of my life.

Catherine MacKinnon advised us as feminists to "look for the deepest meanings in the least elevated places." In sports the simple act of a girl shooting hoops or a woman hitting a softball challenges deeply established gender paradigms. By building their strength in sports, women challenge a root cause of male domination and women's political, economic and social subordination-men's physical dominance over women. When we think of female athletes, it is empowering to realixe that the last person in the world who is supposed to have strength-a woman-has it. It is this revolutionary potential of female athletes that has proven to be very threatening to those people-primarily men-who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Unfortunately, the threat of female strength and power has drawn down a patriarchal backlash. Patriarchy forcefully fights back to contain any advancement in women's power. One way our patriarchal social system tries to repress the radicalness of women in sports is by questioning a female athlete's femininity. The media raise the ridiculous and inconsequential question of whether or not a woman who is an athlete-or a woman who is strong-is still a woman. In addition, female athletes are asked to make their transgressions acceptable by demonstrating their heterosexuality. This is accomplished with the considerate help of the male-run mass media that continually portrays women athletes as sexual objects for male consumption rather than as competitive athletes. Just reading through one issue of Sports Illustrated proves that. So the influx of female athletes into our collective consciousness may be translated into a narcotizing dysfunction wrapped up neatly in the package of sexualized representations of female athletes portrayed to the public-images which function to downplay or push aside the skill and athleticism of these women in favor of emphasizing their physical appearance.