‘Why are girls lifting that heavy if it makes that happen?’: From abjection to a weak theory of ‘pissing yourself’ in sport

Kristeva’s abjection theory is a popular framework for grappling with leaking bodies. Yet while exploring the significance of women's involuntary urination during sport, abject theory's insistence that pissing oneself must be identity shattering failed to convince us. Indeed, some women find pissing themselves to be identity forming as it marks the threshold beyond which one becomes a ‘serious’ athlete. Drawing on Sedgwick, we frame abjection as strong theory—able to explain some aspects of the experience well but unable to account for other aspects. To supplement our approach, we draw on sexuality studies for inspiration regarding how to approach involuntary urination during sport through weak theory. Rather than trying to proffer a totalizing explanation, weak theory foregrounds near and specific phenomena, allowing for variation and complexity. In this case, weak theory is analytically useful as it allows us to consider women's diverse responses to urinary leakages alongside mainstream cultural responses (disgust at the leaky body) and subcultural sporting norms (prioritization of sport performance). Further, weak theory allows us to attend to the gendered specificities of peeing in sport. Drawing on interviews with women strength athletes, we question what women's responses to their nuanced, specific experience of peeing themselves while resistance training tells us about women's place in sport and their bodily capacities. Ultimately, we argue that far from being abject, bodily leaks can be transformative, creating new subjectivities and new understandings of what women's bodies are capable of: namely, being simultaneously strong, beautiful, and leaky. This article contributes a grounded exploration of the limits of abjection theory by highlighting the necessity of considering cultural context and specific phenomena, arguing that weak theory is a useful lens through which to do so.