Sports and masculinity†

Feminist scholarship has had a profound impact upon the study of sports. It has forced us to recognize the gendered nature of these activities and to question the traditional exclusion and marginalization of most females from sports. It has reinforced and extended the social history insight that modern sport is not the essential, universal historical practice that it was once thought to be, but a family of related activities developed under the specific conditions of rapidly industrializing Europe and spread by immigration, emulation and imperialism. We now understand sports as originating as ‘male practices’, developed by males for males, without the needs and experiences of females taken into account in any way, so that every generation of girls and women has had to fight to write themselves into this history. Often overlooked in the feminist struggle for opportunities and the politics of gender equity has been the effect of sports upon men. Yet sports have a profound effect upon men, our sense of ‘masculinity’, our relationships with other men (as well as with women) and our place in societies, whether we are players, spectators or entirely ignorant of sports. It took me a long time to recognize this and the special privilege that sports conferred upon me, far longer than it took to acknowledge the justice in feminist campaigns for fair and equitable opportunities and resources. This article was my very first attempt to come to terms with these issues. It was written for a collection on masculinities, edited by Michael Kaufman, a pioneering scholar and activist on issues of men, gender and power. In 1990, I joined with Kaufman and other men to form the White Ribbon Society to educate men about our responsibility to help end the violence against women.