Sport, Sexualities and QueerTheory by Jayne Caudwell

Author:Jayne Caudwell [Caudwell, Jayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415367622
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2006-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Can sport be queered?

From the observations and accounts revealed during the research, ‘queering’ sport was not a priority and it appeared difficult to contest the discriminatory practices evident within mainstream sport. Similar conflicts of interest were found in recent UK-based studies of a gay rugby club (Price and Parker, 2003) and a gay rowing club (Owen, 2002). In these, the practices inherent within traditional sports restricted much of the focus upon ‘gayness’, often to the extent that hegemonic masculinities were reinforced at the expense of subordinate ones. Consequently, the emphasis within gay sports is generally placed upon activities and practices established within the context of traditional sport. The location of sport within the discourse of gendered and heterosexual practices means that it is often difficult to confront or replace the forms of social conduct which predominate. One of the central insights of queer theory is that the privileging of heterosexual intercourse is a social construction which gives rise to a binary division of gender (Ostenfeld et al. 2004). The binary of heterosexual and homosexual also implies that queer is a political and cultural strategy aiming to destabilise contemporary configurations of gender, sexuality and sex, thereby allowing something more capacious (and less occupied with sex as an indication of identity) to emerge. The ‘queer acts’ which Butler (1993) describes are supposed to disrupt the formulation of normative gender and make people reinterpret public signs. Positioning gay and lesbian space as ‘alternative’ is initially problematic since it reinforces the heterosexual/homosexual binary rather than exposing their constructed characters. In addition, the evidence collected during the research suggests that the gay tennis club continued to produce more signs of ‘straight acts’ than queer ones.

In terms of a collective identity, the gay tennis club had conflicting ideals. On the one hand, it had been set up to provide an environment away from the often oppressive heterosexuality found in mainstream sports clubs, whilst, on the other hand, the club was based around competitive sport and adopted traditional sporting procedures. My research supports the claims made by Pronger (2000) when he suggests that the emancipatory power which appeared initially within the gay and lesbian community, particularly in its approach to sport, has been quelled in recent years through the attempts to ‘normalise’ and become part of mainstream sport. This is not to say that the gay tennis club has ‘failed’ as it has been successful in providing the opportunity for some gay men to play tennis in a relatively safe environment and that, similar to the wider achievements of the lesbian and gay movement, it has contributed to making gay sport more visible. However, those who are granted greater opportunities to participate freely in gay sport are more likely to have had less traumatic experiences of mainstream sport as children. The evidence in this research suggests that amateur sporting practices in gay sport continue to reinforce discriminatory practices based on bodily performance and heterosexual configurations of gender.

In the research I found that consciousness of gayness as a

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