Re-Thinking Gendered Identifications within the Classroom Games and Sport - Literature review Example

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[The female boxer violates this stereotype and cannot be taken seriously—she is parody, she is cartoon, she is monstrous.]” In history, though, several women have joined boxing competitions, and hence an uncommon feminine involvement has waited on the side-lines. Nevertheless, until quite recently, many British people have paid no attention to these female boxers and concentrated on the masculine feature of boxing. By the same token, Lindner (2012) asserts that “sports represent a context in which traditional notions of gender and gender relations are enforced.” Messner (2007) claims that females are trained or taught since childhood to aspire for ‘gender-fitting’ sports in order to avoid social rejection or ridicule. Women who join sports competition usually regarded to be manly are generally criticised by having their sexuality and gender doubted according to their professed incorrect representations of femininity, like building a muscular body. Women participating in boxing contests defy the traditional relationship between masculinity, physical power, and boxing and hence risk blurring “already destabilised gender boundaries”. As pointed out by Woodward (2013), “Possibilities of re-thinking gendered identifications within sport… might also disrupt some of the performance of hegemonic masculinity.” Such argument is supported by some scholars, like Weaving (2012), who explain that: Persistent reinforcement of traditional gender binaries creates the expectation that women be less physically aggressive than males, which explains why boxing heightens the struggle and tension regarding women’s bodies and physical capabilities… Boxing is at odds with the traditional sense of femininity. Such ideas are substantiated by Mennessen (2000) by arguing that female boxes call into question the prevailing gender norm. Women are perceived to require protection from the risks, hostility, and aggression that boxing tolerates and exemplifies. The illusion of manliness provided by boxing disregards based on the old-fashioned belief that they have to be protected against these manifestations of (aggressive) masculinity. Such assumption has been strengthened by Amir Khan, the British male boxer who won second place in the 2004 Olympics and who at the outset criticised female boxing due to the distress he experienced seeing women being harmed. The struggle of Khan with the reality that women can get hurt or be injured strengthens the dominant view of men as defender and the women as a ‘weakling’ requiring protection. Obviously, in truth, it is a logical belief that women athletes know of these dangers and have considered them when making a decision to seek boxing. Such social-cultural notions of aggression or violence as femininity’s opposite have pursued women into, and frequently expelled them from, the sport altogether. Like the other women athletes, female boxers have generally been embodied in ways that highlight their heterosexual appeal and ‘girlishness’, and hence start to resolve the observed mismatch between involvement in boxing and femaleness. Misconceptions, like the idea that premenstrual syndrome (PMS) will prevent women from boxing, or that the sport can bring about breast cancer and damage fertility, were believed to be raised in an effort to prohibit women from boxing. Hence boxing became a combat arena for such gender stereotypes. A. Women’s Motivation towards Boxing It is widely recognised that boxing can cause serious medical problems, such as brain injury, and the British Medical Association continues to support efforts to ban this sport. Still, amateur boxing for females is continuously growing in Britain. According to an adherent of the Great Britain amateur team, Amanda Coulson, “Pro boxing is a blood sport, but amateur boxing is completely different. It’s about outscoring and outclassing your opponent. It’s a physical game of chess, a noble art.” Suggestively, it was proclaimed in 2009 that female boxing would be hosted in the Olympics of 2012. Star athletes Thai boxing, kickboxing, and other martial arts changed sports for their opportunity to take part in the Olympics. Coulson thinks the movement motivated women who had rejected boxing in the past: “Girls didn’t realise that women could box, but now there are role models for them.” When asked about the reason behind their eagerness to join, the response of numerous male boxers is “because I love it”. Expectedly, female boxers usually give the same response. Girls and women confront demands to comply with specific standards. They are continuously being overwhelmed by the slim portraits depicted in the mass media. Boxing is generally linked to masculinity, which could shed light on its appeal for women wanting to push their physical limits. Vanessa Toumlin has demonstrated that, even since the 19th century, women could be seen participating in boxing in cabaret or burlesque spectacles. Some of the popular cases are British Annie Hayes, who “claimed that she did fights against male opponents”, and the Scottish Johnson sisters, “who would exhibit in red velvet dresses, decorated with amber coloured cuffs and gold braid, complete with boxing boots and gloves”. Observing a rise in the prominence of female boxing in the 1930s, Jennifer Hargreaves, a sports sociologist, explains: “In its most pure form, it was a celebration of female muscularity, physical strength and aggression. Power was literally inscribed in the boxer’ bodies—in their actual working muscles—an expression of physical capital usually ascribed to men.” Simply put, boxing is used by women to assert control over their femininity and resolve the culturally constructed belief about their physical capabilities and how they actually perceive their own physicality. With greater and improved training and preparation opportunities, the performances of female athletes got better considerably over those of their male counterparts. Female athletes trained vigorously and developed more beefy or muscular built and, even though brawny females had constantly participated in the Olympics, the gender of these females was questioned by the 1960s (Woolum, 1998, 52). In order to deal with the issue, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1968 launched a sex-testing initiative “to protect women against unfair competition” (Woolum, 1998, 52). The sex-testing program was initiated due to the belief on the superiority of males in sports: female athletes would be at a disadvantaged position over their male counterparts in men’s events, and male athletes taking part in women’s competitions would have an undeniable advantage; hence, female athletes must be safeguarded against male athletes participating in their competitions. Hence, all athletes participating in women’s competitions should be subjected to various tests to identify and make sure of the athlete’s sex. Gender boundaries have a transforming existence, yet when brought in, they are escorted with planned forms of action, a feeling of performance, combined and vague meanings—the instances frequently waver between play and antagonism, and heterosexual definitions hang about within other meanings—and by a range of powerful emotions such as playful delight, excitement, irritation, aspiration, humiliation and fear (Slade & Wolf 1994). The researcher will thoroughly discuss these issues in the framework of various different forms of borderwork: competitions, cross-gender practices of chasing and pollution; and offensives. These stylised instances suggest chronic issues that are profoundly embedded in our cultural ideas of gender, and they hold back understanding of patterns that challenge and qualify them. Boys and girls are at times positioned against each other in school playground games and competitions. While gender is a quite clear-cut and observable group of individuality that separates the population more or less in half, it is an appropriate foundation for reshuffling two teams. When boys and girls are on different teams, gender could go undefined as a basis of conflict, as in the opening of game of team handball; yet more frequently gender, defined by conversation and other actions, turns out to be essential to the representation of the interaction. In the fourth and fifth grade classroom of Oceanside, wherein usual seating was just about entirely separated by gender, the students chat about a boys’ area and a girls’ area. Evoking and strengthening the children’s self-division, Miss Bailey occasionally arranged the boys and girls into competing teams for academic competitions such as math and spelling contests. When classroom teachers structure gender-separated classroom games and contests, students obtain and highly structure the conflicting and opposed meanings. When given the freedom to organize their own activities, children also at times set up boys-against-the-girls games, particularly of kickball. Weighed with games in which each side has a combination of boys and girls, these gender-separated games are significantly unbalanced, which could, evidently, be the purpose and much of the excitement. As in the case of team handball, the partakers normally end up pulling the string of gender meanings and in so doing loosening the continuing game. For instance, on the fifth and sixth grade of one of the school playgrounds the researcher was able to observe, the researcher witnessed a kickball game with participant boys in the playing field and participant girls assigned to kick; some of the players on each side were African-American and others were white, yet the stress on gender appeared to sink possible racial issues. As the game progresses, it was highlighted by occasions of cross-gender chasing; once one of these occasions entailed a boy running after a girl who holds the rubber ball, the competition shifted into an expanded adaptation of “keep away” with boys and girls on competing sides, and an assortment of chasing, shoving, shouting and snatching. Read More