Gender/Women Studies 280: Feminist Methodologies

GENDER RELATIONS IN ULTIMATE FRISBEE AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR RETHINKING POWER STRUCTURES IN SPORTS

Review of the Literature
In my essay, I will be looking at the differences in men and women in sports, including society’s perception and their perception of each other within the sport. There are three main topics within my research which are masculinity as it has developed in the sports world, research on mixed genders in sports and whether it has helped or hurt women’s experience in the sports world, and finally I will present articles and forums from the ultimate frisbee community to determine if the community is ready for mixed gender competition or not. The first topic, masculinity, is a good way of centering my research and understanding possible explanations for the overall bad experience of women competing alongside men. I found several articles on this topic that outlined different ways masculinity has developed and changed the public’s perception of sports, but also how sports have developed society’s understanding of masculinity. The second topic, mixed genders in sports, will be important to look at how women are received in the sports world of “real” sports, or those that are established both in the media and the public eye. While there are important differences in Ultimate Frisbee, looking at these accounts will give me a better idea of the issues Frisbee will have to face if it hopes to break down the gender divide in sports. The final part of this essay will be looking almost exclusively at non-scholarly articles from various Frisbee magazines and forums. As a sport that has only been gaining popularity recently, there is very little scholarly research on it so my research will have to draw on speculation a little. The question I am trying to answer is “Could gender relations in sports be rethought by Ultimate Frisbee?”
For the first topic, I pulled most of my research from a single source; a book called Power at Play. In this book by Michael Messner, he conducted interviews between 1983-85 with 30 male former athletes (major sports), 21-48 years old, and talked about four broad eras in their life: their earliest experiences with sport in boyhood, their athletic career, retirement or disengagement from his athletic career, and life after their athletic career. Messner then gives a history of the crisis of masculinity as jobs became more blue collar and men turned to sports to reaffirm that they are not apart of the female world. He also talks about the racial and socioeconomic differences in why men join sports, but highlights that they are all at least superficially united by “manhood” upon entering the sports world.Chapter 2 outlines boyhood and how men are socialized into sports from a young age in a way that is very different from the way girls are socialized. Boys find their home in sports it isn’t just a place to be, it is THE place to be if they want to establish relationships with other boys. This resource highlights the prevalence of masculinity in sports and how it is impossible to separate the two realms. The importance of this resource will be to give a background on masculinity, and how it defines men’s experiences with sports. Specifically, their socialization as children, their perceptions on injuries, their relationships and conduct outside of the field, and then how all of these factors of the socialization of men into masculinity through sports affects women in their pursuit of equality and recognition as athletes.
For the next section I have three different sources, two different scholarly articles by Eric Anderson and one collaboration piece about gendered differences in sports and the media. The first article is titled "’I Used to Think Women Were Weak’: Orthodox Masculinity, Gender Segregation, and Sport" and discusses the experience of men entering cheerleading in college after exclusively playing football all of their lives. Anderson discusses how their perception of women as sexual objects is undermined and the men are encouraged to support their female teammates by seeing their strength and the hard work that goes into the sport. The next article is titled "Openly Gay Athletes: Contesting Hegemonic Masculinity in a Homophobic Environment" and outlines ways in which people who do not identify with masculinity are accepted/rejected from sports. Although this article does not talk about femininity, the author interviewed openly male-identifying gay athletes to see how they affected the standard of masculinity. The author describes several problematic aspects of the men’s experience, but the significant part of this research is that almost all of the athletes report having positive experience with coming out to their team. This suggests that modern masculinity might be more open to athletes that identify differently and this could correspond into mixed sports. The gay athletes had the privilege of passing as straight, cis-gender men before coming out to their team, so their experience will inherently be different from a woman joining a male team. However, there are positive implications for their reception once coming out. Both these scholarly articles will be important to the research because the first one documents men’s experience in a female-dominated sport and the second one documents gay men’s experience in male dominated sports. So the first essay gives insight to how men integrate into femininity and how their grip on masculinity changes after joining cheerleading. The second essay will then show how men will still change and adapt their perception of masculinity when a non-cis-gendered male is integrated into their world.
The third source for this section is entitled "Separating the Men from the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports.” A quote that I found exemplary of the themes and uses of this essay is: “We speculate that confidence is considered a ‘given’ for men, but an attribute for which women players must constantly strive.” This article highlights the language used in sports commentating that contributes to misconceptions about females as athletes. It also talks about the lack of coverage of women’s sports. In the conclusion they talk about how these factors--that is, poor media representation and when they do get televised are subject to gendered commentary and terms that subtly degrade their legitimacy as a female athlete--how these sway public opinion away from interest in female sports. This article could be used to show the necessity of women to have more coverage in the media and the positive effect this might have. It can also be related to the Skyd Magazine article that proposes a petition for equal coverage in the media for female and male sports. So although it might not yet be feasible for men and women to play mixed at a high level, equal media coverage will at least support interest in female sports which could lead to widespread normalization of female and male abilities.
For the last section of my essay, I will look at three different articles all from the online magazine Skyd. The first article is called “Gender Equity Belief Statement” and outlines a petition that Skyd Magazine is calling on parts of the ultimate community to sign. The petition calls on media coverage and USA Ultimate to prioritize women’s ultimate frisbee. The resource and the list of well-known teams to the ultimate frisbee community shows a broad base of at least support, if not educated understanding of issues of gender equity. The comments to the resource, however, can be used against the resource to show the arguments that exist in the ultimate community against this sort of progressive thought. The comments do not represent a majority of the ultimate community, but neither do the teams that have signed the petition, so the sentiments expressed in the comments are still important to understand as they represent viewpoints that exist in the community. The second article, is entitled “Gender Equity in Ultimate: A Guide for the Young Gentleman,” and explains the issues that were brought up in the comments of the petition. The author attempts to give a thorough understanding of what kind of inequalities are present in the frisbee community, both on mixed teams and in men’s perception of women’s teams. Similar to the other articles in Skyd Magazine, this one will be important to analyze the general culture of the ultimate frisbee community. Because these articles are not scholarly they therefore cannot be a basis for widespread issues in frisbee. However, their presence is notable, and provides a place for discussion to take place within the community which gives a perspective on the types of conversations dictating the direction of the sport.
The last resource for understanding the ultimate frisbee is an article entitled “Unstacking the Deck: How I Can Use My Privilege to Help Other People.” It is written by a male who has been apart of multiple higher level frisbee teams. Unlike the vast majority of frisbee players, Sam Harkness has had the opportunity to travel and be payed for his participation on teams, so his perspective is relatively well-informed and emblematic of frisbee culture. This article does a really good job of outlining the ways in which the ultimate frisbee community tends to favor male players and the men’s competition division. It is written by a man and experience-based so difficult to draw conclusions from for the general frisbee community. However, because the ultimate frisbee community is small, it has relatively few magazines. As one of the only official ultimate frisbee media sources, Skyd Magazine reaches many in the Ultimate frisbee community. So the fact that they published an article detailing male privilege in frisbee is somewhat significant and reached a large portion of the already small community. This article will be an important source to analyze the culture of the sport. This includes the comments as well as the article. The author of the article (as a male) is significant, as are the comments (which also mostly come from males) and how this article was received as opposed to the article about the petition for equal media coverage. Although the latter article did not have an author, it spoke with authority on the struggles of females in the frisbee community, indicating that the author was probably female. This article, if analyzed thoroughly and in comparison to the other Skyd articles and forums, can give an overview of the gender issues faced by women in the ultimate frisbee community and whether or not the community is ready to integrate genders or if it is necessary to first give more attention to the women’s teams to build their credibility.
So although there is no scholarly literature within the frisbee community about whether or not playing mixed gender works or not, hopefully the articles I have chosen are telling enough of the culture. This, combined with my personal experience with ultimate frisbee will give the projections more accuracy and the other resources will give it credibility. Although I am looking specifically in ultimate frisbee, the broader issue is men not accepting women into the sports world as athletic and competitive and deserving of the same attention given to male’s sports. So I can use my scholarly research to find ways in which masculinity has been formed in relation to sports and how cemented this form really is. Are there ways to break down the idea of “sportsmanship?” Has masculinity changed over time to incorporate people who do not identify with masculine qualities but want to garner the same respect as an athlete? These are the questions that will arise as I answer my main question of whether or not the world is ready for the boy’s club in sports to be eroded into a more inclusive and representative environment.

Research Questions
Could gender relations in sports be rethought by Ultimate Frisbee?
What is the current culture/community of Ultimate Frisbee in college teams?
Do they talk about gender relations?
Do they play/enjoy mixed ultimate?
Does the competitive mixed division of ultimate frisbee have a future, and does it make gender relations more complex than the rest of the sports world?

Sample Interview Questions
Player demographics/background
How long have you been an athlete and what other sports have you played? Do you most strongly identify with Ultimate Frisbee?
Do you watch Ultimate Frisbee games? Which ones (male/female/mixed)?
Why do you like watching/playing Women’s Ultimate Frisbee?
What is your role on your team? (handler/cutter/new player/experienced player etc.)

How the player understands gender relations
There is a petition for equal media coverage for men and women’s frisbee. The petition calls the signers to reject the coverage if it is not equal, that is, if the number of women’s games shown is less than the number of men’s games, USAU will reject all coverage. Do you think this would help or hurt the frisbee community? The sports community? Are the downfalls worth it?
How do you perceive gender relations in ultimate? How are these relations affected by competitive mixed gender teams, and how does this aspect of frisbee make the community different from the rest of the sports world?
Does mixed help or hurt gender relations?
How are you, as an Ultimate player and athlete (also player of targeted identity, if applicable), different from the men at your school/in your division? (FEMALE ONLY)

Specifics of the Player’s Team
Does your team talk about gender relations? If so, how do they address it, if at all?
What differentiates women’s frisbee from men’s/mixed frisbee?
Do you like playing mixed? What challenges are there on a mixed team? What benefits?
Are there additional considerations/duties for you as a female? Do the men recognize these additional barriers? (FEMALE ONLY)

Future of Their Current Team (Captains)
How many people are on your team? How many freshmen/new players?
Is your school seeing growth/stagnation/decline in interest from campus?
What are your goals for your team’s growth (are you trying to get more people on campus involved, are you trying to recruit frisbee players from high schools, are you trying to spread interest on campus for the team)?
How important are gender relations to your team? Do you address them?
How do you ensure new female players stay with the sport?

Bibliography
Anderson, Eric. ""I Used to Think Women Were Weak": Orthodox Masculinity, Gender Segregation, and Sport." Sociological Forum 23, no. 2 (2008): 257-80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20110264.
Anderson, Eric. "Openly Gay Athletes: Contesting Hegemonic Masculinity in a Homophobic Environment." Gender and Society 16, no. 6 (2002): 860-77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3081938.
Gender Equity Action Group. “Gender Equity Belief Statement.” Skyd Magazine, Sept. 9, 2017. http://skydmagazine.com/2016/09/gender-equity-belief-statement/
Gender Equity Action Group. “Gender Equity in Ultimate: A Guide for the Young Gentleman.” Skyd Magazine. Sep. 26, 2016. http://skydmagazine.com/2016/09/gender-equity-ultimate-guide-young-gentleman/
Harkness, Sam. “Unstacking the Deck: How I Can Use My Privilege to Help Other People.” Skyd Magazine, Feb. 17, 2015. http://skydmagazine.com/2015/02/unstacking-deck-can-use-privilege-help-people/
Messner, Michael A., Margaret Carlisle Duncan, and Kerry Jensen. "Separating the Men from the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports." Gender and Society 7, no. 1 (1993): 121-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/190027.
Messner, Michael. Power at Play. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.