"Girls Can't Play Baseball": Sports Are Gender Specific

Blog 2

The first time I have experienced a gender issue was when I was in elementary school and I wanted to play a sport, but the boys who were playing would not let me because I was a girl. At an early age boys and girls learn through socialization what they can and can not do. The boys who were playing took on a dominate male role and said I could not play with them because I was a girl. Those boys learned that they were then superior and thought girls could not do the same things as them, and the girls are supposed to listen and do something else (submissive role). This connects to the term hegemony: "those in power secure the consent of the socially subordinated to the system that oppresses or subordinates them... to persuade the populous that the hierarchical social and economic system is fexed and 'natural' and therefor unchangeable" (Dines & Humez, p. 627). I grew up with two older brothers with whom I have done a lot of “boy” things with. I guess you could say I was a tom boy. So, when the boys said I couldn’t play with them I was confused because I thought I could do what they were doing since I have before with my brothers. Growing up, I soon learned that male and female sports kept getting separated and no longer was there a mixed gender sport for awhile (until out of high school and into co-adult leagues). The boys in my elementary class were showing signs of hegemony in that they did not want girls in their all boy sports, because boys believed girls were weak and slow (stereotype) and they wanted to keep them out of their team (strong and fast). 

 

Nowadays, if girls play on a boys team or a boys sport they are considered as butch (lesbian), or the women will have uniforms on that are extremely skimpy and very revealing. I believe, women wear skimpy uniforms because of their sponsors or because they want attention from male audience and to do so is to be very sexually explicit. I do not believe that these women personally chose to wear lingerie while playing football due to the fact that football is a rough sport and women should not have to be naked in order to get an audience. Do women really feel they must be half or all the way naked to feel accepted or noticed? If so, this shows something is wrong in this society to allow this type of degrading of women.

References

Dines, G. & Humez, J. M. (2011). Gender, race, and class in media: A critical reader.
                Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.