Women and Sport
To begin we looked at the history of women and sports and women athletes. In a quick summary women were basically not allowed to participate in many sports until halfway through the 20th century. Women were looked at as a "delicate creature" who should not be subjected to the rigors of sports such as soccer, rugby, cricket and many other such sports.
The activities that women were mostly relegated prior to the 20th century to were your country club sports, like badminton, and they were hardly dressed in athletic gear.
When women became more involved with athletics Orin made several excellent connections with society and the gender role of women. Even though women could be great athletes. The best example we examined was "Babe Didrikson". Her accomplishments included 2 gold medals and 1 silver in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. She was also such a great natural athlete she would pick up any sport and play it at a high level. She decided to pick up golf after the Olympics and qualified for and made the cut in every PGA golf tournament she entered in. She remains the only woman to make the cut in a men's PGA golf event. When the LPGA formed in 1950 she dominated the circuit with 41 career victories. She sadly passed away from cancer at the young age of 45.
Amazing pioneering female athletes such as Babe Didrikson met much criticism for not settling in with the stereotypical female gender roles of the time. Consider this quote:
"It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.
— sportswriter Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram, [1]
It really is a sad commentary of the thought process of some people in the 20th century. Orin interestingly pointed out a term coined, "The Apology", where female athletes still did gender role activities to help be accepted by society, such as "girly" photo shoots, getting married and having children, and being a homemaker.Women's sports has certainly come a long way but women still take a back seat to the men. Male professional athletes earning potential can be almost unlimited, in the tens of millions of dollars per year, but most women top athletes can earn only a fraction of that.
Homosexuality, Transgender, and Sport
In this lectures Orin points out that sports can sometimes be ahead of the curve as in the case of Jackie Robinson. He was allowed to participate in professional baseball decades ahead of African Americans gaining other significant social rights.
In the case of gay athletes this is not the case however. In all of the major professional sports only two currently active athletes are openly gay, Michael Sam, a player on the Cowboys, and Jason Collins, a player for the Brooklyn Nets.
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| Michael Sam |
The topic of transgender athletes was particularly interesting, and I was admittedly uninformed when it came to the biology of such athletes. If you are unsure of the exactly transgender people are, take a look the Transgender APA page on the topic.
In class we examined the transgender MMA athlete Fallon Fox. This is the article we looked at for class that explains her situation. My initial reaction was that it's not really fair that someone born a man, who would have an inherent advantage with regards to muscle strength and density, would fight females professionally. However Orin continued to talk about western's culture tendency to look at sex as either all male or all female. When looking at the issue of sex, as it is actually described in science, sex is much more on a continuum than just being black and white, male and female.
There are many people born with various hormone and different chromosome makeups. For example males are usually born with an XY chromosome makeup but can be born with XXY makeups that give them many physical characteristics of a female. When looking at transgender athletes their biology isn't as easy as saying male or female, it's basically somewhere in-between our traditional western thinking.
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| Fallon Fox |
After week 4 and into week 5 we explored the phenomenon of the fan or "Fanatic". The readings were very interesting and there was a good article that delved deeper into the behavior of people in crowds. In a crowd people tend to stop thinking for themselves and act in ways that they would normally not. Individuals in the crowd lose capacity to think for themselves at times.
When this topic was brought up in class I thought of the Vancouver riots after the Canucks lost the 7th game of the Stanley Cup final. The acts the people committed would have never been the brainchild of one or two disgruntled fans, it was the crowd or mob mentality that lead them to their actions (in part anyway).
The topic of United States college sports was also brought up in the fan section. College sports in the United States generates money in the hundreds of millions and yet the college athletes are not allowed to get paid at all. The solution argued in our course readings is that there should be some sort of pay system for these athletes, and I couldn't agree more.
Some observations after weeks 4 and 5:
-From someone who considers themselves a knowledgeable sports fan, I was shocked to find out how little I knew about transgender athletes and the true biology of a male and female continuum.
-I really thought that a MOOC would be fairly generic and I wouldn't get to know the professor really at all. However, through the lectures, I am getting a good sense of the person Orin is and I really enjoy his teaching style. He is interesting and I like the topics he has chosen to incorporate into the course. There really is something for everyone.
-The course is almost finished! It's been a lot of time with the readings and videos but I feel I've learnt quite a bit and it's all been interesting.
Week 6 is next!
