Not Just a game

Politics have historically been an enormous part of sports. Many of the world’s most famous athletes have used sport as a platform for change as the article Not Just a Game by Dave Zirin states. Zirin believes that sports and politics should always intertwine. He points to the fact that famous athletes such as Muhammad Ali and Bully Jean King used sports to promote social change. He then proclaims that the problem in sports today is that players do not use sport as a political device. I however disagree with Zirin’s views. First, I see sports as a way to escape the reality of everyday life and politics. I believe that this is a positive aspect, not a negative one. Take the example of the New Orleans Saints return to the Super Dome after Hurricane Katrina. People had gone through such hardship and they chose that football game as a way to escape reality, if only for a few hours. The next point of disagreement I have with Zirin is his stance that athletes should stand up for causes, just as Muhammad Ali and Billy Jean King did. My response to that is: What cause? These athletes today are making millions of dollars per year and have money and power to do pretty much anything they wish. No athletes today are being blatantly segregated against in the way that Muhammad Ali and Billy Jean King were. No one today is being drafted to go to war the way Ali was. Times are changing and Zirin’s ideas have not evolved from the 1960’s. It is time to move on and face the new challenges that today brings us.

Lingerie Football, Sport, fad,

Pat Griffin discusses in her LGBT sports blog about the Lingerie Football League and the offensiveness she takes against it.

Such offensiveness involved is the media portrayals of women, example, hyper-sexualizing women, the names of the teams ( Fantasy, Desire, Bliss, Passion, etc). All of which as a class we have studied and are now able to interpret what the real context behind the Lingerie League is. In my opinion it is just a spectacle. Something to entertain the male sports loving fan demographic, which is also an incredibly lucrative industry by itself.

The women within this league may be serious athletes or they do not care about the portrayal of themselves on national tv. They are scantily clad, which Griffin notes, "there are lots of skin, lots of T & A". Women showing a lot of skin will for sure entice a mail crowd to enter an arena and see them. But nobody is taking this seriously (maybe the players, maybe), the audience is primarily only going there to see the women in skimpy clothes. Griffin says that the wardrobe malfunctions lures the fans in like crashes lure nascar fans.

We also have to look at the players themselves. The women from what i am seeing are very attractive (some), fit, athletic(?) (never seen a game). One can agree that the players were chosen mainly for sexual atrractiveness, Pat Griffin states that "it seems clear the players were chosen for their appearance and heterosexiness as much as for their football skills. everyone of them on the LFL website has large breasts and small buts, not one with muffin tops and love handles". We can compare appearance of the women to the men in the NFL... not all guys have six packs or well defined pecs, assumingly, i don't really want to check.

So this spectacle clearly involves, also, the female apologetic. We also look at the idea of female athletes becoming more masculinzed. These women do not fit that idea, they were brought in for a specific reason, to look sexy in lingerie and play some football for the entertainment of the male viewers

Lingerie Football As Women In Sport

Our reading this past week and topics we have discussed in class lately have related to the ideal women's body as an athlete and the desire to look a certain way and portray a certain image without losing their femininity, but when reading Pat Griffin's march 21st blog about the Lingerie Football League and relating to one of the participants coming out as as lesbian really struck my interest.

As Griffin stated in the blog, "that it seems clear that these players are chosen for their appearance and heterosexiness as much as their football skills. Everyone of them on the LFL website has large breasts and small butts. Not one has muffin top or love handles. This is easy to see because that is what the photos focus on: lots of skin." And i have to agree that this seems to be a logical technique of the league to gain more fans and viewers, especially for the easy possibility of a wardrobe malfunction while the game is being played. But as our readings discussed it happens with women's sports where they are required to unrealistically thin for their participation, a main sport that would be included would be gymnastics, where the women basically have no fat, no hips, but are well set on their upper half. With the LFL they are required to demonstrate a certain body image as a sole purpose for circulation of the league. When it comes to women's sports it has a lot to do with how the media reinforces the bodies of these athletes. And when these women's sports are finally given the representation that they have worked so long to gain recognition for the media does not entirely show their athletic abilities but instead focus on their sex portrayal as athletes, which is not fair.

And this is exactly what has happened with the Lingerie Football League, these women are not seen as athletes but as sex symbols wrestling and fighting with each other, apparently what everyone is dying to see these days. Is this used as a cover up so that it is almost acceptable to be seen watching a female sport and being interested in it? Maybe.

With the player of the LFL coming out as a lesbian, it may seem controversial for this specific sport as these women are playing football in very little skimpy clothing. But I feel as it is a step forward in women sport as they are already expected to have a certain body image that is almost unattainable to most women as it seems unnatural and now with her announcing her sexual preference she is allowing others to see that this sport does not have to be so sexually oriented but instead a sport that women do enjoy and should be given the respect and credit they deserve.

Not Just a Game

In the Sports, Media & Society blog, Melanie Formentin writes about renowned sports writer Dave Zirin's article about the role politics play in sports. He states a few key points in this article:

1) Militarization of professional sports is a huge issue. Fans don't even think twice about the political displays they see at sporting events, or watching sporting events. (military fly-overs, gun salutes, military nights, etc)

2)Pat Tillman's death and the controversy revolving around it. The cover up was mean to preserve the aura of Tillman as a sports star combined with a military hero, yet actually he was strongly against the war by his death.

3)Commercialization was another big issue talked about. 1992's "Dream Team" gold metal ceremony sported Michael Jordan with an American flag draped over his right shoulder. Little did spectators know, that this was meant to hide the reebok symbol on his jersey.

These main points bring fort a lot of emotions in regards to social media and subliminal messaging in the sporting realm. Political messages are involved in every aspect of our lives, and it's safe to say the those messages are the best at hiding in other forms of our culture. It also involves a sort of branding. People sympathize with stories about heroes and their hardships. Billy Jean King was another example listed in the article. Not only does this relate to our lecture on women's basketball in connection with breaking gender barriers, but it shows that the power of sport is extremely profound in our culture, and is able to cause a vast amount of change in ideals, and promote/instill ideas in our culture's minds.

My question is if this sort of subliminal advertising/media branding was/has been used to promote agendas of Title IX, either for or against?

Sex Testing in Sports

After reading an article on Mokgadi Caster Semenya of South Africa, I looked into the highly controversial problems dealing with gender determination. It is a very sensitive subject when dealing with athletes that fall into these categories, and can end a career upon embarrassment.

Sex testing was introduced at the 1968 Olympics. It came about as the result of Polish men were competing in various women sports. There have been man other cases throughout the year including Mokgadi's. Its came under criticism lately because of the fact that only women have been submitted to the testing. They have officially stopped from testing every athlete at Olympic and World Championships, but the IOC still has the power to test individual athletes if a problem does arrive. The process was stopped because of the humiliation and the unequal treatment between the male and female sex.

The testing is a very long process that goes farther than the slender hips, Adam apple checks, and muscular bodies. It is determined through chromosome testing which has been highly controversial too. Competitors whose test results showed chromosomes other than XX were considered to have failed the test and were consequently barred from competing as women. As the IOC Medical Team stated "I consider that our duty as doctors comes before everything, even Olympics, and that if we find such hybrid beings, we must if possible treat them and at the very least, help them to accept their fate as we ourselves do when we discover a shortcoming of some kind in ourselves. … these people are to be pitied, for throughout their lives they will be inadapted and thanks to sport, they probably tried to achieve a difficult assimilation into an often hostile, and even stupid, society." One of the most popular cases happened at the 1976 US Open where Renée Richards was banned from playing, until further testing was concluded. Richards appealed the ban, and ended up winning in here favor. It was constituted under the right for transsexuals rights.

There are many suspicious cases dealing with the sex testing controversy; there are guidelines set up now that to be constituted under a specific class you have to follow if your considered one of the hybrid athletes. As in the reading on ICON Teetzle-Equality, Equity, and Inclusion: Issues in Women and Transgendered Athletes' Participation at the Olympics, "Classifying individuals as strictly male or female in sport, as well as in the rest of society, and offering only two options for competition, fails to recognize and take into consideration the spectrum of individuals who fall somewhere between male and female, including the 0.1 – 1% of the global population born with ambiguous genitalia, those who have changed or transcended their sex assigned at birth, and those who identify with a sex other than female or male." I personally feel that there need to be a class like this in future Olympics, it would be a huge movement for transsexual athletes.

In relation to our readings every week in class, this week we covered the "body". These readings not only covered the extremes that women go to to reach these unattainable goals, such as a women's body with relatively no fat, no hips, and "very well set" on the top but also this category in the form of elite athletes and what they put themselves through in order to win and to be the best. In the reading, "Anabolic Steroids" we get a candid, inside view of a female body builder athlete and her experience with steroids. Tam Thompson originally began to experiment with ssteroids because she believed it would give her a "competitive edge". She also felt as though she wasn't showcasing her real strength; after one of her competitions she finished sixth out of nine women and stated that she knew she was stronger than these other women and then instead of training harder she turned to steroids. Just like men, women put themselves through many things in order to achieve the athletic status that they so desperately seek for. An example of this realtes to another reading this week, "Understanding the Female Athlete Triad", Christy Henrich, a young Olympic set gymnast, got some unsettling advice one day at a meet. Although Christy weighed a tiny 95 lbs one of the judges gave her advice, saying if she expected to win Olympic gold, she would have to lose weight! This seems somewhat obsurd to others mainly because Christy is small to begin with, 95 lbs to be exact. There is no reason why Christy should have to lose even more weight in order to achieve her goal of winning goal. Christy eventually died from developing severe eating disorders and weighed only 47 lbs when she passed away. In relation to sport, women and men are very alike. They both are attempting to achieve the impossible, striving to reach these unattainable goals that so many other athletes have been successful in doing. Unfortunately, as the years have passed on, more and more information is coming out about athletes and their participation with performance enhancing drugs along with other forms of things that will help these athlete(s) become the best. This is where these athletes are overconforming to the sport; it has become normalized now in athletics to use these substances to attain a higher athletic status. It is not uncommon at all these days to find out about an athlete who failed on their drug test, Ramirez as an example, he failed his second drug test and who have to sit out almost half the season, but instead decided to retire in order to avoid the consequences from his positive test. Even though men and women athletes have this drive in common, there is still a very wide gap in understanding of men and women's sports. The main ideology in our sport world today, is that men are better, stronger, faster; men's sports are better than women's aka more entertaining and less boring. That women can participate in sport, but are more likely to injure themselves and simply will never be as good as men. This reminded me of the NCAA games we watched just last week; we sat and watched not only the men's semi-final/final but as well as the women's. In the twitter blog, "men's basketball compared to the women's game", the narrator makes various statements about comparing the games of the men and the women's on television. Spectators of the games were not impressed by the men's abilities and lacking so much to compare it to a women's game; this was due to the terrible shooting percentages by both teams and the low scoring number of points. This is appalling to both men and women athletes. This is where the gap can still be seen in sports today, men's sports are seen as the top with women the latter. There is no reason why men's sport should still be considered to be above women's. Women are participating in sports more than ever now in the 21st century, and this number doesn't seem to be going any where in the other direction. The athletes who are active today need to remember that they are capable of acheieving their goals and making it to national competitions but these need to be reached in healthy and legal ways. Both men and women have the ability to push their bodies to the ultimate extreme but this does not always end well, as I stated earlier with Christ's example. We need to continue to make sure there is a clear distinction between what is acceptable and what is not.

Twitter Bashing

Without doubt, the 2011 National Championship game between the Bulter Bulldogs and the Connecticut Huskies may be consider one of the most poorly played games in the history of collegiate Basketball. Bulter and Connecticut simply could not find a way to score the ball consistently, therefore, the two teams combined for the lowest combined first half points ever in a national championship game. Bulter, returning to their second straight championship game, shot a disappointing 18.8 percent, setting the record as the last shooting percentage ever in the game’s history. Though the game was boring, interesting tweets concerning the game and women’s basketball were posted online, which some believe denies the women’s game of it’s legitimacy.
“It is not a stretch to say that the women’s national championship game will be far more interesting.” Said CBS analyst Roland S. Martin. “April 2011: The month that women’s college basketball caught up to men’s college basketball” tweeted “The Sports Guy” from ESPN. These kind of tweets may seem positive for women’s basketball, until one realizes that the only reason it’s being compared to a men’s sport is due to the boring and unexciting nature of the men’s title game. Upon this realization, I think it’s completely unreasonable to the women’s game, to compare it to the disaster that the men’s title game ended up being.

In the article “NCAA March Madness” by Coyte Cooper, she covers the multiple issues of gender inequality across NCAA sports. “Women’s basketball is marginalized whereas men’s basketball is framed as the norm” (7) states the article. I believe that this is very true. When one thinks about March Madness, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the men’s tournament, with the women’s tournament being completely ignored by most. With the discussions on Title IX and the individuals that have fought so hard for equality among the gendered sports, it’s sad to see that although women are allowed the opportunity to play, they are still considered to be a lower form of entertainment and only equal to a boring, dull and poorly executed men’s game. It’s not only unfair to the players, but to women in general to be put in that sort of environment, where their best is only as good as the worst of men.

Although Twitter has become a major social outlet for the general public and athletes alike, tweets like these, although may seem funny to some, only do harm to our women basketball players by making them inferior to anything but the worst of men’s performances. Hopefully in the future, tweets like these will cease to occur and equality among the media coverage and acceptance of the two tournaments will be the new norm.

Bullying By Adults

High school drama occurring from relationships and people dating the same people is not unheard of. But, when the drama is between an adult coach and a student and is started by the coach, that seems rare to me. When I read Pat Griffith’s blog about Skye Wyatt, a high school softball player from Texas, I was appalled. It made me ask myself; how many times are high school athletes, regardless of their sexual orientation, bullied by their coaches? I thought it was bad enough to hear that the coaches, after bullying Skye about dating a girl one of them had previously dated, outed the girl to her mother, and then read that it is a school policy for staff to tell student’s parents of their kid’s sexuality. To me, that is absolutely ridiculous. I, in no way, see how this policy benefits the school district, the student, the staff, or the parents, so, what is the purpose of it? To top it all off, the young female athlete was kicked off the softball team by her coaches. According to the blog, the school supported the coaches’ actions. I understand them supporting the coach for telling her mother about the girl’s sexual orientation, because of the fact that it is school policy, but, how could the school district find it ok for two adults to lock a student in a locker room and essentially harass them? Reading about this situation made me think about the heterosexual matrix, and how in society men and women are expected to have certain characteristics and be a certain way. It made me realize that discrimination often occurs when people act outside of the matrix, which is wrong. The trial for this case is set for later this year and I, for one, hope something good can come out of this bad situation for the girl and all other high school students who have had to experience similar situations.

Title IX Violations

Title IX is a piece of legislation that will have immense impacts on future generations of females. It has fought for females to be seen as equitable in the eyes of public institutions. This has transferred into the realm of athletics as well. Title IX has become a vehicle for many young women to infiltrate sport and be allowed to have the opportunity to participate. However, when we see institutions violating this equitable law, it is a clear indication of how far we still need to come as a society in terms of equitable gendered treatment. Females have historically been at a disadvantage in society in general and from an athletic participation standpoint as well. In this specific incident, 16 former and current Yale students have filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights claiming that the “hostile sexual environment” present at Yale is in clear violation of T IX. According to T IX, “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”(Title IX-Education Amendments of 1972, p.321)

Yale was clearly creating a hostile sexual environment by having chants saying, “no means yes, yes means anal”, “we love Yale sluts”, and the 2009 “Preseason Scouting Report,” an email ranking freshman women based on their attractiveness, as well as personal instances of rape and sexual assault. These three instances right here clearly show how this environment is one that does not support an equitable climate or promote positive gendered ideologies. This is disturbing somewhat due to the discomfort of female students. "In my immediate circle of friends, I know six or seven women who've been raped," says Alexandra Brodsky, a junior. "I think it's hard to go through Yale and not have a roommate, a friend, a girlfriend, experience some sort of serious harassment."( http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-04-02/title-ix-complaint-against-yale-women-allege-a-culture-of-silence-on-campus/#) Another notable Ivy League school, Harvard law, is also under investigation as they have a “running out the clock” policy pertaining to sexual assaults reported on campus. The time taken to actually interview theses cases takes so long that many get dropped. Athletically, Ivy League schools have been only in compliance with the first of the three prongs in the T IX prong test meaning that they usually have not been proportionally equivalent in opportunities provided or been showing a history of progress. These instances show how T IX has helped to push for equitable treatment of females and punish institutions not adhering to these policies. However what has the impact of this legislation had on the males involved?

T IX is equitable and pushing for women’s participation, but in a way it has hindered the male side of sports. Powerhouse sports such as football and basketball are never usually threatened to be cut by schools because they are such large revenue earners for institutions. However T IX has impacted and somewhat hurt the presence of smaller sports for male athletes. Wrestling and men’s gymnastics are two sports that have seen significant decreases since the institution of T IX. Due to their lack of popularity compared to the “big” sports, they became the first programs cut. In one example, University of California Berkeley needed to cut 5 sports. In order to be in compliance with T IX, they re-instated women’s gymnastics (ranked 50) and still left the men’s gymnastics cut (ranked 3)[http://andersonissues.com/2011/04/02/title-ix-good-or-bad/]. It doesn’t seem fair that in order to pass tests, schools are cutting sports without giving significant analysis to the issue. This was similar to the findings of George Will, showing that between 1992 and 1997, 3.4 men’s positions on college teams were cut for every woman’s spot created (A Trainwreck called Title IX, pg. 348). This does not seem like equitable treatment to me. I am not saying that I am in not in favor of T IX. I think it is equitable legislation giving females the opportunities and policies they deserve to know that institutions are treating them fairly. In the cases presented earlier, T IX allows for institutions to be punished for their mistreatment, which I believe it truly good. From the standpoint of male athletics however, I think further discussion needs to be done to make sure that we truly are being equitable to both sides and not beginning to reverse discriminate.

Sexual Assault Is The New Hazing?

A recent post on the Title IX blog talked about a high school football team in Albuquerque, New Mexico and recent filing of a lawsuit that is being presented as 'hazing'. There are three alleged senior football players who committed the crime along with three victims. Five coaches are also being held accountable in the matter. However, the interesting thing here is that the victims all claimed to be physically and sexually harrassed in the incident and the courts are approaching the matter as hazing. When I was growing up and even experienced playing sports and being the 'freshman' of the team, hazing may involve a little physical harrassment but more importantly nothing to the extent at which a lawsuit should be involved. It mostly, more or less, was being called names or being deemed to running to get water or getting shouldered in the hallways. This blog clearly states that these girls were not victim to a normal 'hazing' act. What is more interesting is that two of the three seniors accused of the hazing are sons of the coaches also being accused in the matter. I think that this is another clear case of Title IX being under represented in sports. Just because these boys are involved in sports and may or may not be a big part of this teams success doesnt omit them from being charged with what they deserve. These boys deserved to be charged with sexual assault and or battery. Jocks like this always seem to be getting away with this in schools. Always calling out women and hitting on them in public and thinking that just because they are the big shots that any woman would want to get with them. Another thing that gets on my nerves is the fact that two of these young men are sons of coaches on the team. You would think that once these boy's fathers heard about this, which actually went unspoken since last fall, that they would be all over them. Sitting them or making them apolagize as soon as possible to maybe avoid being sued, but no now they get almost a free pass and are only going up against a way lesser charge of hazing instead of sexual assault. This blog reminded me of class and how we are in the process of interview people about Title IX. For me it was shocking that even my own sister didnt really know what Title IX was and had no idea what it entailed. Title IX is a big deal shouldnt be over looked just because of the male dominance in sports. It has taken Title IX so many years after it was put into play to even get recognition and its a sad thing that even today, 2011, that its still hasnt made a bigger impact especially in cases like these where girls aren't getting the justification that they deserve. These girls deserve to see these boys get charged with assault because of what they went through. Jocks these days dont need anymore of an ego boost then they already have.

It is sad to say, but being put on the backburner is not something new to the world of women's athletics. Even in today's media rich world where athletes are tweeting from locker rooms and sports writers are live blogging from events, it is hard for women's sports to gain any positive attention. Even when the University of Connecticut women's basketball team was in the process of breaking the record of consecutive wins set decades before by John Wooden's historic UCLA teams, the media still managed to minimize the accomplishment by somehow arguing that this type of winning streak may be bad for their sport. Therefore diminishing the amazing accomplishment of these athletes, and the fact that they have done something no men's team ever has. Then this spring when March Madness was coming to a close and it was time for the championship games, the women again managed to outperform the men, staging a much more exciting title game. However, instead of being praised for their skills on the court, the women's game was only used for a negative comparison to the "boring" and low scoring men's game.

In her entry on the Sports, Media & Society blog, Erin Whiteside discussing the minor "Twitter assaults" that were being launched by men in order to emphasize just how little they were entertained by the men's national championship game of UCONN v. Butler. Immediately there were tweets being fired out to emphasize the point, and not only by the casual basketball fan but even professionals were joining in. Even CBS analyst, Roland S. Martin tweeted that "It is not a stretch to say that the women's national championship game will be far more interesting." This is a statement laced with contempt. As if the men's game was so painfully bad that even the women could manage to outperform them. What an insult to every female athlete in the country. Statements like thist succeed in reinforcing our culture's male dominated sporting ideology and consequently relegate women's athletics to second rate activities, only worthy of our attention when the male's are done doing the real competing. For a country that is supposed to be based on fair and equal rights, we are certainly judgemental to those things that don't 'live up' to our standards. Like women's athletics. I hope for the sake of any female athlete that women can succeed in sports without receiving fair media coverage, because if our contry has supposively come so far in women's rights yet we still react in this manner, I don't see things changing soon.

Where are the Moral Ethics??

After reading Pat Griffin’s blog discussing “ An update on Lesbian High School Player’s Lawsuit Against her Coach and School District” I was appalled! It made me sick to think that the school district and the athletic director were completely fine with the fact that a coach would verbally harass and corner one of their players until they broke and revealed their sexual orientation. I can’t wrap it around my finger that this coach isn’t in some type of legal trouble or even in jail. How is this seen as acceptable? Especially, with all the recent media attention that this topic has be focusing on students taking their own life’s due to be outdid by their peers pertaining to their sexuality. How is this being viewed as not a big deal by the school district? If a student would do that to another student they would be expelled from school. But how is it that a professional educator did this to a student? Aren’t they supposed to be protecting the students from fellow peers who may be causing these appalling behaviors onto others?

This just makes me sick. I am without words to say the least. I, like Pat, would like to know how in the world the school district is allowed to have the policy stating that it is ok for staff to reveal the sexual orientation of students to their parents.

I understand that Texas is a conservative state with their morals and values. But how can someone look in the mirror and tell him or her that what they are doing isn’t ok? When I think about this, it reminds of some of my response that I was given in my interview for our paper. The person I interviewed for my paper discussed the girl’s basketball team’s coach and how he was verbally assertive with the girls and would occasionally impose derogatory statements to them. He was also known for pulling the occasional Bobby Knight move to show that he was meaning business. But were his actions the outcome of a successful program? He had coached the girls to 3 state championships back to back to back, and made numerous appearances in tournament play as well. But where do you draw the line? How did Planet Kilgore not think at one moment that they weren’t stepping over that line, and they could be ruining the life of one of their students by outing them? We’ve talked in class about stereotypical remarks towards females in athletics, but I can’t believe that it has gone this far. This school is demonstrating to others that this type of behavior is acceptable for professional educators in the high school level. What’s next to come, seeing this behavior in the collegiate level? Or will this behavior start showing up in the middle schools? Where does it end? Who can students turn to now?

Twitter Trash Talking

It is no secret that the NCAA Men's 2011 Championship Game was anything less than terrible. Butler and UConn, the two contending teams, shared the lowest combined points scored in the first half in any championship game in NCAA history. "Butler shot a horrid 18.8 percent from the field" says Erin Westside in the April 5th blog from Sports, Media & Society entitled "Twitter users compare men's basketball to women's game."

In summary, the blog basically discusses the horrific events that

comprised the Men's Championship Game and the way they were discussed on social networking sites, twitter in particular. This connects to our class enormously just because of the way in which these tweeters compared the terrible men's game to women's basketball in general. They quoted CBS Analyst Roland S. Martin in saying "It is not a stretch to say that the women’s national championship game will be far more interesting." Although the men's game definitely deserved criticism, it is completely out of line to compare it to the women's sport. It's simply degrading.

It is important to analyze the different ways in which the media interpret and frame men's and women's sports, especially basketball. March Madness is such a televised and commercialized production; But the way in which they discuss the women's game is never the same way they discuss the men's game. In Women and Sports in the United States, there is a piece written by Michael A. Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan, and Kerry Jensen entitled "The Gendered Language of Televised Sport." They argue a similar point: "Much of the

continued salience of sport as an institutional site for the construction and legitimation of masculine power lies in its role as a mass-mediated spectacle. There has been a boom in female athletic participation, but the sports media has been very slow to reflect it" (266). This is the idea that the media are constantly reconstructing and re-framing the way in which men's and women's sports are accepted and portrayed by the general public.

The major advancements of technology that have come about in the late 20^th and early 21^st century have been extremely helpful in advancing the importance of society in modern society. But it should not be used to degrade women’s sports when comparing them to poorly executed men’s sports.

Sport or Sex?

Pat Griffin’s blog entry about lesbians and lingerie football is definitely an interesting combination. The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word lingerie is usually sex or Victoria’s Secret models. I would have to agree that this is one of the main goals of the Lingerie Football League.

In today’s society, it is all about the man’s sport with little recognition given to women. When women’s sport is represented, the media turns it into a sexual appeal for the public and always shows the female athletes as models rather than athletes. They do this to give the feminine apology to society and make it seem okay that there is female athlete on the cover of a magazine or the face of a new product, because how dare a female would be represented for what she is talented at, when our world is male dominant in sports.

The Lingerie Football League is a huge example of that feminine apology to males and society. These women are not represented as athletes, but again as a sex appeal so it isn’t weird that a man is watching a female sport. Dudley Sargent brings up the idea that many people believe that athletics are making girls more masculine and are destroying the beautiful lines and curves of a female’s figure in his article “Are Athletics Making Girls Masculine? A Practical Answer to a Question Every Girl Asks”. The LFL is a way to not lose that and still show their femininity.

The interesting thing about this blog entry is the fact that a female in the LFL has come out as a lesbian. While this has a positive impact on athletes not being afraid of their true sexual preference, she is almost using this as another sex appeal to the sport. It’s not about her being a lesbian in athletics, but she’s advancing the idea of girls tackling girls on the football field and being aggressive, yet sexy, in that way.

Transgender Athletes’ Participation in Sport

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender athletes’ participation in sport has been a controversial topic throughout sport history. Society has become more accepting of LGBT athletes, but the debate continues today. In Sarah Teetzel’s article Equality, Equity, and Inclusion, she discusses issues in women and transgendered athletes’ participation at the Olympics. Today, women athletes are receiving more equal treatment compared to their male competitors than ever before. Tweetzel suggests the problem with the division of men’s and women’s sport lies on the “out-dated and binary modes of thinking that call for the complete and absolute separation of women and men in the majority of athletic pursuits.” This separation fails to recognize the 0.1-1% of individuals who fall somewhere between being male and female. The debate continues today because of the binary way of thinking and its devaluing of women as athletes.

Pat Griffin also tackles the issue of accepting LGBT athletes in her blog post Does Acceptance of Women's Sport Require Dismissal of LGBT Discrimination? In the post, Griffin describes the experience of Kye Allums, a transgender man who plays on the George Washington University women’s basketball team. Kye displays remarkable courage and a strong sense of self identity by being open about his transition in order for others to learn and benefit from his experience. Kye’s courage as well as the fair and sensitive treatment of the GWU staff and basketball team have helped progress transgender participation in sport. The support from his teammates and coach have made the transition smoother and set an example for future transgender athletes. Mainstream acceptance of LGBT athletes should not require them to “suffer discrimination in silence or give up their right to participate in sports.” Instead, sport and society acceptance must change with the times and provide equality for all.

Things are changing for the better in the acceptance and participation of LGBT athletes in sport. Transgendered athletes are now allowed to participate in the Olympics. However, they must choose one sex either male or female, and follow the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) binary application in terms of sex and gender. This method fails to recognize individuals who fall between the binary line of male and female but it also enables transgender athletes to participate. With the help of athletes such as Kye Allums, society is progressing toward a more equal and accepting environment for LGBT athletes. Sport must change with the times and so should the often narrow way of public thinking.