Is an Apology Necessary?

In our society, we’ve come to accept the ideology that sport is male-dominant. You always see sport being represented in the media by muscular, male athletes always trying to show off how aggressive and athletic they are, whether that be in still advertisements, commercials, etc. There is rarely ever a female on the cover of any sports magazine and most of ESPN’s top ten plays are performed by the male sex. There are stereotypes throughout sport that associate female athletes as being overly masculine and sometimes assumed to be lesbians because they play a male-dominant sport.

Because of this, we have adopted the process of the female apologetic, where women feel like they have to apologize for being a talented athlete. It is seen as abnormal for them to be playing such powerful and aggressive sports. In the reading, All American Girls Professional Baseball League Rules of Conduct, 1943-1954, the league set up rules to support this idea. The first rule is that a female athlete should always appear in feminine attire; others being that her hair is worn long and she always has lipstick on. This is not about being a good athlete; this is about making sure you look like a girl.

Also because of this ideology that sport is male-dominant, homosexual athletes are ashamed to come out and express their true sexuality. In the article Out of the locker room closet, Jaime doesn’t know whether he should come out or not in his new home. He was already insecure and seen as an outcast because he was in a new place trying to learn new things, but he really didn’t know who to talk to about being gay. Being an athlete made it even harder on Jaime, since there is this vision that athletes are tough, strong, and heterosexual. Jaime’s story is similar to the female apologetic because he has to pretend to be straight to be considered more masculine since he is an athlete. It was through his sport of wrestling that he gained the courage to come out to his teammates and coaches because he knew that being straight or gay was not what made him a talented wrestler.