This paper is about glitching bodies-bodies that break, crash and confuse the conventions of pre-programmed and binary gender patterns. Exploring the promise of an intersex phenomenon; hyperandrogenism in women's sport, I discuss how glitching bodies and a feminist posthumanist understanding of gender can contribute to the field of gender and queer sport studies. Responding to calls for research enacting how non-binary bodies challenge the dualistic gendered ontologies that have structured the performative practices of sport in highly exclusive ways this paper is a travelogue into a messy nature-cultural phenomenon. It is partly a theoretical and methodological exploration and partly an analytic endeavour. The phenomenon of hyperandrogenism is explored and untangled by engaging in a diffractive analysis where I 'plug in' the concepts of intra-activity and glitch. I argue that a feminist posthumanist understanding of gender and diffraction as a methodological practice helps us move away from habitual and normative readings that zero in on either male or female, either nature or culture and either material or discursive. This implosion of binaries in turn opens up for alternative ways of thinking and being bodies in sport (studies). Just as Foucault stated that there can be no reason without madness, Gombrich wrote that order does not exist without chaos, and Virilio stated that technological progression cannot exist without its inherent accident, I am of the opinion that flow cannot be understood without interruption, or functioning without 'glitching'. This is why we need glitch studies. Rosa Menkman This paper explores the promise of an intersex 1 phenomenon; hyperandrogenism in women's sport. It is a travelogue 2 into a messy phenomenon that breaks, crashes and confuses the conventions of pre-programmed and binary gender patterns, that is a glitching phenomenon. The paper is in part a theoretical and methodological exploration and in part an analytic endeavour. Like Lather (2007) I think that strolling down unchartered terrain and getting lost once in a while is a way of coming to know. But although getting lost can make you see things you never saw before, I do not wish the readers to get completely disorientated, and I will therefore describe the structure of the paper. Following a brief background, I present the phenomenon of hyperandrogenism that I will explore and untangle. Secondly, I situate my analysis within posthuman feminist theory, arguing for a reintroduction of nature and the material as a vital, and agential, element within the field of gender and queer sport studies. Next, I set up the scene for diffraction as a methodological practice and introduce the concepts I use as tools to ARTICLE HISTORY
Leisure studies have given scant regard to human-animal relations and intersectionality. In this paper, I respond to calls for research analysing leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon by exploring humanhorse relations and intersectionality in boy's/men's equestrian stories through the concept of intra-activity and creative analytical writing. Thinking and writing through intra-activity brings insights into the coconstitution of humans and horses, as well as the entanglement of other power relations and social categories. The paper illustrates that becoming horseboy(s) is a process of material-discursive intra-activity where boys/ men, by transcending the human-animal divide simultaneously transcend the female-male/masculine-feminine divide. Thus, engaging materially with horses can allow and encourage boys/men to be less constrained by dominant gender discourses. The paper also illustrates the importance of studying gender, not as a separate or primary category of privilege or inequality, but as one that is entangled with race, class, sexuality, age and other animals. I finally argue that bringing horses, as well as discourses, into discussions of the enactment of gender in leisure landscapes offers a productive site for elaborating the much-debated question, posed by feminist posthumanists, of the agency of matter.
Inspired by calls for an emphasis on the “potentiality of the present” in feminist and queer (sport) studies, this article explores queering acts, moments, and spaces in stories of athletes living nonstraight. To do this, we use Haraway’s and Braidotti’s notion of figuration and creative analytical writing. With one foot rooted in what is, our three figurations of the queering athlete take us into and beyond heteronormativity to what can be(come). Two figurations enact how sex segregation and gender norms in sports can serve as conditions of possibilities that open up for other-worlds-in-the-making and the third works sexuality against identity and queers the hetero–homo binary. They are figurations—in form and content—of a “science of the possibility of science.”
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