On the Limits of “Gaie” Spaces: Discursive Constructions of Women’s Sport in Quebec

Abstract

Several studies on the experiences of nonheterosexual women in sport have highlighted the development of lesbian subcultures in sport, while others have emphasized the scarcity of athletic contexts embracing sexual diversity. This article explores the narratives of 14 young Francophone sportswomen positioning themselves as “gaie,” lesbian, bisexual, or refusing labels altogether. Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, we examine their discursive constructions of sport and argue that the discourses articulated in sport allow for the creation of a space of resistance to heteronormativity. We suggest that the sport space is constructed as a “gaie” space within which a normalizing version of lesbian sexuality is proposed. We investigate how in/ex/clusion discourses are inscribed in space and how subjects are impacted by and, in turn, impact these discourses.

Sport and Sexuality: Athletic Participation by Sexual Minority and Sexual Majority Adolescents in the U.S.

“…The historical connection between sport and masculinity has not only impacted men but has also caused women who have played masculinized sports to have their femininity questioned (Cahn 1994;Hicks 1979;Kauer and Krane 2006;Lenskyj 1986;Ravel and Rail 2007;Shakib 2003). Across the years, successful women athletes who moved beyond the "socially accepted" female sports (e.g., tennis, swimming; Griffin 1998) repeatedly have been portrayed as not being "real" women, with the most egregious effect of this making women athletes submit to various forms of sex tests (e.g., the International Olympic Committee required these from 1967 through 1999).…”

“…Despite a series of well-done qualitative, historical, and theoretical studies (e.g., Anderson 2002Anderson , 2005Cahn 1994;Griffin 1998;Hekma 1998;Kauer and Krane 2006;Lenskyj 1986;Price and Parker 2003;Pronger 1990Pronger , 2000Ravel and Rail 2007), some autobiographies of gay or lesbian athletes who have self-disclosed their sexuality (e.g., Amaechi and Bull 2007;Anderson 2000;Kopay and Young 1977;Nelson 1994) and various websites devoted to "out" sports/games (e.g., www.outsports.com; GaySports. com), there is relatively little quantitative data that allow us to reconcile these competing expectations regarding the participation of sexual minorities in sport.…”

In/Visible Bodies: Lesbian Sexualities and Sporting Spaces: Introduction

“…Our engagement with a sexuality/sport studies begins with an everyday theorizing of the world that travels in all the ways that (for our purposes here) women in sport have traveled-as object and as "trickster" (Villaverde, 2008, p.105). Such travels include accounts of the very real, pragmatic responses to structural limitations of elite, sporting experiences among women who identify as lesbian (Griffin, 1998;Lenskyj, 2003), analyses of ideological representations of sexualities as re/produced through particular sport contexts (Caudwell, 2007;Jamieson, 2003;Ravel & Rail, 2007), as well as analyses of sporting spaces as sites of challenge/resistance to simplistic, binary accountings of sexual identity (Broad, 2001;Jamieson, 2003;King, 2008;McDonald, 2006;Sykes, 2006). Moreover, a sexuality/sport studies theory that travels accounts for shifting conditions within sporting contexts resisting discursive strategies that highlight heterosexual performances in order to maintain a binary engagement with sexuality in general (straight or gay), and in turn supporting a myth that most sporting women are unquestioningly straight prior to their engagement with (elite) sport and that lesbian life is unfulfilling (Lenskyj, 1991) and requires strategies for identity management (Clarke, 1997;Griffin, 1998).…”

Le pourquoi du spectacle : motivations relatives à la consommation de pornographie chez les hommes gais

“…Associée à l'approche poststructuraliste, l'analyse critique de discours porte aussi sur le langage et sur la façon dont il construit et contraint la personne qui parle et pense (Fairclough, 2003). Comme le mentionnent Ravel et Rail (2007), cette forme d'analyse permet d'explorer les récits, de les interroger, de voir de quelles façons les personnes se positionnent face à différents discours véhiculés et de mettre en lumière quels éléments de pouvoir traversent leurs propos.…”