Skateboarding Women

Abstract

This article reconsiders the Skirtboarders' blog, produced by a crew of female skateboarders, as a space where crew members attempt to reflexively start a movement and, in doing so, construct and circulate a wider collective identity (Taylor & Whittier, 1992). Through a discourse analysis of blog comments and user interviews, we attempt to understand how young women who visit the blog interpret (re)presentations of female skateboarders and whether they become engaged in the movement to promote skateboarding among women. Do they adopt this collective subjectivity? While the analysis suggests that they do feel part of the movement, it raises the issue of blog user access to the more specific "Skirtboarder" identity.

Pigefællesskaber i skateboarding

“…Faellesskabet er således med til at styrke deres individuelle handlekraft. Dette understøttes af eksisterende forskning, som netop peger på, at piger oplever sociale medier som et middel til at kunne udtrykke sig friere i skateboardmiljøet (Mackay & Dallaire, 2014;Bäckström & Niarn, 2018).…”

‘The golf course doesn’t know what gender you are’: feminist perspectives in the online blog of a female professional golfer

“…In a more recent post she similarly spoke in support of others: For the ones in power, breaking through glass ceiling after glass ceiling while protecting others from the shards of glass as they shatter. Becca There is evidence that women in golf have in the past been complicit in the marginalisation of other women in golf, thereby ensuring that gender disparities prevail in the sport (Kitching, In supporting other women in the game, MacLaren takes a different stance, and while this evidence may not stretch to the collective activism often associated with online blogging and third wave feminism (e.g., MacKay & Dallaire, 2014) MacLaren operates in the same way that Stewart (2018) finds cyclist Nicola Cooke as self-sacrificing and other-directed. In summary then, while the individualism associated with both neoliberal feminism is to the fore as recounted in the previous section in MacLaren's choices around textual self-representation, here we see how MacLaren sometimes rejects this individualism to pursue more critical outlooks, a change agenda and support for other women golfers.…”

The ‘boy scouts’ and ‘bad boys’ of skateboarding: a thematic analysis of the bones brigade

“…Studies of lifestyle sports such as skateboarding (Beal, 1996), surfing (Westly Evers, 2018) and snowboarding (Thorpe 2007) nevertheless remind us that even activities that encourage alternative masculinities can still diminish and exclude females in various ways, while Yochim (2010, 4) argues that skateboarding's nascent critique of dominant masculinities nevertheless maintains the power of 'white middle-class, heterosexual men'. Systemic sexism continues despite significant increases in women's participation in such sports (Thorpe 2010;Mackay and Dallaire 2012;Backstrom 2013).…”