Skating Femininity: Gender Maneuvering in Women’s Roller Derby

Abstract

This article contributes to the discussion of hegemonic and alternative femininities through an ethnographic study of Women's Flat Track Roller Derby. As a site for construction of alternative femininities in the image of a "derby girl," derby reveals how the understudied intragender relations between femininities can be important in challenging hegemonic gender relations. The dynamics between femininities, and the women who practice them, affect the motivations for challenging hegemonic gender, the transportation of symbolic discourses deployed in the challenges, and the creation of new organizational networks to sustain these challenges. One sees these effects in the organized ways the athletes feminize their participation in an aggressive sport through resistance, adaptation, mockery, and parody of hegemonic femininity, pariah femininities, and sport. This study gives particular attention to the interpretation of the events by the skaters and the histories of the social actors as well the interactions in the collective.

'Pink Gloves Still Give Black Eyes': exploring 'alternative' femininity in women's combat sports

“…Research on women's sport has begun to identify such alternative modes of femininity practiced by a range of female athletes [e.g., Thing 2001;Finley 2010;Hardy 2015], but perhaps the most recent and prolific site for discussion of this phenomenon has been within the scholarly work on women's roller derby. This largely female, full-contact, combative team sport has provided scholars with ample opportunities to explore the construction of alternative femininities due to its woman-centred and woman-led ethos, its overtly feminised (and often sexualised) aesthetic, and the masculine connotations of its physicality.…”

“…In this respect, the notion of 'alternative femininities' [Schippers 2002;Carlson 2010;Finley 2010] provides conceptual space for describing practices which are intelligible as feminine (i.e., they are socially understood as somehow signifying 'woman') but work against the maintenance of male hegemony. This is not to say that any recognisable expression of femininity which departs from orthodox or traditional feminine styles ought to be read as 'alternative', nor that women's apparent embodiment of masculinity should in and of itself be considered 'alternative'.…”

“…The extant research on this sport has highlighted the need to examine the degree of agency women claim when embodying (often overtly sexualised) femininities [Beaver 2014], the ways in which feminine signifiers are re-claimed to denote power rather than to balance out the power indicated by masculinity [Carlson 2010], and exactly what can be described as alternative femininity [Breeze 2010;Finley 2010] relative to the concerns about sexual signification, power, and conceptual integrity outlined above.…”

Rock and roll or rock and fall? Gendered framing of the rock and roll lifestyles of Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty in British broadsheets

“…First, most studies within the above-mentioned fields have failed to take intergender relations into account. Popular music and celebrity scholars have primarily focused on women only (Davies 2001, Gies 2011, whereas studies of masculinities dominate contemporary gender scholarship (Wedgwood 2009, Finley 2010. In both cases it remains unclear to what degree female artists are treated differently compared to their male counterparts.…”

“…As such, the gender hierarchy is maintained by a dual dynamic: rewarding men for enacting hegemonic masculinity and at the same time sanctioning women for exhibiting similar conduct. However, whereas recent gender scholarship has largely overlooked the role of femininities in gender dynamics (Wedgwood 2009, Finley 2010, popular music studies have mostly focused on women only, researching, amongst other things, how the music press denigrates the work of female artists (Davies 2001). As understanding masculinities requires attention to femininities (Martin 2001, Connell andMesserschmidt 2005), this research addresses intergender relations by comparing the newspaper framing of a relatively comparable male and female artist that both enacted masculine practices -the rock and roll lifestyle.…”