‘These chicks go just as hard as us!’ (Un)doing gender in a Dutch CrossFit gym

Abstract

CrossFit is a relatively new fitness movement/sport, where women and men train together in the same space, performing the same athletic movements and gender equality is celebrated in CrossFit marketing, promoting equal opportunities for men and women. This paper explores how the much emphasized gender-equality narrative in CrossFit unfolds in gender performativity in a Dutch CrossFit gym. To this end, we draw from an ethnographic case study through which we examine the gendered narratives and bodily gestures of CrossFitters. Using Butler’s heterosexual matrix, we found that gender ideologies emerge in explicit and implicit narratives, materials and organizational structure, and embodied performances in the CrossFit gym. CrossFitters, on the one hand, explicitly challenge gender norms and create a space where women can undertake behaviour that is traditionally considered masculine. However, traditional gender norms, including heterosexual desire, are nonetheless implicitly reproduced through performances, narratives and organizational structures present in CrossFit.

Gender Relations, Gender Equity, and Community Sports Spaces

“…The Steelers Football and Netball Club provides a valuable case study for examining the ongoing complexities of gender relations within community sport and, in particular, the pervasiveness of the heterosexual matrix as a gender ordering system that shapes the spatial environment, club practices, and experiences (Butler, 1990;Schrijnder et al, 2020) despite attempts by the club to promote more equitable gender relations. The interweaving of Lefebvre's spatial theory and Butler's theory of gender assists in highlighting the intersections of embodiment, spatiality, and how men's and women's bodies govern and are governed in community sports clubs (Smitheram, 2011).…”

“…Within the heterosexual matrix, dominant versions of masculinity are privileged alongside appropriate enactments of femininity. Individuals who do not comply with appropriate gendered behavior are scrutinized and othered (Butler, 1990;Schrijnder et al, 2020).…”

“We All Play Pretty Much the Same, Except. . .”: Gender-Integrated Quidditch and the Persistence of Essentialist Ideology

“…As agency may be reproductive or resistant (Messner 2000(Messner , 2009, then interactions may also challenge or reject gender, for instance by failing to organize interaction according to sex/gender binaries or through nonconformity to gendered expectations for behavior. The extent to which gender is "done" or "undone" has been a central question informing research on gender-integrated sport (Channon 2014;Priyadharshini and Pressland 2016;Schrijnder et al 2020).…”

“…More common than these examples of either wholesale rejection or adoption of gender essentialism is a both/and dynamic where gender ideology is simultaneously invoked and questioned (Fink et al 2016; Schrijnder, van Amsterdam, and McLachlan 2020). For instance, Fink et al (2016) study of men practice players in women’s college basketball found some recognition of the continuum of ability by gender (Kane 1995), yet persistent construction of men as superior players to women.…”

“…To summarize, existing research on gender integrated sport contexts has often relied exclusively on self-report, often retroactively in interviews, although a few studies have involved ethnographic observation (Henry and Comeaux 1999; Schrijnder et al 2020; Wachs 2005). Little research has considered integrated contexts without rules that refer to a gender binary or noncompetitive, “pleasure and participation” contexts (Coakley 2001).…”