When a Looker Is Really a Bitch: Lisa Olson, Sport, and the Heterosexual Matrix

Disch, Lisa; Kane, Mary Jo

doi:10.1086/495067

Cited by 49 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…However, a woman who reaches the senior levels of coaching poses a challenge to the male certainties that rest upon the powerful levels of sports leadership (Disch & Kane, 2000). This intrusion is also often unsettling for the women coaches also (Disch & Kane, 2000). These findings contribute to our understanding as to what the reaction is of those women coaches to a sense of resistance.…”

Section: Illusions Of Triumph? Women's Coaching Experiences Shaped Bymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Steinem (1992) also asserts that patriarchal cultures prefer women to be weak. However, a woman who reaches the senior levels of coaching poses a challenge to the male certainties that rest upon the powerful levels of sports leadership (Disch & Kane, 2000). This intrusion is also often unsettling for the women coaches also (Disch & Kane, 2000).…”

Section: Illusions Of Triumph? Women's Coaching Experiences Shaped Bymentioning

confidence: 99%

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A crisis of confidence: women coaches' responses to their engagement in resistance

Norman

2012

Sport, Education and Society

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This study centres upon the accounts of master women coaches based in the UK, exploring how they have individually experienced such acts of resistance as reaching the top of such a male dominated profession. By going beyond previous positivist feminist approaches to this focus of inquiry, I employ a feminist cultural studies framework to understand how the social construction of what it means to be a woman impacts women coaches' individual sense of self and confidence to lead.The discussions are based upon semi-structured in-depth interviews with six senior national women coaches of team sports in the UK. The data highlights the success of masculine hegemony of coaching through documenting women's reluctance to advance their coaching career through a lack of self-belief and motivation as a consequence of their culturally and historically marginal position. The findings illustrate a pressing need for a revision of the dominant values inherent in professional sport in order to engage and retain potential women leaders.

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Section: Illusions Of Triumph? Women's Coaching Experiences Shaped Bymentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Illusions Of Triumph? Women's Coaching Experiences Shaped Bymentioning

confidence: 99%

A crisis of confidence: women coaches' responses to their engagement in resistance

Norman

2012

Sport, Education and Society

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“…In fact, when speaking about the ideal body of either gender, students interviewed frequently commented that an ideal body is a body which is attractive to the opposite sex. According to Disch and Kane (1996), drawing from Butler's (1990) theorization of the compulsory heterosexual matrix, the oppositional and complementary categories of womanhood/manhood represented by the football player/cheerleader aim to maintain a compulsory gender/sex order in sports. Butler (1990) has argued that gender is the social construction that makes sex and sexuality 'natural' and binary within a heterosexual matrix, therefore producing compulsory gendered performance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Panopticon of physical education: pretty, active and ideally white

Azzarito

2009

Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy

185

131

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Background: Recently, a growing number of researchers have explored students' social construction of the body in school settings. Young peoples' construction of the body, inextricably linked to dominant cultural discourses of the mass media, bears upon their identity and physical activity participation choices. Purpose: This study employed a qualitative research design in two public high schools to explore young people's social construction of the ideal body in physical education by using body images drawn from fitness and sport magazines. Participants: Participants were high school students, and formal interviews were conducted with 28 students. Students' construction of meanings about the ideal body were gendered and racialized. Conclusions: We conclude the paper by suggesting that further work on understanding girls' and boys' construction of the body is needed, especially regarding gender and race issues; and that the creation of pedagogical spaces in schools to destabilize and subvert the gendered, racialized social norms of the ideal body are necessary.

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“…Sport scholars, for example, have examined the constitution of dominant gender roles in sports through textual and media analyses (cf. Disch & Kane, 1996;Pirinen, 1997); yet the spatiality of sport landscapes, or how these landscapes are produced and productive of power and social relations, has largely been ignored. 3 If the social spaces of sport are acknowledged, therefore, they are depicted as unproblematic containers for athletics.…”

Section: Contested Spaces Of Women's Basketball 199mentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberty for All? Contested spaces of women's basketball

Muller

2007

Gender, Place & Culture

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The Women's National Basketball Association is a professional women's basketball league that is notable for constructing a heteronormative 'family friendly' selfimage while maintaining a sizable following of lesbian fans. This article examines this apparent contradiction through two case studies: a kiss-in protest by a group of New York WNBA fans, Lesbians for Liberty, and experiences by Minnesota Lynx lesbian fans of the marketing tactics and daily practices that regulate WNBA game spaces. By highlighting the socio-spatiality of the WNBA venue, it becomes clear how heteronormativity is naturalized, as well as accepted and resisted by lesbian fans in both New York and Minnesota. An overt act of resistance, however, failed to encourage the WNBA to reconsider its policies: the Liberty kiss-in, by situating lesbians as a counterpublic, foreclosed the range of attitudes held by lesbian fans. Moreover, as Minnesota Lynx fans demonstrate, WNBA spaces feel 'safe enough' to many lesbian fans. As a result, there remains a contest over the meanings and practices that define WNBA landscapes. To date, however, normative heterosexuality has contained the presence and visibility of the lesbian fan.

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When a Looker Is Really a Bitch: Lisa Olson, Sport, and the Heterosexual Matrix

Cited by 49 publications

References 9 publications

A crisis of confidence: women coaches' responses to their engagement in resistance

A crisis of confidence: women coaches' responses to their engagement in resistance

The Panopticon of physical education: pretty, active and ideally white

Liberty for All? Contested spaces of women's basketball

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