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Sports and Gender: Separate and Unequal

September 20, 1973 Billy Jean King took on Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes”. Riggs believed that he could beat King in tennis because even though she was the best woman tennis player, she was “just a woman.” That day in Houston, King came out on a gold litter carried by four brawny men while Riggs came out in a rickshaw pulled by scantily clad models whom he called “Bobby’s Bosom Buddies” (Schwartz). This visual display demonstrated the importance of this match not only for King to prove herself, but to prove that female athletes’ athletic ability rivaled males. She acknowledged how much pressure was on this game, "I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match," she said. "It would ruin the women's tour and affect all women's self esteem" (Schwartz). King played for all women and she beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, and 6-3. He did not stand a chance. By proving women’s competitiveness in a male arena, the match set the tone for other women in the future.

Cosmopolitan Canopy of Mawrters

I think I was honestly sad to write this paper because I knew that I would be addressing a harsh reality: Bryn Mawr, as an entire entity, is no longer my home.  Throughout the semester I have engaged in course materials, personal conversations, made observations, and MOST importantly met Anne—all of these things have led me to the conclusion that Bryn Mawr is not the cohesive community we advertise ourselves to be.  This is not to be confused with the idea that community does not exist in this space, and that there is the possibility for a more collective coalition to build—however Bryn Mawr as an institution has not been structured to facilitate an actual community where the needs of students are addressed in full.  Of course we have Access Services for academic accommodations, counseling center, dean’s office, the Pensby center, and various other systems of protocol in which standards are somewhat flexible in order to address the “most pressing” or “urgent” needs for students.  However many of these issues are considered to be individualistic, or micro-level, thus stifling communal solidarity amongst students, faculty, staff, and administrators due to student’s respective stigmas, shame, and silence about our ACTUAL discourse. 

I do not want to critique whether or not Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is a feminist or not.  As we have discussed in class “Feminism/Feminist” is a self-identifying term that too subjective due to the varied lived experiences and temporalities, in which women are stratified.  I wanted to write this paper given the exponential emergence of dialogues and opinions ((un-) expressed) within multiple spheres of feminist discourse, specifically between white feminists and black feminists, as well as intraracial dialogues within the black feminist community.  When I began to do my research I knew that I wanted to focus on the song “***Flawless”, IT IS MY FAVORITE SONG/VIDEO, but I also wanted to explore Beyoncé’s using Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDxEuston talk: “We Should All Be Feminists” on the track.  My favorite part about the song is the juxtaposition of the three different narratives: child/adolescent Beyoncé~ feminist mantra-festo~ Queen B, and her use of “criping time” by way of her somewhat cyclical, fragmented, segregated way of story telling: “I Woke Up Like This… Flawless”. 

I have throughout my education questioned the productivity of inserting the personal, the narrative, the emotion in classrooms and academia as a whole.  In a world populated by so many social ills it seems extraordinarily selfish to be obsessed with the self. In “The Long Goodbye: Against Personal Testimony, or An Infant Grifter Grows Up” Linda S Kauffman echoes this thought and asserts, “writing about yourself does not liberate you, it just shows how ingrained the ideology of freedom through self-expression is in our thinking” (269).  This is the same issue that Wendy Brown explores in her essay “Freedom’s Silences” in her analysis of “compulsory discursivity” as it relates to the current cultural obsession with persona testimonies. This “compulsory discursivity” has an amazing ability to co-opt and appropriate narratives of victimization. Brown wisely warns against casting silence as the opposite of speech, and uses Foucault’s insight into the paradoxical and ambiguous workings of silence to show how silence can be a barrier against power and a vehicle of power. The vehicle of power is potentially making the political personal, which is what Kauffman concludes when she writes,

Posting this today because I still have not found all the right words. I had referenced this poem in an earlier post, but am feeling the need to share the whole piece. I am currently wishing I could read this aloud to our group; I think the only way to translate how I feel when I read this would be to hear it in my voice. More importantly, when I read aloud, I can pretend, for a moment, the words are my own.

IX

Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It's not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever's lost there is needed by both of us -
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key...Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.

The Olympics: Breaking the Gender Binary?

Imagine training your entire life for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: competing for your country in international competitions. You sweat, you grind through all of the workouts, you give up your life for this one amazing experience, you win gold, you stand before thousands of cheering fans, and see your dreams come true. A week later you are told that the gold medal you just won may be taken away because you are not a woman. This is exactly what happened to Caster Semenya after winning the 800-meter world championships in 2009. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) wanted to disqualify Semenya because they found that she does not have a uterus or ovaries and instead she has internal testes. Because of the testes, she produces three times the amount of testosterone as the average female, giving her an advantage because testosterone has “performance-enhancing effects, particularly on strength, power, and speed” ("IOC Regulations on Female Hyperandrogenism"). Caster Semenya grew up as a girl, never suspecting that she was any different than the any other girl. After going through a humiliating process where reporters questioned her potential motives for attempting to disguise her differences and people all over the world discussed her personal information, she was cleared and she qualified for the 2012 Olympics.

“I have thought that a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“...in other words, the position of woman in society determines the vital elements of its regeneration and progress...And this is not because woman is better or stronger or wiser than man, but from the nature of the case, because it is she who must first form the man by directing the earliest impulses of his character.” -- Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892) 

I begin with these two quotes about the importance of a society’s women to highlight the current condition of America as a result of how it has critically fallen short of protecting and caring for all of its women.  America fails to protect its women from an unhealthy rape culture, incarcerates women more than any other country, and fails to protect the country’s mothers by being the country with the highest infant mortality rate in the world. By failing to protect the country’s women and mothers, it fails to protect the country’s children and therefore the country’s future. In the midst of these downfalls, which only represent a few of the ways America fails women, historically, only a select group of women are considered valuable, and women of color, specifically black women, are left marginalized and fending for themselves -- and these are the women who make up a disproportionate amount of those affected by the failures aforementioned. 

 Rewrite Deep Play

I am in a daze, sitting in front of my laptop, my eyes staring at the photo of my little cousin Sam on the screen, thinking about that I would never notice that I did a kind of “ deep play” with him before without taking this course and reading the article by Ackerman.

Play is an activity enjoyed for its own sake, while deep play is the ecstatic form of play, which is a fascinating hallmark of being human. (Ackerman) With my own experience, I state the definition of deep play as a kind of play that not only bring fun, but also express something deep inside the players. During most of my playtime, I just have fun—search the Internet, play games or do some sports without think deeply and express anything from my heart. However, when I played hide-and-seek, the common game which seems may not be consider as a deep play, I thought much more than the game itself and did a deep play.

“Five, four, three, two, one …… I am coming!”

I still remember that it was my first time to play hide-and –seek with Sam, a five-years-old boy. I was a seeker and he was a hider. Actually, it was extremely easy for me to find him—he was hidden under the quilt and his back was like a little hill on the bed. Thus, I walked to the bed directly and opened the quilt quickly without any hesitation. I felt proud to be “clever” to find him while he looked a little bit embarrassed and upset. Looking at his bright eyes with depressiveness, I suddenly realized that I had made a mistake—I should not play this game so seriously.

When Kelly and I were discussing our presentation, we came up with an array of things that have totally impacted our relationship, or have had an overall greater influence on our lives. So we decided that we couldn’t be the only people that have enjoyed the class, missed an opportunity to give praise/thanks, want to ask a question, or just share your thoughts with each other. 

Also taking notes from our mid-course evaluation, and conversations about silence and speaking we wanted to find a way to hold a conversation that was “accessible”.  We both felt that after the mid-course evaluation not only, allowed for a productive conversation, but also illuminated the different ways and mediums we can use to speak.  

We decided to create FEMANOTES, inspired by the a posse plus retreat exercise, which are in order to continue our conversation, but specifically to celebrate one another.  They are meant to be anonymous, you can specifically address individuals or the entire class with questions, comments, things you appreciated, exercises you liked, things that can be worked on.  PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING. 

Sorry! Accidentally deleted this while finishing up!