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Page 1 of 3 A scholar looks at sports talk radio, focusing on Jim Rome, and how it deals with gay and lesbian issues.
(An excerpt from the book "Beer, Babes, and Balls: Masculinity and Sports Talk Radio," by David Nylund. Reprinted by permission)
By David Nylund
In their analysis of sport media’s treatment of women, critical sport scholars have revealed how stereotyped images of femininity and heterosexuality serve to reinforce heterosexual dominance (referred to as heteronormativity) and trivialize women’s sporting endeavors (Creedon, 1994; Griffin, 1998; Messner 2002).
Moreover, homophobic representations of female athletes, particularly the symbolic erasure of women who participate in sports traditionally considered a male preserve, play a vital role in perpetuating male hegemony. My analysis of sports talk radio indicates that not only does the discourse of sports radio trivialize female athletes, it portrays women who challenge traditional gender boundaries as “unnatural” and “deviant.” I will provide some textual examples on Rome’s show illustrating the ways that lesbian females are represented in sports radio.
I will argue that sports radio, as part of the masculine sports/media complex,maintains heterosexism by emphasizing conventional standards of white, heterosexual femininity and marginalizing female athletes who race, gender, and sexuality in the jungle subvert traditional gender and sexual roles. These representations help produce and reinforce traditional femininities and contain the perceived threat of lesbian presence in sport. In addition, sports talk radio, by making invisible the presence of lesbians in sports, helps to naturalize sex and gender differences and reinforces ideas about women’s physical inferiority. I will also discuss some ways in which the masculine performance of some female athletes disrupts and subverts hegemonic masculinity and how that is addressed within sports talk radio.
Numerous authors have made the claim that the “lesbian presence” in sport is threatening because it challenges male hegemony by upsetting existing power structures based on gender and sexuality (Birrell,1998; Griffin, 1998; Halberstam, 1998). The question is why? Feminist scholar Monique Wittig (1993) and queer scholar Judith Butler (1990) both assert that there is no such thing as a natural category of women; women are culturally produced, not born. Similarly, Wittig argues that lesbians also are socially constructed artifacts whose existence poses a direct threat to heterosexist assumptions regarding the so-called natural connection between sexuality and gender.
According to Wittig, refusing to perform heterosexuality is equivalent to refusing to become a woman. This refusal has particular material consequences for lesbians that relate to men’s control over women: “For a lesbian this [refusal] goes further than the refusal of the role ‘woman.’It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man” (p. 105).
Following Wittig’s argument, sport becomes a particularly troublesome area of concern because female athletes, regardless of their sexual orientation, fit the profile of lesbians: they are frequently in groups without men; they are physically active in ways that do not have to do with being sexually appealing to men; and they are engaged in activities that do not fit with traditional specifications for heterosexual motherhood (mothers, wives).
Griffin (1998) suggests that the traditional sports media complex produces fears regarding the presence of lesbians in sport: (1) that there is an overabundance of women athletes who are lesbian; and (2) that sports participation causes females to be become lesbian. By exploiting such popularly held assumptions, those who oppose women’s attempts to gain equal access to sporting resources and opportunities bring forth homophobic assumptions about lesbians running rampant in sport. Griffin (1998) suggests that a particularly effective way to prevent any challenge to male hegemony is to label female athletes as lesbians. This tactic threatens to silence and marginalize all female athletes, regardless of their sexual orientation. Women are thus discouraged from participation in sports and those who do participate are constantly navigating a homophobic landscape, making behavior choices in response to an ever-present threat of censure or ridicule. In this way, traditional gender relations are reinforced, and even as female athletes engage the domain of sports, the male preserve of sport is maintained. Homophobia regulates the behavior of female athletes and discourages significant challenges to traditionally male preserves.
Sports talk radio plays an important role in reinforcing traditional standards of white, heterosexual femininity. For example, Jim Rome rarely interviews female athletes, and, when he does, they tend to be those who meet contemporary standards of white, heterosexual femininity. Examples include Gabrielle Reece, a skilled volleyball player who is best known for her modeling career, including her appearance in Playboy magazine. On the rare occasion when female sporting events earn coverage on sports radio shows, inevitably the focus turns to the athletes’ femininity and adherence to heterosexual beauty standards. Heterosexually attractive women athletes are appropriated by consumer capitalism (and women’s leagues like the WNBA and LPGA) to promote their sport. Tisha Pinicheiro, Lisa Leslie, Sue Bird, and other WNBA players were represented in the 2003 season promotionswearing suggestive clothing, makeup, and engaging in more traditionally feminine activities, thereby constructing a less threatening, more “family-friendly” atmosphere for their games. As media scholar Pam Creedon (1998) notes, “Homosexuality doesn’t sell” (p. 96).
The WNBA’s marketing strategy reflects this conventional construction of female athletics, symbolically erasing lesbians, bisexuals, queers, and women performing female masculinity (until WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes ‘came out’ in 2005). Female athleticism is further regulated by the explicit value placed on women’s sport activities. Sports talk radio, in its function of advertisement and promotion of the sporting industry, assigns particular value to sporting events based at least partly on gender. Women’s sporting events are rarely covered. This gap in coverage is conspicuous in a media age in which many new or previously local and “niche” sporting events have gained national coverage.
Some feminist scholars have questioned whether female participation in sports is a productive activity that empowers women. For instance, Varda Burstyn (1999) suggests that while there is value in women learning to be active, she is uncomfortable with the hypermasculine values in sports:
U.S. culture, influenced by men’s culture, is marked by an intense denigration of the feminine and its associated qualities of softness, receptivity, cooperation,and compassion. Today’s erotic flesh is hard, muscled, tense, and mean. The unquestioning emulation of hypermasculinity by women does not constitute androgyny or gender neutrality, but rather the triumph of hypermasculinism. (p. 267)
Burstyn’s essentialist argument implies that women who engage in sports and take up practices that are typically assigned to maleness are reproducing the gender status quo. Her argument suggests that female athletes inadvertently internalize dominant masculine norms that colonize women’s imaginations.
However, Burstyn misses out on a more complicated analysis of the ambiguous joys and potential insubordinate ways that women who appropriate masculinity through sports are creating a challenge to male hegemony. Drawing on the queer scholarship of Judith Halberstam (1998) and Jose Munoz (1999), I suggest that women who participate in sports usually associated with male physicality and aggressiveness (rugby, hockey, football, and weightlifting) are not necessarily reproducing dominant masculinity but are engaged in what Munoz refers to as
“disidentification.” Disidentification is “a mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that neither opts to assimilate within a structure nor strictly opposite it” (Halberstam, 1998, p. 248). Hence, sports participation in traditionally male preserves becomes a site of cultural struggle and feminist transformation by actively disidentifying with dominant forms of masculinity and producing alternative forms of masculinity. Cox, Johnson, Newitz, and Sandell (1997), in their essay, “Masculinity without Men,” concur with Halberstam’s argument:
The idea that some women might want to assume certain “masculine” traits or consider themselves as “male identified” does not suggest that women are becoming like men, but rather that the relationship between gendered roles and biological sex is more fluid than we have been taught to believe . . . Neither does such a shift automatically signal a regressive step for feminism. (p. 178).
'Martin' Navratilova
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