Sports have always played into gender inequality. The title IX did not completely abolish that. I have never seen a female on any kind of sports team with males. It is always a separate male and female team. Women have only really been allowed to play “feminine” sports. With football, guys are the players and girls are the cheerleaders. When I was in high school we had an event called “powderpuff football” where the girls would be the players and the guys would be cheerleaders. Why can’t this be a normal sport? Why can’t boys and girls play on the same team? Besides the argument of “boys and girls are built biologically anatomically different and boys are stronger” I think it is because boys are afraid having women on their team will make them “play like girls.”
Boys are always said to be more competitive; this is why sports were made for men! But in reality, certain characteristics are not built into you based on your gender. Gender is a social construct as well as gender stereotypes. Some stereotypical adjectives for males are aggressive, heated, and, like I said before, competitive. When you think of a sport such as football, one may want their player to have all of those qualities. When you think of a sport such as dance, one might question someone having those qualities. I think they both can be attributable characteristics to both sports, even though dance is considered “feminine” and football “masculine”.
As previously discussed, football is considered a very masculine sport. Barely any female football teams exist. This leaves mostly male football players. Football poses many health risks such as concussions, broken bones, and the issues that arise with those conditions. Are we putting males at more health risks than females by only allowing them to play football? Maybe something in the genetic train over time with males getting these injuries have fed into the stereotypes of males and male football players being “dumber” and more juvenile. Many of the phrases used by coaches of male teams are also very harmful to our boys. Words such as “sissy” and phrases like “play like a man” or “you’re playing like a girl” have detrimental effects on both males and females.
In the Seamons v. Snow case it is stated that a football team was hazing another male player by tying him up naked to a towel bar. They invited his girlfriend to see him, hoping that it would embarrass him and make him feel ashamed. The victim complained like any normal person would and the couch accused him of not taking it like a man or being manly enough. The coach even used the words, “boys will be boys”. The case said that “boys will be boys” is part of the athletic culture. Those three words can be so dangerous not only in this circumstance but in rape culture as well. If male athletes actually believe it, it can lead to them doing much worse things than just tying up another player.
We can say that sports have come a long way in society in regards to gender, but realistically we still have a long way to go. I have yet to see much, if anything at all, of transgender people in sports or individuals of the LGBT community in sports. I think sports have damaged true forms of masculinity and created a whole different form of it. The first step was allowing women into sports to make them equal, now we just have to find a way to actually make it equal.
