Skip to main content
Intended for healthcare professionals

JMM in the Classroom: Masculinities and Sport

Mike Hartill. 2009. The Sexual Abuse of Boys in Organized Male Sports. Men and Masculinities. 12(2): 225-249.

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is now a significant issue for organized sports. Since its “discovery” thirty years ago, research on CSA has been guided mostly by the “maleperpetrator—female victim” paradigm; hence, the perspective of the sexually abused male in the sports context has rarely been considered. This article considers organized male-sports as a social space that facilitates the sexual abuse of boys. Through promoting a sociological perspective on child abuse rather than an individualized and pathologized approach, I consider how the institutions of childhood, masculinity, and sports fit together and the contribution that sports make to the adult—child relation. I use Spiegel’s ecosystems model of the sexually abused male (SAM) and the sociology of sports literature to identify how some normative features of male sports contribute to the sexual abuse of male children. 

Vicky M. MacLean and Carolyn Rozier. 2009. From Sport Culture to the Social World of the “Good PT”: Masculinities and the Career Development of Physical Therapists. Men and Masculinities. 11(3): 286-306. 

This research explores the career development of men who cross over into the historically female occupation of physical therapy, drawing from a critical feminist perspective on sport, work, and the gender order. Data gathered from thirty-two semistructured interviews with early- and mid-career men indicate that a traditional emphasis on athleticism shaped men's career entry and early specialty choices. Men in physical therapy described a “good physical therapist” as displaying both stereotypically masculine and feminine traits. Although athleticism shaped men's abilities to comfortably accept alternative masculinities in the form of caring work, early-career specialty choices reinforced hegemonic patterns of occupational segregation. Implications for gender equality at work are discussed and limitations to feminist perspectives are noted. 

Murray Drummond. 2010. The Natural: An Autoethnography of a Masculinized Body in Sport. Men and Masculinities. 12(3): 374-389.

Stories about individual’s lives in relation to sport, and the body have intrigued me. This is due in part to my significant involvement in sport throughout my life and its central role in shaping my masculine identity. I have been particularly interested in autoethnographies as a means through which such stories are conveyed. It is the intense personal meaning that has captivated me most. I often contemplated the capacity to tell my story of a life so heavily invested in sport. The following article is an autoethnography of my body involved in elite level sport. I use a life historical approach to articulate the way in which my body became the focus of my existence within sport and how this impacted my masculine identity. This is a story about my life, and my body in sport. I invite the reader to share my story in the desire that it will elicit a similar response to those engendered in me when I am engaged with a meaningful story. 

Belinda Wheaton. 2000.  “New Lads”?: Masculinities and the “New Sport” Participant. Men and Masculinities. 2(4): 434-456.

Historically, sport has been so closely identified with men that sport has become one of the key signifiers of masculinity in many Western societies. Traditional institutionalized sports cultures in these societies have been a central site for the creation and reaffirmation of masculine identities and for the exclusion and/or control of women. Since the 1970s, women have permeated many sporting spheres; thus, exploring the role sport plays in the reproduction and/or transformation of contemporary relations between and within the sexes is a prime concern. This article explores how gender relations and identities in a less institutionalized, “new sport” culture are constructed. Ethnographic research focused on a windsurfing community in England and examined men's (and women's) sporting experiences within this community. The ethnographic data suggests that while competing masculinities are negotiated in the windsurfing culture, this individualized new sport broadens the recognized boundaries of sporting masculinities. 

Stephan R. Walk. 1999. Moms, Sisters, and Ladies: Women Student Trainers in Men's Intercollegiate Sport. Men and Masculinities. 1(3): 268-283.

This study presents accounts of nine women student athletic trainers (SATs) working as interns in an athletic program at a large university. The presence of women within a historically closed masculine sport environment was resolved by viewing the women within the traditionally feminine roles of “mom,”“sister,” and “lady.” Subject to overt and subtle discrimination, sexist and misogynist behavior, as well as sexual harassment and imposition, the women were essentially forced to choose among behaviors that either “defeminized” or “deprofessionalized” them. A professional attitude was generally favorable to coaches and supervisors yet defeminized them in the eyes of peer trainers and male athletes. On the other hand, a sociable attitude permitted positive peer relations but deprofessionalized them in the eyes of peer trainers and male athletes. Hence, while the mom, sister, and lady labels sometimes prevented offensive behavior by men, they contributed to the women's professional disempowerment and sexualization. 

Andrew C. Sparkes and Brett Smith. 2002. Sport, Spinal Cord Injury, Embodied Masculinities, and the Dilemmas of Narrative Identity. Men and Masculinities. 4(3): 258-285.

This article focuses on the narrative identity dilemmas of four men who have experienced spinal cord injury (SCI) through playing rugby football union and now define themselves as disabled. The biographical data illustrate how body-self relationships moved from an absent presence in the lives of these men to something that was other, problematic, and alien. This transformation instigated anxieties concerning the combined loss of specific masculine and athletic identities that were formerly at the apex of the participants' identity hierarchy. In such circumstances, the desire for a restored self is highlighted, as are the limited narrative resources that frame this coping strategy. Suggestions for how this situation might be changed are then offered. 

Ulla-Britt Lilleaas. 2007. Masculinities, Sport, and Emotions. Men and Masculinities. 10(1): 39-53. 

The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate how men understand and talk about their bodies, bodily habits, and feelings. The study was based on qualitative interviews with sixteen sportsmen, all of whom were handball players. Half of the players were on an elite team (aged twenty-five to thirty-five years), and the other half were on an old boys' team (aged thirty-five to sixty-five years). The players were very definite about how an ideal male body should be; they preferred a slim and well-trained body, with strong muscles. Training had become a necessity for many of these sportsmen, and they used physical activity as a way of handling difficult feelings. When they were together, teasing and joking was the usual way they managed embarrassing feelings, and they talked more easily with women than with men about their problems. Data are discussed in relation to what some researchers have described as men's fear of not being man enough and the theory of habitus. 

Eric Anderson and Edward M. Kian. 2012. Examining Media Contestation of Masculinity and Head Trauma in the National Football League. Men and Masculinities.15(2): 152-173. 

American football has long been central to the construction of masculinity in the United States. Of the multiple masculine scripts promoting professional players’ hegemonic masculine status, sacrificing one’s body for the sake of sporting glory is a key tenet. Sport journalists have traditionally used their media platform to reify this social script, an act which simultaneously promotes their own masculine capital. However, this article investigates a crack in this hegemonic system. Through a media analysis of the reporting on Aaron Rodgers’ self-withdrawal (after hitting his head) from an important National Football League (NFL) game, we argue that increasing cultural awareness as to the devastating effects of concussions, in the form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, combined with a softening of American masculinity is beginning to permit some prominent players to distance themselves from the self-sacrifice component of sporting masculinity. Concerning concussions, we conclude major sport media are beginning to support the notion of health over a masculine warrior narrative. 

Eileen Kennedy. 2000. “You Talk a Good Game”: Football and Masculine Style on British Television. Men and Masculinities. 3(1): 57-84.

This article represents one aspect of an inquiry into the gendered character of the address of British televised sports. To answer the research question, “Why are televised sports disproportionately popular with a male, and not female, television audience?” football is chosen for analysis as one sport whose appeal has traditionally been limited to men. Using semiotics to enable the elicitation of a gendered address to a television audience, a match between England and Holland broadcast by ITV as part of Euro '96 was analyzed. The results prompt a consideration of how Easthope's delineation of three aspects of masculine style might inform an investigation into football's masculine address. Finally, the work of Gilligan on the gendering of psychological development theories is discussed to further identify masculine style in televised football. 

Akihiko Hirose and Kay Kei-ho Pih. 2010. Men Who Strike and Men Who Submit: Hegemonic and Marginalized Masculinities in Mixed Martial Arts. Men and Masculinities. 13(2): 190-209. 

While the recent conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity allows for the emergence of multiple masculinities, a significant ambiguity remains in theorizing the relationships between hegemonic and ‘‘alternative’’ forms of masculinity. In the relatively newly institutionalized sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), the relationship between the two polarized, competing technical styles—striking and submission— appears to demonstrate the competition between hegemonic and marginalized masculinities. This article argues that the distinction is predicated on the process of maintaining and negotiating a specific form of hegemonic masculinity that interacts with East Asian masculinities that are often feminized, yet selectively authorized by their white American counterpart. This article provides a theoretical discussion of marginalized masculinities identified in MMA and challenges the perceived characteristics of hegemonic masculinity—particularly its singularity and impenetrability—by suggesting a more relational, antiessentialist approach. 

Marcus Free and John Hughson. 2003. Settling Accounts with Hooligans: Gender Blindness in Football Supporter Subculture Research. Men and Masculinities. 6(2): 136-155.

Recent ethnographies of male football supporters have provided in-depth, highly engaged accounts from the supporters' subcultural perspectives. Although they are commendable for their ethnographic detail, this article's authors take issue with their theorization of the data, particularly their inadequate interrogations of gender construction and gender relations. The authors argue that McRobbie's critique of earlier male youth subcultural ethnographies is equally applicable to football ethnographies. The authors make three principal criticisms. First, these ethnographies' authors falsely dichotomize the public and private domains, thus failing to provide complex pictures of the gendered social relations in which these subcultural activities are situated. Second, they ignore evidence, in their own data, of the performative role of such activities in the construction and reproduction of masculine identities. Third, their uses of the concept of “carnivalesque” camouflage both the gender themes in the data and the authors' failures to adequately address them theoretically. 

Lindsay Fitzclarence and Christopher Hickey. 2001. Real Footballers Don't Eat Quiche: Old Narratives in New Times. Men and Masculinities, 4(2):118-139.

In this article, the authors examine the way that sport acts as a contradictory and complex medium for masculinity making. The analysis illustrates the way that many discourses now unite in a cybernetic mix that offers both new opportunities and presents complex challenges for educators, coaches, and administrators. The method used combines a number of strategies and narratives pitched at the local, national, and international levels. The analysis is grounded in the game of football, although it is argued that the issues raised translate to other settings. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that large-scale, macro level analyses miss an important force working within the dynamics of masculinity making and sport, namely, peer group power. The analysis concludes with insights from a junior coach who has consciously “worked” the peer group dynamics to foster a strong sense of personal and group responsibility. 

Karen Downing. 2010. The Gentleman Boxer: Boxing, Manners, and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century England. Men and Masculinities. 12(3): 328-352.

Prize fighting was enormously popular during the second half of the eighteenth century in Britain. It became a fashion perhaps experienced as keenly by contemporary men of all classes as the “culture of sensibility” that describes this period of increasing politeness in society. This juxtaposition illustrates a vexing eighteenth-century issue: could a man be both polite and manly? This article argues that men across the social spectrum found in the “gentleman boxer” a resolution to this issue. The gentleman boxer synthesized traditionally held views of manliness with the civilizing effects of modern consumerism, acknowledged the concerns and aspirations of men of all classes, and responded to the political imperative for fighting men capable of forging a new nation bent on empire building. The gentleman boxer was both polite and manly and a fine example of a masculine identity negotiated between individual conceptions of the self and the material circumstances in which that self is found. 

Bryan E. Denham. 2008. Masculinities in Hardcore Bodybuilding. Men and Masculinities. 11(2): 234-242.

In his definitive ethnography of hardcore bodybuilding in Southern California, Klein (1993) examined gender construction in a narcissistic subculture characterized by deceit and excess on many levels. In the present article, I compare my own experiences as a strength athlete and bodybuilding author with some of the observations Klein made at Olympic Gym. Like Klein, I address ironies associated with hardcore bodybuilding and discuss the nature of deviance in the bodybuilding subculture. 

Alan Bairner. 1999. Soccer, Masculinity, and Violence in Northern Ireland: Between Hooliganism and Terrorism. Men and Masculinities. 1(3): 284-301.

Despite, or arguably because of, the marked decrease in the level of politically motivated violence in Northern Ireland since 1994, greater attention can now be paid to other forms of violence. The article argues that hegemonic masculinity encourages patterned male violence at large and that this was formerly an important element in the persistence of terrorist violence. The latter existed on the same continuum as other manifestations of hegemonic masculinity including the antisocial behavior of certain soccer fans. Specific attention is paid in the article to the relationship between loyalist paramilitary violence and the activities of young Protestant working-class men at soccer games. The two phenomena are revealed as interconnected responses to a crisis of masculinity rooted in economic and political uncertainty. 

Nick T. Pappas, Patrick C. McKenry, and Beth Skilken Catlett. 2004. Athlete Aggression on the Rink and off the Ice: Athlete Violence and Aggression in Hockey and Interpersonal Relationships. Men and Masculinities. 6(3): 291-312.

Because male athletes have exhibited aggressive tendencies in a variety of settings, they may be at risk for using violence both within and beyond their sports involvement. Five former college/professional hockey players were interviewed to determine their perspectives on the nature of aggression and violence in sports competition as well as in social relationships. The informants were asked about athletes’violence and aggression toward teammates, acquaintances, and female intimates. This analysis includes participants’ experiences, observations, and explanations of the instances of violence in hockey culture. The study findings yield (1) a greater understanding of the ways in which hockey socialization and athletes ‘notions of masculinity combine to create a culture of aggression and violence and (2) two major factors—consumption of alcohol and the objectification of women—that contribute to exporting violence outside the athletic arena. 

Also from Sage