Gender Play: My Identity Formation Through Sports

My parents always encouraged an active lifestyle, and my sister and I started playing soccer quite young, my sister eventually becoming one of the best players in Washington State. In middle school, my parents requested that I involve myself in at least one sport per season. It encouraged me to try volleyball, basketball, and track, and although none of them lasted long, I enjoyed every minute of it.

I started playing soccer year-round when I was in eighth grade and didn’t stop until college. My daily routine never changed. I would go to school, spend my nights out in Redmond, Washington practicing with my club team, go home, sleep, and repeat. It was my life. I loved that it was something my sister and I did together. And, I loved that it brought my family closer once my parents started playing in their own recreational league. 

Since I attended a small middle school, it was rare to meet anyone who wasn’t on at least one school sports team. Until I joined my first club soccer team in eighth grade, I thought playing sports was something that every kid did. Once I started playing soccer year-round, I started picking up on the unique experience of playing sports as a girl. Little did I know that soon, as a high school club soccer player, I would enter into a lifestyle full of convoluted social education about what gender, sex, gender roles, and sexual identity all meant. 

My mom did not grow up playing sports, and my dad was an avid athlete growing up who believed sports “toughened up” your character, regardless of gender. With their different backgrounds in sports, and a difficult task of trying to explain how sports were a means to define and shape masculinity, my parents never attempted to explain this evident association between sports and masculinity. I don’t blame them. Michael Messner explains this point well in Boyhood, Organized Sports, and the Construction of Masculinities. Sports started as games for boys and men to play, where they could learn to be masculine by being competitive and aggressive, form friendships with other men (but not get too emotionally close to them), and learn that their bodies and athletic ability shaped their masculinities. Not many parents encourage their children to play sports and then proceed to have conversations about gender identity formation through sports, because that is nearly an impossible task without previous personal experience as the parent. So, upon reflection, I don’t expect my parents to have had those conversations with me. But, I found myself grappling with feminine and masculine performance, facing double-standards, and (most importantly) feeling like I would never play as well as the boys would from a young age.

The most common experiences I shared with other girl athletes were the comments that sexualized girls and women in sports, downplayed our athletic ability, or categorized us as masculine. It was constantly one or the other: masculinizing or sexualizing athleticism in girls. But girl athletes couldn’t go too far in one direction toward masculine or sexual because it gave way into boys determining our sexuality or sexual worth. I would get comments about how I looked in my soccer uniform, how boys found girls more attractive if they played sports, inappropriate comments from men coaches, comments about my “surprising” speed or athletic ability, how I had the perfect personality for an athlete because I was “feisty,” and how I was “one of the boys.” From eighth grade until early high school, I enjoyed the attention that came with being a competitive athlete. It wasn’t until late high school when I stopped believing my worth as an athlete was defined by sexual treasure or masculine kinship. I was an athlete because I loved the sport, pushing myself, and the friendships that came out of it. High school was a huge transformation period of shaping my personal relationship with masculinity and femininity. I felt powerful when I recognized that being a competitive athlete isn’t exclusive to masculinity.

I found that in order to operate in the sports world, I had to embrace that I was considered to be performing a lot of masculine characteristics just by being an athlete. I chose to hang out with the other soccer players in middle and high school because I wanted my identity to be attached to soccer, no matter what that meant. So, I had no goal in mind as to how I was performing gender. Since masculinity tends to be associated with the male body and sports allows for a judgement of athletic ability, successful masculinity is often measured through sports and athleticism for boys and men (read Judith Lorber’s piece, Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology which further explains the relationship between sports and masculinity as a means for developing key features of men: violence, aggression, and physical dominance over women). For girls and women, we succeed at performing masculinity by being athletic and playing sports, but are judged for “acting masculine” otherwise. 

With the expectation for girls and women to walk a fine line between being sexy as athletes and not too masculine, this puts a heavy double-standard on women to talk, dress, and communicate in traditionally feminine ways, but when playing sports, to perform characteristics attributed to masculinity. Masculine attributes could be expressed in innumerable ways, which were related to me as being aggressive, competitive, fast, strong, tough, and loud.

Although my experience as a woman in sports was difficult, I had privilege as a cisgender player. There was never a question of which team I should be playing on on the basis of gender. In sports, gender is perceived based on secondary sex characteristics, meaning that the people who get to decide whether you play for a women’s team or men’s team are essentially guessing your “sex.” Sports leave little room for sex or gender expression outside of the binaristic system. People who identify as gender nonconforming and/or trans typically experience the most discrimination, dysphoria, and rejection when it comes to “sex determination” in sports. 

For examples, Andraya Yearwood is a Black transgender track star who has faced unbelievable setbacks and discrimination because of her identity. Veronica Ivy, another successful trans athlete, is a professional cyclist who has experienced immense public scrutiny and faced various athletic institutions trying to “determine” her “sex.” Layshia Clarendon is a gender nonconforming WNBA player who has similarly experienced hate from fans, media, and athletic institutions who try to determine Layshia’s identity for them. The experiences of Yearwood, Ivy, and Clarendon really bring sex-segregated institutions into the spotlight. Their stories should force us to question whether the way sports are separated has aged well. Sports play an intrusive role in gender disciplining that precludes the opportunity for self-identification, exploration, and expression.

Sports segregation (on the basis of gender or “sex”) is dated. Instead, we should consider something like separating athletes by skill level. For that to work would require extensive steps to break down the influence of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity in athletic spaces. Don’t get me wrong––I will never stop playing sports, but it’s a problematic and sometimes violent space for identity formation. And if it continues the way it is, it will only further reinforce and justify the power lying in the hands of cis men.

I was luckily convinced to try out for the girls’ ultimate frisbee team at my high school during my senior spring. When I came to Boston University my freshman year, I ended up quitting soccer entirely and joined the college ultimate team. It was the best choice. Ultimate is the most femme-positive space of feminist kinship in any sport I have ever watched or played. During my freshman year, one of my teammates came up with a feminist campaign that went viral. She took pictures of each player from the women’s and men’s programs holding discs that say “I need feminism because…” and every player filled in the blank. I couldn’t believe the shift in sports culture I was able to partake in, and it wasn’t just my college team. The entire community embraces sex expression, gender expression, and sexuality, including the governing body of ultimate that protects player identity expression. For example, we have the option to add our pronouns to our player profiles on the USA Ultimate website. Moreover, trans and queer players choose which team they want to play for rather than USA Ultimate. Although ultimate frisbee is not mainstream, it is way beyond the curve of letting the athlete choose how they will play the sport with no questions asked.

Although I dislike how sports continue to put men in the spotlight, it doesn’t change my love and passion for being a competitive athlete. I cannot imagine my life without an incredible space like sports to be competitive, to constantly grow, to be with friends and family, and to never peak. Playing sports and being an athlete is feminine and awesome.