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In The Ladies' Room: Lesbians and Sports, Need I Say More?

10 July 2009, 9:00 am 3 Comments

This post was submitted by amelie

Photo by jng03

Due to my ongoing struggles with the mysterious beast that is “the internet” this week’s In The Ladies Room is a bit late. Apologize all around, dear readers.

During my daily internet wanderings, I came across the trailer for a new movie coming out called Lady Trojans, an independent film about a girl’s high school basketball team during the early 1990s. The main plot of the movie is basically following the love lives of the girls on the team, who all happened to be lesbians. Shocking, I know. Even more shocking: they were all sleeping together.

Though I should point out that it’s not as if I find any of these things shocking. My college rugby team (yes, rugby, I’m that lesbian) was the exact same way. But I do feel like that begs the question of why do women’s sports teams turn into sexy-times clubs? Is it all the sexy ladies? Could it be as my mom so kindly put it when I came out to her, peer pressure? Or perhaps a lack of acceptance from men?

Clearly, those are society’s unrealistic, stereotypical reasons. While some girls may have more innocent reasons for joining sports teams that happen to be vortexes of lesbian drama, when I joined the rugby team my freshman year it was for the drama, not so much the sport. Of course, this isn’t something I usually readily admit, as “I started playing rugby to meet girls and here I am three knee surgeries later” is one of the worst kind of I-told-you-so stories you can imagine. And while I did end up enjoying the sport, I can’t deny the fact that most of my reason for joining was because if I knew one thing about rugby, it was that lesbians played it.

I always wonder why, it is, that lesbians are drawn to sports. Because from what I can tell, there’s not just one lesbian sport. Sure, you’ve got your staples of basketball, softball and rugby, but ask any volleyball, tennis, field hockey or water polo player, and they will tell you that their team was full of lesbians too. So what is it?

My official hypothesis is that since society has always created a relationship between women’s sports and lesbianism, little lesbos know that sports teams are the way to go. But it’s not just the fact that the experience of a sports team being the center of a lesbian drama vortex that resonates with me, but also the archetypes that are played out in the film. There’s the somewhat predatory upperclassman, who exists on all teams, and the freshmen that yield to her, whether gay or straight. In some regards, it’s no different than the basic structure of the way straight guys or girls scope out underclassman on campus in the broader sense. But, to put things in The L Word terms, there’s always a Shane, and there are always her followers.

These power dynamics, in general, probably aren’t that different than straight power dynamics, and in that regard they may not be unique to the lesbian experience. But I truly do feel like they are. Maybe because in the straight world they aren’t played out in the athletic realm. Men and women are free to pursue each other completely openly and publicly in anyway they please. But as queer women, we need signifiers, and we need a safe space. And while not every athletic team is a safe space, many, many are.

Any correlations between lesbianism and women’s sports are often fought by, well, just about everyone, but it’s almost frustrating. What’s the big deal if a lot of lesbians play sports? Why is it bad that a group of women can find a comfortable space to be themselves? Why does any association with lesbianism put a permanent tinge on something that has to be washed off? And why do so many feminists seem in a hurry to erase any association with lesbianism away from women’s sports? The current reaction seems to be to push that playing sports doesn’t make a woman gay–to the point that it seems as if there is some sort of resentment towards the athletic lesbian. If sports are a safe space for queer women, we shouldn’t try to strip them of that. Though no one should be automatically assumed to be gay because the play sports, lesbians in athletics shouldn’t have to be hidden, either.

3 Comments »

kacey said:

Amelie – you raise some interesting questions/thoughts here, specifically about stereotypes and how those play out in society. As a rugby player and a gay female (didn’t even have an inkling of my orientation before I started, in fact I started playing because a straight friend and I thought it seemed cool)I don’t think that it is strictly about queer women who like queer women finding a safe place. Once girls leave middle school the pool of peers who are interested in playing sports narrows significantly. Some of this has to do with competition and cuts and pursuing other interests/activities but it’s also that in teen years society starts telling girls that maybe sports aren’t feminine enough, aren’t proper enough, won’t get you anywhere. The norm says: put on a dress, take off your cleats, wear make-up, aggression/self pride/competitiveness are not womanly traits. I think that this has a huge effect on who remains in sports at higher levels.

The way I see it is that I personally operate outside of what society considers ‘normal’ anyways, and so do many queer women. We don’t fit gender construction, we aren’t conformist and simply put – we’re different. And because we’re different we face less pressure to fit in, at least in this aspect of life. We play sports not to find a safe place to meet people, but because we do not have to define ourselves by societal standards. In fact, in this situation, being a queer woman is freeing. I tend to think it’s kinda awesome.

Of course, it doesn’t free us from discrimination or pressure to be someone we are not – we are still questioned and looked down upon for our orientation. But, nobody can tell me that I’m not lady-like enough to get a boyfriend or find a husband because whether they accept it or not, they know that’s not what I’m looking for. Even my mom (who is not especially approving of me in general) knows well enough not to tell me to stop playing competitive sports because it makes me appear butch.

And of final note – there are many wonderful women out there who are not queer and who play all kinds of sports. My favorites are the ones who scoff at societal standards (one particular teammate has been married, has 2 young children and is one of the biggest bad-asses i know!)and do what they want – including playing sports.

10 July 2009 at 4:06 pm

Bridgit said:

I do agree with some of points Kacey brought up, but I also think she is missing Amelie’s point to a certain degree. I don’t think she was trying to say that lesbians only play sports because it is a safe space and the only the way to meet women. What I took away from this was that for whatever the reasons may be, lesbians do tend to gravitate towards organized sports. And although we should not concede to stereotypes, we should also not shy away from the truth and try to pretend that it is just another stereotypical image conjured up by society that should be broken down. Whether it is a “safe space” or “because we do not have to define ourselves by societal standards,” the point is that there shouldn’t be anything shameful associated with the connection between lesbians and athletics.

10 July 2009 at 4:43 pm

Vanessa said:

I disagree with what kacey said about gay women feeling less pressure or less of an impulse to fit in with society’s standards. I also find fault with the notion that gay women “don’t fit gender construction.” I think that both statements are gross generalizations which fail to take into account the enormous diversity within the so-called lesbian community. I think the idea that “gay” suggests nonconformity underscores the false perception that by virtue of being gay, one is somehow more rebellious, more original. The truth is that some gay people are nonconformist; others are not. Being gay has just as much to do with one’s personality as does being left-handed.

Also, in the twenty-first century in the U.S., I don’t think that many young women find that they face pressure not to continue with athletics because it is not feminine or proper enough. In my high school, which was quite culturally conservative, it was odd for a girl NOT to be involved in sports, and pretty much every “popular” girl was also very athletic (and by “athletic”, I mean they participated in actual sports, not cheerleading). I guess what I’m saying is that women’s athletics are now so mainstream that the decision to take part has absolutely nothing to do with being courageous or nonconformist enough to challenge society’s traditional ideas about what it means to be a woman.

10 July 2009 at 6:00 pm