Proving Something

Messner used sport to prove his masculinity by joining a “D Team” basketball team precisely because he was insecure about his “baby fat” his height (5’2”) and the fact that he was “still prepubescent with no facial hair and a high voice that [he] artificially tried to lower” (401). While on the team, he became “infatuated with Timmy” but later “aggressively rejected him” (401). His efforts to prove that he was an athletically competitive and competently aggressive player caused him to act out in aggressive violence against Timmy. Even though he was captain of the team, he wasn’t the best player and he wasn’t “happy or secure” in that position (402). He felt that he needed to prove himself a thorough heterosexual, “100% heterosexual” and so he joined in when his other teammates called Timmy a “geek” and a “faggot” (402). He used sport to underline his masculinity even though for a while, the delay he experienced before fully entering puberty at the onset of high school and his attraction to Timmy who later became the subject of disdain and ridicule seemed to be holding him back from being perceived as “100% heterosexual.” He wanted to be a “man” and men were rough and aggressive and good at basketball, they did not play on the periphery of the game or feel things for other players that wre anything but strictly platonic or competitive feelings. Messner unconsciously used the basketball team to underscore his vehemently heterosexual identity. He decided to have a “moment of engagement with hegemonic masculinity, where [he] actively took up the male group’s task of constructing heterosexual/masculine identities in the contest of sport.” His aggressive action toward Timmy served to underscore his commitment to that task and to quell his fears that he might not be failing at that goal (402). He picked on Timmy with the rest of the team and chose him as the “victim” for his aggressive maneuver primarily to underscore his heterosexuality in contrast with the weak, effeminate, and otherwise “unsuccessfully male/heterosexual” Timmy.

            Waddell also used sports to construct his identity in regard to his gender but he also used sports as “his closet” (403). He clung to so called “masculine” such as football and track and field as a way to reinforce the perceptions that he was a “red-blooded American man” even though he would have preferred to participate in other sports such as dance and gymnastics but he grew up in the 1950s which he described as “a terrible time to live” (403). He says that it was obvious to him that “male ballet dancers were effeminate, that they were what most people would call faggots. And [he] thought [he] just couldn’t handle that…[he] was totally closeted and very concerned about being male.” (403) Thus, choosing sports that he felt men played helped him to assert his gender identity as male. He chose those sports in order to “do something to protect [his] image of [himself] as male…so [he] threw himself into athletics—[he] played football, gymnastics, track and field…[he] was a jock—that’s how [he] was viewed, and [he] was comfortable with that.” (403). He says, “I wanted the male, macho image of an athlete. So I was protected by a very hard shell. I was clearly aware of what I was doing… I often felt compelled to go along with a lot of locker room garbage because I wanted that image” (403). He entered sports and constructed “a masculine/heterosexual athletic identity precisely because he feared being revealed as gay.” (403). He used sports as a way to reinforce the idea that he was heterosexual even though he was not really. He needed sports as a way to project a heterosexual image in order to protect himself from the negative backlash of being anything but heterosexual. “Waddell seemed to be consciously ‘acting’ to control and regulate others’ perceptions of him by constructing a public ‘front stage’ personal that differed radically from what he believed to be his ‘true’ inner self.” (403)

Messner notes, “as young male athletes, heterosexuality and masculinity were not something we “were,” but something we were doing” (403). Both men used sports as a way to discover how to behave as men and as heterosexuals. He writes, “doing heterosexuality as an ongoing practice through which we sought (a) to avoid stigma, embarrassment, ostracism, or perhaps worse if we were even suspected of being gay; and (b) to link ourselves into systems of power, status, and privilege that appear to be the birthright of ‘real men’” (403). Both stories point “to the importance of the athletic institution as a context in which peers mutually construct and re-construct narrow definitions of masculinity—and heterosexuality is considered to be a rock-solid foundation of this conception of masculinity” (403). The institution of sports is an “institution of compulsory heterosexuality.” Messner notes that there are “extremely high levels of homophobia that are often endemic in boys’ and men’s organized sports” (403).

Women who play sports however, are often deemed “unfeminine.” By the very fact that they are participating in the realm of athleticism which is an institution founded basically to make men look masculine. It is firmly rooted in the effort of promoting masculinity as it is understood by our culture as traits of aggression, assertion, strength, and dominance. By participating in the institution of sport they are participating in one of the institutions which is utilized to formulate and maintain ideas of masculinity. This means that they are often ridiculed, considered homosexual or “unwomanly.” It is a major problem because there is nothing about athleticism which is inherently gendered or sexualized but society has endowed sports with those unspoken (and sometimes vocally spoken) characteristics and defining notions about gender and sexuality. When women cross over into realms which have been determined to be masculine they are deemed deviant and therefore ostracized and given a difficult time.