M2 Theoretical Perspectives & Intersectionality

Sports-Betting Advertisement and Women’s Representation

Advertisement and public response

• A sports-betting campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney prompted online backlash because of her suggestive poses and minimal clothing

• Critics argued that the campaign sexualized women in a sports context while promoting betting primarily to young men

• Sweeney responded by sharing covers from ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue which features athletes posing in ways intended to celebrate athletic bodies

• The discussion compared this controversy with Sweeney’s earlier American Eagle advertising campaign, which also generated debate

• Former Canadian champion figure skater interviewed about the ad said she was disappointed that the campaign used an actor rather than featuring women athletes or promoting betting on women’s sports

Why the issue was seen as significant

The interviewee and students argued that the debate was not simply about one advertisement: it reflected broader conditions for women in sport

• Women’s sport are often less visible, less discussed, and less commercially supported than men’s sports

• Students highlighted examples of unequal or gendered expectations

  • Women’s sports receive less attention and sponsorship

  • Women’s uniforms may be more revealing than men’s (e.g. beach volleyball, gymnastics)

  • Female athletes may be judged by appearance and femininity rather than athletic ability

• Discussion noted that sexualized portrayals can reinforce stereotypes and diminish the perceived value or seriousness of women’s sports, potentially affecting sponsorship and investment

• Athlete's’ bodies are also policed in conflicting ways: women may be criticized for looking too masculine, while campaigns may promote a narrow ideal of feminine attractiveness

Sexualization, audience, and the male gaze

The instructor described the ad’s poses and use of sports equipment as suggestive, regardless of the clothing shown

• The campaign was discussed in relation to:

  • Heterosexuality and assumptions about the intended audience

  • The male gaze and the use of women’s bodies to attract viewers

  • The difference b/w celebrating athletic bodies and presenting women as sexualized objects

• Students considered whether a comparable ad featuring a mostly unclothed male athlete would provoke similar backlash

  • Reactions might depend on the athlete chosen (e.g. heterosexual, cisgender, etc) and how the ad was constructed (e.g. appealing to masculine, heterosexual, patriarchal ideals)

  • A hypermasculine sports star may appeal to audiences through admiration or identification

  • A male athlete who appears queer or feminine could face different reactions including homophobic or anti-feminine backlash

• The discussion distinguished the desire to be like a sports hero for the desire to be with a sexualized celebrity

• The instructor contrasted the betting ad with past athlete photography, including Body Issue-style images that present both male and female bodies as powerful and athletic rather than solely sexual

Media, Bodies, and Social Power

Media representations help normalize expectations about how men and women should look, behave, and present themselves

• These expectations can contribute to body dissatisfaction and eating disorders; pressures around appearance also affect boys and men

• The instructor connected idealized body images to industries that profit from body management, including:

  • Media and beauty products

  • Fitness and health-food industries

  • Weight-loss products and treatments

• Biopower, associated with Michel Foucault, offers a way to consider how socials structures encourage people to monitor and govern their bodies

• The point is not necessarily that these industries act through a single coordinated plan; rather, their interests and practices can reinforce one another

Gender Order

The organization of gender in society, often structured around binary categories

Heteronormativity

The assumption that heterosexuality is normal and that social institutions are organized around it

Identity

How people name, understand, or are categorized in relation to themselves

Theoretical Perspectives

4 theoretical perspectives regarding gender, sex, and sexuality

• Feminist Standpoint

• Feminist Cultural Studies

• Post-Structuralism

• Queer Theory

Feminist Standpoint Theory

Main idea: People's experiences, especially those of marginalized groups, influence how they understand the world.

• Epistemology (how we know things): There can be multiple valid ways of understanding reality because people have different experiences.

• Major focus: The shared experiences and awareness of people who face similar forms of oppression.

• Identity: Identity is relatively fixed and stable.

• Power: Society tends to have a hierarchy in which certain groups have more power than others. It often favors traditional gender roles and heterosexual relationships.

• Strength: Gives a voice to people whose experiences of oppression have historically been ignored.

In simple terms: To understand society, we need to listen to people who experience inequality, because they may see problems that more privileged people overlook.

FST and Sydney Sweeney Ad

Can help explain:

• Sweeney’s perspective as an actor

• Women athletes’ accounts of being sexualized or misrepresented in sport

Feminist Cultural Studies

Main idea: Our identities are shaped by culture, society, and our everyday interactions with others.

• Epistemology: Our understanding of reality is influenced by culture and social interactions.

• Major focus: How culture and everyday interactions shape people's identities and experiences.

• Identity: Identity can change over time depending on our experiences and interactions with others.

• Power: Society still has hierarchies, but people can have multiple identities. Which identity is most important may depend on the situation.

• Strength: Helps us understand how privilege and marginalization result from different aspects of identity and from dominant cultural practices.

Post-Structuralism

Main idea: What we consider to be true or normal is shaped by language, social beliefs, and systems of power.

• Epistemology: Truth is not always universal or objective; what people accept as true can depend on the language and social beliefs used to describe the world.

• Major focus: How language, social ideas, and signs influence what people believe and how they behave.

• Identity: Identity is fluid and unstable rather than permanent.

• Power: Power and knowledge are connected. What society accepts as true can be shaped by institutions, language, and social relationships.

• Strength: Helps reveal contradictions between what society says is normal or acceptable and how people actually behave.

Queer Theory

Main idea: Traditional ideas about gender and sexuality are socially shaped and should be questioned rather than treated as fixed or natural.

• Epistemology: What we believe about sexuality is influenced by political, economic, and social forces.

• Major focus: How society's expectations about sexuality and gender are connected to systems of power.

• Identity: Identity is fluid and can change rather than fitting neatly into fixed categories.

• Power: Challenging traditional identity categories can make it difficult to identify and address certain forms of inequality.

• Strength: Challenges traditional assumptions about sex, gender, and heterosexuality.

PSF and QT and Sydney Sweeney Ad

These approaches might ask:

• Why was a conventionally feminine actor chosen instead of a woman athlete?

• Which bodies and identities were excluded?

  • E.g. examine how racialization, capital accumulation, economic individualism interact with sexuality

• How does the campaign normalize heterosexuality and sexualized femininity?

Comparing Theoretical Approaches

• A feminist standpoint analysis may foreground the lived experiences and viewpoints of Sweeney or women athletes

• A post-structuralist or queer analysis may focus more on the institutions, norms, and power relations that shape those experiences and determine which representations become visible

• A single media event can be examined through multiple theories, and researchers may revise their approach as their questions or findings change

Intersectionality

Examines how social categories (e.g. gender, race, class, sexuality, age ability, religion, etc) and systems of power overlap to shape people’s experiences and social value

• People are multiply situated: They may experience privilege in one context and discrimination in another

• Helps explain why people in broad categories (e.g. “women”,”men”,”athletes”) do not all have the same experiences

Developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw

Crenshaw’s Examples

Crenshaw’s presentation highlighted Black women whose deaths at the hands of police were less widely recognized than those of Black men

• Argued that when social problems do not fit the public’s existing frames, people may fail to recognize those affected

• Her legal example concerned Emma Degraffenreid, a Black woman who challenged a company’s hiring practices. THe court rejected her claim because the company hired Black people and hired women, without recognizing that Black women could experience discrimination specific to the intersection of race and gender

• Crenshaw used the analogy of intersection: race- and gender-based policies and practices meet, creating combined effects for people positioned at that intersection

• A central lesson is that when a problem has no name or framework, it can remain invisible and therefore difficult to address

Implications for Sport

A “trickle-down” approach to social justice—addressing one category and assuming others will benefit—may leave people behind

• Research that treats all women or men as homogenous groups can obscure differences in socialization, culture, class, gender presentation, and access to sport

• Intersectionality can be used to study how race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other factors shape participation and experiences in sport and recreation

• The lecture emphasized the importance of critical disability studies, which examines how social, economic, and institutional structures shape disability—not only how physical environments affect people with impairments

• Research on disability and sport should also consider how ableism interacts with expectations of masculinity and femininity

• Intersectionality is relevant to questions of LGBTQI people in sport and to the ways multiple forms of discrimination may affect someone—for example, a queer, disabled BLack woman"

“There’s no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives.” —Audre Lorde

Race, Whiteness, and Ableism and Sport Scholarship

Class, race, gender, sexuality, and disability are organizing principles of society

• Sport scholarship has often overlooked women’s differing social positions and the racial privileges commonly afforded to white, middle-class women

Whiteness and ableism can remain invisible in research

Key critiques:

• A white women’s movement that does not address anti-Black racism cannot be transformative

• Colour-blind racism can produce racist effects while denying that racism exists

• Studies of masculinity and femininity often fail to account for disabled sporting bodies

• Disabled people’s sexualities have largely been ignored in sport scholarship

Social and cultural understandings of gender have historically regulated gender-nonconforming bodies

Critical Disability Studies

A diverse, interdisciplinary approach that analyzes disability as a cultural, historical, relative, social, and political phenomenon

• Rather than treating bodily or mental impairments as the primary problem, it scrutinizes:

  • Social norms that define certain attributes as impairments

  • Social conditions that concentrate stigmatized attributes in particular populations

• Critical analyses of heterosexism, sexism, and racism should draw on disability theory

  • —Melinda C. Hall, “Critical Disability Theory,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition)

Post-Colonial and Anti-Colonial Studies

Post-colonialism can designate a political position against imperialism and Eurocentrism

• Post-colonial and anti-colonial critique investigates imperial power relations and counters colonial oppression as it continues in the present

• Anti-colonialism also emphasizes Indigenous knowledge and experience as valid sources of knowledge and sites of political contestation

Sport and the Regulation of Bodies

Sport is more than physical activity: it can operate as an ideological and discursive formation that sustains narrow, white, Christian, patriarchal, and heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality

• Historically, expectations about girls’ and boys’ interests in sports have contributed to the pathologizing of gender-nonconforming children:

  • Girls’ interest in sport and boys’ aversion to “rough-and-tumble” play could be treated as problems

  • Their ability to produce “normal” femininity or masculinity may be quesitoned

  • Their bodies may be depicted as flawed, and labels such as “sissy” or “lesbian” reproduced

• Institutions perpetuate rigid conformity in masculinity and femininity, and particular sports may become targets of intervention for boys and girls