Melissa Condon Article Review #2

Melissa Condon

Dr. Currans

WGST 202 H

4 November 2014

Article Review #2

Travers, Ann. “Queering Sport: Lesbian Softball Leagues and the Transgender

Challenge.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 41:431 (2006): 431-446.

            In “Queering Sport: Lesbian Softball Leagues and the Transgender Challenge,” Ann Travers discusses the policies involved in lesbian softball leagues, and how the current policies can be shifted to be more inclusive of transgender individuals. Travers based her discussion about the issue on interviews that she conducted with a variety of ball players at the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA) Women’s Division World Series in 2003. Travers makes the assertion in her article that “lesbian softball leagues have the potential to model a queering of sport that is compatible with the values of these women [lesbians] by ‘softening’ rather than eradicating the gender binary” (443).

            The first point that Travers makes in support of her main point has to do with the gender binary that is often enforced in sport, stating that sport “is one of the most important institutions for naturalizing and reinforcing the assumption that fundamental differences exist between the sexes” (432). She goes on to discuss the policy changes that have been instituted by the International Olympic Committee, as well as why the policies that the IOC has enacted have only been accepted because they do not challenge the gender binary. Rather, the policy adopted by the IOC enforces the gender binary by only providing inclusion to transsexual athletes who have undergone a complete sex reassignment surgery, as well as hormone treatments for at least two years prior to competing (Travers 432). Travers states that the IOC’s policy is “emphasizing inclusion only for medically transitioned women and men leaves the power relations underlying male/female heterosexual/homosexual boundaries virtually untouched” (435), which she believes is not a truly satisfactory solution to transgender and non-binary inclusion in sport.

            The second topic that Travers addresses in support of her main idea is the topic of queer feminism, which she asserts, “goes beyond challenging sexist and homophobic discrimination to contest the naturalness of male and female categories themselves” (433). She discusses the difference between gender conforming transgender individuals and gender transforming individuals, who choose to reject the gender binary rather than choosing to change themselves to fit into the binary. Gender transforming individuals would often be excluded from some feminist movements in an effort to keep a space for women to feel safe; however, queer feminism asks that the gender binary be broken down to the point where women would not need a space to all to themselves because everyone—including non-binary individuals—would be treated as equals. Travers uses a queer feminist standpoint to help assert her point that the gender binary should be criticized, and that non-binary individuals should be allowed to participate wherever they feel most comfortable.

            The third idea that Travers uses addresses the role that lesbian softball leagues play in actually reinforcing gender binaries. Travers states that lesbian sport organizations “continue to define themselves as women-only strictly within a two-sex binary,” going on to say that they “place limits on players whose non-orthodox sex/gender identities challenge that binary” (435). The interviews that Travers conducted at the NAGAAA World Series cast some light on some of the reasons why lesbian softball leagues often perpetuate a two-sex system. One example of this is Travers’ statement that “playing softball in a women-only environment is important to the women I interviewed because they do not have to fight against sexism during recreational time” (442). However, even despite this fear of facing sexism from including males or non-binary people in a lesbian softball league, the majority of women who participated in Travers’ interviews indicated that they would support the inclusion of transgender individuals in their leagues, and even Pamela Dunnam, who is the Women’s Commissioner of NAGAAA was quoted as saying that “it is crucial to be as inclusive as possible by letting them [transsexual and transgender individuals] decide where they want to play, by letting them choose the division within which they will feel the most comfortable” (Travers 443).

            Travers’ article relates directly to my blog topic, which is transgender athletes, because it provides a critical look at the ways in which sporting organizations such as NAGAAA’s Women’s Division can expand their inclusion policies to be more inclusive of transgender athletes. Travers’ article also relates very directly to the last article review that I did, which was on “Transsexual and Transgender Policies in Sport” by Heather Sykes. Both Travers and Sykes discussed the policies of the International Olympic Committee, and how, despite the fact that the policy is a step in the right direction, the policy is overall very ignorant towards things such as class and race. Sykes speaks to this criticism by pointing out that “The Stockholm Consensus does not even attempt to address how these economic differences, structured locally and globally through racialized and colonial legacies, affect which transsexual communities and athletes can meet the universalized medicalized criteria” (Sykes 11), and Travers further speaks to this criticism of the IOC’s policy by bringing up “the gender, race and, class privilege that enables some trans people and not others to access such medical services (Travers 435). Overall, the information in this article was helpful to me in gaining a more thorough understanding of my blog topic because it gave me an opportunity to read about a wider variety of viewpoints on the topic of transgender athletes. I think that Travers did a very good job of including everything, and there is not really anything that I can think of that she missed entirely.