Melissa Condon's Article Review #3

Melissa Condon

Dr. Currans

WGST 202 H

25 November 2014

Article Review #3

Semerjian, Tamar Z. and Cohen, Jodi H. “FTM Means Female to Me: Transgender Athletes Performing Gender.” Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal 15.2 (Fall 2006): 28-43.

In “FTM Means Female to Me: Transgender Athletes Performing Gender,” Tamar Z. Semerjian and Jodi H. Cohen discuss the experiences of four different transgender and non-binary identifying athletes in non-professional sport settings. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured format that allowed the participants to openly discuss their personal experiences with sports participation as trans identifying individuals. The assertion that Semerjian and Cohen make in their article is that “the narratives of these [trans identifying] athletes portray a way of thinking about gender as a category that is transmutable, unstable, and constantly written and rewritten through embodied performances” rather than as a set gender binary of male and female (28).

The first point that Semerjian and Cohen use to back up their main idea is that it is important to listen to the experiences of athletes who compete outside of the mainstream, professional realm of sporting events. They state the importance and value of taking note of these experiences because, “everyday exercisers, recreational, and competitive athletes who are looking for a place where they can play their sports and do their workouts, in the bodies that feel the most comfortable to them, are far more numerous” than the transgender athletes who participate in professional level sport (29). Semerjian and Cohen also reiterate the value in recording the specific experiences of non-professional transgender athletes because of the fact that, at the time when their article was published, there was not a great deal of other research that had been done regarding the experiences of non-professional transgender athletes (28). This awareness is important because it helps to exemplify the fact that the issues that transgender athletes face on a day to day basis are not limited to professional athletes, but are instead something that is experienced on an everyday basis by the average trans identifying individual who chooses to partake in sport.

The second topic that Semerjian and Cohen bring into the discussion regarding the experiences of non-professional transgender athletes is the meaning of the word “trans” itself. Traditionally, the words transsexual and transgender have been used to note individuals that want to, are in the process of, or already have transitioned from one of the traditional binary categories of gender to the other. However, in this particular article, the authors state that they “intend to use this term [trans or transgender] in its most inclusive sense, and not strictly to describe individuals who have shaped themselves surgically or hormonally,” meaning that the authors made the conscious, decision to use the term trans to also describe individuals who are gender-queer or otherwise non-binary in their self definitions. The reason that Semerjian and Cohen had for using the more inclusive definition is that many of the athletes interviewed expressed the need for a non-binary term to describe themselves instead of always being pressured to conform to a gender or sex identity that s considered socially acceptable. The aversion shown by the interviewed individuals to identifying within traditional categories of the gender binary provides real life examples of the ways in which the personal experiences of trans identifying athletes helps to provide an important argument as to why the guidelines for transgender participation set forth by the International Olympic Committee are not necessarily a step towards transgender inclusion in sport. Rather, the ruling by the IOC serves to further establish the gender binary by only allowing athletes to participate if they have reconstructed their bodies and taken hormones in order to conform.

The third point that Semerjian and Cohen bring into their discussion is the ways in which the individuals that they interviewed challenge traditional notions of gender by their continued participation in sports. The authors write that, “many social theorists have stated, sport in our society is valued as an exclusively male domain” (29), and it is because of this fact that some of the individuals that were interviewed choose to stay separate from the traditional gender binary in an effort to help break down the idea that sport is purely a masculine arena. The authors further speak to this point by stating that, “although sport may be a way to construct gender identity, it is not necessarily always used as such, and is occasionally used to subvert the notion of appropriate gender roles and performances,” and then going on to discuss the ways in which gender performance has been used by the interviewed athletes as a way to help break down the traditional notions of the gender binary, rather than to enforce them (41).

In conclusion, the article by Semerjian and Cohen relates directly to my blog topic, which is about transgender athletes, because it focuses on the personal experiences of non-professional transgender athletes. It helped me to gain a more thorough understanding of my blog topic because it showed me the experiences of everyday people rather than professional athletes, which I think was very helpful to me in trying to gain a better understanding of the transgender community as a whole. This article also relates to the second article that I reviewed, which was Ann Travers’ article entitled “ Queering Sport: Lesbian Softball Leagues and the Transgender Challenge.” The two articles relate to one another because both of them provided semi-formal interviews with athletes on the subject of transgender participation in sporting events. In the case of Semerjian and Cohen’s article, the interviews were focused on the trans identifying athletes themselves; whereas in Travers’ article, most of the interviews were with the biological women who partake in the lesbian softball leagues to find out what their personal feelings were in regards to the inclusion of trans individuals in a space that is held for queer women. Overall, I feel as though the authors of “FTM Means Female to Me: Transgender Athletes Performing Gender” did an excellent job in covering their topic, and although the pool of participants in their research was small, the authors identified this fact and also went on to state that, “in the future research needs to incorporate larger and more diverse samples of athletes” (42).