rideals women and sport marks
It's a man's game
Sport is front-page news. But and ask for their reactions...
Of course, the evolution of sport has playing sport is still, clearly meant a certain feminisation. This evolu"for the boys" . And the tion is parallel to the evolution of leisure violent euphoria of some male time itself: from an elitist practice of spectators is a coarse reminder bourgeois women wishing to entertain of the darker aspects of the themselves, it has because a mass phenoworld we live in. menon. And traditional female gymnastics Meanwhile, women's maga- (based on female supports, such as the plank and the asymmetric bars - "to zines constantly encourage avoid shocks to the ovaries"), are giving their readers to exercises. But way a little, now that it has become clear only in order to lose weight, that high-status sports (like running) do and sculpt our bodies so as to not diminish the hips or lessen the resemble the dream-world breasts, in short that they "do not stop women from being women"! models which fill the media.
But everyone can see that high-level Isabelle Forest sports destroy the bodies of the athletes:
men as well as women. Some female The world of sports is gender-divided. athletes take male hormones to increase Sport has traditionally been masculine. the level of testosterone, with visible and The sexism of the "founding fathers" of destructive effects. It is probable that modern sport is illustrated by the convic- Soviet trainers on several occasions tions of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who asked their top gymnasts to conceive a re-established the Olympics in the child: once pregnant, your physical outmodern world. He was convinced that: put is increased by a higher transport of "female Olympics would be uninter- oxygen. And you could always abort esting: not aesthetic, and not correct."1 once the contest was over.?
Is this an outdated view? Are there It is clear that coaches play with still dinosaurs that think in such a crude bodies and manipulate them, trying to way? After all, in 1999, television find the most powerful hormone cocktail regularly shows high level sportswomen for each athlete. This causes premature in action. But just show people around menstruation for some, delayed periods you a photo of a female weight thrower for others. This costly personalised treat28 International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 beh resp exc
WOI ship
Fro
"B fem agg test and ene the nity lon the wor pic ress abo
The dee fast
Fem
VISI no ment is not carried out in the name of the carr athlete, but in the name of the sacred or tl one-hundredth of a second, of the medal, of n of the glory, and of the money involved.
und
Of course, this criticism of competitive tast sport is not specific to women.
com
Are competitive sports genderone specific at all as we enter the 21st seve century? Women have advanced in many tha areas; are they not going to become
"equal" to men? According to sociologist
Catherine Louveau, "sports has become, today more than yesterday, a place of real slide of women towards men. It is true that this is the direction of History, since women continually take over activities that initially were the domain of men.
Temi
"However, in competitive sports, the
189 performance levels attained require work the and physical preparation that modifies
US/ morphologies, making women's and viol men's bodies more similar."
Chr
At this point, an inevitable hypothesis nel!
arises: with equal physical training from acco early childhood on, women could attain by 1 equal performances to men in many
Into sports. The question will probably not be bask answered, but doubt is justified." * If this the hypothesis of equality in sports may be und considered, what is left for men in the sports? Should (can) sports be co-ed?
Should we call for equality or nurture our con difference?
the
Some sportswomen speak of a stre
"manly relationship to the body" when doc they are not cold, feel no pain, push their fro limits to reach a performance, in other dev words, when they do not listen to themhav selves. A "feminine relationship to the in t body" would presumably be character-
Mix ised by grace, tenderness, harmony, gen feeling good and not causing stress. So
behaviour stereotypes can continue be respected by both women and men: only exceptional women, high-level sportswomen, will have this "manly relationship to the body".
How does this relationship arise? From a social construction, of course. "But from hormones too," some feminists would probably add. After all, aggression is related to the presence of testosterone, the 'male' hormone. Men and women do not work with the same energies.
Must a feminist project seek to cast the concepts of femininity and masculinity into oblivion? Should behaviour no longer be gender-specific?
Though the media occasionally put the spotlights on exceptional sportswomen, they usually present us with the picture of a masculine sports world.
Some sports remain "masculine fortresses", such as boxing or rugby, and above all soccer: prime male territory.
deep Sorcer ss piotent, on i must and
. Soccer is violent, one must run fast, hit hard, and look frightening. Female soccer is never shown on television: it is not spectacular.
There will be no female soccer hero, no "Queen Pelé". Important football carries the honour of the city, the region, or the nation. It represents a stronghold of masculine identity: "And one cannot understand the popular and masculine taste for football encounters and the communicative capacity of the show if one does not place it in the context of a severe crisis of masculine identity (...) that men might find in the toughest, competitive, and violent sports the last strongholds of expression of their manliness. These are the last places where masculine values can still be revealed publicly, legitimately, and without manage. But, in co-ed physical education classes, you can sometimes see a new game developing. There is more flow in the team than in male games, and more dynamism than in female games. Could mixed-gender sports be a source of emancipation, both for women and for
Notes
1. Quoted in Quel corps, no. 10-11, 1978, p.101.
2. Le Monde, November 29, 1994. Article by J.-J.
Boyonnet
3. Idem, p.163.
4. Les défis de la legereté (les pratiques corporelles en mutation) [The challenges of lightness (physical activities in mutation)] by Christian Pociello, in Esprit, no. 196, November 1993, p. 53.
5. Quoted in A. Davisse and C. Louveau, (op. cit., p.
219).
shame... Androgynous sport?
Other sports appear to be more feminine: basketball was established in 1891, by James Naismith, professor at the YMCA University in Springfields, USA, who wanted to exclude all violence from baseball: "based on the Christian notion of love for one's neighbour ... this game takes into account the fact that some participants, by losing their self-control, can make it into a 'tool of the devil". This is why basketball is conceived in a way so that the player always keep his reactions under control," based on the respect of the other, no contact, and skill.
Furthermore, the evolution of the concept of physical activities away from the hygienic up-keep of the body and strength-building, called for by military doctors, towards a leisure activity freed from constraints, has allowed the development of co-ed sports. Schools have played and still play a decisive role in this change. Mixed sports activities, and the heterogeneity that they impose, are difficult to
Androgynous sport is a utopia. That's the conclusion of sociologist Catherine Louveau. Pro-feminist teachers should instead "play the differences against the inequalities" to make sport more appropriate - and more fun - for girls (and boys). • Is women's dislike of sports really a reflection of our alienation? Ifwe do not wish to place ourselves on the field, where men have set the rules, does this imply that we are not sufficiently feminist? Catherine Louveau: Feminist movements have focused on most questions relating to women's bodies. But, at least here in France, we have curiously disregarded issues relating to sport: like morphological transformations, demands on the body, or uses of the body.
Also, though we have heavily insisted on the lack of representation of women in politics, in institutions, feminists have rarely questioned the role of women in the sports movement, where we are even less represented then elsewhere, both as sportswomen and as sports managers.
The situation is slightly different in the United States. There, the Women's Liberation movement calls for complete equality, even a erasure of differences. The principle seems to be "women and men, it's all the same", or "sport has no gender".
US writer Carole Oglesby even entitled one book Sport, the laboratory of
International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 29
women and sport are, I believe, intellectual constructions. What is the root of these differences? It is social, yes, but more than that, it is bodily defined: men are larger, stronger, heavier, etc. The body exists, it is given! However, history shows that when girls practice, for generations, they end up by catching up with the men, or at least by coming close. The distance is closing in. We do not know yet what will come of it. The Americans are not afraid androgyny. Personally, I find this state- of extrapolating: within 50 years, they ment entirely utopian as a statement of say, women will beat men in endurance principle. It has no relation to historical reality, nor to the reality of daily activi- But there are secondary sexual signs ties or the life-styles of men and women! that could be easily changed... Although,
The few European works on the issue when one considers the case of high level of women's relationship to sports are sports women, one may wonder: not only quite recent. In these analyses, the do they have bodies that change, but, for problems of access of women to sport is some of them, a physiology that is modiinvariably posed in terms of emancipa- fying as well: their menstrual cycles, for tion: equality is doing the same thing, to instance. But I am not at all saying that "do sport like the boys do" they are becoming masculine!
These works study the history of the
• But there are now women highpresence of women in sport according to this analysis: "women have become more level sports stars Surely this gives a emancipated, they do more and more of positive picture that encourages girls things like sport". This seems to me to be to get involved, and has an an unilateral analyses. One cannot under- "emancipating" role? stand and explain what is going on for women if one does not simultaneously Yes, this evolution is rather positive, take men into account: feminine and it changes the models. Sports are feminimasculine are inseparable. sing, it is true, but not nearly as fast as
When I began to think about women has been sometimes said. Today, there is and their relationship to sport, in the a tendency to say that there is no probsixties, I considered the issue, as a good Communist, in terms of barriers: if sportswomen like Florence Arthaud and women do not participate in sports, it is Jeannie Longo. because of their social conditions. One But after twenty or thirty years of must lift these barriers, I thought, by girls cycling, boxing, and wrestling, they lowering the prices and giving women represent only 1.5% of regular particimore time. pants. Sport is becoming feminine very
I never asked myself the question of slowly. It remains a masculine domain, a content: what were we trying to attain? It place for expression of manly values: was clear, in my mind, that our goal was courage, strength, resistance, violence, to gain access to universal activities, i.e. risk, effort in its hardest sense. men's activities. I only pondered the means: how to liberate women from • If sport is such an awful, violent quantitative oppression? place, why should we want women
It was only later, in the late seventies to get involved? and early eighties, that I told myself: I think that women have a whole another reason women do not do sports is world to win, and men too, in what I call because they don't feel like it. They do the cross-gender spirit, which is somenot want to approach something that was thing different than equality, a lot more: made without them. There is no or little the cross-gender spirit is the recognition female history in sports. of values, the taking into consideration of
We move from the question of the particularities, of complementarity... In forbidden to that of appropriation. Rather what men constructed, there is not only like the question of the role of women in oppression, there is also positive value! politics. When women say "it's not for Women have a lot to gain and to me", it is not only because they interna- recapture in rebuilding their position in lise male domination. It is also because it the world of physical activity. is true that sport is not "for them", in that This, it is true, also brings up the it was built without them. question of the relationship to time: not,
This is where there is a debate: as I believed in the sixties, the objective should one think that there is a feminine issue of the lack of time or lack of money body-ness, a female relationship to the - even though that does have an effect, it body? is not essential. What is essential is a
It is clear that the feminine relation- very deep set problem of emancipation: ship to the body is a social construction. that women dare take time for themBut in all that is socially constructed selves. there is sexuality, which is something in- For having experimented in lowvariable. All efforts to separate the two income neighbourhoods, I know that it is 30 International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 possible, but that it takes huge efforts on the level of social animation: for women to build new forms of "taking time off" in democratic conditions (not in the commercial sector), for them to access the world of physical activity, they must do it tel collectively, they cannot do it each clu separately, not in poorer areas, in any del case. This brings up the problem of thi neighbourhoods, of social questions, of Fra the competence of animators, etc. One the must think of the issue of means in a po different way, starting from the wishes of WO the persons, and not by projecting on them pre-established models. po
I would add that one should not look dif at things only in a technical perspective: wh perfectioning, perfect gestures, confron- spa tation, rivalry, competition, etc. From the me moment when the full range of activities and goals opened to women, feminisation hav took on an entirely new character. act but • In your book, you propose egl "working differences against lis inequalities." What do you mean? fig
This is a question of the "true" and tha the "just". If one speaks in terms of wa socio-political objectives, I am, of the course, on the side of the just; I am for fiel something that has to do with equality, in the historical sense. bar
But I am for an equality that is based No in reality, and not a mythical equality that dec means pretending that men and women that are the same. To construct equality in If i reality implies starting from differences, box because, in reality, what functions are the Bes differences. The egalitarian discourse wat does not have any effect if it does not take into account the reality of differ- • И ences. But, at the same time, one must trai avoid a relativist logic, as in "to each his culture", men with men, women with tOW women, which kids translate in their own wa: way: "dance for girls, fighting for boys".
tog
In other words, one must try to con- they struct on this basis a dialectical approach that does not forsake the ideal of emanci- phy pation, and thus is a tool for equality ed, (even though this notion is ambiguous, as sep far as bodies are concerned), and that at gir the same time has its eyes wide open on sch reality, i.e. that does not disregard sch differences. 196
The first effort requires identifying teac the feminine, looking at what girls really the do - not only Jeannie Longo or other high-level sports women. The existence Thi of Jeannie Longo proves that girls can mai cycle, indeed, and that is not bad; but thi beyond that one must think about what pre can be done for this to generalise, and but look at all the space that remains to be the: built: if one has this cross-gender spirit tiot that involves saying that the feminine boy and the masculine exist, it requires abo identifying what social demand, what for social transformation the feminine can wit bring
In the example of the low-income a ti neighbourhoods that I was speaking thit about, one can say that the feminine nat
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*
carries a social demand that is not yet identified.
When the elected representatives think about the sports policy of their municipality, they go to see the clubs; I tell them: careful, if you go to see the clubs, you will only know the sports demand of the sporting people—l.e. a third of the people who do something in France-but you will not find out about the demand for sports activities of the population, and, in particular, of the
Here, there is a "revolutionary" potential: to identify, starting from differences, the necessity of reaching what exists-but also to construct new spaces, to take into consideration new methods of seeing. It's not easy!
To say this, to say that women also have the right to build spaces of physical activity, is to think in terms of difference, but with an ideal of emancipation and equality. But, contrarily to the "essentialist" tendencies, I am in favour of fighting at the same time for all those
"atypical": for all the girls that want to play football, for instance, to find their place, which means fighting for the fields and the locker-rooms.
I am in favour of the abolition of all barriers in all types of physical activity. No federation leader should be able to declare, as the boxing leaders still do, that such a sport is not made for women. If it is true that it is not good for women, boxing, than it's not good for men either! Besides, it's the business of the girls that want to box, not the leaders... • What is the role of schools in the training of sportspeople?
When I began to write on the subject towards 1967/68, things were simple: it was enough to put girls and boys together, we thought. I couldn't see why they should be treated differently.
Remember that, in the sixties, physical education in France was not coed, and recruitment competitions were separate. In those days, there were still girls' high schools and boys high schools. And even in the junior high schools (which became co-ed in the 1960s), tradition was maintained: male teachers for the boys, female teachers for
This lasted a long time, and still lasts. This is what made me think: there were many of us calling for co-education, but this did not change much. Or, more precisely, it changed in the lower grades, but not much in senior high: even when these became co-ed, the physical education courses have remained separated, boys on one side, girls on the other. And, above all, a tendency has been revealed for a re-separation along gender lines with adolescence.
This led me to ask a few questions: as a trade union representative, I did not think that all the teachers were reactionary; so why did they continue to separate their pupils? I began to look closely at my girl pupils, and I realised that I did not take much care of them: I was working in the masculine gender: the boys—and the "atypical" "tomboys"-are so demanding in activities that one takes care only of them. This is a tendency one finds with the professors of all disciplines: to respond to those who are the most demanding. In physical education, this tendency is multiplied by ten: one works with those who are physically good, because they are very demanding.
The others are forgotten, by general consensus: the teachers forget the girls, and the girls do everything to be forgotten. Then one says: ah, they are not succeeding... Thus one arrives at a relative failure of girls in physical education, mainly in poorer environments, and particularly in technical schools.
One realises that co-education puts the girls at a disadvantage: when one is dealing with people who are different, and one pretends that they are the same, one worsens the differences.
The stronger "motivation" of the boys, their stronger demand, is also related to the types of activities that they are offered: when the activities are historically more masculine, the girls do not feel comfortable with them, or do not express themselves well, which reinforces the differences of attitude that you
As far as I am concerned, physical activities are not "neutral", there is no activity that is free from all gender marking: each has its history, its culture, its imaginary of use.
And one realises - Annick has seen it for volley-ball, and others have shown it in other sports, that girls and boys, in the same sport, are not playing the same thing. Where boys play "against", girls
In rugby, for instance, many coaches have realised that girls do not play forward, pushing-body contact, fighting —but they have a much more technical game, with more passing, and less
Girls and boys do not play the same way and they do not play the same thing. Should one, then, put together people who are not playing the same thing? I don't think that this question can be easily answered; I myself am divided between the wish for co-education, the desire to make different people live together, and feasibility, which tends to make me say that it is easier to separating
Why could one not (if the entire class stays together) have co-ed times and gender specific times, times by ability, and times by choice of activity? When one puts football on the programme, for instance, I dislike saying "it's for boys"; it is better to put two activities on the programme and let the pupils choose. Otherwise, what will the "atypical" do?
One cannot stop sporty girls running about! And what about atypical boys? A little guy who doesn't want to run fast? The problem is getting the pupils to identify what they feel like playing. Thinking female means organising alternatives.
Having said this, there are two problems. A material problem: teachers do not always have the room to do this in good conditions; and a training problem: currently, the historically feminine activities have a very insufficient place in the training of physical education teachers. Generally speaking, all the girls receive hand-ball training, but all boys are not trained in dancing (nor are all sporting women.
There is a third problem, and that is the family: before they come to their physical education class, the children have a body culture, through their games, the family activities and others. Boys and gırls have different famillarity with certain activities. lake football: boys already have a whole culture by the time they come to the school field, whereas gurls are behind.
I don't say that it's enough to bring the two together. There are activities where co-education is more difficult to introduce than in others: the question of struggle, of body-to-body fight. One cannot impose cross-gender duels straight away, it can only come after a didactic work that allows it. With colleagues that work well, this can be done: by the end of the course they have a few girls that ask to challenge boys on their own initiative. Though this is not a generalised attitude, it is important to reach this result. But it requires that one do not start off pretending that it's the same, one cannot force them together, nothing is obtained that way.
I remain in favour of co-education, for people to live together. It would be very sad to have to re-separate girls and boys. But mixing genders must not be made into a dogma, in either direction. To declare that a hand-ball team must have three boys and three girls is not adequate if it leads to a game where the three boys play together and the girls stand back, which is what usually happens..
But this does not mean there should be only girls or only boys. One must find a system of grouping more appropriate to the goal one is seeking. I prefer to speak of co-education: the idea of identifying different values. To identify the feminine is to say: careful, the actors are women, they therefore have reasons for acting the way they do. I am strongly opposed to the idea of sex neutrality as a social Author of Sports, école, et societé: la part des femmes, (Ed. Actio, 1991), a study on the role of women in school and society. and Talons aiguilles et crampons alu, les femmes dans les sports de tradition masculine, INSEP 1986.
International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 31
* reviews someone who was first and foremost a militant, and for a long period the Fourth
International's main leader.
In Mandel's work, political intervention and speculative thought are intimately, dialectically interwoven. This explains the originality of many of
Mandel's writings, which were neither academic publications nor reducible to the political goals that their author consistently gave them. Often they seem to situate themselves in the interstices between science and politics, nourished by a constant back-and-forth between analysis and action.
The great variety of Mandel's writings-reflected in the book by the multiplicity of fields and approaches of its various authors—is held together by a centripetal force: the forceful coherence
210 of his intellectual personality.
This is thus a "profile" whose originality editor Achcar rightly stresses in its opening lines: Mandel "was one of those few men and women in the history of the socialist movement who were able to combine an untiring activity as revolutionary leaders with a body of
Booknotes intellectual work fulfilling the scholarly criteria for scientific research, to the comprelling respect from academic circles".