Adele Pavlidis

From Riot Grrrls to roller derby? Exploring the relations between gender, music and sport

The current revival of the sport of roller derby was initiated in 2001 by members of the Riot Grrrl movement in Austin, Texas. Since then, the sport has grown rapidly across the globe. In roller derby, style, costume and attitude are integrated with skills, embodied competencies and fitness, providing an example of the tensions between creativity and constraint that are possible within sport. From its direct links to do-it-yourself punk and the Riot Grrrl movement through to the more implicit links to improvisation and competence, roller derby provides a space to explore some under-acknowledged connections that exist between sport and popular music. Roller derby enables women to experience a creative, gendered leisure space in which popular music, play and competitive sport come together, with women placed at its centre. Using my own experiences as a new roller derby participant, as well as observations of popular discourses about roller derby, the article outlines some of the ways in which sport and popular music are related, allowing women to shift between multiple subject positions not previously available to them, as well as highlighting directions for future research.

Becoming roller derby grrrls: Exploring the gendered play of affect in mediated sport cultures

This article explores how the global revival of roller derby as an alternative sport for women has been mobilised through online social networks, league promotion and fan sites that create imagined communities of ‘roller grrrls’. In the creation of sport culture we argue that the virtual performance of ‘derby’ identities is as significant as the embodiment of play. Like other sports, derby sites mobilise affect (passion, pleasure, pain, desire to play) through a discourse of ‘empowerment’ that urges women to overcome limits and reinvent gendered subjectivity. However, within the virtual space of roller derby, complex affects are produced and circulated within power relations that can include or exclude. Through an analysis of the way affect is mobilised in selected roller derby sites, we identify how virtual sport identities are connected through the movement of ‘affects’ across bodies and leagues. These affects both circumscribe and undermine the notion of a single derby community.

The pain and pleasure of roller derby: Thinking through affect and subjectification

Writing about pain in roller derby challenges us to rethink old dichotomies that separate mind and body, ‘real’ and virtual, feminine and masculine. The ‘tough’ roller derby ‘girl’, willing and able to endure pain for the pleasure of the game, has become a powerful figure in contemporary western popular culture. Our analysis of roller derby reveals women’s complex relation to pain and pleasure, as part of a feminist reimagining of sport. Through an analysis of derby texts we explore how painful affects are mobilized in particular ways: to imagine collective belonging, to invent alternative feminine subjectivities, and to mark out the limits of self and other. In this way we endeavour to think through the affective experience of derby and how sport might become more gender inclusive as a transformational cultural site. The embodiment of pain is not simply one of ‘overcoming’, but a corporeal relation that is productive of multiple feminine subjectivities.

“It's all about the journey”: women and cycling events

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a gendered understanding of womens experience of a mass cycle tour event.Design/methodology/approach – This research uses an ethnographic approach to explore womens experiences of a cycle tour event. Qualitative data are analysed through the conceptual framework of post‐structural feminism.Findings – Key themes included the meaning of womens cycle tour experience as a “shared journey”, the centrality of the “body” in event design (comfort, safety, enjoyment) and an event culture of “respect” (encouragement, skill development, knowledge sharing).Research limitations/implications – This research is based on a particular sample of women who were largely Anglo‐Celtic, middle to lower middle class and middle aged Australians. Hence, this research does not claim to be representative of all womens experiences. Given the strong focus on quantitative research within event management, this research identifies the need for qualitative and feminist approaches.Prac...

On the track/in the bleachers: authenticity and feminist ethnographic research in sport and physical cultural studies

Much contemporary ethnographic research about alternative sports and physical cultures tends to value the ‘insider’ perspective, claiming that it provides a level of embodied understanding that cultural ‘outsiders’ struggle to access. Participatory research perspectives have come to be viewed as the most ‘authentic’, with participation itself defined by those who are doing/playing the activity. This often diminishes the value we place on meanings experienced by those on the sidelines/bleachers, which may be similar to or different from those of participants. This article explores these issues by placing the observations, experiences and insights of a ‘intimate insider’ in dialogue with those of an ‘interested outsider’, and considers the ways in which roller derby, as an alternative sport and leisure activity for women, presents both opportunities and limitations as a feminist and queer space. Taking a dialogic approach to questioning the authentic value of ‘insider’ research, we reveal a space where collaboration and curiosity become vital for maintaining high-quality, rigorous feminist research.

Narrating the Multiplicity of ‘Derby Grrrl’: Exploring Intersectionality and the Dynamics of Affect in Roller Derby

Driven by an ethos of self-organization and empowerment women involved in the revived version of roller derby have created an embodied and virtual leisure practice that challenges gender norms and invites different identities. However, tensions exist in the way different women negotiate the space of roller derby and the meaning of playing, belonging, and becoming “derby grrrls.” This article presents findings from a qualitative study of roller derby in Australia to make connections between feminist theories of affect and the growing body of work on intersectionality. We explore how identity categories intersect to shape the meaning of roller derby for different women. Narratives recount the complex affective relations (passion, frustration, pride, shame) that women negotiate in forming leisure identities in relation to the social context of their lives. The article aims to contribute to the development of feminist thinking about leisure as a negotiated space of transformation, creativity, and difference.

Writing Resistance in Roller Derby Making the Case for Auto/Ethnographic Writing in Feminist Leisure Research

Abstract As an emerging researcher working in the field of leisure studies, I explore auto/ethnographic writing as a valuable methodological approach. Focusing on contemporary roller derby in the Australian context I grapple with the complexities of “resistance” within this women-centred sport, privileging affect as surfaced through the research process and writing. This article explores the possibilities inherent in research that makes visible the paradoxes and ambiguities of resistance in leisure. Shame and hurt—although uncomfortable for the researcher and perhaps for the reader—are important affects to incorporate into feminist analyses if we are to continue to explore new questions, and identify ways to theorise the complexity of gender power relations as they are embodied in leisure.

Living it up in the 'new world city': High-rise development and the promise of liveability

The growth of high-rise developments raises questions about how the emotional and social leisurescape of the city is evoked, produced and represented. In this article, we examine how advertising images and texts promoting new high-rise developments produce notions of ‘liveability’ through the depiction of idealized spatial experiences that typify urban leisure lifestyles. The focus of our analysis is three high-rise developments in Brisbane, a self-proclaimed ‘New World City’, and the capital of Queensland in Australias northeast. We identify how marketing images evoke particular emotions to construct desirable relationships between consumers, domestic space and urban leisurescapes. Our analysis revealed social tensions between different constructions of the liveable city and the implications for leisure planning. While Brisbane City Council sought to be inclusive in its planning for urban liveability, developers imagined urban renewal projects through exclusive lifestyle practices and normalized consumer identities (white, middle class, heterosexual, without children).

Men in a ‘women only’ sport? Contesting gender relations and sex integration in roller derby

Abstract Roller derby is a growing, popular sport, where teams compete on roller skates, and where rules allow ‘blocking’ and full body contact. Roller derby is primarily played by women, with men restricted to support roles during its revival stage in the early 2000s. However, men and gender diverse skaters are increasingly playing the sport, in mixed/co-ed leagues and Men’s teams. This has created deep divisions within the derby community regarding the role of men in a women’s space and the playing of a full-contact sport with men against women on the track. The tensions within derby highlight the wider gendered problems in sport regarding perceptions of athletic ability, strength and capability. Drawing on an ethnographic methodology, we present a range of perspectives from derby players and counter-point their lived experiences with the structural constraints on gender enforced by the governing bodies with the sport Women’s Flat Track Derby Association and Men’s Roller Derby Association. We explicitly engage from a radically inclusive position inspired by Hargreaves’ call for sport to challenge gendered notions of capability.

Women, Sport and New Media Technologies: Derby Grrrls Online

Sport has long been viewed as a public ‘good’ — a space for the creation and enactment of the ‘good, healthy citizen’. Yet this public ‘good’ has also been gendered masculine: competitive, public and ‘tough’, with women’s participation historically marginal to men’s. In Australia in recent years, the participation of women and girls has fluctuated, with decline or stagnation in more traditional organised sports (netball, basketball) and growth in other areas, such as roller derby and football. However, women’s sports are still largely invisible in the popular sport media. In this chapter we focus on roller derby as one particular women’s sport that has undergone a global revival, mobilised through ‘new’ youth-oriented media forms. We examine four diverse websites that form part of the ‘social web’ of derby: two official league sites, a blog and a Facebook group. The reinvention of roller derby is intimately connected to the alternative mediated spaces made possible by the social web. Roller derby players and organisers have used online spaces for various ends: to promote the sport community, to make visible the relations of power between those involved, to create and maintain boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within the sport, and to express ‘creative’ aspects of identity. This chapter provides examples of the strategies and tactics used to establish and maintain roller derby as a ‘women’s only’ sport and some of the challenges and possibilities inherent in this highly mediated space.