Jayne Caudwell

Women’s Football in the United Kingdom: Theorizing Gender and Unpacking the Butch Lesbian Image

This article draws on recent quantitative and qualitative research material to show how gender functions in the cultural arena of women’s football in the United Kingdom. In particular, the questionnaire and interview findings show that the “butch lesbian” identity is a concern for those players who have taken part in the research. This supports other research on women taking part in sports traditionally defined as male. I will discuss the findings as they relate to the social construction of gender and lesbianism. The research suggests that our understanding of gender and sexuality is bound up in a structuralist analysis. I will offer a post-structuralist interpretation as a “new” way to theorize gender and sexuality as they function within women’s football culture in the United Kingdom.

'Bend it like Patel' - centring 'race', ethnicity and gender in feminist analysis of women's football in England.

This article focuses on the experiences of Black women and one Indian Hindu woman in football in England. The discussions draw on survey and interview research to theorize gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The research represents a questionnaire survey of women’s teams and 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews; seven with players and seven with ‘officials’. The survey provides data on players, coaches and managers at women’s football clubs registered with the Football Association (FA) in the North of England. The questionnaire data on ‘race’, ethnicity and gender demonstrate that football’s organizational structures in the region are White and gendered. The interview data highlights the gendered and racialized experiences of women as they begin to play and continue to play football at the club level. What emerges from the interviews is how ‘racial’ difference is constituted for some women footballers. The article analyses the processes that construct gender and ‘race’ as interlocking systems of relationships by using Glenn’s (1999) theoretical framework identifying three processes through which ‘race’ and gender are mutually constituted: representation, micro-interaction and social structure. We raise both theoretical and methodological issues that indicate the need for further rigorous theorizing in the sociology of sport of women’s interwoven experiences of gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity.

‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here?’ The spatiality of homophobia in men’s football culture in the UK

In this paper, I focus on football culture in the UK and the presence of homophobia in the men’s professional game. In particular, I explore how football fans, through sound and visual display, produce homophobia within the spaces of the stadia. In this way, I offer a contribution to existing debate surrounding the spatiality of sexuality and the social and political significance of sporting spaces. I demonstrate the normalisation of homophobic chanting and homophobic gesticulation, and suggest that it is dominant ideas surrounding gay men’s sexual activity, penetrative sex and men’s bodies, which are central to these articulations of homophobia. I explain this emphasis on men’s embodied sexuality and sexual activity in relation to the materiality of men’s bodies in sport spaces. Moving on from this context, I draw on preliminary research to consider the possibilities that may work to contest dominant versions of homophobia and the existing spatialities of homophobia in men’s football. Discussion is based on semi‐structured interviews with two men heavily involved in The Justin Campaign – an ‘anti‐homophobia in football’ project established in Brighton on 2 May 2008. The Justin Campaign seeks to make visible the tragic death of Justin Fashanu (on 2 May 1998) and his plight as a young gay black player. Fashanu remains the only professional footballer to date – in the UK – to publicly self‐identify as ‘gay’. This is significant and I consider past treatment of Fashanu as well as the campaign’s celebration of him to drive their anti‐homophobia initiatives. In all, the paper has two fundamental aims, firstly, to address the lack of existing debate on the spatiality of homophobia in men’s elite football and secondly, to raise awareness of the recently established: The Justin Campaign.

Queering the Field? The Complexities of Sexuality within a Lesbian-Identified Football Team in England

Lesbian-identified sports teams provide a challenge to the heterosexing, and heterogendering, of sport and sport space. An ‘out’ lesbian football (soccer) team can be understood as offering resistance to compulsory heterosexuality. It is this disruption of normative sexuality that can be described as queer and contributes to the queering of sport space. Given evidence of obdurate heteronormativity in most sporting arenas, such a team could be described as a queer community. However, a critical engagement with lesbian subversion is necessary before claiming lesbian ‘subjects’ as queer ‘subjects’. In this vein, the discussions that follow reflect an engagement with marginalised sex–gender–sexuality identities within a specific lesbian sport community in London, England. Relatively little is known about the social relations that exist within lesbian sporting communities. Through an engagement with femme-inine players and transsexual players this article aims to highlight the diversity of sex–gender–sexuality experiences. Moreover, it demonstrates the tensions and complexities within a particular footballing sub-culture, which can be described as both queer and anti-queer. In this way it contributes to developments in the feminist–queer theorising of the spatiality of sexuality. The research is drawn from a larger ethnographic study of the team, which includes analysis of archival materials and club documents, semi-structured interviews and participant observation.

Gender, feminism and football studies

In this article, I explore some of the ways gender has been interpreted over time within different feminisms and how this might be of use to a critical football studies. I move between different feminist emphases, which include consideration of the ‘category of woman’, the ‘category of gender’ and the ‘category of femininities’ and specifically in relation to football contexts. This simple model of feminist categories (‘woman’, ‘gender’ and ‘femininities’) intends to capture some of the histories of feminist theoretical development and available modes of feminist analyses. I use these categories to demonstrate the depth and breadth of feminism and the range of feminist theory available for future research and study of football and its many cultures.

Sport Feminism(s): Narratives of Linearity?

This article is inspired by a dialogue that occurred between two feminist scholars in the journal Feminist Theory. The dialogue was initiated by Clare Hemmings, in 2005, in her article entitled “Telling feminist stories.” Rachel Torr challenged this original article with “What’s wrong with aspiring to find out what has really happened in academic feminism’s recent past? Response to Clare Hemmings” “Telling feminist stories” (2007). Hemmings, in the same issue (2007), gave her reply: “What is a feminist theorist responsible for? Response to Rachel Torr”. In this article, I explore the debates raised by their dialogue and I suggest that the tensions the authors highlight—in their written scholarly correspondence—are significant to sport feminisms and sport feminists. I focus on the ways feminist thinking, feminist theory and feminist politics have been framed in some sport feminist work in relation to “waves” of feminism and how this presents key developments as linear, progressive and in danger of missing the multiple, complex and fragmented nature of feminisms. More specifically, I seek to problematize the notion of a “third wave” of sport feminism.

[Transgender] young men: gendered subjectivities and the physically active body

In this paper, I discuss [transgender] young mens social, physical and embodied experiences of sport. These discussions draw from interview research with two young people who prefer to self-identify as ‘male’ and not as ‘trans men’, although they do make use of this term. Finn and Ed volunteered to take part in the research following my request for volunteers at a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth group. Their narratives provide valuable testimonies on transgender and transgender and sport: more specifically, their experiences of school sport, their embodied subjectivities, transitioning and sport participation. The focus on transgender and sport also highlights the taken-for-granted assumption that a coherent LGBT collective exists and that transgender is a fixed, definable and agreed-upon category. The paper, therefore, has two aims. First, it intends to privilege and document the views of two young people who identify with a group that is often marginalised. Their narratives raise significant questions in relation to transgender and sport participation in educational and recreational settings. Second, the paper seeks to expose the methodological and ontological complexities surrounding ‘LGBT’ and ‘transgender’ and place these debates within sport and educational studies.

Reviewing UK football cultures: continuing with gender analyses

Women’s and girls’ active involvement in football and football cultures, and how their participation is registered in popular culture and viewed by the popular imaginary, is complex. Women and girls have been, and continue to be, active in all aspects of football culture, including playing, coaching, managing and spectating. And at almost all levels of the game – including playtime games, recreational kick-abouts, grass-roots development, competitive fixtures and professional play – they are active participants, albeit to varying degrees, and not to the same extent as their male counterparts. Women’s and girls’ past and current involvement in football in the United Kingdom – and elsewhere around the world – is visible, and has been acknowledged as such.1 However, it remains that their engagement with football is highly contingent on gender, and the general assumption is that the activity is something men and boys do. Such ideas are socially constructed, as Orwell’s observations in the above quote emphasize. They are a result of how the social, cultural and historical operate to affirm and reaffirm men’s and boys’ ‘entitlement’ to the game. The acceptance of women and girls into UK football has fluctuated, and variations exist between the different football cultures and at different levels of play. For instance, it is still beyond the imagination of many involved in the game that a woman could manage and/or coach a men’s professional club/team. This idea would be regarded as comical by many men, not least those in the tabloid press. However, it might be viewed as acceptable that a woman is managing and/or coaching a boys’ youth squad/team. A woman taking charge of the men’s international side might be seen in the same way as a non-white man, and, up until fairly recently (pre-SvenGöran Eriksson), a non-English man in this position. The general opinion is that such leadership is unlikely and impossible: this is based on norms, values and traditions surrounding the game in the UK. These ‘common-sense’ beliefs and taken-for-granted assumptions, which influence the entitlement to football, present obdurate, and often impenetrable, barriers that women and girls continually negotiate in their quest to be actively involved. The particular, and nuanced, experiences of women and girls in UK football cultures are documented within both the academic and popular literature.2 These

Girlfight and Bend it Like Beckham: screening women, sport, and sexuality.

In this article, sport film is taken as a social and cultural space where womens bodies are made publicly in/visible. Two films—Girlfight and Bend it Like Beckham—provide the focus for critical discussion. Moreover, a queer-feminist analysis explores the links between participation in boxing and football, and womens sexuality as represented in the films. Lesbian sexualities are considered in a critique of the erasure of the lesbian sport [film] star. Sexual subjectivity is also discussed in relation to the heterosexual heroic and to patriarchy. In this way I interrogate heterosexuality. I also consider links between ethnicity, womens bodies, and sexuality. In the final instance, I show that the films work to reproduce heterosexual hegemony and depict heteronormative assimilation.

Women Playing Football at Clubs in England with Socio‐Political Associations

The documentation of women’s experiences of football continues apace. Since the mid 1990s, authors have highlighted the complexities of gender and gender relations and the impact on girls’ and women’s relationship to the ‘people’s game’. The burgeoning literature tends to adopt a feminist theoretical approach and successfully exposes the significance of football in the everyday lives of women. In addition, the accounts contest the study of football as male academic terrain and challenge the tradition of football studies. This essay makes a new contribution to the literature through an engagement with football clubs with political associations. The focus on women’s lived experiences of playing for clubs with political associations continues the tradition of feminist methodology and demonstrates the complexities of gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity.