Nikki Wedgwood

The Dilemma of Disabled Masculinity

A much-cited point by those who study the intersection of gender and disability is that masculinity and disability are in conflict with each other because disability is associated with being dependent and helpless whereas masculinity is associated with being powerful and autonomous, thus creating a lived and embodied dilemma for disabled men. This article maps and critically evaluates the conceptual development of this dilemma of disabled masculinity, tracing how several developments in the fields of disability studies and the critical study of men and masculinities have shaped sociological understandings of disabled masculinity. We suggest that, while social science scholarship has increasingly moved beyond a static understanding and toward a dynamic view of the articulation and interaction between masculinity and disability, there are nevertheless several problems that require attention. The most critical issue conceptually is that the focus of study has been more on masculinity and how it intersects with ‘disability’ as an almost generic category, rather than on how masculinity (or masculinities) intersect(s) differently with various types of impairment. Thus, though there is quite a bit of research on the dilemma of disabled masculinity for men who acquire a physical impairment post-childhood and for groups of men with diverse impairments studied as if they were a homogenous group, less research has been conducted with men who have specific impairments, particularly early-onset, intellectual or degenerative impairments. In this paper we urge researchers to open up the concept of intersectionality to accommodate a range of differences in bodily, cognitive, intellectual and behavioral types (impairments) in their interaction with various masculinities and to show more explicitly how context and life phase contribute to this dynamism.

Connell's theory of masculinity – its origins and influences on the study of gender1

The Australian sociologist Raewyn Connells theory of masculinity is the most influential theory in the field of men and masculinities. Along with its enormous impact on the field of gender studies, it has also been taken up across a wide range of other disciplines. Connells book Masculinities, originally published in 1995, has been translated into five different languages and since it was first published its influence has increased with an English second edition being published in 2005. A crucial part of the enduring appeal of Connells theory is that it provides a critical feminist analysis of historically specific masculinities whilst at the same time acknowledging the varying degrees to which individual men play in its reproduction. Yet, as I suggest here, three key elements of Connells theory of masculinity have been largely neglected by other scholars. These are: the crucial influence of psychoanalysis and subsequent use of the life history case study method; the importance of non-hegemonic forms of masculinity; and the concept of cathexis. Because this article weaves parts of Connells own life history into the development of the theory, it is based on a variety of sources, including two interviews with Connell.

Far from Ideal: Everyday Experiences of Mothers and Early Childhood Professionals Negotiating an Inclusive Early Childhood Experience in the Australian Context.

Using narrative interviews underpinned by an ecocultural framework, this Australian study investigated the experiences of 39 mothers of children with disabilities and 27 staff members from the early childhood services which these children attended. The data highlight serious limitations of current government policy and provisions in Australia to facilitating the inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream childrens services. The small number of successful inclusions evident in this study appears to be in spite of current government policy and may be attributed more to staff personnel. This article concludes by calling for policy change that actively facilitates the successful inclusion of children with disabilities into generalist early childhood services.

Doin’ It for Themselves! A Case Study of the Development of a Women's Australian Rules Football Competition

Women have wanted to play Australian Rules football throughout the games history, yet given it ritually celebrates male superiority, few have actually played the game. This paper looks at the socio-historical circumstances leading to the eventual establishment of a womens league, based on media coverage and interviews with current and former members. By focusing on their association with two mens football organizations – one that helped them get started, and the other that allowed them to use their mens clubs as home bases for their womens teams – it also explores the extent to which playing a male-dominated game means having to play on male-defined terms.

For the Love of Football: Australian Rules Football and Heterosexual Desire

The sexual attraction of some women specifically to sportsmen is such a taken-for-granted and commonplace phenomenon in Western society it receives little academic attention. This article first examines the handful of studies that have considered the relationship between heterosexual desire and Australian Rules footballers. Second, it reviews the few sociological studies of the groupies and wives of elite sportsmen. The article concludes that the social construction of sexual desire is an important but neglected element of the reproduction of the gender order. It is suggested that the concept cathexis may provide a useful conceptual framework for illuminating the ways in which womens heterosexual desires affect the maintenance, reproduction, and/or subversion of the existing gender order.

Just one of the boys? A life history case study of a male physical education teacher

Studies of physical education teacher training have already established that hegemonic forms of masculinity are reinforced and reproduced both in the hidden curriculum (Flintoff, 1997) and the informal student culture (Skelton, 1993). Given this, an important feminist concern is whether male PE teachers whose own masculine identities are anchored in their athletic prowess simply ‘teach’ their young male charges to construct hegemonic forms of masculinity through PE and school sport and/or whether they necessarily marginalize and inferiorize female students. This paper provides a life history case study of a male PE teacher’s role both in reproducing and challenging gendered norms in his capacity as coach of a schoolboy and schoolgirl Australian Rules football team.

Hahn versus Guttmann: revisiting ‘Sports and the Political Movement of Disabled Persons’

Abstract Ludwig Guttmann, who pioneered the use of sport in the physical, psychological and social rehabilitation of paraplegic patients, argued that sport facilitates social reintegration, even asserting that: ‘an employer will not hesitate… to employ a paralysed man… when he realizes that [he] is an accomplished sportsman’ (Guttmann, 1976: 13). Disability activist Harlan Hahn, on the other hand, argued that participation by people with disabilities in sport is: an emulation of non-disabled standards; over-emphasises physicality in the assessment of humans; and diverts attention from the struggle for equality. Focusing on the Paralympics, this paper shows that disability sport is neither a panacea for social exclusion, as Guttmann would have it, nor a monolithic disabling institution, as Hahn would suggest—but rather an incredibly complex phenomena politically, socially and historically. It is argued that, whether essentially disablist or not, the Paralympics may make an excellent political platform for the disability rights movement.

A Person with Abilities The Transition to Adulthood of a Young Woman with a Severe Physical Impairment

Whilst it is one thing to say disablism negatively impacts the lives and well-being of people with impairments, it is another altogether to tease out how this happens in everyday life. This article explores the potential of combining sociological theories and method with a psychosocial framework as an interdisciplinary approach to studying the transitional experiences of people with impairments. Using a single life history case study of Ella, a young woman with a severe physical impairment, it clearly illustrates that the impact of disablism on transition is contextual and mediated by a combination of socio-historical factors. It highlights, in particular, the constant tension between agency and structure—revealing that Ella’s levels of personal agency to challenge or undermine disablism varied from one social con-text to another and from one life phase to the next.

Revisiting ‘Sport and the maintenance of masculine hegemony’

In 1987, in her seminal paper ‘Sport and the Maintenance of Masculine Hegemony’, the Australian sociologist Lois Bryson described sport as ‘a crucial arena in which masculine hegemony is constructed and reconstructed’, directly supporting male dominance via the association of males and maleness with valued skills and the sanctioned use of aggression/force/violence. Sport, she said, celebrates the dominant form of masculinity and it is this monopolization process which either excludes women from the terrain completely, or if they do manage to pass through the barriers, effectively minimizes their achievements. She identified four concrete processes that maintained sport as a male arena definition, direct control, ignoring, and trivialization stressing the importance of understanding these processes if we are to develop strategies to circumvent them. ‘The mere fact that it is necessary for these processes to be continually invoked demonstrates that there are contradictions which can be exploited’ (Bryson, 1987, p. 349). Twenty-five years later, despite promising changes, the field of sport remains dominated by masculine values that disadvantage women by pitting their performances against (hegemonic) masculine standards. We completed this volume during the week leading into the Olympic Games in London, providing us with constant reminders in the media of the gender inequality both locally and globally. For example, on Friday July 20 the front page of Melbourne newspaper, The Age, exposed discrimination at work with the Australian women’s basketball team flying to London in a lower class that the men’s basketball team. This is despite the fact that the women’s team is ranked second, having won three silver medals and a bronze medal, while the men’s team is ranked ninth and is yet to win a Games medal (Lane, 2012). As Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Liz Broderick suggests, ‘these are Australia’s finest athletes, both male and female, but treated very differently’ (Lane, 2012, p. 2). Incidents such this conform Kentel’s (2012, p. 138) suggestion that ‘despite efforts to shift attitudes and perceptions, sport, and in particular professional sport, belongs to men. Men earn the high salaries, men hold the majority of coaching and administrative positions, and men own the teams.’ Even in women’s sports men dominate coaching positions. Thus, success for women in sport still necessarily involves the negotiation of a field dominated by men and masculine values. It is this negotiation and struggle that form the central focus of the articles in this Special Edition. The six articles in this collection provide insights into women’s experiences of sport in the United Kingdom and in Australia as athletes/players, coaches, physical education teachers and sports leaders. A few of the contributors are well established Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education Vol. 3, No. 3, November 2012, 181 183

‘I employ a crew that can do life with me’: A young woman’s creative self-management of support workers

This book brings together scholars to explore understandings of disability, normalcy, and the everyday. The major concern is with the taken-for-granted, mundane human activities at the heart of how social life is reproduced, and how this impacts on the lives of those with a disability, family members, and other allies. Many critical analyses of disability address important ‘macro’ concerns, yet are often far removed from an interactional and micro-level focus. Containing a range of theoretical and empirical (qualitative) contributions from around the world, this book departs from earlier accounts by making sense of how disability is lived, mobilised, and enacted in everyday lives. Although broad in focus and navigating diverse social contexts, contributions are united by a concern with foregrounding micro, mundane moments for making sense of powerful discourses, practices, affects, relations, and world-making for disabled people and their allies. Using different examples – including learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, dementia, polio, and Parkinson’s disease – contributions move beyond a simplified narrow classification of disability which creates rigid categories of existence and denies bodily variation. The chapters unpack (among other things) how people with disabilities interact with others in public and private spaces (and the role of space/place in this), how normalcy is pursued or resisted, how structural conditions shape their lives, and how positive accounts of disablement move beyond narratives of tragedy and pity, and towards discourses of joy, resilience, and the quest for/accomplishment of a ‘good life’. Taken together, the contributions are located within both new and familiar debates around embodiment, stigma, gender, identity, inequality, care, ethics, choice, materiality, youth, and representation. This book, thus, identifies disability as a concern not simply for disability studies scholars, but for academics from different disciplinary backgrounds including sociology, anthropology, humanities, public health, science and technology studies, and social policy.