Playing Gender:

Sport, Bodies and Sexuality

Abstract

　In this paper, I discuss the relationship between sport, gender and sexuality, especially since the 1970s, when sport emerged as an object for social and cultural consideration. I first look at past research how theoretical perspectives have changed, and then examine how theories and research can be applied to real cases that have happened in the sporting world in the past 40 years. I emphasize the two points below, which highlight the significance of looking at sport in gender/sexuality studies:
　1. Sporting culture has been emerged and developed as a highly male homosocial domain.
　2. Sport is one of the most unique cultures left in postmodern society, as it uses the human body itself and makes the deference of capacities of bodies visible by displaying bodily performances.
　The emergence of queer theory since the 1990s increases the importance of these significances, as theories of homosociality state that the ideal of male gender itself includes a condition of sexuality―heterosexuality. Added to that, the idea that gender is socially constructed and performatively enacted discloses the arbitrariness of the coalition between sex and gender, and undermines the connection between ideal masculinity and the male body. In conclusion, I suggest that strategies of gender/sexual liberation in sport swing between universalizing (constructivism) and minoritizing (essentialism) views as pointed out by Sedgwick in her work.