Chapter six of Guyland by Michael Kimmel discusses the role sports play in men's relationships with each other.
"Guys live for sports, and live through sports. It serves so many purposes--validating our manhood; bridging generational, racial and class divides; cementing the bonds among men; and more clearly demarcating the boundaries between Guyland and Herland.
[...] Sports talk provides a temporary respite from having to think about our differences and the complexities of life all the damned time. And not the least of these complexities involves women. "
While it's true that not all guys are into sports, and many women are, I think the point is true enough. I constantly see men who are perfect strangers become instant friends over sports related discussions. And it's very common to hear men talk about sports in relation to their sons and fathers. And it got me thinking. What is the equivalent of sports for women? Do we have something that transcends the differences among us? Something that can be discussed or enjoyed together casually while creating a bond between us? Is there something that does this that does not involve discussing the men in our life or our children (if we have any)? And if not, is the absence of such an equalizer among women a disadvantage?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: What is the equalizer for Women?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12017
I don't think there is one for women.
I don't think there is one for men, either. Sports is popular, but it's not a great equalizer, unless you make it so incredibly general that it stops meaning anything. (Why not say TV--not everyone watches the same shows, but not everyone follows the same sport.)
Plus, it's gender stereotyping, even when you admit it doesn't apply to all men. You're taking the men who don't fit the stereotype out of the equation, as if they don't exist. The many men who don't follow sports prove it's not a great equalizer among men, just one among men who like sports.
Yeah, my SO has zero interest in sports -- even less than me. And I'm only a Bears fan when they make the play offs.
It's true that even my dad and grand-pa (two very different people) can watch sports together and get along. But my partner? I think I'm more into sports than he is and I really only care about the Olympics. He would not relate to that paragraph. Among young men, video games may be as popular as sports.
Clothes, makeup, shoes, shopping.
And your response to that should tell you what I think about Kimmel's generalization about sports.
I don't like Kimmel's work, and while I'm sympathetic to his attempt to target young men with a pro-feminist message, I feel like this message gets lost among sweeping generalizations and a lack of interest in understanding what he's critiquing (his treatment of boys and video games was so uninformed to this gamer's eyes that I wanted to throw my Wii-mote at something). It seems like he takes the simple way out by critiquing stereotypes, rather than critiquing things AS stereotypes. If that makes any sense whatsoever.
I'm going to echo those who disagree that sports is an equalizer amongst men. First of all, not all guys like sports, my SO among them.
Second, not everyone likes all sports. Baseball fans do not necessarily get along with or relate to football fans.
Third, not all sports are seen equally. Ever bring up soccer to football fans?
Fourth, some of the most heated fights I've seen within my family has been over sports-related issues. Whether it's Cubs vs. Sox or whether or not that coach should have made that particular call at that point in the game, my sports-obsessed family has actually come to blows. It does NOT make friends of everyone.
The equalizer is any subject that people enjoy or agree upon and like discussing with others. For me, it's anime. But I'm not going to go around assuming that all other women like anime, too, just because me and a few of my closest friends do.
Not every man is a sports fan, and not everybody likes the same sports.
I'm a construction worker, so I work with a lot of immigrants. Many of them are into football (by which they mean the sport Americans call "soccer").
So that not only divides them from American sports fans, but also by nationality (Ireland vs Germany vs Colombia vs Mexico vs Italy vs Poland ect ect ect ect)
And not all US born sports fans like the same sports - I'm a casual fan of pro basketball, but my eyes glaze over when guys start going into all the tedious details of who played for the Celtics in 1989 or the last 2 minutes of the 1994 NBA finals.
And I totally do not follow college b-ball - too many teams, and they change their rosters every year....new freshmen come in, seniors graduate, guys go to the NBA, so I can never keep track of it.
And I totally lose interest when folks talk about football or baseball, sports that I only half follow during the Super Bowl and the World Series, respectively.
So sports talk can actually DIVIDE MEN, rather than uniting us.
getting your period.
it may be a more personal and uncomfortable topic than sports, but it's one that every woman has, and can discuss her problems, solutions, whatever, about.
and it has the added benefit of completely grossing out any guy in the room.
Actually, not every woman has one (myself included). I for one do not enjoy discussing it in the least, and it doesn't make me feel any closer to other women by discussing it. I know a lot of people feel this way about it as well.
So I don't think it is something that bonds all women.
But maybe it does in a stereotypical sense, as sports bonds men, stereotypically. Another subject could be shopping or clothes or make-up.
I personally don't like to discuss my period. I have to talk about it with my doctor every time I go...I've talked about it quite a bit. I get it every month. It's an exhausted subject that doesn't change much from month to month. Let's talk about something else.
One of my best friends has never had one, which is part of health problems that relate to her being infertile.
And I don't think "grossing out" men is an added benefit - I'll welcome the day that men don't treat the menstrual cycle like the creature from the black lagoon.
A-fucking-men. I can't wait until the day my boyfriend is as comfortable talking to me about my period as are my girlfriends.
Also, I don't get my period either, since I control it with meds. Never liked it, although I will admit I'm glad I get it without medication, because I do want to have one or two of my own (biological) kids one day. Other than as a signifier of fertility, though, it's largely an irrelevant pain in the ass (or abdomen, I guess).
Trans women, such as myself, don't have them. I don't want to either; it's one of the few perks of being trans. So conversations about periods don't exactly make me feel closer to anyone.
I think a better statement would be that sports may do all these amazing things for guys who like sports, the same sports, the same amount. Among certain groups of friends who all follow sports equally as constantly, this may be true. But, as everyone else has said, this is far from true for every man. My SO feels out of the loop sometimes when his male friends talk about sports. He has little to contribute unless it's baseball. I think this is far from bringing all of them together, it may even push him further apart from some friends if sports are all they talk about.
Just like this equalizer isn't really the equalizer for all men, I don't think there is one equalizer for women. Getting our period is hardly something we'll spend an evening chatting about. Maybe a comment here and there about how badly our cramps hurt, or something, but it's not exactly a long term conversation topic.
Probably dieting.
That's all the women I know seem to want to talk about.
Dieting, how "bad" you were for eating a certain thing, how you feel like a whale, etc.
This.
Which is a tragedy. We bond by shaming our bodies! Hurrah!
If that's the equalizer, then those of us who believe in size acceptance are unequal.
It also makes me sad.
I'm a science fiction reader, makeup lover, animated entertainment freak, video game fanatic, Project Runway watcher and old horror movie lover.
What's the equalizer with my friends? None.
I have a female friend who is a sci-fi fan and we discuss books and TV shows. But if my other friend who likes to talk makeup tips with me is around she'll get bored to tears and vice-versa.
I can't be neatly classified.
Um. I think we are already equalized. Were we separated at birth? :D
LOL. True.
Generally I try to learn more about people and then I share stuff that I think will interest them.
The only "equalizer" I know is talking about the weather or traffic. But it's not like yelling shoes or Word of Warcraft immediately sparks interest from all females.
My boyfriend used to be a sports columnist for the school paper so he talks to pretty much anyone, male or female, who wants to talk about mainstream American sports (he doesn't watch soccer, for instance). I used to have a female roommate who would talk with him about basketball all of the time. Usually he makes friends with men more often when he talks about sports but I think there is societal pressure for men to enjoy sports so that they can fit in with the other men, but that doesn't men all men fall into this category or that women don't enjoy sports.
I usually use music or current events as an ice-breaker.
Sports as the great equilizer among men?
Try talking about Football to an American or Australian and see them look on in confusion until then finally realize what you are talking about and then go "Oh, you mean SOCCER?"
Yeah, I've never found sports to be a great equalizer- rather, it serves as a divide in male groups between "real men", who like sports and shooting guns and living in tents and never washing and wrestling grizzly bears, and "those lame dudes" who don't know a damn thing about sport and are therefore probably pretty gay.
I do not care about any sport, even a little bit. I've had to learn to fake liking sport to grease the wheels in co-worker relationships, because otherwise I get cut out of conversation at all. It's not an equaliser at all- it can just look like one sometimes, I think.
I find that if I want to get out of talking about sports, I have to change the subject to power tools, or lawn care, or something similarly "manly".
I totally disagree with everyone who's arguing that sports is not an equalizer for me because their male SO has no interest in it or whatever. In my experience, yes, there are men who don't really care about sports and would rather talk about music or sci fi or something. But the vast majority of men I've encountered know SOMETHING about sports - they can talk about in a general way, or more specific if they happen to be fans of the same team. They make sports analogies. Is it a sexist stereotype about men? Yes. But there is such a deeply felt expectation that men WILL know something about sports, those who don't and who have nothing to contribute to those conversations are frequently left out.
As for women, I don't think there is an equalizer. Appearance - diet, fashion, hairstyle - may seem like one, but a significant number of women don't really care about these topics. Plus, you can't go very far on the question of "ooh, where'd you get those cute shoes?" I suspect marriage/relationships and babies may work for women in their late 20s and 30s (especially if you're at a park with your kids or, I dunno, at a bridal store), but I think it's usefulness is limited - it's a bit too personal for an opening conversation gambit. Entertainment interests, career/education are probably the most neutral, but they're not really women specific.
I guess this could say a few things. One, we expect men to fit into a neat category of masculinity as represented by an interest in sports - to not do so is to risk social ostracization. But we allow women a greater range of interests. Conversely, you can see it as "feminine" interests - like fashion or relationships - are sort of too embarrassing to talk about or too loaded with emotional significance, especially in a mixed group, but sports is pretty neutral. We expect women to form close emotional bonds, which you can't really do in a casual conversation, but we expect men to keep their conversations to more casual topics. This was a long, possibly contradictory comment, but I'm just throwing some thoughts out there.
By that logic, then fashion has the same function for women. Never mind that a huge number of women could care less, or that fashion isn't particularly friendly to actual women.
Now that I think about it, though, the same is also true of sports and men, right down to engendering body dysmorphia.
When I was a teenager, my dad told me that I HAD to be interested in sports because "that's what men talk about".
It didn't matter that I was, at best, a casual fan of basketball - meaning that I'd watch a game if it was on and the New York Knicks were playing, but I really didn't obsessively "follow" the sport the way some guys do - memorizing all those boring statistics and keeping track of when this guy got traded and that coach got fired.
Football confused me (and still does) and I find Hockey boring and Baseball even more boring.
But that didn't matter, a MAN is SUPPOSED to be a "sports fan".
So I faked it for a couple of years.
Until I found out that, yes, indeed you can be a "man" and not be a sports fan!
So now when the sports guys start nattering on about this coach making "the wrong call" or that player "sucking" I just nod off and ignore what they're saying.
Yes, with certain kinds of men, it CAN be ostracizing - because all they every talk about is the minor tedious details about the rumors and press coverage of the inner workings of their favorite team and league.
There IS a true beauty to certain sports - a basketball game in and of itself can be AMAZING, the athleticism, the power, the grace, the skill, the talent.
But all the boring statistics and the business dealings aspect of sports is really boring.
And, sadly, that's what a LOT of male sports fans natter on about - the lameist and most boring part of sports!!!
And now, I'm "man enough" to admit that I'm really not interested, and no I don't care if this guy got $ 2 million a year or that guy got traded to Milwaukee!
What's the "equalizer" for me? Metal. I see other people in band shirts, flash the horns at them, and maybe strike up a conversation. That's how it goes. You'll find camaraderie in any circle.