Sporting sex/uality: pleasure and danger in the locker room

Introduction

Much of the focus in sport research on sexuality issues has been on mapping and analysing homophobia and homonegativism in sport. Compulsory heterosexuality, hegemonic masculinity/femininity, sexism, and heteronormativity are found to constitute homophobia, and an obdurate sex/gender-scheme stigmatising athletes in general in sport [1, 2, 3,].. The aim of this paper is to contribute to these issues by drawing attention to the locker room culture, and discuss whether homosexual athletes take on some strategies to transcend existing heteronormative sexualities in sport.

Methods

18 athletes living as gay/lesbians in Norway engaged in 13 different sports, were interviewed about how to do sexuality and sex/gender in sport. Snowball sampling was used to recruit both closeted and open athletes. The interviews were taped, transcribed, and analysed with the WinMax computer program for text analysis..

Results

The study demonstrates how a number of different but related discourses about sex/uality occur, the locker room culture as one among other aspects of sports activating them. One outcome is a tendency of early drop out of elite sport, whilst others, however, find the sports arena particularly valuable for "erotic" sexual approaches and acknowledgement. Heidi; jeg tror det er vanskelig for personer som ikke kjenner prosjektet og se sammenhengen mellom the aim of the paper og the results. Er det mulig å være mer presis og konkret i relasjon til strategier in the locker room culture? Jeg ser ikke koblingen early drop out etc i relasjon til the locker room culture, tror det må skrives ut hvis du skjønner hva jeg mener.

Discussion / Conclusions

Recent studies have aimed at describing possibilities of a deconstruction of heteronormative ideals as a way to ameliorate homophobia and heterosexism in sport [9]. The results of this study contribute to that by concluding that the informants do sex/uality through both heterosexual and homosexual utterances, and by both obeying the laws of heteronormativity and challenging them. The activated discourses are sometimes framing sports as a stable, traditional, and heteronormative context, but also offering the informants extensive possibilities of queering that picture of sports. Dette er godt skrevet, men virker mer som konklusjonen på hele avhandlingen (slik jeg husker det, og ikke direkte på problemstillingen på dette paperet??

References

[1]. Cahn (1994) Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s
Sport. New York: The Free Press.
[2]. Eng (2003) Sporting Sex/uality: Doing Sex and Sexuality in a Norwegian Context. Doctoral Thesis, Oslo: Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education.
[3]. Fasting, K. (1998) In: Loland, S. (ed.) Toppidrettens pris: En debattbok. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
[4]. Griffin (1998) Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport. Champaign: Human Kinetics.
[5]. Krane (1997) Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal, 6, 141-163.
[6]. Messner & Sabo (1994) Sex, Violence and Power in Sports: Rethinking Masculinity. Boston: Beacon Press.
[7]. Veri( 1999) QUEST, 51, 355-368.
[8]. Sykes (1998) Sociology of Sport Journal, 15, 154-173.
Referanser bør være et minimum. I første avsnitt har jeg satt 3, men egentlig er det vel nok å vise til avhandlingen din her ? Ellers synes jeg vi skal ta de tre nyeste Eng, Fasting og Veri for eksempel.