Picture a race between the fastest female and the fastest male. Unless he slips or falls, the guy wins the race. Maybe that’s the reason that so many prefer to watch men’s sports over women’s sports. It’s a matter of seeing not the fastest man or the fastest woman; it’s a matter of seeing the fastest human being.
Not so for the authors of a study on the UK’s male football (soccer) fans. That they prefer to watch men’s football over women’s football is an indication of misogyny. To make their point, the authors define various kinds of masculinities:
Progressive masculinities
Overtly misogynistic masculinities
Covertly misogynistic masculinities
Stacey Poper, John Williams, and Jamie Cleland, the three who ran the study, declare that the progressive and overtly misogynistic masculinities are polar opposites, both, however, overlapping on their Venn diagram the third type of masculinity. The title of their paper is “Men’s Football Fandom and the Performance of Progressive and Misogynistic Masculinities in a ‘New Age’ of UK Women’s Sport.” In their paper they write of hegemonic masculinity, inclusive masculinity, and the coverage in male-dominated sports media.
Venus and Serena Williams, aside, the authors suggest that greater media coverage of women’s sports, such as football, poses a threat to the long-standing “male preserve.” They also tie the attitudes of UK’s male fandom to hegemonic masculinity.
But is their categorization of football fandom a story worth telling? Does it teach us anything new about humanity? To do their study, Poper, Williams, and Cleland asked through 150 online message boards for survey volunteers. They got 1950 men to respond, eliciting from them their views on women’s football. You can probably guess where this is going.
The researchers include statements by the participants in the paper, such as one by a persons in the 26-35 age category in which the guy says he has no problem with women playing football and that he even wishes the UK’s women football team well, but that he has no personal interest in watching women play football anymore than he has an interest in watching Notts County’s men’s team play, essentially because he believes the “minor league” men’s team doesn’t play the game at the level of the professionals. In other words, he wants to see the “best human players.” For that statement he is placed in the “covertly misogynistic masculinity” category. You can imagine the responses of the “progressive masculinities” and “overtly misogynistic masculinities.”
Yep. Stereotypical. But then, what do we expect in an age when one must of necessity fit into some sociological category? What’s wrong with a guy who just prefers men’s soccer over women’s soccer. Does it entail that in the workplace he will be misogynistic or abusive? Does it mean that his attitude toward the level of athletic endeavor and performance will drive him to quash the advancement of a female in other venues?
Do we categorize one another because we seek confirmation of our beliefs, often beliefs made popular by social movements? We see the effects of anti-misogyny not in the equal treatment of women and men, not in the fulfillment of positive aspirations of talented women athletes like the Williams sisters, but rather in the condemnation of personal opinion. What’s wrong with some people liking women’s sports and other people not liking them?
All categorizations reduce humans to extreme positions, even when they include a set of overlapping categories in some Venn diagram. Each of us knows enough to realize we are walking oxymorons, containing as we do contradictory thoughts and beliefs. Our personal interactions have shown that each of us is more than “just this” or “just that.” Ambivalence is the human condition because we cannot escape the inevitable variations that we encounter in people and interactions.
Yet, we continue to categorize, and our categories justify our judging others and their motivations. There are, I assume, men among UK’s football fandom who know that some women can outperform many men in an athletic endeavor. Again, the Williams sisters would provide stiff competition for many male tennis players. I think of that famous 1973 tennis match in Houston’s Astrodome between Billie Jean King, then 29 and at the top of her game, and the aging 50-something Bobby Riggs in which King took home the winner-take-all $100,000. It was dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes.” But Riggs, as I noted, was in his fifties and well past his prime of the 1940s and 1950s. The match drew a crowd of both men and women to the Astrodome and a very large television audience. It was entertainment.
That one of the surveyed UK football fans declares his disinterest in watching women’s football doesn’t necessarily mean that fan is abusive toward women, quashes their aspirations, or considers women inferior human beings. Misogynist is a category imposed by the researchers on the men they surveyed.
We all need to consider how we impose categories. Which of us wants to be pigeonholed as “just this” or “just that”?
*Published 20 Jan 2022 online as an one EPUB by Sage Journals under the topic of Sociology. Found at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385211063359 Accessed January 20, 2022.
Not so for the authors of a study on the UK’s male football (soccer) fans. That they prefer to watch men’s football over women’s football is an indication of misogyny. To make their point, the authors define various kinds of masculinities:
Progressive masculinities
Overtly misogynistic masculinities
Covertly misogynistic masculinities
Stacey Poper, John Williams, and Jamie Cleland, the three who ran the study, declare that the progressive and overtly misogynistic masculinities are polar opposites, both, however, overlapping on their Venn diagram the third type of masculinity. The title of their paper is “Men’s Football Fandom and the Performance of Progressive and Misogynistic Masculinities in a ‘New Age’ of UK Women’s Sport.” In their paper they write of hegemonic masculinity, inclusive masculinity, and the coverage in male-dominated sports media.
Venus and Serena Williams, aside, the authors suggest that greater media coverage of women’s sports, such as football, poses a threat to the long-standing “male preserve.” They also tie the attitudes of UK’s male fandom to hegemonic masculinity.
But is their categorization of football fandom a story worth telling? Does it teach us anything new about humanity? To do their study, Poper, Williams, and Cleland asked through 150 online message boards for survey volunteers. They got 1950 men to respond, eliciting from them their views on women’s football. You can probably guess where this is going.
The researchers include statements by the participants in the paper, such as one by a persons in the 26-35 age category in which the guy says he has no problem with women playing football and that he even wishes the UK’s women football team well, but that he has no personal interest in watching women play football anymore than he has an interest in watching Notts County’s men’s team play, essentially because he believes the “minor league” men’s team doesn’t play the game at the level of the professionals. In other words, he wants to see the “best human players.” For that statement he is placed in the “covertly misogynistic masculinity” category. You can imagine the responses of the “progressive masculinities” and “overtly misogynistic masculinities.”
Yep. Stereotypical. But then, what do we expect in an age when one must of necessity fit into some sociological category? What’s wrong with a guy who just prefers men’s soccer over women’s soccer. Does it entail that in the workplace he will be misogynistic or abusive? Does it mean that his attitude toward the level of athletic endeavor and performance will drive him to quash the advancement of a female in other venues?
Do we categorize one another because we seek confirmation of our beliefs, often beliefs made popular by social movements? We see the effects of anti-misogyny not in the equal treatment of women and men, not in the fulfillment of positive aspirations of talented women athletes like the Williams sisters, but rather in the condemnation of personal opinion. What’s wrong with some people liking women’s sports and other people not liking them?
All categorizations reduce humans to extreme positions, even when they include a set of overlapping categories in some Venn diagram. Each of us knows enough to realize we are walking oxymorons, containing as we do contradictory thoughts and beliefs. Our personal interactions have shown that each of us is more than “just this” or “just that.” Ambivalence is the human condition because we cannot escape the inevitable variations that we encounter in people and interactions.
Yet, we continue to categorize, and our categories justify our judging others and their motivations. There are, I assume, men among UK’s football fandom who know that some women can outperform many men in an athletic endeavor. Again, the Williams sisters would provide stiff competition for many male tennis players. I think of that famous 1973 tennis match in Houston’s Astrodome between Billie Jean King, then 29 and at the top of her game, and the aging 50-something Bobby Riggs in which King took home the winner-take-all $100,000. It was dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes.” But Riggs, as I noted, was in his fifties and well past his prime of the 1940s and 1950s. The match drew a crowd of both men and women to the Astrodome and a very large television audience. It was entertainment.
That one of the surveyed UK football fans declares his disinterest in watching women’s football doesn’t necessarily mean that fan is abusive toward women, quashes their aspirations, or considers women inferior human beings. Misogynist is a category imposed by the researchers on the men they surveyed.
We all need to consider how we impose categories. Which of us wants to be pigeonholed as “just this” or “just that”?
*Published 20 Jan 2022 online as an one EPUB by Sage Journals under the topic of Sociology. Found at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385211063359 Accessed January 20, 2022.
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