Who's Coming Out to Play: Disruption and Disorientation in Queer Community Sports 9780228006411

Citation preview

w h o ’ s c o m i n g o u t to p l ay

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Who’s Coming Out to Play Disruption and Disorientation in Queer Community Sports

claire carter

McGill-­Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2021 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-0-2280-0554-4 (cloth) 978-0-2280-0555-1 (paper) 978-0-2280-0641-1 (eP DF ) 978-0-2280-0642-8 (eP UB)

Legal deposit first quarter 2021 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the University of Regina.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Who’s coming out to play: disruption and disorientation in queer community sports/Claire Carter. Names: Carter, Claire, 1976– author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200345311 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200345427 | IS BN 9780228005544 (hardcover) | I SB N 9780228005551 (softcover) | IS BN 9780228006411 (P D F ) | ISB N 9780228006428 (eP UB) Subjects: LC SH: Lesbians and sports—Canada. | L C SH : Gays and sports—Canada. | L CS H: Lesbian athletes—Canada. | L C SH : Transgender athletes—Canada. | L CS H: Gay athletes—Canada. | LC SH: Sports—Social aspects—Canada. | L CS H: Athletic clubs—Social aspects—Canada. Classification: L CC GV708.8 .C 37 2021 | DDC 796.086/60971—dc23

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5/13.5 Sabon.

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For Rowyn & Eyton ~ magic, joy, and beauty ~

The Batcheler Sisters Ellie MacDonald, Jennifer Hirst, Katherine Carter, and Frederica Batcheler

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Contents

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction 3 1  Bodies at Play  18 2  Queering Gender in Play: Community Sports, Spaces for Diverse Gender Embodiments?  56 3  Queer Sports: Re-imaging Space, Community, and Inclusivity 91 Concluding Thoughts: Forging New Paths…  124 References 135 Index 143

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge all of the people who have shared their stories, expertise, and time with me. I am so grateful for your willingness to meet with me, welcome me into your community spaces, and give this project a meaningful life. There have been many twists and bumps during this process and I would like to acknowledge all of the support I received that kept me, and this project, going. Thank you to my family – Eyton, Rowyn, Rosemary, Hugh, Richard, Tim, Imogen, and Claire; you have all supported me in beautiful and moving ways. My community of chosen family and friends, your support has been invaluable and resonated deeply with the core motivation for this project. To colleagues all across the map, thank you for the conversations and input between classes, at conferences, and when we had the fortunate opportunity to meet. Thank you to various disciplines for providing important dialogic spaces: leisure studies and sport sociology for welcoming me into your scholarly communities, and women’s and gender studies and sexuality studies for supporting the inclusion of sports within your spaces. The drafting of this book was done with significant support from Erin Edwards, for which I am ever grateful. I would like to acknowledge the University of Regina, notably the Women’s and Gender Studies program, the Faculty of Arts, and my community of colleagues. This project received great support through various University of Regina internal grants

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x Acknowledgments

and from a sshrc Insight Development Grant, 2015–19. The completion of this book was supported by a Banff Centre Leighton Arts Residency in 2019. Finally, thank you to Jacqueline Mason, the anonymous reviewers, and McGillQueen’s University Press for your input and support.

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Introduction

No matter the season, every day of the week and at all times of day, queers congregate on basketball courts, pitches, and rinks, temporarily engaging with community spaces for a few hours to play sports, see friendly faces, and, through their very presence, build and maintain communities within major urban centres in Canada. The mixture of players, friends and lovers, children and animals engaging in banter as the transition between teams who have just finished and those about to start unfolds makes evident that the given sport is only a part of the attraction. As players arrive, there are greetings and exchanges about who will be playing as well as more intimate chat about family, work, weekends while cleats are put on or equipment is pulled out of bags. By their sheer numbers, these leagues and their collective of players and support people are visible and change the energy and space of school gyms and community fields. Some leagues are well-established, having been in existence for over twenty-five years, whereas others are relatively new; but their collective presence tells stories about the sizable and changing dynamics of queer communities in Canada. Within Toronto and Vancouver, the two major cities tied to this research, there are numerous queer leagues including softball, hockey, soccer, basketball, volleyball, and dodgeball. In other smaller cities, queer teams and/or leagues exist, but not with the same numbers or history, and they are often more casual rather than having a formal presence. The focus of this research has been on leagues that previously identified as

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women’s/lesbian and are now becoming trans- and genderqueer-inclusive, with the exception of Double Rainbow Dodgeball, which was an all-gender queer and trans inclusive league from the start. The leagues directly involved in this research are, in Toronto: Notso Amazon Softball League, Pink Turf Soccer, and Women’s Hockey Club of Toronto; and in Vancouver: Queer Van Soccer, Queer Van Hoops, Double Rainbow Dodgeball, Bump Volleyball Vancouver, and the Mabel League (softball). Participants also spoke of their participation on co-ed and mixed leagues, other queer leagues, and queerpositive exercise spaces. Both of the softball leagues (in Toronto and Vancouver), Rainbow Hoops Basketball (Toronto), and the Women’s Hockey Club of Toronto have been in existence for over twenty years and have over a hundred players each season. Queer Van Hoops has gone from four to eight teams, with a wait list, solely from word of mouth, with no explicit advertising or promotion. Queer Van Soccer is similar, and while there have been requests for both leagues to increase the number of teams/ players, to do so would require adding an additional night; this would limit the interaction and familiarity of all teams and players with each other, as players would only see and interact with the teams they played against on their night. Queer sporting spaces can be interpreted as producing – or at least contributing to the production of – healthy queers, in support of healthism and neoliberal citizenship which prioritize individual action and responsibility for being active, a central component of good health, where health is understood as the absence of disease (Crawford 2006). But these spaces – and the bodies that come to play in them – also reflect new ways of being in and with bodies, multiple or different ways of embodying gender, and new and/or different forms of engagement, notably different “rules of play” within sporting arenas. This book focuses on queer community sports spaces but engages with notions of exercise and physical activity as they are tied to and a part of community sports. The distinction between them is important, for as various feminist theorists have demonstrated, exercise and physical activity have a disciplinary effect with respect to normative femininity; they are a primary means

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Introduction 5

by which one can obtain the ideal female body (Rice 2006, 1994; Sykes 2011; Choi 2000; Bordo 1993, 1997; Bartky 1990). Sykes found that “physical education is typically an unbearable lesson” (2011, 3) for students, in particular fat and overweight students, and further that “discrimination against queer bodies in physical education serves to maintain widely held illusions about healthy and normal bodies” (1). Exercise and physical activity are used to discipline bodies deemed abnormal and/or out of control and effectively reshape them in accordance with an “increasingly normalizing and homogenizing” ideal gendered body as represented in mainstream Western media (Bordo 1993, 250). While individuals bring their own relationships with exercise and physical activity, as well as to their bodies, into community sports spaces, the objective of queer (women’s) community sports is not weight loss, nor mastery of the body, nor a reinforcement of the heteronormative thin ideal. Some examples from descriptors of various queer women’s leagues include “all skill levels,” “inclusive and supportive environment,” “enhance learning, make connections, and build community,” and “encourages fun, positivity, safety, fitness, inclusion, and fair play” (Notso Amazon Softball League Toronto and Double Rainbow Dodgeball Vancouver). The core principles of the Gay Games, an international queer community sporting event, are “participation, inclusion, and personal best,” and tied to those principles is the Games’ assertion that “no individual shall be excluded from participating on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, political belief(s), athletic/artistic ability, physical challenge, age, or health status” (https://gaygames.org/Mission-&Vision). These descriptors illustrate an additional distinction from traditional sport culture, namely that participation and socialization are primary motivators for joining, over and above competition and winning. Queer community sports are informed by feminist and social justice principles that prioritize shared decision-making, inclusion, and community-building (Caudwell 2007a; Lenskyj 2003). A brochure for the 1994 Gay Games asserts similar principles, stating that “winning at the Gay Games means doing one’s personal best” and that the

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Games are “creating a legacy of camaraderie and hope in our community,” fostering pride and power and reducing prejudice and homophobia, and “supporting each other, taking care of ourselves, and improving the quality of our lives” (Gay Games 1994). The Gay Games shares core principles of community sport leagues, but on an international scale that by its nature (requiring airfare, hotel accommodation, registration fees, etc.) is inaccessible for many to participate in. Queer community sports are also engaging in a shift from sex-segregation as a “natural fundamental” within sports at every level to the queering of membership and league descriptors (Anderson and Travers 2017, 1). The formation of queer community leagues has predominantly been in larger urban centres, where there are sufficient populations to support several teams and an independent league. They emerged out of a desire and need for queer community outside of bars, as a means to find other queers and foster visibility outside of the designated gay village, and because of rejection or discrimination within co-ed or heteronormative mainstream recreational leagues. For example, Tagg’s (2017) research on transgender netballers documents how trans women played a predominant role in the 1980s in the formation of the men’s netball association, after having been “officially excluded from Netball New Zealand.” However, by the 1990s, pressure to present a heteronormative image led to “overtly queer players” being excluded, thereby forcing queer players to present “homo-normatively” (Tagg 2017, 90). The growing acceptance of queers within Western societies has “happened in ways that the ‘relative privilege of White, middle-class lesbians and gay men appears to have been entrenched’” (91). As not everyone can or seeks to present homo-normatively, elite sport spaces as well as some community sports become inaccessible and unwelcoming for some queers. Given their commitment to social justice and social focus (over competition), queer community leagues are a critical space within which to examine the potential to queer body, gender, and sporting norms. The purpose of this book is to consider the disruptive potential of queer community sports on the embodiment of gender

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Introduction 7

and community, with an awareness of numerous factors that limit this potential. To that end, the book is informed by three guiding questions: Can queer community sports provide a space that disrupts the normative body ideal, and thereby support and recognize diverse bodies as active and desirable? Can queer community sports, as queer spaces, disrupt the reproduction of the gender binary and support diverse gender embodiments? Can queer community sports, as sports spaces, challenge sporting norms and traditional rules of play? In this work, “queer” is understood as “a category in constant formation … always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes” (Butler 1993, 228). This book’s queries emerge out of an ever-changing gendered and sexualized context in Canada, and Western society, with the advent of mainstream television shows and films depicting queer and trans lives, the legalization of same-sex marriage, and the growing awareness of and call for an intersectional queer lens to address immigration issues, trans health and employment, and solidarity with Two-Spirit communities. The themes of body image, embodiment of gender, and community spaces all engage with these broader societal issues and developments and inform the three main chapters of this book. As a white queer settler cis woman and feminist academic who has a long history with and love of various forms of physical activity, but who has not been a member of a queer community sports team, I am writing from various different spaces: commitment to be in solidarity with trans and genderqueer people, Two-Spirit people, and racialized and disabled queers; “insider” as a member of queer and athletic communities; and “outsider” to queer leagues themselves. Chapter 1 engages with queering body image and emerged after reflecting on comments by one of the participants in my doctoral research about the loss of fat-positive spaces in queer community. Notably, she cited one experience in particular, that of learning to box in a queer-positive boxing gym where the instructor told her, “You move really well, you move like you are 100 pounds.” Though the comment was likely meant as a

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compliment, it clearly revealed the extent of fatphobia and the degree to which thinness is read as active, healthy, and overall positive. The Showtime series The L Word had recently ended when I wrote my dissertation, but the impact of how the show spoke to queer women, and/or on how queer women see themselves, was still unfolding. Over the years, some of the queer and trans women and individuals I have spoken with have acknowledged that the show provided a cultural reference for different types of representation of queer women and trans people through, for example, the characters of Shane, Bette, Alice, Max, and Ivan. The show featured predominantly heteronormatively attractive women – thin, mostly white, fashionable, and middle-upper class. More broadly, beyond the show, discussions have also highlighted an increasing rejection of the butch and an assigning of attributes to the butch lesbian, similar to Hardy (2015) and Ravel and Rail (2006, 2007), as “masculine, fat, undesirable,” that I found troubling. Literature on lesbian/queer women’s body image revealed two opposing perspectives: the first being that lesbian/queer women are ­protected from body image struggles because queer community does not support heteronormative/patriarchal body ideals, and the second, that lesbian/queer women experience body image struggles because, as women, they are socialized with and internalize the mainstream cultural body ideal. Community has been identified by several theorists, for example Yost and Chmielewski (2011), as enabling a more positive body image for queer women, therefore revealing the importance of their relationship with space and interaction with other queer bodies. As a result, I was curious to talk to queer and trans women and individuals about body image, and about whether queer community sports, as community spaces, were experienced as welcoming and also potentially empowering of diverse bodies. Talk of bodies, and moving bodies in particular, was often tied to questions of gender, and chapter 2 focuses on gender identification and gender expression within community sports. As noted above, some of these conversations reflected attitudes and changes with respect to certain forms of gender expression, notably the loss of positive characterizations of the butch,

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Introduction 9

femme invisibility, and increased identification as androgynous and non-binary. I was interested in the significance and impact of broader societal shifts around trans-inclusivity in Canada in general, but specifically within queer community sports spaces. Sports is a pertinent medium to discuss gender because it often remains rigidly gender/sex-segregated, from Olympic sex testing, to the predominant segregation of competitions and recreational leagues by sex and influenced by gender norms, to essentialist notions of bodily capability and athleticism based on sex/gender (Travers and Anderson 2017; Travers 2014; Sykes 2006). Many queer women’s community leagues are changing their membership language and policies from being lesbian and/ or women’s spaces to being trans- and g­ enderqueer-inclusive. These changes have opened up conversations amongst members as well as organizers about what would facilitate more effective inclusivity, and about how to manage particular issues when they arise. Website language, league descriptors, adoption of pronoun rounds, and examination of language “in play,” such as “man-on,” have all been variously considered and/or employed. Attachments to gender, the importance of community spaces for safety and identity, and at times competing or diverging needs for community space have arisen. Travers and Deri (2010) speculate that trans women may have anxiety at having “finally come home to a female” community space that is now welcoming and inclusive of trans men and/or gender non-conforming people, as the gender binary is now disrupted (500). This book explores the various gendered meanings that inform, or have informed, different sporting spaces from mixed/ co-ed leagues to queer/lesbian women’s leagues, and how differently identified individuals are navigating their relationships with gender, sport, and community. Chapter 3 focuses on the spatiality of sport and changing dynamics within queer community and the impact on sporting norms. Queer sports leagues were created to provide community spaces outside of bars and/or gay villages where queers could engage in sports/physical activity without having their sexuality and/or gender expression be the focus or determinant of their level of ability, and to offer a space of resistance against

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the heteronormativity of mainstream spaces (Ravel and Rail 2006, 2007; van Ingen 2004; Caudwell 2007a). Experiences of discomfort and disorientation within non-queer sporting leagues and sport-related spaces, such as gyms and change­ rooms, tied to heteronormativity and sex/gender norms were highlighted as motivators to join queer leagues. The recognition of the importance of these spaces for diverse community members has led many individuals to engage in significant emotional labour and to uphold and promote a strong sense of responsibility and commitment to the maintenance and growth of these spaces in response to changing community dynamics. Leagues have tried and are continuing to try out different strategies to foster greater inclusivity with respect to trans-inclusion, racial diversity, and accessibility. The work of inclusivity is not easy work and necessitates continual critical reflection about who currently occupies the space, why other individuals and bodies may not be present and/or feel welcome, and what assumptions may inform current “rules of engagement” within various community sports spaces. Anderson and Travers found that while queer athletes can “challenge heteronormativity within sport, they typically do so with homonormativity” (2017, 6). Similarly, van Ingen’s (2004) research with the Toronto Front Runners revealed that while the group promoted itself as welcoming to all queers, there was no “critical interrogation” of the differential impact of structural and intersecting forms of oppression, and as a result the status quo was maintained rather than disrupted. This book cites various strategies leagues and individual members are trying out in order to consider the queering potential of these community sport spaces to effectively foster greater inclusivity and disrupt normative ideals of gender, bodies, and sports. Tied to these discussions is how “queer” and “community” are utilized and understood within this research; notably, a queering of community is deployed such that the ideal is not for a space of unity or common experiences, but rather one of struggle, negotiation, and tension over how to be in solidarity and learn to engage in different patterns of relating to others. There are two projects that inform this book, and though they are different, the latter larger project builds upon the focus

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Introduction 11

and findings from the former. The first project, Exercise and Gender Norms: Analysing the Implications of the ‘Fit’ Body for Queer Women, was supported by several grants from the University of Regina and involved doing thirty interviews with queer and trans women and individuals in Vancouver, Toronto, and Regina from 2013 to 2015. Participants were recruited through personal contacts in the queer communities in each city as well as through emails to league organizers obtained from their websites. Interviews were on average an hour in length, with some around forty-five minutes and others closer to two hours. The age range for participants was 25–45 and participants identified for the most part as queer women and/ or lesbian or gay, but some participants identified as trans women, soft-butches (including one as dyke soft-butch), bisexual, Two-Spirit, and genderqueer. A general snapshot of the racial diversity of participants within the project is as follows: within Toronto, there were twelve participants, and racial identities included Asian, Black, and white; of the ten participants in Vancouver, the majority of participants identified as white, but participants also identified as Caribbean and Asian; and in Regina, there were eight participants who identified as Indigenous, Two-Spirit, and white. This project examined the relationship between exercise and individuals’ body image, sense of social belonging, and expression of gender identity, and analyzed the meaning of exercise in queer communities within the greater socio-cultural context of anxiety about body size and gendered appearance. Participants were asked about their involvement in sports and exercise generally, and specifically their experiences in queerpositive or exclusively queer leagues. Socio-culturally, changes have been going on within queer communities regarding the negotiation of different gender embodiments and the impact of increasingly narrow representations of queer people in popular culture. The second project, Exercise and the Queer Body: Implications of Exercise on Gender Identity, Body Image, and Community for Queer and Trans Women, is a s s h rc Insight Development Grant–funded project that explored the social

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dynamics within queer sports communities and the implications for individual and community body politics, and has two areas of focus. The first extends my previous examination of queer and trans women’s and individuals’ gendered narratives on physical activity, questioning how contemporary meanings of gender and health affect diverse individuals’ body image and gender identity. For example, one participant spoke of her reluctance, as a trans woman of colour, to be too physically active because it would jeopardize her efforts to maintain a feminine body, while another participant who identified as a queer woman with a desired androgynous appearance watched their weight to ensure that their body did not have the appearance of curves or feminine attributes. The second area of focus addresses the vital role of relationships and community for well-being and social belonging. The first project revealed that within each community (Toronto, Vancouver, and Regina) there were some tensions around meanings of queer and acceptance of diverse gender embodiments: for example, the inclusion of trans individuals in historically lesbian spaces, racism and the limits of visibility, femme invisibility and the rejection of the butch, and increased fatphobia. This project involved doing qualitative interviews and focus groups with league organizers about current league dynamics, membership criteria/language, and initiatives for inclusivity and accessibility, as well as individual interviews with members of leagues about their experiences with respect to body image, gender, and community. Participants aged roughly 25–45 were recruited through contacts from the first project as well as through league websites and listservs. Of note, age was not included in the recruitment or asked with respect to focus group participants/collective organizers, only individual interviews/participants (which is why age does not appear for some participants). Only one focus group was held with the five collective members of Pink Turf soccer in Toronto, a group interview was done with both organizers of Queer Van Soccer, and individual interviews were done with league organizers for Queer Van Hoops, ­Women’s Hockey Club of Toronto, the Mabel League, Bump Volleyball ­Vancouver, and Notso Amazon. There were thirteen

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Introduction 13

participants in the collective/organizers discussions, most of whom identified as white, but there were also participants who identified as Black and as Asian. There were eighteen interviews done, nine in Vancouver and nine in Toronto. With respect to racial diversity, the majority of participants identified as white but there were participants involved who identified as Asian, South Asian, Indigenous, and as queers of colour. The majority of participants identified as queer, some as lesbian/gay, three as genderqueer, and one as trans.1 Part of this project has involved various forms of community engagement with teams and leagues through initiatives such as sharing trans-inclusive policies and other strategies to be more inclusive between leagues, a facilitated community meeting with the collective of queer leagues in Vancouver, and a community film focusing on ways to be more inclusive. This film, still in development, will be shared with leagues to post on their websites for new and returning members to access. The idea of the film emerged out of several interviews as well as from discussions with league organizers about inclusivity. For example, some participants expressed support for trans-inclusivity but didn’t know what to do or how to talk about it, and were worried about offending or hurting a fellow team member. Another example came from a league that was trying out some new strategies to encourage queers of colour to join and address the whiteness of the space, and they wanted feedback from other leagues about what they had tried and with what level of success. The film will feature interviews with players on several different leagues about what would make the space more trans-inclusive and welcoming to queers of colour, alongside images from the Mabel League Lil Softball Tournament. The goal is to provide useful and informed strategies for leagues as well as individual players to make the space of community sports more effectively inclusive, without putting the burden on individual community members to educate white cis queers on racism and transphobia. 1 Please note, I use the language that participants used in response to my questions “how do you identify?” and “how would you like to be known/referred to in the research?”

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t h e o r e t ic a l f r a m e work This book focuses on the inter-relation of bodies, gender, and community spaces, and specifically on what potential queer sports spaces offer for disrupting normative patterns of interacting and/or relating to each other, embodying gender, and building community. To that effect, I have drawn upon Ahmed’s notion of queer phenomenology, with reference to Foucault’s technologies of the self as a theoretical framework. Queer phenomenology involves consideration of the relationship between bodies, desires, and space. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Ahmed posits that space is shaped by the “purposefulness” of the body (2006a, 65), how bodies move through and take up space, what actions they take, and how they relate to other bodies (6). Bodies are shaped and made meaningful through the repetition of norms, which over time has the effect of normalizing and naturalizing their desired form and orientation (Ahmed 2006a, 56; Butler 1990). Expanding on the notion of orientation, Ahmed suggests that desire affects how we are oriented in space, and which bodies and objects we are oriented toward, such that desire leads one to follow a certain direction (2006a, 70). Sexual orientation informs our place in and relationship to society and societal norms, as well as what is within reach, what objects or bodies we can reach when we extend into space (68). The nearness of some objects is not casual (87); rather, as Ahmed demonstrates through the examples of wedding gifts and photographs within the familial home, objects are not just found, but instead are placed and function to set heterosexuality as normative, wherein it becomes the background framing our sense of self and relations to others (90). Subjects are required to “tend” toward some objects and not others as a condition of familial and social love (85). Tending toward certain objects and not others produces “straight tendencies,” a way of being in the world that sets heterosexuality as a social given, enabling straight bodies and heterosexual couples to take up and move through space (91–2). Ahmed gives an example of going out for dinner with her partner and looking down the row of tables and feeling “out of place” amidst the lines of women on one side and men on

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Introduction 15

the other. The assumption and expectation of bodies tending toward certain bodies and not others affects and informs our interactions and familial relations. I remember bringing home a female partner for the first time and my mother expressing concern about who my father would talk to after dinner, with the assumption that the women would all go into the kitchen to clean up and the men would stay in the living room to talk. My desire for someone of another sex than was expected disrupted the social dynamics informing the space of the familial home, where heterosexuality was the unquestionable frame. Straight orientation then occurs when the body appears “in line,” when it coheres with the desired actions and expectations of bodies, and through this process of alignment, the lines become invisible (Ahmed 2006a, 66). As a result, when a body comes “out of line,” the effect is “wonky or even queer” (66), and not just for the body; it may disorientate our world view and perhaps “unseat the body” itself (67). Inherent to Ahmed’s theory of queer phenomenology is the notion of disorientation, of being and/or experiencing a sense of being “out of place” or “out of line,” wherein things feel unfamiliar and/or strange (2006a, 10–11). Queer moments happen when things fail to cohere, and in such moments of failure, when things do not stay in place or cohere, disorientation happens (170). Ahmed suggests that the experience of disorientation reveals to us in that moment that we do not have a sense of orientation, and thus enables a reflection on orientation, on what it means to be oriented, “how we know or feel where we are” (6). For queers, becoming disorientated involves not having or relating to heterosexual orientation, not feeling at home in that orientation, and not aligning with straight tendencies and ways of relating to others according to the sex/ gender binary and heteronormative desire. Through disorientation, one may come to a queer orientation, and engage in different forms of inhabiting space. Disorientation and queering moments are not always radical or transformative, as bodies that experience disorientation can be defensive, and the politics that emerge from disorientation can be conservative (158). Further, disorientation is unevenly distributed, as some bodies have their involvement in the world called into crisis

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more than others (159), such as queer bodies in straight spaces, or Black bodies in white spaces (161). However, what is significant to Ahmed is “what we do with moments of disorientation, and whether they offer hope for new directions, and if so, whether these new directions are reason enough for hope” (158). Critically, Ahmed argues that the “differences in how one directs desire can ‘move’ us and affect even the most deeply engrained patterns of relating to others” (2006a, 101), and as such queer desire can be rethought of as a “space for action, as a way of extending differently into space through tending toward other” queers (102). It is this notion of a “space for action” within which to reimagine our ways of relating to ourselves and others that I connect with Foucault’s concept of care of the self. Foucault defines technologies of the self as those “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (1988, 17–18). He argues that the principle of “care of the self” was central to personal conduct and social life for the Greeks and Romans and led to self-knowledge. Lloyd, who applies Foucault’s notion of “care of the self” to feminist politics, argues that it “promotes the dimension of critical awareness to distinguish practices of freedom from the ones that perpetuate the dominant discursive construction of gender” (referenced in Markula 2003, 102). Lloyd brings together Foucault’s theorizing on technologies of domination and technologies of the self to argue that attitude or critical awareness is necessary to the practice of “care of the self”: “self-fashioning[,] when allied to critique, can produce sites of contestation over the meanings and contours of identity, and over the ways in which certain practices are mobilized” (1996, 250). The practices we engage in or initiate, such as practices at greater inclusivity, “are always in some way imbricated within or mediated by contemporary practices or existing (though not necessarily dominant) patterns of behaviour” (247). Further to this point, Ahmed articulates that if heterosexuality is compulsory, then any potential positive movement

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and/or shifting resulting from queer desire will continue to be informed and affected by this compulsion (2006a, 102). Markula applies this notion of critical awareness to women’s sport practices and argues that to consider actions as practices of freedom, athletes need to demonstrate an awareness of, rather than just an ability to cope with, their position in sport (2003, 103). In her examination of the exercise practice known as “hybrid,” Markula utilizes Foucault’s theory to analyze normative fitness practice as part of a broader inquiry into “possibilities for changing the dominant, feminine body discourse” (2004, 302). Critical reflection on and resistance to the normative relationship of the exercise = weight-loss paradigm is fundamental to the design of the hybrid practice, but Markula found that fitness centre owners, personal trainers, and instructors do not necessarily embrace these ideals when they teach or perform it. She argues that without critical awareness, hybrid exercise cannot be construed as a practice of care of the self. Markula states that “any fitness form through which the participants can problematize the dominant discursive construction of gender and actively reconstruct their selves can transgress the limitations of the natural (feminine) identity” (319). Therefore, the analysis of hybrid exercise as a practice of “care of the self” is dependent on whether it is used to challenge normative bodily ideals or to reinforce them. Ahmed proposes that “queer surfaces support action, but also that the action they support involves shifting grounds, or even clearing new ground, which allow us to tread a different path” (2006a, 170). Queer community sports hold the potential to foster new lines, means of gathering to form new patterns, and new ways of making sense (171). With reference to care of the self and the notion of critique/critical attitude, the question then becomes, are these potential new patterns and ways of making sense disruptive, transformative of dominant ways of being and relating to each other? Within the context of this book, the three main body chapters are focused on the potential of queer community sports as spaces of challenging normative body ideals, heteronormative and cissexist gender norms, and rules of play/engagement in sports and community.

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1 Bodies at Play “If a bodily schema is not simply an imposition on already formed bodies, but part of the formation of bodies, how might we be able to think the production or formative power of prohibition in the process of morphogenesis?” (Butler 1993, 54)

“For bodies to arrive in spaces where they are not already at home, where they are not ‘in place’, involves hard work, indeed it involves painstaking labour for bodies to inhabit spaces that do not extend their shape. Having arrived, such bodies in turn might acquire new shapes. And spaces in turn acquire new bodies.” (Ahmed 2006a, 62)

Going to play or watch sports, we make a myriad of assumptions about what bodies are expected in the space, what bodies should be in the space, what those bodies should be doing, and how they should be moving. These assumptions pertain to intersecting notions of gender, sex, sexuality, health and fitness, race, ability, and the rules or regulations of whatever sport is in play. In thinking about queer bodies and community sports spaces, there is an explicit commitment to doing sports differently. As I detail throughout this book, queer women’s and trans-inclusive sports leagues seek to disrupt or challenge some deeply entrenched facets of sport that pertain to gender/sex and competition and winning at all costs, informed by feminist principles of collegiality (community), fun, recreation, and inclusivity (Travers and Deri 2010; Lenskyj 2003; Caudwell 2007a). In this way, queer sports teams can be said to engage

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Bodies at Play 19

in a “politics of disorientation” of dominant discourses informing the sporting world (Ahmed 2006a, 24). This politics of disorientation – of not falling in line with how sports ought to be played or organized – could inspire individuals and collectivities to “sustain wonder about the very forms of social gathering” that may be possible (24). There is the potential for organizers and players to engage in critical reflection and corresponding action to resist and change the disciplinary effects of normative sports, specifically the sex/gender binary that still dominates the sporting world (Travers and Anderson 2017; Travers and Deri 2010; Markula and Pringle 2006). The leagues and their players, through policies of inclusivity and gender diversity, and through a commitment to community engagement (which I consider throughout the book), could be said to be engaging in technologies of self, to a fashioning of bodies and gender within sporting contexts in new and critical ways. Bringing together Ahmed’s notion of queer phenomenology – strategy of disorientation – and Foucault’s technologies of self, this chapter focuses on embodiment within the context of queer community sports: how bodies navigate normative discourses of gender, health, and sports, and what potential opportunities exist to disrupt these discourses within community sports spaces. I draw on queer sporting narratives to consider how these “stories produce and complicate the current state of [queer] bodies and sporting spaces” (Davidson 2009, 339). A significant portion of this chapter focuses on a queering of body image literature, which is then grounded in narratives that stem from a queer community sports context. While there exists significant feminist scholarship on body image, there remains very little about queer women’s, trans people’s, and genderqueer individuals’ body image within community, nor on the positive impact for cis/queer women’s body image from the greater diversity of bodies and gender expressions that may exist in queer community sports spaces. In discussions about the relationship of body image to exercise/sports, the narratives provide rich nuances on how body image affects and informs their queer lives, from the connection of body image to a ­non-heteronormative gender identity, to the differences they

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experience within queer spaces versus straight co-ed spaces, to intersections of body image with other aspects of their identities, including ability, race, health, and professional identity. The majority of the chapter involves an overview of key literature on lesbian/queer body image and then moves to engage with queer narratives on body image. However, the closing section of the chapter brings the focus directly back to queer community sports to consider the following question: given what is thought and/or known about queer body image – both within the literature and from queer narratives themselves – do queer community sports foster spaces from which a disruption of and resistance to heteronormative body ideals is possible? This chapter makes an important contribution to body image literature, specifically about the role of queer community sports on body image and the different gender dynamics at play for queer and trans women and individuals. Ahmed suggests that “the here of the body does not simply refer to the body, but to where the body dwells,” and in this chapter I examine the dwelling of queer sports spaces and how queer bodies engage with and experience these spaces (2006a, 8). Many of the players and organizers are aware of and acknowledge the intersection and competing discourses of gender, health, race, and exercise/sports and how they inform these spaces and their relationship with their bodies. In what follows, I highlight individual examples of critical reflection and/or strategies of queer community sports that range from moments of possible disruption, to coping strategies and conforming to/reinforcing some limitations while questioning/ challenging other forms of bodily disciplinary power. My analysis of the effects of these strategies and reflections is not to make a judgment about whether I think they are ultimately successful in (a strategy of disorientation or enactment of technologies of self) disrupting normative discourses and radically changing the sporting arena. Rather, my aim is to consider these potential moments of disruption, as well as those of regulation, in order to better understand what queer and trans individuals and communities are negotiating, both externally and internally, and the ways they are responding and changing. Linghede and

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Bodies at Play 21

Larsson examine what they call “the potentiality of the present” that considers both what is and what could become, and refer to Lather’s articulation, the no longer and the not yet, within the context of sex segregation and gender norms in sports (2017, 291). This dynamic – what is and what could become – is useful as it aptly addresses the potential within various sporting moments: what bodies are present; what bodies could be present? Increased cultural representation and legal rights have led to greater visibility and social awareness for many queer and trans people. But alongside some of these changes there has been increased questioning about who and what is “queer,” and many of those questions bring the focus back to the body. What does a queer, trans, and/or genderqueer body look like? Do queer and trans people experience body image and/or health struggles in similar ways to straight and cis individuals? How has increased representation of queer and trans bodies impacted individuals’ negotiation with their own bodies? Do communities offer protection and support from the normative disciplinary power of gender and health? How and in what ways do queer community sports spaces enable and/or disrupt cis heteronormative body pressures? This chapter begins by providing some theoretical context on lesbian/queer body image and queer sport sociology, and then moves into narratives of embodiment of gender, health, and exercise, and of bodies in community sports.

l e s b ia n / q u e e r wo m e n ’s body i mage There are some differing opinions with respect to the prevalence of body image concerns for queer and trans women and individuals. Some theorists have proposed that lesbian1 women have more positive body image due to the seeming protection 1 I use “lesbian” here as that is the predominant term used within the literature on body image. In my own research I use “queer and trans women and individuals” when talking more generally, and identifiers chosen by participants themselves when referring to their stories.

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that queer community provides and strong historical ties with feminist fat activism (Cogan 1999; Ojerholm and Rothblum 1999; Bergeron and Senn 1998; Striegel-Moore et al. 1990), while others argue that lesbians (trans women and genderqueer individuals are rarely mentioned in body image literature thus far), as women, are socialized in relation to the heteronormative feminine bodily ideal similarly to straight cis women (Kelly 2007; Cogan 1999). One common difference between lesbian and straight women is that queer women tend to have a slightly more positive body image with respect to strength, muscularity, and physical activity (Cogan 1999; Bergeron and Senn 1998). Despite increasing pressure for women to be thin and fit, queer women are thought to be protected from these pressures because their communities are assumed to be spaces of resistance to patriarchal beauty norms. However, Slevin (2006) and Thompson (1992) have found that heteronormative ideals and homophobia affect queer women’s body image and gender identities, and there is not adequate information on queer and trans women’s and individuals’ body image concerning the degree to which they may feel pressured to conform to particular body and/or gender ideals (in ways that may be affirming and/or regulatory), nor what dynamics are like within queer and trans social spaces (Caudwell 2007a; Kelly 2007; Lenskyj 2003; Rice 2006; Slevin 2006; Thompson 1992). In addition, while there is greater widespread acceptance and visibility of queer and trans women in the West, for example on television, representations tend to resemble the normative cis heterosexual woman: thin, white, financially well-off, and very feminine. Over the past decade there has been a shift within queer communities with respect to an emerging ideal, an androgynous and/or heteronormative thin body, that is informed by media and popular culture, and in many ways is tied to current sociocultural anxiety about women’s body size and feminine appearance, influenced in part by concerns in the West about obesity. This anxiety has led to the promotion of exercise to keep women’s bodies trim and fit. The problem with this focus is that the rigorous promotion of exercise and fit bodies reinforces a limited range of body size standards that few individuals can

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Bodies at Play 23

sustain (Riley et al. 2008; Rice 2006; Bartky 1997; Bordo 1993, 1997). Further, the pressure to control the size of women’s bodies is linked with an increasingly narrow social representation and acceptance of expressions of gender. The consequences are numerous and complex for everyone, but this chapter considers the implications of these bodily trends for queer and trans women and individuals within the context of queer community sports. Compounding the current anxiety around body size, there has been an increased promotion of the heterosexual feminine ideal for queer and trans women and individuals within popular culture (Hardy 2015; Malin 2010; Riley et al. 2008; Rail and Beausoleil 2003). Popular images of queer and trans women reinforce normative white feminine heterosexual representations. For example, Ellen DeGeneres has appeared in anti-aging and make-up commercials, the cast of the original Showtime television show The L Word were thin and the majority of them very feminine, Caitlyn Jenner has appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and the ultra-fit guru Jillian Michaels identifies as bisexual. An exception to these examples is the cast of the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, which offers some diversity with respect to the race and body size of queer characters. However, the predominantly feminine, thin, white bodies, while queer and/or trans, can function to reinforce the cultural promotion and expectation for all women to conform to the dominant feminine ideal. The ideal female body is increasingly a fit body, and therefore exercise is a means to access femininity. The relationship between body size, exercise, gender and sexuality, and space are critical for understanding contemporary meanings of gender, and forms of regulation on bodies and subjectivities in order for them to be deemed socially acceptable (Riley et al. 2008; Rice 2006; Butler 1990, 1993; Bordo 1993, 1997). Several theorists have critiqued the cultural myth that queer women are protected from the impact or internalization of the normative thin feminine ideal because their communities support alternative gender expression (Atkins 1998; Rice 2006; Slevin 2006; Thompson 1992). Rice (2006) and Thompson

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(1992) suggest that body image struggles, including eating disorders and other forms of body control, can be coping mechanisms for homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, classism, and experiences of violence, and thus are not simply about meeting the feminine ideal. Slevin’s (2006) analysis of body image among aging lesbians finds that feminine norms of antiaging have a stronger influence over women than any potential alternative the lesbian community might offer. There are several studies that focus on either lesbian or mixed straight and lesbian women’s body image struggles. Kelly (2007), Cogan (1999), Bergenson and Senn (1997), and Striegel-Moore et al. (1990) all identify similar themes: notably, a social expectation that lesbian women are protected from body image concerns and an assumed sentiment within lesbian community that struggling with body image is perceived as buying into the straight/dominant ideal. An impact of this assumption of protection that all of the studies mention is that of body silence, a concept coined by Kelly (2007), which suggests that lesbian women don’t talk about their body image concerns. Body silence reflects the inability of lesbian women to talk about body image concerns with either straight or gay people in their lives, due to a lack of understanding of the desire to look gay by straight people and the sense that body image concerns are un-lesbian (Kelly 2007). Kelly argues that while body or weight concerns can unite heterosexual women, they do the opposite for lesbian women; they remain shrouded in body silence (2007). Another commonality across the studies is the minimal difference found between lesbian and heterosexual women in terms of desiring the normative female body and women’s body dissatisfaction (Kelly 2007; Cogan 1999; Bergenson and Senn 1997; StriegelMoore et al. 1990). For example, Bergenson and Senn (1998) found four of the six body attitudes to be the same, with the two that were different being that lesbian women have a slightly more positive attitude in relation to physical ability and strength. Kelly also found that homophobia was experienced by women in terms of their gender performance; the women spoke of the “ease of acceptance by others if they looked like what was generally accepted as the way a woman should look, which

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Bodies at Play 25

is not the way a lesbian should look” (2007, 876). Kelly argues that body image perception among lesbians is influenced by both dominant culture/outsider expectations and lesbian community/insider expectations, and that for some this led to the development of two looks, “one that would allow them to fit into dominant society and one that helped them fit in and be recognized by other lesbians” (877). Cogan found that body image is a central means for achieving visibility, and hence community (1999). However, homophobia and/or the sense of community led to a different experience for individuals in terms of their gender performance, such that androgynous and butch women were more easily recognized and accepted within the queer community but less accepted by the dominant culture, and the opposite was true for femmes (Cogan 1999). Lyle, Jones, and Drake found that notions of beauty within queer communities were informed by race, such that Black women were positioned as outside current standards of beauty and that the “images of what the good looking butch or femme looks like … are all white” (1999, 51). Further, they reference a tension that queer Black women experience between “not wanting to have to fit the norm of queer look, to represent yourself as you want, with the desire to still look queer” (47). This tension was also noted by Hammidi and Kaiser in their discussion of “how lesbians ‘do beauty’ within and across four discourses: verbal and visual messages, individual acts, media images, and dominant and community looks” (1999, 56). They argue that despite the seeming openness and acceptance within queer communities with respect to diversity of style and appearance, there is an evident ideal, “the middle-class, masculine chic, urban butch symbol of lesbian beauty,” and this “symbol is steeped in race and class privilege that uses visibility as a marker of both credibility and beauty” (60). In Yost and Chmielewski’s (2011) study on rural lesbian women’s body image, they found that the amount of time a woman was “out” and their access to community had an impact on body image, such that having access to community outside of heterosexuality enabled women to view their bodies in less objectified ways. The only exception they found to the positive

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impact community had on body image was with respect to fatphobia. Myers, Taub, Morris, and Rothblum had similar findings, such that “many lesbians state that their views about themselves and their appearance changed dramatically after coming out” (1999, 19). However, pressure to conform to normative gender ideals remained present and a “common source of conflict” for lesbian women, including concerns over body size and weight (20–1, 24). Time “out” was also found to be a factor, such that women who had recently come out “may feel more pressure to ‘fit in’ and be recognized as lesbian” (22). As noted by others above, Myers et al. found that queer communities also “create their own norms” which may be experienced as “just as restrictive as heterosexual norms” (24). Further, they found that some lesbian women struggled to navigate the promotion of body positivity within queer communities – and the construction of body image struggles as heteronormative – and their own relationship with and negative feelings about their bodies. These findings support Kelly’s (2007) theory of lesbian “body silence,” as women in Myers et al.’s study felt unable to voice their body image struggles, and the fact that they “were still affected by pressures which continue to play a role in their lives” (Myers et al. 1999, 33). This literature draws attention to the fact that the two predominant theories about queer/lesbian body image are perhaps intertwined and useful to think through queer embodiment. Queer/lesbian community does offer some space and support for a different, at times more positive relationship with the body, but there also exist pressures to conform to the cis heteronormative body ideal, to a community ideal informed by race, class, and body size, and to remain silent about complicated bodily relations. With this literature in mind, how might queer community sports spaces support or make possible different bodily dynamics and relationships?

t h e q u e e r s p o rt in g healthy ( f e m a l e ) b o dy Within queer sport sociology body size, gender expression, and essentialist notions of bodily capability intersect and inform

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Bodies at Play 27

community dynamics and politics of identification. Ravel and Rail’s research (2006, 2007) with young gaie female athletes found that women perceived “butch” as masculine, a bit fat, and undesirable, and thus chose to identify as “gaie,” a “lighter version of homosexuality” that was not affiliated with a lesbian label (2007, 413). They found that while sports spaces were generally supportive and open, women sought to distance themselves from the identities of butch and lesbian because of the seeming association with masculinity, being unfit, large, and unattractive. Participants chose to identify as gaie instead because it was interpreted as a “more feminine, less visible, less disturbing version of being lesbian” (2006, 409). The women in Ravel and Rail’s study tried to “dissociate themselves from the most visible elements of the lgbt community” (2006, 407) and engaged in a “blaming and disparaging of those women who are seen as not having the ‘proper’ shape and appearance” (2006, 408). Caudwell’s research on women’s football in the UK stretches over a decade and reflects the complexities of identities and embodiments within women’s sporting communities. Body size and gender identity were central attributes that women spoke about in relation to their participation in football. For example, one woman commented that players automatically get labelled as gay just because they play, and players are assumed to be “this big butch hulking around,” which suggests that “‘proper’ or ‘real’ women, that is heterosexual and nonbig, do not play” (Caudwell 2003, 377). Similar to those of Ravel and Rail, Caudwell’s participants also sought to distance themselves and dissociate from butch and to challenge the stereotype of the female athlete as only and always butch (2003). Hardy’s (2015) research on Canadian National Women’s Rugby, while on an elite level, found similar concerns about appearance with respect to fatness and queerness. Players felt pressure to challenge stereotypes of themselves as overweight, “looking masculine and unattractive” (161). However, players embraced a sense of pride in the strength and muscularity of their bodies, despite the heterofeminine ideal of being toned but not overly muscular, as muscularity is equated with maleness and queerness (161). The emergence and popularity of

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rugby 7s over 15s, where there are seven players rather than fifteen, and the game is much faster and “demands a different type of athlete” and athletic body (notably thin), raises questions about homophobia and fatphobia within the sport (163). Hardy wonders whether international support for rugby 7s, for example inclusion in the Olympics, supports Griffin’s (1992) argument that growing support and media attention for women’s sports has corresponded with efforts to “eradicate the lesbian image” from women’s sports (Hardy 2015, 164). The relationship between body image, exercise, and community spaces for many begins at school with physical education. Sykes and McPhail (2011) found that for queer and trans youth the intersection of queerness and fatness within physical education had a negative impact on body image and on experiences/relationships with physical activity. As a result, and despite the common assumption that sports are safe spaces for queer women, many queer and trans women and individuals have avoided sports, including community sports, because of their negative experiences of body shaming, transphobia, and homophobia. Finally, in brief, two different studies found a positive correlation between body image and community spaces within running groups: one for Clydesdale runners and/or large/fat runners and the other for l g b t q runners (Chase 2008; van Ingen 2004). The fat athlete (as I will get into a bit more below) often experiences fatphobia resulting from “the public reaction to their bodies and the underlying assumptions that their bodies [a]re inferior and inadequately disciplined,” instilling an overall sense that their bodies are unacceptable (Chase 2007, 143). The formation of Clydesdale running communities, which initiated different weight divisions within distance races, is “transforming running from an exclusive sporting space dominated by high performance running bodies to a more inclusive bodily space” (Chase 2008, 130). Further, Clydesdale runners spoke of embodying different race principles: for example, rather than just going home after the race was over, Clydesdale runners wait at the finish line for the last Clydesdale runner to cross, disrupting the primacy of winning and individualism (143).

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Bodies at Play 29

Chase’s research is important as it speaks both to what is possible when different bodies interact within community sports spaces and to the potential to disrupt normative sporting ideals around body size, rules of engagement, and athletic abilities. van Ingen’s (2004) study on the Toronto Front Runners group found that a queer exercise community enabled more positive body relations for some participants. While this study was primarily based on gay men’s experiences, I include it here as it provides an example of a queer/gay community sporting space where heteronormativity is challenged and in which participants were able to “have a more complete engagement with their own bodies” (van Ingen 2004, 259). The men were still very conscious of pressures to conform to dominant masculinity, but the space fostered opportunities for their bodies to be “‘made’ and ‘remade’” and for them to experience new bodily relations and “no longer [feel] distant from their own bodies” (259–60). The above studies reveal the prevalence of body stigma, fatphobia, and homophobia and transphobia within sporting spaces, including community sports. Similar to Yost and Chmielewski’s (2011) findings, fatphobia is a limiting factor and/or exception to the positive impact of being in community on individuals’ body image and confidence in their queer identity. Queer community sports promote themselves as inclusive spaces and endeavour to challenge normative sporting practices and objectives, but as these studies reveal, body image and the construction of the sporting and healthy body as heterofeminine and thin remain powerful and active discourses informing engagement amongst players and the spaces themselves.

he a lt h is m a n d w h at a healthy body l o o k s l ike The sporting queer and trans body is informed by contemporary constructions of fitness and health. Over the past three decades, there has been a shift in the ideal female body from thin, to thin and fit (Markula 1995, 2003, 2004; Bordo 1993, 1997). This shift has occurred alongside other cultural and

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social changes, such as anti-aging, consumerism, neoliberalism, and technological developments that promote the ability to constantly re-create oneself through body changes (such as cosmetic surgery, exercise, diets, clothing, and/or beauty products). Body management is not only encouraged as a means of self-care, but has also come to take on a moral impetus; to be fit, to take care of one’s body, means one is a good person and citizen (Moore 2010, 2008; Crawford 2006; Rail and Beausoleil 2003; Bordo 1997). Crawford (2006) and Blackman (2008) both suggest that this is the result of the increasing importance of health in everyday life. The concept of “healthism,” coined by Crawford, draws attention to changes in how health and health care are conceptualized and promoted (2006, 10). Crawford (2006) and Blackman (2008) argue that despite the formal obligation of the state to provide some level of health care, more and more of the onus for health is being put upon the individual, due in part to political restructuring and neoliberal economic policies. Crawford argues that being healthy has become the moral compass of citizenship and one’s individual responsibility (2006, 10). Perhaps not surprisingly, healthism has influenced constructions of the ideal feminine and fit body. The socio-­ cultural change in the “social symbolism of body weight and size” that began in the 1970s has strong class, racial, and gendered dimensions (Bordo 1993, 5). Bordo articulates that the prevailing norm of thinness was complemented by the promotion of the new, strong, and athletic ideal; “these two ideals, though superficially very different are united in battle against a common enemy: the soft, the loose; un-solid, excess flesh” (5). The athletic body is no longer read as symbolic of working-­ class and immigrant labourers but has become a cultural icon – “a glamourized and sexualized yuppie body” (5). The image of health, of a healthy-looking body, has become a way of gaining recognition and social acceptance. Both Choi (2000) and Malson (2008) illustrate how contemporary health discourses reinforce dominant constructions of femininity. Choi argues that healthy and/or exercise activities are presented as, and have become synonymous with, beauty activity; women

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Bodies at Play 31

undertake healthy activity in order to achieve a beautiful, slim and toned body (2000, 9). Similarly, Malson argues that pursuit of slenderness has been “re-presented” as health promotion and that the pursuit of exercise and health practices are done in the hopes of having a body that appears healthy (2008, 18). Further, under the guise of health promotion and fears about obesity, weight management practices such as dieting have been reformulated as positive, even necessary health practices (29). Feminist critiques of weight management practices as “patriarchally oppressive and potentially physically and psychologically damaging” have been marginalized and instead these practices are increasingly characterized as “health maximising” within global health initiatives (29). Moore suggests that we need to consider a gendered analysis of the new paradigm of health and argues that doing health is doing gender – put more specifically, that health-consciousness is inherently bound to the performance of femininity (112). Critical social theorists have been quick to address these developments and their impact on women. For example, Riley et al. (2008) argue that the current obesity epidemic has heightened anxiety over women’s body size, resulting in increased promotion of excessive monitoring and disciplining of women’s bodies, predominantly through diet and exercise. The intensity of broader social and cultural attention to the benefits of exercise, Riley et al. suggest, has failed to address how these newer discourses on the morality of exercise are intersecting with normative discourses of femininity that favour a slender body. McPhail and Bombak (2015) provide a critical analysis of contemporary public health studies that propose a correlation between lesbianism and obesity. They argue that these studies refer to lesbians as a unified social group, which conflates critical differences, including race, class, ability, and age (546). Further, the equation of lesbianism with obesity furthers a historical and painful trend within biomedicine of medicalizing and pathologizing queerness; as with the ai d s pandemic, it infers that to be “queer is to be sick” (546). The undercurrent is that queer culture is to blame for (lesbians’) obesity, which is based upon the “troubling notion that lesbians are obese

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because they exist outside of the male gaze” and confines of heternormative femininity (546). They posit that while resistive opportunities may exist, there are also studies that find that queer women experience “similar pressures” and bodily dissatisfaction to straight women (546). Notably, instead of public health discourses acknowledging the positive elements of queer community’s seeming body acceptance and positivity, the preference seems to be for these feelings to be “redirected and replaced by ‘normal’ feelings about fatness – disgust, loathing, and shame” (547). In addition, within Fat Studies there are engaging critiques of the move to incorporate or bring fat bodies into the fold with respect to “normal” “healthy” bodily activities, with the inherent notion that if a fat body is trying – exercising and eating “right” – then they are accepted/acceptable (Cameron 2019). Bias (2014) argues that the promotion of the (fat) athlete is critical, as it extends acceptance and morality to the fat body because in doing exercise the fat body becomes productive and can no longer be associated with laziness. Chalklin analyzes fat activism through a queer lens and finds a “celebration of amateurishness, insecurity, trauma and pathology” that “resolutely refuses to engage with the fat person’s civic responsibility to strive towards health and happiness” (2016, 108). Their work suggests that rather than focusing efforts to reduce fat stigma on the positivity of the fat body, an engagement with negativity (with respect to fatness) may move activism beyond humanizing and/or legitimizing fat bodies to more radical understandings of fat and queer embodiment (108). Sports and exercise are typically spaces wherein one expects a “trained, efficient, and obedient body,” as “disciplinary techniques function as a central component of sport even at the recreational level” (Chase 2008, 134). As noted in the introduction, queer community sports could, and some do, function as spaces of body shaming, enforcing normative ideals of the athletic body, healthism, and gendered expectations. Certainly, Ravel and Rail’s (2006, 2007) research found this to be the case. But as Chalklin (2016) found within fat activism and Lenskyj (2003) and Caudwell (2007a) highlight about queer community sports, there may be more at

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play, and there is a concerted effort to queer these spaces, to disrupt – at least in principle – the notion of sport as a disciplinary tool for body management. Within body image literature, there remains a dearth of information about the experiences of trans and genderqueer individuals, as well as some debate and ambiguity about the extent to which lesbians face similar body image struggles/dissatisfaction to straight women. The various studies on body image and queer sports do identify queer community as being a positive space for bodily acceptance as well as one which imposes its own norms or ideals that individuals must negotiate. Body image is understood as tied to visibility and acceptance within queer community, to the validity of one’s identity, and as the site of many individuals’ struggle with pressures of gender and health norms. In what follows, I draw on diverse narratives from queer and trans women and individuals about their bodies to consider the extent to which queer community sports can foster a space of critical reflection, of disorientation, and of resistance. Hardy (2015) and Markula and Pringle (2006) are helpful here; they both suggest that individuals’ engagement in technologies of self does not necessarily lead to a transformation of dominant discourses – of gender, of health, or of sport – but they can be individually experienced as practices of freedom. For this to occur, an individual – or possibly a community – must be critical of discourses impinging on them and actively strive to change themselves/their community spaces and their relation to their bodies (Markula and Pringle 2006). The narratives reveal at times overlapping, but also distinct reflections on body image. Body image is a concern and ongoing struggle for several individuals. Community and being out, as identified in the literature, have positive effects on embodiment but fatphobia and healthism are also present. Several themes emerge from the narratives that highlight significant aspects of body image for queer and trans women and individuals, notably: the similarities to and differences from straight and cis women; gendered correlation with fat and body size; the role and influence of dominant discourses of health; and the body in community sports spaces. In the final section, the narratives

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engage directly with the question of whether queer community sports enable or foster spaces of critical reflection, disorientation, and resistance to the disciplinary and regulatory effects of the heteronormative body ideal.

b o dy im ag e : d if f e r e n c e s a n d   s im ilari ti es In what follows, I present a myriad of narratives about body image within the context of community sports and propose that they offer up something else, something different, and/or something more than can be articulated by a comparison or equation with straight and cis women, or more precisely with the heteronormative feminine ideal (Linghede and Larsson 2017). As such, a queering of body image is offered through a complication of gendered readings of bodily experiences and inclusion of intersecting factors of race, class, fat, and ability. [My body image] is a little bit the perception of maybe guys being stronger and then I see that a woman’s body is more curves … I don’t find that very attractive for myself, but I find it attractive on other women. So that has been my struggle … I’m still learning to accept my body. – Susan, 34, Asian Canadian lesbian For Susan, her body size and shape are interconnected with gender; there is a dissatisfaction with her body not because of its inability to meet the heteronormative thin ideal but rather because of her appreciation of a stronger, more masculinelooking body. While the literature identified feeling strong as one of the only differences between queer/lesbian and straight women (Bergenson and Senn 1997; Striegel-Moore et al. 1990), this does not acknowledge or recognize that this difference can also speak to a desire to embody gender differently. Further on in her narrative, Susan mentions that she thought for a while about “wanting to be transgender,” that she felt uncomfortable in her body and growing up there were no representations of diverse embodiments of femininity, such as female masculinity,

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until Ellen DeGeneres publicly came out. Body image thus needs to be understood in the context of what is thought possible, what options individuals feel exist to negotiate their bodies and gender identity. In the opening quote by Butler, she suggests that the bodily schema is a part of the process of morphogenesis, such that what is possible to imagine informs how the body comes into being, into meaningful, intelligible forms. For Susan, not being able to imagine a bodily schema that supported the desired correlation between gender expression and her body, what was prohibited from being imagined, led to a complicated and fraught body image, to a body she struggles to accept. I’m just trying to understand okay, what am I comfortable in? I’m like well, I’m not comfortable in the clothes I see my sister wearing. I don’t want to wear that. So okay, therefore I don’t fit into girl’s clothes. So then I go into boy’s clothes. Well, they don’t really fit me either because I’m a woman and I have tits. So you know, despite wanting to look like a guy … I’ve got this chest so this shirt doesn’t fit me. So just really struggling with clothes and trying to figure out … and body image within that and then being called sir all the time, it was really really a struggle for a long time to feel confident and comfortable – Chloe, 34, white lesbian Clothing in Western society is deeply gendered, as articulated quite poignantly in several narratives. Clothing impacts individuals’ relationship with their bodies, as clothes that don’t fit the body disrupt or interfere with a positive correlation between body and identity; clothing options are limited, so the body becomes the focus of change. The changing relationship with the body resulting from the historical shift to standardized sizing is clearly articulated by Brumberg: “so long as clothing was made at home, the dimensions of the garment could be adjusted to the particular body intended to wear it. But with storebought clothes, the body had to fit instantaneously into standard sizes that were constructed from a pattern representing a norm” (1998, 107). The norm informing standard sizes is

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gender-, race-, and class-specific, and therefore not all bodies will feel at home in the clothes on offer. I kind of look like an average sized guy now – or that’s how I internalize it anyway. And it is helpful going to stores and buying small shirts instead of extra large shirts, so you don’t have that much going on in your head anymore. It’s so psychological, and I get mad every time I go to the store. I buy a small men’s shirt or an extra large women’s shirt, and it’s like, how is that supposed to make a woman feel? – Dylan, 27, white queer This commentary by Dylan highlights the impact of the imposition of clothing size onto diverse bodies, as the different sizes they are able to fit into are dependent on the gender and sex an item of clothing is designed for, even if the shirts are the same size or utilize the same amount of material. This differential reinforces the societal norm that women are supposed to be petite and smaller than men, as the construction of sexed bodies necessitates rigid distinctions of size and shape that all individuals are required to try to approximate. In addition, while straight and cis women also struggle to find clothing that fits them and that they feel comfortable in, these narratives illustrate further complications with clothing that speak to different embodiments of gender. Cameron (2019) and Chase (2008) both discuss the relationship of clothing and accessibility to physical activity for fat bodies. The inability of fat athletes to find sport clothing that fits reinforces that their bodies are not expected to be or thought of as physically active, and “perpetuates the invisibility” of fat athletes within society (Chase 2008, 137). Clothing and appearance have a long and important history for visibility and identification of lesbianism, as a means to recognize other lesbians but also notably to challenge heteronormative ideals of femininity (Dove-Viebahn 2007; Cogan 1999; Walker 1993). Clothing and appearance for queers, then, is political, as they function as tools in community-building via alternative and/or diverse forms of gender expression and embodiment.

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It’s not smaller but sexy to me is clothes, you have to be able to wear certain clothes and if I can’t wear a crop top I’m not sexy … it’s not desirable, sexy is desirable. Wobbly is not desirable. – Adele, 22, Trinidadian-Canadian trans woman For Adele, bodily delineations reinforce mainstream body norms; the “wobbly” body is not desirable. The ability to wear clothing that reveals her body necessitates a firm, non-wobbly body and thus sexiness is inherently tied to the body’s tautness. Adele’s comments can be read in relation to normative Western ideals of femininity that require women to have thin, fit, and toned bodies or face social sanctions and a loss of societal recognition, but they also go beyond (Bordo 1993). For Adele, being a “sexy woman” is critical, and if her body is not able to meet that standard, she told me she “probably would not want to be a woman,” revealing the centrality of the body to her transition and gender identity. Full disclosure, I have body dysmorphia, so I have a, I was going to say a love/hate relationship with my body but it’s more hate than love … and I’m coming to terms with an eating disorder, starting to open up a little more about that … so yeah, it’s a struggle to get out and exercise and for people to see my body in motion because I’ve had so many experiences where my body was a master in that particular discipline and now it’s gone so beyond that. So it’s kind of hard, that part of it is really hard. And because, you know, I gained weight. – Jesse, 40, white lesbian Within several narratives, discomfort with the moving body is critically tied to body image struggles. Notable in Jesse’s commentary, it is not only her weight but also the loss of skill and mastery that is seemingly tied to her body size. Sykes and McPhail argue that fatness is often perceived as counter to athleticism and being healthy, because the “very motion of ­fatness threatens the illusions of athletic mastery and the

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boundaries of subjectivity” (2011, 97; also noted in Chase 2008, 137, about the fat runner). Thus, participating in exercise spaces potentially adds to anxiety about the body because of the fear of the gaze of others on the moving body; the exercising body should be/is expected to always already be fit and toned. But being, this is going back to like a culture thing – being Black I have thick legs; I’m not trying to get muscular legs. I have big legs and a big butt. I like it and I was kind of chubby before, and hey, that’s what works for me because in my culture it’s okay to be thick on the bottom, firm, you know. – Jasmine, 28, Black bisexual I do have this image in my head that I’m this healthy, active, awesome super athletic sort of person – not super athletic – but you know, healthy. And then in reality I get so fatigued after [a] day of work. – Amelia, 27, white lesbian The body is also spoken about in ways that reflect individuals’ intersectional identities and their negotiations within different spaces and life stages. The above comments by Jasmine and Amelia speak to perceptions of their bodies and their degree of acceptance and struggle with socio-cultural pressures. Jasmine asserts that being Black provides space for acceptance of a bigger body, against which she frames her body and having “thick legs.” This acceptance is qualified to a degree by her use of “firm,” that is, a bigger body is accepted as long as it is firm. This reiterates the above discussion about wobbliness and moving bodies; loose or jiggly flesh is unacceptable. Amelia is learning to live with a body with chronic illness, one that gets tired more easily, and this process involves a significant shift in her body image, from the body of her upbringing and young adult life in which exercise was a defining element to now embodying a different physicality. The healthy body is equated with an athletic body, and there is some uncertainty for Amelia about whether she can identify as healthy now that her body is not and cannot be “super athletic.” If the body schema is

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part of the formation of bodies, as Butler (1993) posits, the productive power of the normative construction of the healthy and athletic body prohibits certain forms of embodiment in the process of its morphogenesis, notably fat and disabled bodies. The disciplinary power that equates a healthy body with an athletic body within the narrow confines of gendered, medical, and sports discourses informs the formation of a healthy bodily schema. For many years I wanted to join but I had a chronic illness and I didn’t know that I could handle the game and after I joined I was like, oh I totally could of handled this game, I don’t know why I was so worried … in our league you can hit the ball and then someone else can run for you. – Cleo, 40, South Asian gender/queer bi/pansexual Here, Cleo speaks about the concern and reluctance many queers with disabilities have about participating in community sports, which connects to Amelia’s experiences of negotiating changing physical capabilities. Cleo’s experience with Notso Amazon and their policy of having someone else run for you enables a shift in the normative ideal of the athletic body and the assumed bodily skills required to participate. This example highlights that within the space of queer community sports there is possibility for the engagement of diverse bodies and disruption of the normative athletic body, as bodies that often are not perceived as athletic and people who may not perceive themselves as having sporting bodies come out to play. Yes, I don’t know. I feel like the straight friends that I have are so into, “I need to get a mani, I need to get a pedi, I need to do my make up, I have to comb my hair.” It’s like they take frigging three hours to get ready and they’re not comfortable unless they’re like that. And then on the same note, me and the people that I know that are gay it’s like … you know, I’m not so concerned about making sure my hair is perfect and getting all those aesthetically pleasing things done. – Amanda, 34, white lesbian

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Amanda offers a stark contrast between queer and straight women, notably the discomfort experienced by straight women if they don’t engage in appearance rituals against the lack of concern about these practices by some queer women. In a different part of our interview, Amanda notes that she would probably wear different clothing when going out socially with straight teammates versus queer/gay teammates: a low-cut top versus a sweatshirt. She attributes the difference to heightened gender regulation amongst straight women and the need to appear feminine enough. This contrast supports the notion that queer/lesbian women are protected – to some degree – from body image concerns because their communities are accepting of diverse embodiments. Though, as just documented, queer and trans women and individuals do struggle with their bodies. Amanda’s noted distinction speaks to some of the differences queer women and individuals navigate and the potential of queer community sports to support diverse gender embodiments. While reflective, these quotes are indicative of endeavouring to cope with and negotiate bodies within gendered constraints and societal pressures. These comments reveal degrees of dissatisfaction with the body, but they are not only or solely in relation to or framed by the dominant heteronormative narrative. They also are outside of or go beyond the boundaries of the ideal body, by way of working through, being critical of, and endeavouring to accept their (changing) bodies. They speak to the skill and functionality of the body, desire for sexiness, womanliness, as well as muscularity and strength, chubbiness and thickness, and being with forms of bodily change. Within all of these excerpts there is a sense of awareness and coming to terms with the body and how it feels, what the body can do, and what is desired or needed of the body; there is the potential to take up, be in and with the body in new ways that are suggestive of possibilities for disruption within queer community sports.

g e n d e r a n d b o dy s i ze I don’t think there’s any less. Girls are girls at the end of the day. We all face the same pressures from society.

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I kind of have this little theory that I’ve been thinking about. It seems to me, overall, not obviously as a rule, but I feel like gay women who are overweight or feel like they’re not attractive or something, I feel like they default to being butch or dyke or something like that. Whereas straight women, if they’re overweight … they still try to look feminine. – Tiffany, 26, white lesbian Tiffany’s two comments here are interesting as they suggest that queer and straight women are bound to the same societal body norms, and yet there may be different responses to these norms in terms of gender expression. I think for females the norm is still … you need to be skinny. Still being overweight is not looked as, “Oh, yes, it’s totally sexy.” But I find – and this sounds horrible – but I found that if you’re a little bit heavier than the norm but then you tell somebody, “Oh, I’m a lesbian, oh, I’m this” then it’s like, “Oh, okay.” – Jasmine, 28, Black bisexual In a similar vein, Jasmine reinforces the notion of a universal pressure to be thin, but then modifies this comment slightly by stating that a larger body size may be more acceptable for lesbians. A queer gender expression, butchness in particular, is characterized as allowing for different and bigger embodiments not available to straight women. Though characterized as “horrible,” there is a potential opening offered here, a degree of recognition that within queer community a bigger body may be more accepted. I noticed that a lot of queer women tend to be overweight and they don’t take care of their body as much as straight women. And my perception is that maybe the straight women try to impress men so they have to look good, and the women, they’re not discriminating so they love your physical body and … maybe they let themselves

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go … most of the women I see that are overweight are butchy women. – Susan, 34, Asian Canadian lesbian I felt really uncomfortable playing rugby because I didn’t want to be the big butch rugby player … it was this perception that I had of what it meant to be butch and butch meant you were a bigger girl, and I didn’t want to be identified that way. So then butch, it was off the table right from the get-go. – Dylan, 27, white queer These comments in some ways serve to limit the positive potential of queer butchness and body image, in their positing of butchness and being big as “not taking care of oneself,” “letting oneself go,” and the negative association attached to being characterized as bigger and/or overweight within Western society. They also support findings in Hardy (2015) and Ravel and Rail (2006, 2007) that queer women seek to distance themselves from butchness and the assumed corresponding fatness, and the construction of women in sport as being “big butch[es] hulking around” (Caudwell 2003, 377). The inherent fatphobia in these constructions of the butch reflects the imposition of dominant heteronormative discourses of gender and health. In part, this may be tied to the increase of media and popular culture representations of queer and trans women over the past few decades. There has been a marked shift in the way queer women have been portrayed – from stereotypical caricatures of the lesbian as androgynous/butch and feminist to heteronormatively attractive lesbian chic from the 2000s onward (McKenna 2002; Ciasullo 2001). This became perhaps most evident with the hit Showtime series The L Word, where all of the characters were thin, almost all white, and conventionally attractive (author 2018; Moore 2007).2 Desirable queerness was thus brought into line in mainstream media with 2 The new iteration of The L Word, Generation Q, released in 2019, offered more diverse representation with respect to race, transinclusivity, and to a lesser degree body size.

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heterosexual gender ideals, and no doubt influences how queer and trans women and individuals negotiate their own sense of identity and queerness within community sports spaces.

h e a lt h y b o di es While sports teams were identified by many participants as a primary means of finding community and feeling at home in a new city (which I go into in further detail in chapter 3), conversations about exercise and community sports were intricately tied to societal pressures around gendered appearance and health. The following are a couple of responses to my question “What motivates you to exercise?” I don’t lie, looking, like looks, appearance-wise definitely and also just to feel healthy. – Kate, 25, Chinese Canadian gay/lesbian/queer

Want to keep in shape to become [job] and there’s a fitness test … And just to be healthier and to have a nicer looking body (laughs). – Tiffany, 26, white lesbian The pressure to be thin and to have a “good looking body” is a common experience for many women, and as McPhail and Bombak (2015), Malson (2008), Moore (2008), and Choi (2000) have documented, this pressure can now be validated through the language of health, such that exercise and other forms of body management are acceptable means to navigate body image struggles. The discourse of healthism – a sense of individual responsibility for one’s health – is evident as a powerful lens that several participants draw upon in their assessment of their bodies (and those of other queer women) and in terms of their understanding of health (Crawford 2006). I see all sorts of different types but if I listen to the chatter when you have dyke march and you have the women typically taking shirts off and going topless, it usually is the

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heavier women. You’ll hear a buzz and comments about, “nobody wants to see that” … again I just go at it from a science point of view, I look at them and I think, “Oh honey, your heart,” you know that’s what I think of. That’s where I go, and I want to help. – Andrea, 33, white lesbian In recounting the fatphobia she overhears at Dyke March, Andrea positions her comments not as a reinforcement of this body shaming but instead as a health concern. Her reading of heavier bodies as in need of help and the assumption that they are unhealthy nonetheless functions to reinforce this fatphobia. As she moves to discussing her own relationship with her body, there is a seemingly purposeful conflating of the aesthetically pleasing lean and muscular body with healthy bodies. In my opinion just as a body builder, is more aesthetically pleasing – just to myself, I couldn’t care about anybody else’s body in the gym but that’s the body I like. I like being lean and muscular … I believe that body fat should be in a certain range for health … it’s just healthy to be in a certain range. – Andrea, 33, white lesbian Andrea’s stated personal preference is decontextualized from societal body ideals, and the dominant discourses of health offer validation for this preference (Malson 2008). There is an implicit movement in her commentary from what is good or preferred for her individual body to what is good and healthy for all bodies, revealing that her personal preference is informed by a normative ideal and is perhaps indicative of the potential for bodily policing on the field (Hardy 2015; Ravel and Rail 2007, 2006). The perception of body size equating to being healthy or unhealthy had workplace/career implications for several participants as they questioned whether or not they were suitable for particular professions. Yeah I feel pressures from friends and myself outside of, and it’s outside of sports to lose weight, as well as I feel

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pressure in medicine to not be the chubby doctor, because nobody will, well why are you telling to me diet if you can’t do it yourself. – Carmen, 27, white bisexual Because I am a trainer and people feel like trainers are supposed to be this ripped person, and I don’t want to be ripped … I feel like I have to stand a certain way and make sure my posture is good because then it gives that, “oh yes, you look pretty good” … you don’t want to have an overweight trainer because then you don’t have that confidence in your trainer so I always feel that there needs to be a happy medium so for me, my back is great … those are my show muscles. – Jasmine, 28, Black bisexual If I was going to be a personal trainer if I was heavy, I don’t know if I would do such a good job, because if I can’t bring myself to be healthy so that I can model or be a role model for someone else, how effective can I be as a trainer? That’s why I didn’t go into that field. – Sonia, 27, Asian queer In all three of the quotes above, there is an understanding that body size determines or at least strongly informs patients’ or clients’ confidence in the professional abilities of their doctor or trainer. Rather than challenging the inherent fatphobia informing this construction of the competent health worker, there is a sense of individual responsibility and choice on how to navigate it, from striking a balance to choosing a different field/profession. However, professional training also enabled some participants to engage with family and others about what it means to be healthy in new ways. My mom will tell me, oh I read the latest fad about this thing we’re supposed to eat. And I stop the conversations now. I don’t have them with her … so it went from me partaking, to me not partaking, to me trying to educate, to can’t even go down this road right now, I need to separate

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more first. It’ll go back to educate I think cause I am a nurse, that’s what I do now – help people live healthy lives. But now I have this degree and this career to back it up so maybe they’ll listen more, “So as a nurse, this is what I’m telling you, you’re not fat, stop it.” – Dylan, 27, white queer While they were growing up, body image, weight management, and shame about body size were intricate to Dylan’s family dynamic. Talking about what to eat and what not to eat, new fad diets, and other forms of body management were part and parcel of daily conversation. As Dylan got older, they negotiated various ways of coping with and responding to this body policing, which had become quite toxic. Dylan’s commentary reflects a critical attitude as well as their efforts not only to cope with their family context, but also to carve their own path – to separate themself – with the intention to go back, nursing degree in hand, and disrupt their family’s beliefs and practices. I feel too like I have a low tolerance for feeling bad about things that I think shouldn’t be a priority. I’m like “The world is so hard and there has been so much bad stuff that has happened to me, and you want me to feel bad because I just ate a McCain’s frozen cake? Are you kidding me?” like come on. Yeah, I’m supposed to feel bad about one, let’s see what happens after two. I don’t know … I feel like I’ve just experienced people doing such awful things and I’m like if you’re hurting someone’s feelings that’s bad. If you’re cheating, that’s bad. If you are assaulting someone, that’s really bad. If you are eating ice cream, that is awesome, like I do not call that bad, I call that really great and lucky and pleasurable rad. – Jordan, 31, white femme queer In this narrative, the normative lenses of what is healthy and what should be a health concern are directly challenged and re-prioritized. Jordan’s comments not only remind us about how pleasurable eating and food can be, but they provide a

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powerful critique of so-called bad or unhealthy behaviour within the broader context of interpersonal relationships. This commentary reflects a critical attitude by Jordan that invites others to examine their own assessment of food choices, and in this way, Jordan is engaging in technologies of the self. Both Jordan and Dylan endeavour to reorient themselves, to question dominant discourses around body management, and to craft new relationships and ways of being with their bodies. In articulating a queer phenomenology, Ahmed suggests that part of our socialization and process of becoming oriented in the world involves “orienting ourselves toward some objects more than others, including physical objects, but also objects of thought, feeling, and judgement, and objects in the sense of aims, aspirations, and objectives” (2006b, 553). Jordan and Dylan are engaging in a re-orientation of thought and judgment; they are reimagining what it means to be healthy and take care of their bodies and the process of prioritization – eating ice cream and treating others with respect and dignity. Mainstream health beliefs and practices are central to how several participants assess their bodies and broader sense of responsibly being in the world, from what makes a good doctor or trainer to how bodies should appear to be read as healthy. This is not surprising given the intensity and pervasiveness of fatphobia and the shift to healthism over the past few decades (Malson 2008; Moore 2008; Choi 2006; Crawford 2006). But the narratives also speak to interrogations of and a turning away from these normative discourses in favour of new orientations and ways of being in and with the body.

ro l e o f c o m m u n ity sports: w h e r e t h e b o dy dwells In this final section, I consider the role of queer community sports, the spaces where queer and trans bodies dwell and come into contact with each other, and the potential of these spaces, what these spaces offer or make possible, specifically their potential for a politics of disorientation. Jesse and Carmen, who have both had life-long struggles with their bodies, experience

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Vancouver’s Mabel League as accepting, and potentially transgressive. Carmen experiences her body as a site of tension; she is training to become a health professional and feels having a full figure is in tension with her professional status and ability to be a health care professional. Her family also regularly comments on her body size and the need for her to manage her weight, and she receives positive feedback from straight friends whenever she loses weight. Against this background, the Mabel League stands in sharp relief; it is a space where she feels more comfortable and at home in her body. The women in the Mabel League come in such different shapes, different sizes, different images, like different views of even queer, I know there are trans men, there are trans women … I just feel like I’m one of many different looking, different acting people. – Carmen, 27, white bisexual woman In a similar way, Jesse also speaks about the possibilities for greater bodily acceptance within queer sports spaces as the social context of teams changes. And I think it’s changing, well, at least in Vancouver, the landscape of queer sport has completely changed. So going from very female-orientated, so female-bodied, biological females, to including a few trans folks … And, you know, policies being changed within the structure of the sport leagues. Some taking them on, some not taking them on. And then the reaction to those that did take them on, new sport leagues were created as a result of that so that they could play with their friends. And now it’s just this, like, the door is wide open … So it’s an expectation now of each individual to not assume somebody else’s gender identity. But, with that, also comes, like, more comfortability with bodies. Because now bodies can be any shape and size. So I think, I mean, it’s too early to tell how that’s gonna have an effect, I think it’s gonna have a positive influence. But it’s, bodies are going to be very different

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now … anytime there’s not one ideal body type there’s more comfort. – Jesse, 40, white lesbian Ahmed states that “when bodies take up spaces they were not intended to inhabit, something other than the reproduction of the facts of the matter happen” (2006a, 62). Within Jesse’s and Carmen’s narratives, there are two things occurring: first, they experience and/or imagine the possibility of comfort for a diverse range of bodies within the community sports context; and second, the sporting body, the ideal fit body is challenged – queered – and potentially not reproduced within queer community sports spaces. In a different moment in her narrative, Carmen also refers to some of the body politics at play for her in these same sports spaces, commenting that “there is a lot of nudity in queer sports,” people will go around “in their bras or go topless,” and “when I’m around that I’m always like oh wow I wish I could do that too.” Despite queer sports enabling a space for many different body types, there is still a body privileging that Carmen’s remarks voice; some bodies are more at home and socio-culturally desirable/able to go topless. Her ability to feel comfortable within sports spaces, however, goes some way to disrupt this privileging, as over time, as Carmen and Jesse have commented, the existence of more diverse bodies may change what bodies take up space within the sporting arena, and, in turn, change what a sporting body looks like. Body politics have also been at play as different teams and individual players address and engage with fatphobia. There was an incident in the middle of a game, I’m pitching, and one of their players shouted, because one of their heavier players stepped up to bat, she yells out “look at all these fat beautiful people on the field,” and I’m like, “who are you talking about?” I felt like, if you and your team want to identify as such, absolutely fine, great, I don’t want you to call me fat … a lot of people have been bullied in the past for the way they looked and to have that

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experience again ten to fifteen years later is really triggering. Great if you and your team want to identify as such, we aren’t there yet, we don’t like to be called that. – Jean, 35, white queer The move by some teams and players to use fat-positive language and embrace the term “fat” was experienced by other players as hurtful and imposing an identity on them that they weren’t comfortable with yet, revealing some of the complexities of queer and trans women’s and individuals’ relationship to body image. This incident led to conversations among players about language and body politics, and how best to navigate within league spaces the different places individuals are in with respect to their relationships with their bodies and the broader culture of fatphobia. One development was the emergence of a new team that identified as fat-positive in the following season, The Heavy Hitters, as well as increased awareness and use of fat-positive language with players who identified as fat. Within the literature, coming out and having access to community are identified as having a degree of positive impact on queer women’s body image (Yost and Chmielewski 2011; Myers, Taub, Morris, and Rothblum 1999). There are perhaps a couple of things informing this, notably finding a space in which other people have potentially questioned the relationship between the body and sex and gender/heteronormative body norms, and the fact that the process of reflecting on one’s identity and taking the step to come out can be experienced as affirming. When I came out and just decided it was okay to identify more masculinely and to try on men’s clothes and realize they fit my body type so well that now I actually look good in what I wear and feel good in what I wear, then not all obviously, but almost all of my body image stuff was gone. – Dylan, 27, white queer

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Yost and Chmielewski found that for some of their participants, “acceptance of their sexual orientation freed them to truly accept their bodies,” and Dylan’s comments here echo these sentiments (2011, 156). Coming out was tied to the decision to wear different clothes and present themself differently, which in turn led to greater comfort and a more positive relationship with their body. Further, Dylan identifies being involved with community sports, notably the Mabel League, as supporting their experience of body positivity. As mentioned earlier, Dylan’s upbringing involved a familial context of body shaming and ongoing pressure to participate in bodily maintenance to look a certain way and have a certain body size. It’s the people, family – it’s a huge part of their lives still at home. And it’s not a huge part of the lives of the people in my life here. It’s more talking about fat phobia and taking back the word fat and all of those kind of positive things. – Dylan, 27, white queer Moving away from home and becoming part of queer community offered a critical vantage point from which to view their family dynamics, as well as the opportunity to learn about and dialogue about other ways of being in the body and body politics. I think the reason I feel a lot more comfortable in my body now is that I’m dating a woman or at least gender queer people and … I feel like in general people I am dating have a way better understanding of the human body … they are not stuck on wanting a partner to look a certain way and just kind of broader understanding of what someone’s body, a broader appreciation of what bodies might look like. – Jamie, 25, queer/genderqueer Asian Canadian Similarly, for Jamie, coming out and becoming a part of queer community – dating genderqueer people – has involved different expectations and views on bodily appearance and relations.

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Within these narratives, the notion of an ideal that all bodies should aspire to and are expected to emulate is challenged, and in its place there is a questioning, a critical attitude, a queering of bodies. That’s the thing with rainbow hoops [basketball] – you see that whole broad spectrum of people. So even if we brought friends that are straight to watch us … [partner’s] cousin came to watch us – she’s younger – and after we’d go out and she’ll be like, “how come that one girl had facial hair” or whatever, because she’s from Barrie, she’s isolated, she’s 20, she doesn’t know. She’s not saying it in a bad way but then you have an opportunity to explain. – Amanda, 34, white lesbian Queer community sports, as effectively articulated by Amanda, provide not only a venue for diverse bodies to intermingle, but also a space that instills engagement and critical dialogue about bodily appearance and gender norms. Queer bodies “do not extend the shape of this world, as a world organized around the form of the heterosexual couple … [and therefore] inhabiting a body that is not extended by the skin of the social means the world acquires a new shape and makes new impressions” (Ahmed 2006a, 20). New shapes and new impressions are made possible in spaces where the normative appearance of bodies is queered, and this goes some way in disrupting the reproduction of the heteronormative bodily ideal. The queer community in the rec division has been having these conversations … getting the word out even around body positivity makes a difference and also sometimes having that conversation about why we are here makes a huge difference … I know some people who are interested in playing in both leagues [basketball and soccer] who don’t have what society would call the athletic body and have decided not to play because they’re worried about not being able to keep up or being embarrassed and feeling vulnerable … I think there are enough visible fat

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bodies that are so fucking good at softball … I see people move back in the field cause they’re like that person is tough, strong. – Eli, 29, white genderqueer/queer Eli’s comments reveal efforts to think critically about normative body ideals and endeavour to foster body positivity within queer community sports, about the power of the normative athletic body such that those interested self-regulate and opt not to participate, and about the importance of visibly diverse bodies in action within sporting spaces. Awareness of all of these factors is necessary for the (potential) disruption of bodily ideals to take place, even if momentarily. Visibility of diverse body sizes and types at play, sustained conversations about body positivity, and acknowledgment of the role of fatphobia and healthism on participation/membership – which bodies will come out to play – each contribute to the bodily dynamics informing queer community sports spaces. I don’t feel that pressure anymore … I feel this sense of relief almost. So sometimes I don’t feel quite ready to step back out into that fight for fat and fight for body image and stuff because I don’t want to bring up anything. And I feel like I’m letting my community down a little bit … one of the biggest things I think I’ve learned from this community is how to check in with myself and how to know if I’m being honest with myself, or if I’m doing this because I think I should. – Dylan, 27, white queer Being a member of and/or participating in queer community sports offers the potential for rethinking one’s relationship with the body, but also a forum for self-care and awareness of one’s limitations and needs. The support Dylan receives extends beyond feeling more at home in their body; it also encourages reflection on when to “step back” and focus on themselves, and when to re-enter activist mode/the fight. Technologies of the self involves not only a critical attitude about “the way things

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are” but also a response or a fostering of the impetus to respond, to act or engage differently (Lloyd 1996). Ahmed suggests that “the question of action is a question then of how we inhabit space … bodies are submerged, such that they become the space they inhabit; in taking up space, bodies move through space and are affected by the ‘where’ of that movement” (2006a, 52–3). The inhabiting of queer community – of being a moving body – affects how Dylan embodies gender and how they experience being a member of a community; there are times to be “on the front lines” and there are times to be with oneself. Sometimes I feel like I’m carrying too much weight, and I’m a little bit uncomfortable, but then I’m always questioning, “Am I uncomfortable, or is it the world uncomfortable with me?” So for me, it’s unfortunately a continual dialogue because I’m not really gonna get off my ass right now and do yoga ’cause I don’t feel like it, ya know what I mean, and that’s ’cause of where I’m at, and quite frankly, I’m loving beer every day, and I’m having a ball, and I am just aware in my life that things are always transient, and things are always changing. And I may balloon. I may shrink. I don’t really wanna think too much about it, but I feel like I’m forced to. – Sam, 36, white dyke The “continual dialogue” Sam speaks of reflects the dynamic of “what is and what could become,” moving from their own bodily discomfort to the social context their body is grounded in (Linghede and Larsson 2017). Inhabiting the queer body means turning away from the social pressures “to follow a certain course, to live a certain kind of life,” stepping out of alignment with heteronormativity, and/or interrupting the repetition that normative gender requires (Ahmed 2006a, 16–17). In Sam’s comments, there’s a critical awareness of the societal pressures to be concerned about their body size and shape, but also a resistance evident in their lack of interest to act in accordance with these pressures (Lloyd 1996). Ahmed suggests that “the ‘new’ is what is possible when what is behind us, our

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background, does not simply ground us or keep us in place but allows us to follow something other than the lives that we have already taken” (2006a, 62–3). Being in dialogue about bodily expectations and societal pressures and possessing an awareness about the body and its potential to change foster this sense of “newness.”

c o n c l u s ion This chapter poses the question of whether queer sports foster spaces of critique of the heteronormative body ideal. In my analysis I use a framework that brings together Ahmed’s (2006a) notion of queer phenomenology and Lloyd’s (1996) and Markula and Pringle’s (2006) application of Foucault’s concept of technologies of the self (1988). The themes stemming from the narratives resonated with the literature on lesbian/ queer body image and sporting bodies, but also highlighted important distinctions. While queer and trans women and individuals experience body image struggles and draw on normative health discourses about exercise and body size that reinforce the heteronormative ideal, the narratives also reveal nuances and reflections that resist and disrupt this same ideal. Being in community with other queer and trans bodies for several participants creates a space within which they could critically reflect on their own bodies in relation to gender, sex, health, and sporting norms and experience more positive embodiment. Queer community sports are found to be spaces where the possibility exists for queer and trans women and individuals to reimagine their bodies and identities, at times as a means to cope (with heterosexism, transphobia, racism, fatphobia, and ableism), but also with potential enactment of critique and engagement in a “contestation over meaning” of bodies and the “contours of identity” (Lloyd 1996, 250).

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2 Queering Gender in Play: Community Sports, Spaces for Diverse Gender Embodiments? “Gender is an effect of the kinds of work that bodies do, which in turn ‘directs’ those bodies, affecting what they ‘can do.’” (Ahmed 2006a, 60) “Disciplined athletic bodies are not ‘natural’ or ‘normal’, and there is nothing ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ about a body disciplined as feminine or masculine. Femininity and masculinity, like sport skills, are acts or performances that must be learned.” (Shogan 1999, cited in Markula and Pringle 2006, 100)

Sports are one of the remaining cultural institutions in North America that are still predominantly organized by binary sex and gender discourses, with women’s and men’s teams and women’s and men’s competitions (Travers and Anderson 2017; Knoppers and McDonald 2011; Caudwell 2007a, 2007b; Sykes 2011; Hargreaves 1994). Historically, sport has been a primary venue for constructing and reproducing masculinity, and in turn, its limited access to women has been tied to desired social roles and the requisite construction of heterosexual femininity (Knoppers and McDonald 2011; Ellison 2002; Theberge 1994). Further, the inherent intersection of gender and sexuality in sport informs how female and male athletes are characterized, such that the “the men are all straight and the women are all gay,” which Lenskyj argues “captures implicit assumptions in mainstream sport media for at least the last 60 years” (2013, 144). This assertion, however, is sport-specific; women who

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participate in typically male-dominated sports (such as rugby and hockey) are assumed to be gay, and similarly, men who participate in typically female-dominated sports (such as figure skating and synchronized swimming) are assumed to be gay. For the most part, sports are still considered a male domain, and Adams (2011) argues that the notion of “feminine sport” reinforces that illusion; the qualifier denotes the distinction and separation from real sports, the ones that receive the most attention and cultural validation. Sport, then, is a productive lens through which to examine the “dynamics of power that underlie contemporary gender relations” (Birrell and Cole 1994, 2). Beginning with a brief background of feminist and queer scholarship on gender and sexuality in sport, I move to an examination of whether queer community sports are potential spaces of disruption, disorientation, and re-fashioning of the reproduction of the heteronormative gender binary. In this work, “queer” is conceptualized as “a category in constant formation … [i]t will have to remain that which is, in the present, never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes” (Butler 1993, 228). Reflecting on key theoretical themes, I discuss narratives of gendered embodiment, limitations, and re-imaging from across various queer women’s and trans-inclusive sports leagues in Toronto and Vancouver. Scholarship on queer sports tends to focus on the “discriminatory power of homophobia” and how queer and trans athletes navigate the cisheteronormativity of sporting culture (Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 318). In this chapter, and in this book more broadly, I hope to contribute to this literature as well as to consider something different: what queer and trans sports teams and leagues offer in and of themselves, and what this offering makes possible. Individual queer sporting narratives reflect “collective personal experiences and processes [that] are informed by race, gender, and class power relations,” and speak to dominant sociocultural structures and discourses (Smith 1992 cited in Hall 1995, 13). In this chapter, I again draw on Linghede and Larsson’s (2017) postulation, “what about moments and spaces where

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something else happens, where heteronormative and gender stereotypical patterns are challenged and turned upside down” (290), and examine in what ways queer sports leagues enable or support this. In their consideration of “more livable elsewheres,” Linghede and Larsson suggest we need to “explore and figure what is contradictory, complicating and does not fit into a pre-existing, always already known order of things” (2017, 291). I want to examine what is – the current gendered dynamics of sport – and what could become – a queering of the sporting arena, wherein a queering involves or necessitates a disruption and/or interrogation of the gender/sex binary, heteronormativity, and the disciplining of bodies and social identities that intersect and inform normative constructions of gender and sexuality (Linghede and Larsson 2017). The sports teams and communities I have been engaged with are in constant formation, undergoing various twists and changes about modes of play, how they take up urban space, and, perhaps most importantly, how they relate and play together. In meetings with leagues, there is hope and a recognition that “what is behind us also allows other ways of gathering in time and space, of making lines that do not reproduce what we follow but instead create new textures on the ground” or court or ice (Ahmed 2006b, 570). In referencing the significant feminist scholarship critiquing phenomenological tradition in relation to gendered embodiment, Ahmed questions “what follows ‘creatively’ from such a critique in the sense of what that critique allows us to think and to do” (2006b, 544). In my analysis of queer embodiment of gendered sporting selves, I want to revisit Ahmed’s question and consider what follows from a critique of queer community sports, and what a critique of queer community sports may enable us to think in terms of gendered embodiment. Do queer community sports enable a space where gendered embodiment can be interrupted, disrupted, and reimagined? In a similar vein, Markula and Pringle cite Foucault’s postulation that “disciplinary power is not always successful in determining the shape of people” (Markula and Pringle 2006, 102). Engaging with a Foucauldian analysis, then, sport is recognized as a space that

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creates a plethora of identities which can reaffirm but also challenge dominant understandings of gender (Markula and Pringle 2006, 102). Sports are a venue within which gendered embodiment is both visible and invisible, as girls and women are invisible, having learnt to restrict their bodily movement and limit the spaces they inhabit, as well as being treated as insignificant by the culture that prioritizes men’s sports; but they are also hyper-visible, as their bodies are also always on display (Toffoletti, Francombe-Webb, and Thorpe 2018; Young 2005). Within queer community sports, then, are new ways of being in and with the body, ways that are not confined nor limited to the cis heteronormative gender binary, made possible?

s p o rt as g e n d e r e d s o c ial i nsti tuti on Feminist and queer sport sociologists and social theorists have long recognized the systemic and significant cultural importance of sports to normative gender inequality. As Theberge argued over two decades ago, “sport as a gendered cultural form bears significant relation to gender segregation and inequality in other realms of social life” (1994, 181). This gender segregation and differentiation/inequality are tied to definitions of femininity and masculinity as bipolar attributes and have informed who could participate in sport in general and in which sports specifically (Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 314; see also Travers and Anderson 2017). Sport has been associated with men and masculinity because of long-standing gendered interpretation of “aggression, physical and sexual expression, competitive spirit, and athletic skill as masculine” (Hall 1995, 329). The history of women’s involvement in physical activity has been challenging, for as Veri states, “athletic behaviour and interest” was seen to contrast “sharply with feminine” standards (1999, 357). This is echoed by Lenskyj, who articulates that the gender differentiation in sport is affirming of masculinity and masculine culture, and alternatively is perceived as a threat to hegemonic femininity (2013, 141). There have been significant changes within the sporting arena, as female athletes and women’s sports have multiplied substantially, alongside some growth

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of acceptance and pride in female muscularity and athletic ability, as well as socio-cultural support, such as media coverage, sponsorships, and fan base (Toffoletti, Francombe-Webb, and Thorpe 2017; Hardy 2015). There remain, however, deeply entrenched ideas about the intersection of gender, sexuality, sex, and athletic ability within Western culture that many athletes and recreational players confront and negotiate in their sporting spaces. For example, Hardy (2015) cites the Canadian women’s rugby team doing a nude calendar to raise funds and several players endeavouring to be proud of their muscularity while also appearing “heterosexy-fit” and challenging the lesbian stereotype. Sport, then, not only reflects sexed and gendered distinctions, but also is critical in the maintenance and reproduction of these binaries and the accompanying social inequality. Definitions of sport and/or cultural perceptions of what sport involves tend to focus on “tests of physical strength and endurance, rather than tests of kinesthetic ability, flexibility, coordination, or other physical attributes” (Lenskyj 1990, 237). As men tend to “out perform” women in these two areas (though there are notable overlaps), “men can maintain the illusion of athletic superiority by naming these attributes as bona fide requirements of the ideal athlete” (237–8).1 Consequently, Lenskyj argues that, by privileging certain physical capabilities over others, sport serves “the maintenance of male power and privilege” and therefore provides useful ground to unpack and analyze gender norms (240). Thus, sport often “assists in legitimating dominant gender ideologies about the dichotomous ‘nature of the sexes’” (Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 317). In addition, the embodiment of femininity involves a “particular style of bodily comportment,” whereby women learn to 1 In a similar vein, a 2017 Guardian article, “The Weaker Sex? Science That Shows Women Are Stronger than Men,” by Saini, challenges the common perception that women are the weaker sex. Key arguments in support of this challenge are that “physical strength” can be defined in different ways and that women survive better than men, granting them more robustness, toughness, and pure power.

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restrict their movement and limit the space they occupy, which has direct implications for their participation in sport (Young 2005, 31). Young argues that for women playing baseball, “the whole body is not put into fluid and directed motion, but rather, in swinging and hitting, for example, the motion is concentrated in one body part … and the woman’s motion tends not to reach, extend, lean, stretch, and follow through in the direction of her intention” (33). This difference in bodily comportment is not due to “anatomy or physiology,” according to Young, but rather results from the “particular situation of women as conditioned by their sexist oppression in contemporary society” (42). This includes the regulatory norms of heterosexuality, which involves bodies “repeating some gestures and not others” and hence becoming “twisted into shapes that enable some action only insofar as they restrict capacity for other kinds of action” (Ahmed 2004, 145). Women and girls are not socialized to be physically active in the same way boys and men are; “they are not given opportunity to use their full bodily capacities … nor are they encouraged … to develop specific bodily skills” (Young 2005, 43). This was affirmed by Jean, one of the participants, in a reflection on her childhood and love of sports, stating that it would have been “easier and more acceptable for me to play more sports as a boy … I would’ve loved to have been more into extreme sports, snowboarding, surfing, all of that, that was just not an option for me, it wasn’t offered.” Within sports, then, “rather than recognizing the existence of diverse bodies and gender performances as well as the incredible ‘variation in chromosomal and morphological sex’” (Sykes 2006, 10), the sporting arena maintains and reproduces sexist ideologies about so-called different bodily capabilities (Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 320). Thus, within sports there has been a determination of what counts as athletic ability, and what bodies and people are capable of engaging in these activities. Sports, then, draws upon biologism, the “preoccupation with biological explanations in the analysis of social situations,” to support gendered differentiation and segregation (Hall 1995, 13). What is lost or perhaps denied in the segregation of sports according to sex is that “all athletes require a complex set of

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skills that cannot be broken down in the basis of sex” (Adams 2011, 18). Further, it is rarely acknowledged that sport exists along “a continuum whereby people of varying height, weight, size, strength, age, and ability play sport and that the division of sport into gender categories has historically been for social not biological reasons” (Kane cited in Hall 1995, 18). Travers and Anderson assert that as a result, athletes “compete not according to ability categories, nor weight/size categories, but rather according to our assignment to one of only two sex categories” (2017, 1). Differences of gender and sex intersect with race, class, and ability within the sporting arena, as sports have often been used as an effective “societal management program” (Lenskyj 1986, 11), as well as a form of civilizing project, “used to emphasize the sex difference,” which Travers argues still functions to naturalize the ideology of the two-sex system (2006, 432). In the 1960s and ’70s, the primary and powerful deterrent against women’s participation and full engagement in sports and physical activity was that being physically active was associated with being aggressive and competitive, and was perceived as an inherent role conflict with being a woman/ female. This so-called role conflict was thought to foster emotional disturbances and to “masculinize” women. As several researchers document, a significant amount of research in feminist sport sociology was devoted to disproving popular myths that sports masculinize women (Hall 1988, 332) and to demonstrating the lack of evidence that female athletes experienced any sense of conflict between being an athlete and being a girl/woman (Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 313). The fitness boom of the 1980s led to increasing numbers of women engaging in physical activity, but there remained cultural limitations, notably on the types of sports and activities that were encouraged and on acceptable amounts of muscularity; exercise was very much promoted as a central means to achieve the ideal female body size (Malson 2008; Choi 2000; Johnston 1998; Bordo 1993; Hargreaves 1994). Women who stepped outside these confines and engaged in stereotypically male sports, such as rugby, wrestling, and hockey, or actively pursued bulking

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up faced pressure to assert their femininity and heterosexuality (Cooky 2018; Hardy 2015; Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 317; Hargreaves 1994). Women have nonetheless engaged in sport and physical activity, despite all of the sociocultural barriers and discrimination (Markula and Pringle 2006, 94). Early concerns about women’s involvement in sports were intricately tied to the preservation of the gender binary and heterosexuality. While society has gradually become more accepting of women’s participation in  sports, women are still expected to engage in gender-­ appropriate sports and their involvement has tended to be more community-driven or on the periphery of society (Adams 2011; Ellison 2002; Lenskyj 1986). Female athletes have negotiated, and continue to negotiate, demands to present themselves in line with normative femininity or face social sanctions, as stereotypes of the “mannish” lesbian athlete continue to have widespread negative impacts on all sportswomen, regardless of their sexual orientation (Hardy 2015; Markula and Pringle 2006; Krane, Choi, Baird, Aimar, and Kauer 2004; Lenskyj 1990). Feminist sport sociologists have analyzed how the gender binary and heteronormativity have “shaped female sport experience, specifically by classifying physical activities as feminine and therefore appropriate for females, only when they were seen to enhance heterosexual attractiveness” (Lenskyj 1990, 236). Young’s research on the embodiment of gender found that “despite considerable historical change in some aspects of gender relations, the legacy of femininity is still a constraint on women’s experiences of their bodies,” such that even though sports are becoming more open and accessible to women and girls, “their sports are often kept less physical than boys” (Whitson 1994, 356, referencing Young). Thus assumptions about women’s physical abilities and levels of aggressiveness and competitiveness remain and continue to inform sporting culture. For example, in Paradis’s (2014) study on boxing, her research notes document an interaction with a fellow male boxer wherein he asks, “are you here to fight or ‘just workin’ out?’” (94). The implied assumption is that women boxers “work out,” they do cardio, but are not there to fight.

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As referenced in the previous chapter, Hardy’s (2015) research on the Canadian women’s rugby team illustrates progress in the form of athletes’ pride in their muscularity and consequent alternative femininity, but also a reinforcement of the normative thin and fit body tied to the popularity of rugby sevens over rugby fifteens. While there has been significant change, resulting from decades of feminist and queer activism, female/women athletes still face enormous pressure to maintain and highlight their heteronormativity and to apologize for their participation in sports, especially those deemed more masculine and/or aggressive (Lenskyj 2003, 146). For some, confronting these ongoing challenges has led to forms of protectionism of women’s sports and support for sex-segregation, against trans-­ inclusion. Love argues, however, that “advocates for gender equity should be cautious in supporting the sex-segregated model of sport, given it often reproduces an ideology of men’s superiority and women’s inferiority,” in addition to being transphobic (2017, 201).

qu ee r s p o rt s : u n ta n g l ing gender? Research on lesbian and/or queer women’s sports identifies community as a primary motivation for participation in sports, particularly queer sports teams; as Lenskyj argues, sports teams are a “vehicle for social interaction” (2003). In their efforts to provide a space for community and to challenge some of the deeply entrenched gendered notions of sport (competition, skill-based, supposed role conflict between being an athlete and a woman, etc.), queer teams and leagues are often informed by feminist principles and seek to promote collegiality and fun, rather than competition/winning at all cost. Sporting spaces can also serve as “counter sites” within the broader societal realm of the heteronormative sports arena (Eng 2006; see also Ravel and Rail 2006, 2007). If participants challenge or disrupt traditional gender and heterosexual scripts through their representation, actions, and interactions with others within their sporting context, Eng argues, they can effectively foster “heterotopias of deviation” (2006, 54).

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Travers and Deri articulate that while heteronormativity is challenged along with normative gender roles, gay and lesbian sporting spaces still predominantly “organize participation … around binary sex differences” (2010, 491). Further, sex-­ segregation in sports is perceived as “a natural fundamental” at all levels, from recreational leagues up to elite and professional sports (Travers and Anderson 2017, 1). Over the years, the “single-sex tradition of these leagues is being transformed” by the increasing visibility and participation of trans, genderqueer, and gender non-binary individuals, the growth of the l g bt / queer community, and increasing societal recognition of and support for trans rights (Travers and Deri 2010). Further, they highlight that trans women and men will have different experiences, needs, and relationships with sports leagues (2010). For example, they suggest that some trans women may be supportive of but also uncomfortable with trans men playing on “women’s” teams, due to their own desire to join and be a part of a women’s community space (Travers and Deri 2010), whereas some trans men may have a history and/or prior relationship with the community league from when they identified as lesbians/women, and therefore want to maintain friendships and involvement in the league. Travers and Deri reference a radical policy shift that some softball teams are making, notably that the basis for membership criteria is shifting from an “assumed biological sameness to cultural affinity” (503–4). These changes and differences have implications for community dynamics and individuals’ sense of belonging and/ or being comfortable within various sporting spaces. While visibility, socializing, fun, and overall community development are promoted as motivators behind the formation of teams and leagues, and as reasons for individuals to join them, studies identify numerous tensions and complexities that disrupt the dominant narrative of collegiality within queer leagues and teams. In Caudwell’s research on femme-ininity/ ies within UK lesbian football teams, she argues that the lesbian body has not been imagined as femme-inine and active, and there remains discrimination against femmes about their perceived athletic abilities; the sport is still imagined as a masculine

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domain (2007a). Players on a team with a trans player reproduced essentialist and transphobic notions, such that being born a man equates to unfair advantage on the field, which also prioritizes winning and competition over fun and community (Caudwell 2007a). As referred to in the previous chapter, in Ravel and Rail’s research with young gaie athletes in Quebec, the women in their study would “dissociate themselves from the most visible elements of the lgbt community” (2006, 407). “Gaie” is the preferred identity descriptor because it is understood as being a “more feminine, less visible, less disturbing version of being lesbian” (409). Travers and Anderson (2017) note a distinction between lesbian and gay athletes and trans athletes. They argue that while lesbian and gay athletes “challenge heteronormativity within sport,” they do not critique broader social inequalities and institutions of which sport is a part nor the sex-segregation of sport, and consequently, trans athletes hold more potential for disruption of the sex/gender binary (6).

f e m in is t / q u e e r v is io n s of s port As already articulated, sports have been recognized as spaces in which the reproduction and maintenance of heterosexist gender norms occurs, but they have also been thought of as potential sites for disruption of these norms. One of the notable ways several scholars have highlighted is that sport can provide opportunities for women, gender diverse individuals, and queer and trans individuals, as well as marginalized racial groups, fat-identified people, and differently abled and disabled people to experience a sense of empowerment and strength through physical activity (Lenskyj 2003; Theberge 1994; Whitson 1994). Playing sports and engaging in physical activity can enable women and diverse socially marginalized individuals to experience and realize that “[they] can do things [they] never thought [they] could do and do them well” (Whitson 1994, 362). In turn, these experiences have the potential to intervene in the reproduction of the binary gender system and to imagine new ways of doing gender through the embodiment of skill,

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strength, and discipline (367). There exists a “vision of the potential of sport as feminist [and queer] social practice” which “stresses the importance as physical activity which expresses, embodies, and gives meaning” to individuals’ experiences (Theberge 1994, 189). This supports the distinction I made in the introduction about the differences between traditional or dominant sport and physical activity, and queer community sports; rather than a disciplinary and regulatory force and/or practice, community sports is a form of social practice that gives precedence to social relations rather than individual skill or accomplishments and seeks to foster spaces for individual and community empowerment. In addition, the construction of dominant experiences within sport has been critiqued and analyzed by feminist and queer scholars. Shogan states that “experiences of ‘female athletes’ don’t just happen”; rather, they are the result of particular “discourses and technologies that make possible these experiences and not others” (1999, cited in Markula and Pringle 2006, 99). Therefore, unpacking the discourses and technologies “that have produced experiences of ‘athlete,’ ‘female,’ and say ‘white,’ ‘able-bodied,’ or ‘heterosexual’” enables greater insight into how they intersect and differentiate and impact social groups and identities within the sporting arena (Shogan 1999, cited in Markula and Pringle 2006, 99). Further, while sports have often been the site for the reproduction of normative identities, Markula and Pringle point out that within these spaces there can also exist a “multitude of subject positions such as: losers, benchwarmers, social players, tomboys, queers, sports dropouts, cheats, the lackadaisical, unfit, unskilled, disabled, injured and of course ill-disciplined” (2006, 102). Utilizing a Foucauldian analysis, Markula and Pringle suggest that “sport creates a plethora of identities that can reaffirm but also challenge dominant understandings of gender … [and] would not necessarily deduce that sport primarily acts as a tool for the ‘ruling groups’ to maintain hegemony” (102). The literature on gender and sport is vast and my goal here has been to provide a brief review of some of the key themes for my analysis of queer sports. Notably, the significance of

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the two-gender/sex binary and corresponding default to biologism within sport has had a strong influence on the development of sport and continues to inform competition and perceptions of athletic ability. The emergence of feminist and queer research of sport critiqued the heteronormativity of the sporting arena, which led to various shifts, including greater participation of women, and to a lesser degree trans and genderqueer individuals, in a wide array of sports and the creation of community feminist and queer leagues, that have inspired a reimagination of bodily and gender possibilities. While queer and feminist sporting spaces are not free from the power of dominant gender norms nor those of race, class, and ability, as noted within several studies in queer sport sociology (Travers and Deri 2010; Ravel and Rail 2006, 2007; Caudwell 2007a, 2007b, 2003), the potential of sport and physical activity as spaces and techniques of disruption complicate its seamless reproduction. Early theorizing on gender and sport made links between gender segregation and inequality in sport to sexism and oppression in broader society. In more recent scholarship, notions of strength and empowerment experienced by queer and trans women and individuals in sports and physical activity hold the potential for disruption of the sex/gender binary and other forms of social inequality (Travers and Anderson 2017; Hardy 2015). So how does gender play out within queer sporting narratives? How is gender experienced and/or navigated in various community sport spaces? The narrative themes range from particular moments of gender discomfort and internalized homophobia within sport spaces; to the dynamics on co-ed and mixed teams (“mixed” meaning “straight and queer women”); to experiences on queer trans-inclusive leagues. As conversations unfolded, the narratives also revealed movement from spaces of sport and physical activity to that of community sports, and some of the ways individuals navigated these different spaces, from the types of clothing they wore, to the emotional and/or social dynamics they experienced, to expectations of skill and ability.

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S pac e s o f E x e rci se: N av ig at in g t h e Gaze Sporting spaces or spaces of physical activity are made up of multiple places, from the changerooms, community centres, actual gyms, fields, rinks or pitches, and oftentimes rooms within homes and/or domestic spaces, to the other locales related to physical activity, such as stores that sell footwear or athletic wear and the transit or streets taken en route to exercise/games. The social relations that inform these spaces are complex and speak to broader social dynamics; they are not just about the sport or physical activity in action (Myrdahl 2011). These places within Western society are all presumed to be heterosexual (Valentine 2000) and are designed with the heterosexual body and sex/ gender binary in mind, through explicit demarcations such as sexed bathrooms and different displays for women’s and men’s shoes, and in more general forms, as Johnston found, the pink cardio room for women and the blue weights room for men (1998). This spatial segregation informs how gender is embodied, and is tied, as Ahmed articulates, to the “kinds of work that bodies do” and as a result “what they can do” (2006a, 60). Further, she suggests that, over time, the work involved in distinguishing these spaces and bodies becomes naturalized, normalized, such that we take for granted that men do weights, that masculine bodies are more muscular, and that feminine bodies should be slim and the primary reason women do cardio exercises is to lose weight, to become smaller and take up less space. The internalization of the normalcy of this work, this segregation, this disciplining for those who are queer can cause discomfort, guilt, shame, and a sense of being in the wrong place, out of place. I’m that gay person who’s gonna be like looking at other women [in the changeroom] and I’ve felt uncomfortable in that way because of the perception of lesbians and in particular lesbians in sport … I have this idea that ­somehow we’re creepy, perverted. – Jesse, 40, white lesbian

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Right now on my hockey team I’m the only lesbian, so I make some jokes sometimes. But I don’t want, I don’t know, to make my teammates feel uncomfortable or s­omething because of like changing in front of each other. I’m always self-conscious of that. They probably don’t think twice about it, but I just don’t want to come across as being creepy or gross. – Tiffany, 26, white lesbian For Jesse and Tiffany there is an explicit expression of internalized homophobia, of being in a space and possessing queer desire as being perverted, creepy, resulting from the understood comprehension of the space as heterosexual. The sentiment of pride and community that can be experienced in queer spaces, such as pride parades or queer sports teams, is not present in spaces of heterosexuality, notably spaces of perceived intimacy, such as changerooms. Without any comment or action by other women in the changerooms, Jesse and Tiffany self-police and feel out of place. Ahmed suggests that “sexual orientation involves bodies that leak into worlds; it involves a way of orienting the body towards and away from others, which affects how one can enter different kinds of social spaces (which presume certain bodies, certain directions, certain ways of loving and living)” (2004, 145). Further, Butler (1990) and Ahmed both refer to the importance of the “role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds” (Ahmed 2006a, 2). In the above narratives, changerooms are experienced as heterosexual, specifically as a cis women’s space, and in turn queer, trans, and genderqueer individuals may feel “out of place,” that they do not belong. This then impacts what bodies are expected to enter these spaces and how they are expected to act, and shapes and/or reinforces the sexed division of changerooms along the normative binary. The effect can be one of a “straightening device” as the queer person, such as Tiffany or Jesse, experiences themselves as creepy or potentially creepy, and so modifies their actions to align themselves with “appropriate” behaviour within the space of cissexist heteronormativity (Ahmed 2006a).

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I went to the Y thinking that would be the safest place and there is a couple of women in there that were like oh my god, I wish there wasn’t so many fucking lesbians there, that made me uncomfortable so I stopped going there actually. – Janet, 46, white lesbian For Janet, the Y as a women’s space was explicitly asserted as a cis and straight women’s space, but rather than aligning herself with the required appearance and gestures, which for many queer women is not possible, she stopped p ­ articipating in the space. On one level, the rejection of conformity (again, potentially not possible for many queer, trans, or genderqueer individuals) reflects a critical attitude and an unwillingness to subject herself to further homophobia. However, it also results in a loss of space, of a potential space of physical activity and positive body/embodiment, and a further entrenchment of the space as cis and heteronormative. Janet copes with the homophobia by removing herself from the space, which, again, while safe and a form of asserting self-care, does not disrupt the space nor lead to greater personal freedom (Markula 2003). Trying to navigate the discomfort of feeling “out of place” within exercise spaces becomes localized and embodied for many queer and trans women and individuals, as they feel that it is their bodies, desires, sexuality, and gender representation that are the seeming cause of the discomfort, rather than the exclusionary spatial practices of heteronormative space. For Jude, a forty-year-old working-class trans man, going to gyms, yoga, or spin classes has never been a strong interest because in general these types of exercise “do not compute with me,” and he prefers instead to be active outdoors. But he notes that this preference is informed by the socio-spatial dynamics of these spaces, stating, “the bathroom situation is always really intimidating, like do I want to show up in workout clothes and then go home sweaty, and get really cold, all those things, like those are lots of barriers.” While there are notable differences in their narratives, both Janet and Jude experience a loss of access to community spaces of exercise because their bodies

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and selves are deemed as not belonging and/or have not been thought of in the design of the space. For Chloe, a thirty-four-year-old white queer woman, her presence and existence within the changerooms and gym space is perceived as threatening or at the very least confusing: “This is not my world. And like I threaten them, scare them, make them confused.” While Chloe talks about the toll that “feeling out of place” takes on her ability to be in exercise spaces and enjoy physical activity, the above comment signals the burden she also carries for others: discomfort, confusion, even fear. This burden can be described as a queer apologetic, which also applies to Jesse’s and Tiffany’s comments: a sense of needing to apologize for the discomfort they might instill in others by simply being in a space. Broad suggests the “female apologetic” “might be understood as an assimilationist tactic of resistance where women and girls are willing to conform to traditional trappings of femininity and heterosexuality simply in order to play the game” (2001, 198). A queer apologetic in the instances above appears to function as a tactic to navigate heterosexual (sporting) spaces, either through modifying one’s behaviour to appear less obviously queer, to diminish confusion and discomfort, or by removing oneself as both an apologetic and a protective action. Confusion can also reflect a lack of recognition, an unwillingness to see or register a body or representation of gender that does not correspond to heteronormative bodily gender codes. Queer bodies are not expected or anticipated in most spaces, but notably in sports or exercise spaces, and are often not made room for or are encouraged to be brought in line, to make them “fit” into the space better. This was the case for Sam, who, upon arriving at her usual yoga studio early, asked about shorts they had for sale and the female attendant held up a pair from the “women’s” section. Look, I’m wearing a pair of shorts and a singlet, this is as feminine as it gets, and it’s not … Don’t feminize me, I don’t like being feminized by clothing or names or ­anything, so even that –, she can see me, I’m coming

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in here. I have a fucking stupid haircut that’s not, ya know … as normal. And you’re already awkward with me, and then you pull out this stupid feminizing outfit, like, there’s a disconnect. Like maybe she would’ve thought I’d be offended to pull out a pair of men’s shorts. – Sam, 36, white dyke In her articulation of a queer phenomenology Ahmed asks, “what kind of objects do bodies tend toward, are within reach that make possible certain tendencies, and how do such tendencies shape what bodies tend toward?” (2006a, 58). For the attendant, offering up “feminine”-style shorts is reflective of what is within reach, the tendency towards appropriate bodily presentation and the corresponding exercise for which the shorts are required and which helps to shape the body according to the norms of heteronormative femininity. Despite perhaps recognizing that Sam does not embody normative femininity, the tendency remains for the attendant to orient towards “what is within reach” within the broader context of how bodies are, should appear and be oriented within the studio space. Ahmed states that “bodies as well as objects take shape through being oriented toward each other, as an orientation that may be experienced as the cohabitation or sharing of space” (2006b, 552). In the yoga studio entrance, the “cohabitation or sharing of the space,” rather than reflecting an orienting toward each other, leads to a disruption, a stepping out of heteronormative alignment by Sam as well as an effort by the attendant to bring Sam “back into line.” Navigating exercise spaces for many women and genderqueer individuals can involve emotional labour, to reinforce to oneself upon entry and during one’s workout that one is entitled to be in the space, that one’s body belongs, and to prepare oneself for the sexualizing gaze of men that the space is shared with. So if I were to go work out and it’s a regular hour and there’s more guys than girls, obviously I’ll go in there, you know … feeling the pressure from men … Just thinking, you know, I can do this, you don’t have to stare me down,

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I know how to lift weights, I know how to work this machine. You don’t need to come over and say hey, maybe you should do it this way … Yeah. Or even the fact that yes, I’m wearing short shorts and a tank top that’s revealing, like it’s hot in here, I don’t want to have to cover myself up, don’t look at me in that way kind of thing, that gaze. And also the other aspect of like I’m gay so I don’t even care. – Kate, 26, Chinese Canadian queer It is notable that Kate comments on her own clothing, defending her right and justifying to some degree her choice of clothing as appropriate due to the temperature of the gym. But as Sam experienced, even if the gym were not hot, certain bodies are expected to dress in certain ways so they are intelligible as a “woman” or as a “man,” illustrating ways that bodies are still highly regulated within the sporting arena. Travers (2014) cites the history of various forms of regulation and policing that women and trans athletes have been and continue to be subjected to in the service of reinforcing and validating the binary two-sex model in sport. Clothing is a tool of visual belonging within a sport space, as wearing the right clothing and having the right gear secures one’s acceptance, and consequently, the lack of accessible athletic clothing poses a significant barrier for those with bodies unintelligible to the athletic fit body norm (Chase 2008). Kate’s disclaimer, “I’m gay so I don’t even care,” tells the gym voyeur “I am not what you think and am not interested in your attention,” but her narrative simultaneously reflects that her body is marked as not belonging, is not perceived as knowledgeable within this male space, is subject to male attention, and is under the male gaze. But Kate occupies the space, potentially disrupting gendered expectations as she uses the machines, demonstrates her expertise moving through the space as one “in the know,” and negotiates the embodiment of her gender and sexual identity as appropriate for her and for the bodily practices and spaces she inhabits. Oh, like in the kind of CrossFit spaces I’m pretty feminine presenting and I feel like that gives me a certain freedom

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and ease to move through the space. But then the juxtaposition of that with being able to lift a fuck tonne of stuff is kind of what I’m interested in, like just all of the – yeah, I like kind of unexpected juxtapositions. – Jordan, 31, white queer As referred to previously, Lloyd argues that “self-fashioning when allied to critique, can produce sites of contestation over the meanings and contours of identity, and over the ways in which certain practices are mobilized” (1996, 250). Jordan possess an awareness about how her feminine presentation enables a particular movement through the gym space – that there are particular expectations of how a feminine body will act, specifically how much it can lift and how strong it is, which she then wholeheartedly disrupts. There is a pleasure from this “juxtaposition” that can be gleaned from Jordan’s narrative that furthers the “contestation” over the meaning and contours of feminine identity and the ways femininity is mobilized within the gym space in that moment. In high school I was the “butchiest” girl in the school, but then I’d go to judo, I was just middle of the pack … [one competitor had an] incredible six pack … very masculine shape … but for me, from my perspective in looking at her, regardless of clothing or anything else, you would look at her and there was no doubt in my mind that … she had a female face. And she was a big woman. But she looked feminine to me and reminded me of myself a little bit. I wasn’t anywhere near as ripped as she was. But similar haircut and stuff like that. And it sort of gave me a bit of peace in the sense that it’s like okay I’m not this freak. – Ainsley, 31, white butch In Johnston’s study of gym spaces, she found that “hegemonic powers operate within the gym environment to actively produce and reproduce difference as a key strategy to create and maintain spatial divisions” (1998, 248). While Ainsley’s body, and that of the competitor she spoke of, would typically be articulated as “out of place” within the gym, being too muscular for

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the heteronormative feminine ideal, in occupying the space their bodies disrupt gender binary and spatial divisions, and make possible a different reading of bodies and genders. Disruption or interruptions may be momentary, fleeting, but they nonetheless are significant, as Ainsley expressed, for they can be experienced as validating and grounding for others. In her essay “Lesbians in Space,” Probyn questions whether the expression of desire between two femme women in a straight bar may rearticulate the male homosocial space into a “sexed space” and whether, in this way, the lesbian body/ies and their mutual desire can be thought of as productive, producing “alternative conceptions of space” (1995b, 81). She argues that “while their kiss cannot undo the historicity of the ways in which men produce their space as the site of production of a gender (Woman) for another (men), the fact that a woman materializes another woman as her object of desire does go some way in rearticulating that space” (81). The object of desire, then, has impact on the performance of gender, but also on the context and space in which it is enacted and expressed. The other judo competitor, the object of Ainsley’s attention and arguably collegial desire, goes some way in “rearticulating” the gym space, what feminine bodies can look like, and Ainsley’s own sense of being in her body and embodying femininity. Sports spaces and spaces of physical activity are predominantly heteronormatively gendered and sexed, such that certain bodies are expected in the distinct and segregationist spaces, and are expected to look, act, and respond in “appropriate” ways according to the sex/gender binary. Correspondingly, as Ahmed states, “being oriented in different ways does matter precisely because of how spaces are already oriented, which make some bodies feel in place, or at home, and not others” (2006b, 570). As the above narratives illustrate, queer, trans, and genderqueer individuals negotiate these spatial orientations and bodily expectations in various ways, from modifying and attempting to limit their queer visibility, to removing themselves from some spaces, to occupying space and asserting their knowledge and physical ability in other spaces and/or at different moments. To engage in sports, to move in and around

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sporting spaces, then involves practices that demand immense emotional work and a sense of risk, which needs to be acknowledged as part of the physicality of sporting culture for queers.

m ix in g it up Moving from the generalities of the broad spectrum of sporting or athletic spaces to more specific locales of particular teams, the following narratives address co-ed and mixed (straight cis women and queer and trans women) experiences that illustrate gender and sexuality at play, on the defence, and out of bounds. Ahmed suggests that “the field of heterosexual objects is produced as an effect of repeating a certain direction, which takes shape as ‘the background’ and which might be personalized as ‘my background,’ as that which allows me to arrive and to do things” (2006b, 558). What becomes/is the gendered “background” within sports spaces? What frames the spaces wherein bodies come to move with and around other bodies? And how do queer, trans, and genderqueer bodies navigate this background, a background that perhaps at some point was “personalized as ‘my background,’” as familiar, but now is made visible, brought to the fore? So playing in that league, definitely I feel … definitely feel different. Because when I do play in that league, it’s mostly mixed teams. They’re like co-ed teams. And so a lot of people assume because I’m a girl and I have long hair … I’m not super jacked, like very built. I do look athletic but I … they kind of doubt my abilities a little bit. Yeah, but usually I’m the youngest one, so they’re always like, she’s fit, okay she can keep going. – Kate, 26, Chinese Canadian queer Part of the gendered background within co-ed sports is a reading of women’s bodies as less capable, less athletic, than men’s bodies. As numerous feminist and queer sports sociologists have illustrated, “feminine” has not been equated with being active and strong (Caudwell 2007a), but further to this is the equation

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of certain physical capabilities as defining of the ideal athlete and as inherently tied to male/masculine bodies (Lenskyj 1990; Hall 1995; Sykes 2006; Travers 2006; Knoppers and McDonald 2010; Hardy 2015). In effect, “playing with men involved the hard work of combating sexism or simply having less fun” (Travers 2006, 442). This interpretation and bias becomes the “gendered background” of the sporting arena and informs expectations about players and the rules of play within co-ed leagues, such as requiring two women on the floor, as noted below by Leslie. I have no interest in playing co-ed basketball … because I don’t wanna play basketball with men. But I don’t think that has anything to do with them being men and more to do with how men play basketball and are taught to play basketball, which is a very different way than I play basketball … They just kind of don’t ever pass the ball and they also don’t play defense. Those are two things that I do … I find the way gender is treated in co-ed leagues a bit weird, like you have to have two women on the floor at a time because clearly they’re worse, you know what I mean? I just find it disgusting. – Leslie, 30, white queer/dyke/soft butch Leslie’s articulation of gender dynamics in co-ed leagues and her classification of them as “weird” brings the gendered background to the forefront, making visible what has been normalized. Leslie also claims her own way of playing basketball and differentiates it from how men typically play, which functions to disrupt or challenge the dominant construction of ideal basketball players as male/masculine. This narrative highlights that there is not one way to play basketball and that there are diverse skills that can inform how the game unfolds. In addition, Leslie’s comments reference how “men are taught to play basketball,” which can be extended to consider how men have been taught to be physically active and to embody masculinity. Young articulated how women and girls learn to embody gender, to restrict their bodies, limit their physical extension, and

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take up minimal space (2005). In turn, men and boys learn to embody masculinity, to extend their bodies, take up space, and assert their physicality. With respect to sport, Jesse captures the differential gendered embodiment, stating, “everybody’s experience is different but there’s a sense of entitlement that men just have when it comes to sport.” There are instances where this is changing, laying important stepping-stones for a socio-­ cultural shift, notably the 2019 fifa Women’s World Cup and Megan Rapinoe in particular (Reiheld 2019), as well as within Hardy’s (2015) research on women rugby players who embrace their muscularity and take up space within the sporting and public arena. Co-ed and mixed leagues for many queer players were experienced, as Leslie puts it, as “very straight or seemingly very gender conforming,” and there was an awareness of differences of gender expression in terms of hairstyles, clothing, and forms of bodily maintenance, including make-up and hair removal. You know, I just am who I am but I do think … it’s interesting probably if I went out with the mixed league to a bar I would probably maybe wear that lower cut shirt ­versus I’d be okay going to Rainbow Hoop’s thing wearing a sweat shirt, and that wouldn’t matter. But again, I think it’s the cliquey, judgey girls on the other … like “Why is she wearing a sweat shirt to a bar,” you know, because I’m not feminine enough or whatever. – Amanda, 31, white lesbian Navigating heteronormative cisgendered spaces for queer, trans, and non-binary individuals can result in coping mechanisms, such as choosing a low-cut t-shirt over a sweatshirt in order to make oneself less visible and to attempt to be part of the assumed and appropriately deemed background of sportsrelated spaces. But these efforts at fitting into heteronormative gender expectations are in the minority for Amanda and inform her interest and dedication to queer community sports; there is more effort to get to know fellow players and to socialize and support the league, versus the “show up and play” format of

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the mixed leagues she is a part of. There is often a negotiation, an effort to balance between what the different sporting spaces offer. Many participants spoke of co-ed or mixed leagues being more competitive, so there were opportunities to improve their skill and overall game, but the pressure or heightened awareness of gender norms and heterosexism often meant they were less social with the teammates and less invested in mixed leagues. The other one is much more competitive. Yeah, so it’s really good in that way, but it can be weird being the only ostensibly queer person … like I’m not going to feel uncomfortable walking into this space [queer league], whereas on Mondays [mixed league] it’s like “God, I’m so tired of being the only one.” – Leslie, 30, white dyke/soft butch/queer As the introductory quote by Shogan (1999, cited in Markula and Pringle 2006) articulates, feminine and masculine athletes and bodies are not natural; they have to be taught, they have to learn to embody gendered physicality and skill, and what the “appropriate” rules of engagement are within sporting spaces. But as evidenced within the narratives, there are also various forms of intervention, questioning, and disruption of these lessons and rules; there is an assertion of other ways to play, poignant reference to privileged entitlement, and a working against assumptions about ability based upon bodily appearance.

g e n d e r w it h in q u e e r leagues “If orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence, of how we inhabit spaces, and who or what we inhabit spaces with.” (Ahmed 2006b, 543)

For queer, trans, and genderqueer individuals, how are queer community sports spaces inhabited, and who and in what ways are they inhabited with? The marked distinction between mixed or co-ed sports and queer community sports, as Leslie and

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Amanda spoke to above, revealed different ways of inhabiting sports spaces, different ways of being and engaging in physicality with others. Competitive sports don’t really jive with the way that I’d like to do, it’s not the reason that I like to play sports, and the teams I was playing on … it was really a cliquey groups of girls … I didn’t really care about winning and I thought, oh if you’re having a great time, what’s the point, you know? now on queer/trans inclusive leagues, it’s super casual, some self-officiated, and way to get to know people. – Alex, 27, white genderqueer The enjoyment of being active and meeting new people are the motivators for Alex to play on a sports team; a focus on winning and being part of a “clique” were notable deterrents. Socializing and fun are common characterizations of queer and women’s community sports leagues, informed by feminist principles that actively seek to disrupt the traditional sporting mentality of winning at all costs and sentiments such as “no pain, no gain” (Lenskyj 2003; Caudwell 2007a). Rather than battling against the limits of one’s body, mentally and physically, which often involves enduring significant pain and repeated injury, the focus is on pleasurable and positive physicality, and endeavouring to embody gender differently; to experience one’s body as good enough, as strong, and as capable. Oh, it’s been a good spectrum of everybody. Honestly, there is – and this is like my thing too – I go and walk in and I’m like – “wait a minute, you and you, oh my God, I would never have known.” And it trips me up a little because I’m like … I catch myself doing it too. Like if a girl comes in with make-up, long hair and heels, I’m like “Are you here to watch or to play?” “I’m here to play.” I’m like, “Oh.” I don’t like trip on her for her gear and I’m like “Whoa, yay, you’re ready to go, all right, but you’re totally girly” and that’s still very shocking to me. – Jasmine, 28, Black bisexual

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Linghede and Larsson’s postulation of “what is” and “what could become” is premised on a consideration or examination of “what is contradictory, complicating and does not fit into a pre-existing, always already known order of things” (2017, 291). Jasmine’s commentary reveals, in a similar way to Jordan’s earlier juxtaposition, a form of female basketball player or athlete more generally that complicates the normative relationship between gender expression and athleticism (as found within Caudwell’s 2007a research on femme-inine football players). It is notable that Jasmine’s reflection can be read in a similar fashion to Paradis’s example of the male boxer who asks a female boxer in the gym, “are you here to fight or work out?” What is different in the queer sports example above is that Jasmine engages in reflection about why the association of long hair, heels, and make-up with being an athlete is still shocking for her; the onus is on her and her assumptions, not the other person being in the wrong place or lacking the ability to play. There is, then, the potential for different ways of being within queer sports, as these spaces enable possibilities for unlearning normative gender dynamics and for bringing into play different attributes and relations of bodies, genders, and skill/athleticism. Because I look more, slightly more feminine than androgynous, I get worse opportunities … But within what is quite a large queer community, it’s become a dynamic that at this moment in time, and in most queer community circles, gender neutral and androgyny is more, I don’t know, it connects more to kind of coolness and gets more play in certain spaces … I think it does sometimes mean that things happen like I don’t finish, I always get sucked out of games. – Payton, 26, white queer I do get a lot of “You don’t look gay,” and “Are you sure you’re gay?” I’m pretty sure at this point … And I find that kind of exhausting. For a community that usually accepts people for who they are because I happen to

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conform, and that’s who I am. I went through little phases. I tried cutting my hair off, and I tried looking androgynous. I was so uncomfortable. – Amelia, 27, white lesbian Spaces of unlearning and possibility also come up against dominant gendered and bodily assumptions, as evidenced by Payton and Amelia, wherein certain bodies are still constructed as more capable, more “gay,” and more at home within queer community. There are several potential reasons for bias against femmes on sports teams and within queer space, including biphobia, internalized sexism that reads female bodies as less skilled and physically strong, and a reading of femme as not disruptive, political, and/or queer enough, being too heteronormatively conforming, as Amelia commented and which Bell et al. (1994) have argued. Similar to Caudwell (2007a), normative gender/ sex readings of bodies are also extended by some to trans bodies, or bodies thought to be trans, notably by cis queer women. That’s a tough argument because, again, I just look at what’s fair. I mean, if you were once a woman and you transitioned, I’m sorry, but you’re taking the hormones. It’s the only thing separates a woman from being a man – you’re injecting it into yourself so you’re going to have an advantage and it’s tough. To me, there almost needs to be an entire new league. I mean, you can say that’s harsh but how do you judge that, right? Essentially that’s cheating. – Andrea, 33, white gay One thing that surprises me is the teams with trans men on them, you hear people making comments like that’s not fair, because they’re like, the two men that I’m thinking about, that I’m aware of on the teams, and then last year we had a trans woman, were really really fast, really fast, and like generally tended to be like harder hitters, because you know like scientifically speaking they had that extra testosterone and so and people would say things like oh that’s not fair, how can they play we shouldn’t let them

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play, and I heard that like maybe three or four times, and it just shocked me because the whole league is not about winning, like who cares if you win. – Carmen, 27, white bisexual/lesbian The issue that prevents them from opening the doors to trans folk because they are, whether they’re now femalebodied or transitioning to male body, they still have an advantage because of the testosterone. For me, that has no issue. I’d rather play with somebody who’s super strong and physical, but I don’t want to play with the ­attitude of entitlement. So they were never socialized like men. And not bashing men at all. It’s just, like, that’s been my lived experience. – Jesse, 40, white lesbian I have put these three quotes together, to be read sequentially, as they form a dialogue, a continuum of interpretations, biases, and beliefs about bodies, sex, physicality, and community sports. The narratives begin with Andrea, who focuses on “biologism,” on the perceived role of hormones within the normative construction of bodies according to the two-sex model. When bodies and people who do not fit this model are presented, Andrea’s solution, the only way to be “fair,” is to create a new and separate sporting league. From here, Carmen’s narrative pushes against this notion of “fairness” to critique the focus on competitiveness and winning as being in direct contradiction of the league’s policy on fun and inclusivity. While still referencing the notion of physical advantage based on scientific readings of bodies and sex/hormones, Carmen deems this knowledge irrelevant and unfair grounds to bar some people from playing in the queer league. Finally, Jesse’s distinction, which was discussed above, between physicality and strength versus learned gendered behaviour takes the discussion away from biologism, to a discussion of privilege, sexism, and discrimination. Entitlement – to space, to more play time, to perceptions of greater ability and strength – is directly challenged by Jesse here. Being strong and

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physically skilled are characteristics that Jesse argues are a part of playing sports, and therefore are not reasons to exclude someone, but instead she calls attention to ways gender is enacted that can have, and have had, exclusionary impact for her. As already referenced, Sykes asserts that “rather than recognizing the existence of diverse bodies and gender performances as well as the incredible ‘variation in chromosomal and morphological sex’” (2006, 10, cited in Knoppers and McDonald 2010, 320), the sporting arena maintains and reproduces cissexist ideologies about so-called different bodily capabilities. In Travers’s research, softball players wanted their leagues to be inclusive but there was uncertainty about what that meant, and “they also expressed discomfort about including players who ‘look like men” (2006, 442). Players acknowledged that there are lesbian women/dykes who “look like men,” revealing that while they are familiar with individuals “who confound the gender binary, most women take the salience of the two-sex system completely for granted” (442). Within the above narratives, there is support for the reproduction of cissexist and biologist ideas about bodies and athleticism, but there are also challenges to this status quo, other ways to interpret physicality and the rules of engagement within queer community sports.

e x e rc is e a n d n e g oti ati ng g e n d e r   id e n ti ty Being in the body, moving, and experiencing one’s physicality for many queer and trans women and genderqueer and gender non-binary individuals often involves confronting and negotiating heteronormative gender norms about bodily appearance. As discussed in the previous chapter, exercise and physical activity have significant impact on individuals’ relationship with their bodies and the embodiment of gender. In the narratives that close this chapter, I consider how exercise informs gender identity, in ways that are tied to the body and body image but are also distinct and highlight important queer facets of the gendered dynamics of exercise.

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Yeah I would [be] really afraid of getting a big chest so I would say that was a very strong motivator [to exercise]. Yeah I was really happy doing eight practices a week because I knew that I would not get any excess body fat and I would probably … have a smaller chest … yeah like I wouldn’t want to gain weight cause I know I would get a bigger chest so yeah I guess it is. – Jamie, 25, queer/genderqueer Asian Canadian For many cis-identified heterosexual and femme women, exercise can hold a complicated relationship, offering bodily empowerment alongside pressure to conform to heteronormative demands to maintain a thin and fit-looking body (Carter 2011; Choi 2000; Theberge 1994; Bordo 1993). Ahmed, in considering the significance of sexuality to bodily orientations and how individuals take up space, suggests that “the differences between how we are oriented sexually are not only a matter of ‘which’ objects we are oriented toward, but also how we extend through our bodies into the world” (2006a, 67–8). In this way there is the potential for exercise to become a means for queer, trans, and genderqueer bodies to extend into the world in new ways, enabling new forms and ways of experiencing the body. Narratives of trans, queer, and genderqueer individuals reveal that exercise can be intimately tied to how the body is experienced, appears, and is read. For Jamie, exercise is directly related to their desired bodily shape and gender identity as it is a means to maintain a smaller body frame and androgynous appearance. Weight loss or body size maintenance for Jamie is not about adherence to the demands of normative femininity, but is rather a way to ensure that they do not develop a bigger chest, which would threaten their genderqueer identity. Yeah, so that used to give my main workout, I used to do mostly stretches and stuff, I never do intense workouts because I’m biologically male and so if my body responds to that in a certain way I can look even more masculine and so fat will always look more feminine than muscle. To be a muscular woman is in itself challenging, so to be

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[a] muscular transgender woman could take away very easily the level of passibility that I have. So I never engage, so the most intense I did was I did a couple marathons and at one time there was, one time I used to jog very ­regularly, I used to do five kilometers three times a week. So to keep up with my fitness and my passion for dance and that’s the extent of where my exercise is, but I never veered other than, I’d like to say lifting weights or going to the gym, uh-uh, no way. – Adele, 22, Trinidadian-Canadian trans woman Exercise for Adele is a cautious engagement, as her ability to be recognized as a woman is threatened by the perception of “too much” muscularity. Fat here is perceived as having a positive impact on gender and bodily appearance as it reaffirms Adele’s feminine identity, whereas exercise and consequent muscularity are the potential threats. There is a sense of disappointment in Adele’s narrative, a desire to lift weights or go to the gym more, but due to continued cis- and heterosexist ideologies about bodies and their corresponding normative gendered appearance, she has navigated forms of exercise that enable a feminine body. The acknowledgment that “a muscular woman is in itself challenging” reveals the extent of bodily discipline and regulation all women are expected to conform to, but also the increased pressure and societal risk for trans women due to transphobia and cissexism. These experiences of the interrelation of gender and physicality offer new insights into the body image and queer sport sociology literature, as they reveal both limitations to engagement with particular types of sports and motivations to engage in some forms of exercise over others; the differential impact on muscularity, bodily fat deposits, and level of intensity are all implicated in the expression and embodiment of gender. As a queer woman who has experienced violence, both because I am a woman and because I am queer, feeling strong and feeling like I am capable is really important to me, just feeling like I can leave the house basically. Yeah,

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like right now I’m injured and the thought having to negotiate public space and public transit makes me feel really vulnerable and really upset … Nothing about being strong would have ever prevented any violence that I’ve experienced before, and I don’t think that women should ever be … women to be beefcakes in order to prevent violence that happens in the world, like never do I feel like that; nor do I even really feel like it would do anything. But it’s really important to me to, well, for me, I’ve come to equate feeling strong with feeling safe. – Jordan, 31, white queer Exercise and physical activity are tools to cope with, process, and heal from trauma for many queer, trans, and genderqueer individuals (van Ingen 2011). Exercise in these contexts moves outside of the limited box typically allowed for women as a means to embody the normative gender body ideal (Bordo 1993, 1997; Theberge 1994; Whitson 1994) and instead becomes a practice of affirming one’s gender, a means to divert away from cis and heterosexual pathways and to follow a new pathway of queered embodiment (Ahmed 2006). Although Jordan states that becoming strong and more physically capable would likely not have prevented any of the violence she experienced, the embodiment of strength has been critical to her identity as a queer person and woman. Exercise then connects to a sense of internal physicality, a way of being in the world and being in the body that disrupts normative ideals of femininity as passive, weak, and vulnerable. The critical attitude Jordan possesses towards her social positionality and experiences of violence informs the action she takes with respect to how she engages with physical activity, embodies gender, and responds to societal pressure and oppression (Markula and Pringle 2006; Lloyd 1996). But then once I started doing drag shows … the shows were really what made my self-esteem go back up, because you don’t have to be a certain body type to be drag, you can be any size. And as long as you’re fabulous, nobody

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cares. And especially in Regina, we have really amazing plus-sized drag queens … But taking this new drag persona with me I can do anything. I feel very powerful and very – I mean nobody messes with a fat girl in a miniskirt. That is like my mantra of life. Like, nobody does. – Darcy, 26, Two Spirit genderqueer homo-romantic asexual Darcy’s involvement in queer leisure activities with the drag community is empowering and fosters an acceptance of self in ways that has made possible new ways of being in the body and new relationships with gender. In the drag scene, Darcy quite tenuously negotiates their gender identity. This is because growing up, femininity and identifying as feminine were not easy or comfortable forms of embodiment, but their efforts to keep femininity at bay were thwarted with the onset of puberty and the rapid and large development of breasts. The feeling of “losing my battle towards masculinity” led to low self-esteem and a continuing struggle with self-acceptance. Within drag spaces, Darcy found that a key tenet of performance is the reinterpretation of femininity as attitude, which became an invaluable defense mechanism for navigating dominant heterosexual and white settler spaces. As a result, performing in drag shows has opened up a space for Darcy to be in their body and perform femininity in ways that are pleasurable and differentiated from the heteronormative constraints of their youth.

c o n c l u s ion What is the relationship between gender and exercise? What could it become? How are sports and spaces of physical activity experienced by queer, trans, and genderqueer individuals, and how could they be experienced? If gender, like becoming an athlete, has to be learnt, embodied, how do spaces inhibit or enable diverse gendered possibilities? Do or can queer sports provide a different starting point, a different dwelling place for diverse bodies to interact, unlearn heteronormativity and the sex/gender binary, and step off old and worn paths and onto new pathways of meaning and being? In considering queer

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spaces and possibilities, Ahmed states, “if the spaces we occupy are fleeting, if they follow us when we come and go, then this is as much a sign of how heterosexuality shapes the contours of inhabitable or livable space as it is about the promise of queer. It is because this world is already in place that queer moments, where things come out of line, are fleeting. Our response need not be to search for permanence but to listen to the sound of the ‘what’ that fleets” (2006b, 565). As queer will always be in flux, as necessitated by the political and social demands of the moment and/or context (Butler 1993), a call to focus on the “what” that fleets is significant. Moments of disruption, of questioning or unlearning, should not be disregarded because they are fleeting – though the immense power of what is “already in place” leads to that sentiment at times. However, the narratives suggest many openings and reimaginings – of bodies, of bodily capabilities, of physicality, and of forms of embodiments of gender – that are productive in the disruption of the seamless “falling in line” with heteronormativity and the sex/gender binary, and in the fostering of other pathways and spaces to inhabit and journey upon. This chapter has illustrated how exercise spaces are informed by dominant gender norms and heterosexuality, but also how they are reimagined as a result of diverse bodies inhabiting space, conscious reflection on bodily capabilities, and doing gender differently. Queer spaces matter as they foster different conversations about bodies, sex/ gender, and skill, and hence offer the possibility for disruption of normative assumptions. Further, the interrelation of gender, the body, and sport/exercise is embodied and expressed in different and more diverse ways; sport and exercise are not only about being “healthy,” recreation, and body management in accordance with heteronormativity and health norms, but rather are engaged with in support of a range of gender identities, experiences, and physicalities.

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3 Queer Sports: Re-imaging Space, Community, and Inclusivity “Where enactments are the focus, not categories of discrimination, their temporality and spatiality dependency renders visible the illusion of stable heterosexual space, whilst recognising its continued manifestation (in part, and paradoxically, through an absence of naming).” (Browne 2007b, 1012)

“Differences in how one directs desire, as well as how one is faced by others, can ‘move’ us and hence affect even the most deeply engrained patterns of relating to others … [Queer] desires enact the ‘coming out’ story of coming to, of arriving near other bodies; as a contact that makes a story and opens up other ways of facing the world.” (Ahmed 2006a, 101–5)

In an episode in the second season of the Netflix show Queer Eye, they make over a trans man shortly after his top surgery. Tan, one of the Fab Five, sits down with Skyler, the recipient of the makeover, and asks “questions he’s been dying to ask” trans people. I mention this scene because in it Tan acknowledges his ignorance and challenges the notion that as a member of “queer community” he will know someone who is trans, be a good support and ally for the trans community, and/or understand the significance of bodily changes and the process of transitioning more generally. The openness and admission

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about the complexities, diversities, and ignorance that inform community are important and disrupt the oft-assumed unity imposed on queer community. As with other conversations around queer and/or lesbian community, this chapter – and this book – seek to engage with multiple and at times competing desires, threads, and bodies that inform community, and in this way “[t]he discussion here is not intended to be representative” of queer (sporting) community; “in fact, it questions whether such representation is possible” (Cvetkovich and Wahng 2001, 131). This chapter will engage with notions of community, specifically to probe the question of whether queer community sports has disruptive potential toward gender and intersecting norms still fundamental to the framing of mainstream sports. What does queer community look like, and what could it become? Inherent in these questions are consideration for what “queer” means, and what it means within community sport spaces. How is a queering taking shape within these spaces, and what impact does this queering or these forms of queering have on broader heteronormative constructions of sport and/or norms informing exercise? Queer community sport spaces can be a welcome refuge from, and can offer resistance to, compulsory heterosexuality and cissexism as well as being places of comradeship and comfort. As Caudwell (2007a) articulated, given the heteronormativity of athletics and sport culture, queer teams provide a sense of community. Sporting spaces provide “social space for contact and community that is outside of bars and bathhouses” and consequently extend queer community beyond the confines of the “gay village” (van Ingen 2004, 257). This book involves considering how bodies, genders, identities, and notions of health are being reimagined and embodied differently, and the implications for the changing terrain of queer community. Many of the community leagues across various types of sports in Toronto and Vancouver are in the midst of changing from being lesbian/women’s spaces to queer and trans/genderqueer/gender non-binary–inclusive spaces (and/or are having these conversations), and in the process, as new bodies interact and imbue new meanings into community

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spaces, what it means to be queer, to queer space, and to engage in queer politics will continue to change. To begin this chapter, I give some context for queer/lesbian women’s sports, drawing on research from queer sport sociology, some of which I touched on in earlier chapters, but will now go into in more depth. Most of the chapter focuses on conversations with league collective members, to give a sense of how queer community sport is currently in play. Community responsibility and strategies to that effect are highlighted, as well as the struggle to enact and sustain commitments in voluntary and sizable community spaces. In closing, I offer some thoughts on community, and suggest that the ideal of community may in fact be hindering efforts to build and sustain community and propose that queering this ideal has possible disruptive potential for the sporting world. Thinking about what it means to queer sport spaces, I draw on several conceptualizations of queer that provide a useful frame. As already referenced, I draw on Butler’s (1993) assertion that queer is a category in constant formation; as something that is not fixed or stable, queer goes beyond oftentimes more essential notions of lesbian and gay identity politics to a “politics of difference, resistance, and challenge” (Caudwell 2007b, 2), by way of engaging in “a critique of claims to solid or naturalized identities” (Davidson 2013, 58). But further than this, queer “engages with uncomfortable places and spaces of flux, fluidity, and instability while grappling with [the] tenuous nature of inclusion, (un)belonging, (dis)location, and home” (Dryden and Lenon 2016, 5). In these ways, queer informs my analysis of community sports as being sexualized space(s) that are “continually becoming” (Browne 2007b, 996) and are in constant dialogue, instability, and discomfort around the bodies that make up these spaces, how they interact, how they navigate intersectional forms of oppression, and how they respond to the ever-changing socio-political terrain of community. To return to Ahmed’s opening quote, the ways we direct our desire – for someone, for community, for acceptance, for belonging – and how we are faced by others, can “‘move’ us” and impact how we relate to each other (2006a, 101).

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Mainstream sports are grounded in sex-segregation, through, for example, women’s and men’s teams and competitions, and this segregation is reinforced and regulated through the gender binary. This segregation informs the expectations of each gender in terms of sporting ability and is often believed/assumed to be tied to a “natural” biological capability. Sykes notes that Olympic sex testing is one example of the construction of biological sex as either female or male (2006). Queering sports thus provides an opportunity to challenge and disrupt these dynamics, and offers spaces where assumptions about the seemingly fixed nature of bodies are/can be interrogated (Travers and Anderson 2017; Travers 2014; Sykes 2006).

q u e e r s p o rt s o c io logy In their efforts to provide a space for community and to challenge some of the deeply entrenched gendered notions of sport (competition, skill-based, supposed role conflict between being an athlete and woman, etc.), queer teams and leagues are often informed by feminist principles and seek to promote collegiality and fun, rather than competition/winning at all cost. For example, in Caudwell (2007a) and Lenskyj (2003), feminist principles of shared decision-making, safety, and avoidance of unequal relations and the success/failure model inform league descriptions. In Caudwell, the team “stood for a sense of lesbian community” and is premised on notions of “visibility, solidarity, pleasure of playing and socialisation” (2007a, 148). In Ravel and Rail’s research, sports teams were perceived as spaces where heteronormativity could be challenged even if teams were mixed; their research reaffirms that queer teams specifically are created to provide a safe space and to make possible moments of resistance (2007, 2006). Further, gay teams/teammates are important for self and social visibility given the predominant invisibility of queer culture within broader society (Ravel and Rail 2006). A queering of sport, according to Travers, involves the “reorganization of sport away from a two-sex system” (2006, 431). In their research on lesbian softball leagues and trans-inclusivity, Travers found that due to concerns around

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“safety, sexism, and culture” players had a “deep appreciation for sporting spaces that are women-only” and anti-sexist (441). As noted in the previous chapter, Travers and Deri found that while heteronormativity is challenged along with normative gender roles, gay and lesbian sporting spaces “organize participation … around binary sex differences” (2010, 491). It is noteworthy that in conversations I had, I found significant differences across teams/leagues, in part because some have a long-standing presence in the lesbian and gay/queer community, whereas others are quite new and as a result have different histories and use different language. Older lesbian teams/ leagues were formed as a result of growing lgbt and women’s rights activism, and their aim was to provide a positive space for gay women to socialize and have fun (Travers and Deri 2010). Over the years, the “single-sex tradition of these leagues is being transformed” by increasing visibility and participation of trans and genderqueer individuals and societal recognition and support for trans rights (Travers and Deri 2010; see also Travers and Anderson 2017). Some older team/league names still use the word “women” but have queer-inclusive statements, such as “all queer women are welcome.” Some newer leagues use “queer” exclusively and don’t reference sex in their league descriptors. A radical policy change that some softball teams are making with respect to membership criteria, to which Travers and Deri refer, involves a shift from an “assumed biological sameness to cultural affinity” (2010, 503–4). Further, Travers found, in their research on lesbian softball leagues, with respect to a constitutional change to allow all “self-identified women” to play, that the “difficulty in defining ‘male’ versus ‘female’ physiques to include physically intimidating athletes, and exclude [trans players] who were ‘too strong’, revealed the blurred boundaries around sexual identity to the point where the women’s commission determined that it was not a significant concern” (2006, 442). The differential experience and attitude of some towards players who identify as lesbian/dyke and who “look like men” versus toward trans players who “look like men,” and thus about the gender binary and two-sex system, highlights a contradiction that “lesbian

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softball leagues are now being challenged to address” (442). In 2003, the Women’s Division of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (naga a a ) changed their policy to one of “prioritizing self-identification over medical-legal identity” with respect to trans-inclusion (443). In their conclusion, Travers argues that the n ag a a a “is not modelling the queering of sport” because it does not incorporate a direct challenge to the two-sex system, and “does not currently endorse the cultural challenge of transgendered persons who refuse binary identification or of female to male transsexuals who may have participated in lesbian softball leagues for years prior to their transition” (443). At the policy level, they suggest that the Women’s Division of the n ag a a a does model a queering of sport through the recognition that the “protection of traditional women-only space and the softening of the gender binary to be more trans inclusive need not be mutually exclusive” (444). A queering in this context suggests that inclusion incorporates both “gender conforming” and “gender transforming” potential. Further to this, Travers notes that “transinclusive policies tell us little about the inclusiveness of the environment for transgender participants” (443). Critically, Travers states that leagues need to ensure space for the concerns of all participants around trans-inclusivity – even those that are sexist and aggressive – if they are to be “genuinely queer” (444). Love’s research found a surge of trans-inclusive policies at all levels of sport from 2014 to 2016, and simultaneously “an upsurge of anti-trans backlash” within both the sporting context and society more broadly (2017, 194). It is notable that while many sporting authorities have revised policies and regulations to be more trans-inclusive, they still rely on “specific medicalized criteria for inclusion, such as surgery and hormone treatment, and seem insensitive to cultural and economic differences in how transgender persons have access to such procedures” (200–1). While Love suggested that new developments “that require neither surgery nor hormone therapy,” as well as other policies within elite sporting bodies, might “signal the possible emergence of a new wave of inclusion for transgender athletes in sport,” the recent ruling by the Court of Arbitration

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of Sport in May 2019 was a significant step back (201). In brief, the decision of the Court was that it could place restrictions on athletes with certain levels of testosterone, such as Caster Semenya, requiring them to take medications to lower their testosterone if they want to compete in certain track distances. This ruling, as well as the backlash documented by Love, reinforces their assertion that despite the increase in trans-inclusive policies and initiatives at all sporting levels, “the potential for greater acceptance and inclusion of transgender athletes is currently tenuous at best” (201). The Gay Games is a global gay sporting community and phenomenon that was – and still is – constructed as a space of inclusivity, where participants can “openly celebrate both their athletic and sexual identities” (Davidson 2007, 90). Lambert’s examination of the 2002 Gay Games found that the “experience marked an important place and event” for athletes who participated, and thus “played a crucial role in [their] ongoing processes of sexual identity construction” (2009, 332). Critically, the athletes felt that they “could relate, connect, and feel a deep sense of community, safety, and belonging, rather than the sense of fear, shame, and expulsion often felt outside such a sporting space because of our difference,” which supports the Gay Games’ foundational principles of pride and inclusivity (332). Further, the Games imagine sports to be “the great social equalizer,” such that the only criteria of importance are how one plays or competes in one’s particular event. While this notion seems to leave unexamined critical questions about accessibility and how someone even gets to engage in sports to the point where they can be on a team/league, let alone travel to and compete in an international recreational sporting event, it is also premised, Davidson argues, on an ideal that seeks to suppress and prohibit shame and loss (2007). According to Davidson, there are two critical factors that inform the Gay Games legacy: notably the unsuccessful court challenge to utilize the Olympic affiliation and the death of the Games’ founder, Dr Tom Waddell. Both of these involve loss and mourning, on the one hand of societal and cultural validation of gay rights on an international scale by way of Olympic association,

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and on the other, of the person who initiated, fought for, and instilled the inclusive basis of the Games (Davidson 2007). Davidson argues that the Gay Games’ focus on pride and inclusivity is dependent in many ways on a prohibition or silencing of these two losses and the shame that they represent. Notably, however, Davidson articulates several ways the Gay Games differ from the Olympics, and suggests that if these moments of difference, of critical queerness, are more fully highlighted or promoted, pride could be celebrated in its own right as opposed to being depended on as a necessity, to cover over the shame and loss. For example, the Games encourages, and is successful at, having a diverse range of bodies participate in sporting competitions, not just the dominant athletic body type; and further, many participants are engaging in sport for the first time, “having shunned athletics in adolescence due to its extremely homophobic culture” (Davidson 2007, 99). The Games also include cultural and camp events, such as the Pink Flamingo Race, that assert a confident queerness (Davidson 2007). Waitt suggests that camp performances at the Games “help to unsettle the socio-cultural norms by which bodies and space are bound together” (2003, 174). In addition, the mission statement of the Gay Games foregrounds the “selfrespect of gay women and men throughout the world” and seeks to promote “respect and understanding for non-gay” people by way of an organized sporting event (Davidson 2007, 100). If the Gay Games loses its dependency on and “adherence to the demands of conventional high performance sport,” which would include challenging the normative gender binary, new possibilities for gay pride are possible (101). Waitt suggests that the Games represents a challenge to traditional mainstream sports, as “[n]ot only do certain rules applying to gender and clothing disappear, but also interpersonal relations are emphasized over competition … and involvement across a range of abilities disrupts conventional ideas that only elite should participate in international events” (2003, 172). However, while the rhetoric of inclusivity is promoted, Waitt argues it does not translate into practice, as participants are predominantly North American males from white middle-class

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backgrounds, and the sports involved stem from those of European origin (172). In a different piece, Davidson draws on Puar’s (2007) concepts of sexual exceptionalism and homonationalism, and Morgenson’s (2010) notion of settler homonationalism, to argue that the Gay Games and the more recent Outgames have become venues of “normalizing recognition” for some gay and lesbians at a cost to, and defined against, racial others (Davidson 2013, 60). More specifically, and inherently tied to the global socio-political context, the “white consuming gay athlete is produced as the embodiment of good citizenship in contradistinction to the uncontrollable queer Arab terrorist threat” (61). The notion of community fostered and promoted by this form of athletic movement is one of “bourgeois sexed whiteness” that is increasingly defined by “processes of commercialization and commodification” (68). Such a narrow and limited movement does not critically engage with the notion of sexual human rights but instead embraces them “unproblematically as a form of global emancipatory progress” (72). In their analysis of the reterritorialization of stolen land for the Vancouver Olympics, Dhoot (2015) argues that the “inclusion of queers in the Olympics through homonationalism relied on decades of police violence against coast Salish peoples and their eviction from [the] Vancouver area, making their exclusion a necessary part of lgbt history and present” (63). Similar to Davidson, Dhoot highlights how the Vancouver Organizing Committee (vanoc) drew upon a “rights-based framework [that] assumes that lgbt rights necessitate a celebratory response” and that one effect is that this “places lgbt rights in a trajectory where they can be read as progressive” (58). Symons and Hemphill found in their study of the Gay Games (2007) that queering sport proved challenging. On the one hand, there were efforts through the Games to “normalize” the queer. They state that efforts were made to promote gay and lesbian athletes “involved in vigorous sports especially those involving the demonstration of strength, power and speed” in order to “convert many of the negative stereotypes haunting this community, including the supposed effeminacy of gay men,

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supposed obsession of all gay people with sex, and their supposed irresponsible, hedonistic, ‘deviant’ lifestyle” (2007, 121). On the other hand, as noted by many others, is the motivation and desire to “live up to [the] Games’ philosophy of diversity, participation, and inclusiveness” enacted by promoting “sexual diversity on organizing committees, outreach to increase participation of women, non-Western individuals, and gays and lesbians living with a i d s , and to foster an inclusive participation ethos, for example, no qualifying standards to play/­ participate” (Symons and Hemphill 2007, 113). Symons and Hemphill found that a tension existed between competition ethos and participation ethos within the Games. For example, the push for drug testing, which is aligned with traditional competitions, fostered a space of increased regulation of some bodies, notably trans bodies, over others and increased the likelihood that trans participants on hormone therapy would “test positive for anabolic steroids” (Symons and Hemphill 2007, 121). They argue that these actions are in direct opposition to the participation ethos, which “would not require such surveillance” (121), and suggest that the “need for verification regimes point to influence that traditional (competitive) sports ethos has within games” (122–3). They offer two possible future considerations for queering sport. The first is to disrupt or challenge traditional dependence on the gender binary as the organizing division within sports; they instead propose to organize sports “in such a way that ability and handicapping are the primary measures used to create fair, inclusive and competitive environment” (123). This strategy highlights a “variety of combinations of fitness and motor skills, in order to neutralise or compensate for any [perceived] competitive (strength, speed, power, socialisation) advantage related to ‘bio’ males or non-medicalized trans individuals” (Symons and Hemphill 2007, 123, addition by author). The second suggestion is for a “queering” of sex that is rooted in “understanding the ambiguity of sex and gender – emphasising differences as well as celebrating a vast variety of sexed and gendered identities” (Symons and Hemphill 2007, 123). The proposed queering of sex is in response to the fact that the dominant

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population in gay sports is white, financially secure, and socialized into traditional ways of doing sport rooted in the supposed “naturalness” of the two-sex system (123). Literature on queer space, outside of queer sport sociology, has also identified some of the positive, transformative potential of queers in community, alongside some challenges and discomforts/tensions that for many do not fit with the ideal or image of celebratory queer pride. Rooke in her research on lesbian habitus and community spaces for lesbians and queers in the UK suggests that there is a commitment and “promise … that it is a space that is welcoming to those who feel different or who are perceived as different on the basis of their sexuality and gender appearance” (2007, 232). However, she found that many experienced a sense of disappointment in relation to those promises, as “questions of difference continue to play themselves out on the basis of age, ethnicity, body size, gender, and sexuality” within queer community (232). Critically, Rooke articulates that “this experience of being different within difference works to deflate the promises of affinity, validation, common understanding, and belonging that gay and lesbian commercial spaces offer” (232). In Rooke’s analysis of lesbian habitus, she found that navigating queer community involves situated knowledge, cultural resources, and an “embodied expression” (232). The ability to be recognized as a lesbian or as queer depends upon processes of “naming and symbols … visual regimes of lesbians and gay users of the space,” and border guards such as bouncers at queer bars or queer/lesbian sports team organizers or players (243). Through these processes, and in conjunction with the “performative work of bodies,” Rooke argues that “a visual agreement of what a lesbian looks like is re-enacted” and reinforced, and so too, as a result, is regulation of who belongs in certain spaces (243). In Nash’s study on trans men’s experiences in lesbian spaces, she examines the potential of trans men to “re-work the meanings embedded” in queer places – the potential for a queering of space, as well as possible erasure or invisibility due to restrictive practices by gender-normative (cis) queers (2011, 204). Nash articulates that “new politics and practices are fundamentally

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altering how queer spaces are understood” (193). Nash suggests that whether certain spaces can be seen or experienced as queer or queerable is a relational concept and depends on who is present, the nature of the place, and the specific meaning “queer” obtains in those circumstances, which speaks to the intersection of race, gender, and class (2011). Of note, there are no trans women referenced in Nash, and they undoubtedly would speak to different needs with respect to community spaces and potential experiences of barriers to accessing lesbian/ queer women’s spaces. Similarly, Doan argues that to “‘queer’ a city means to implicitly recognize the heteronormative nature of most urban spaces and through overt action to create a safe place for people who identify as queer” (2007, 57). Doan cites Rushbrook’s postulation of whether “inclusive queer space exists only as a theoretical construct,” to highlight the specific implications and community boundaries experienced by gender variant and trans individuals (Doan 2007, 57). Cvetkovich and Wahng suggest, in reference to a roundtable discussion with workers at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, that “[e]ven if the festival’s policy does not change, discussions of transgender politics have made an indelible impact on the community”; which holds true within the sporting arena as well (2001, 132). Browne and Bakshi argue that scholars need to move beyond the gay/straight binary in considering leisure spaces and examine how “leisure practices can reconstitute space in diverse socio-sexual/gendered ways, contesting any presumption of straight space awaiting ‘queering’” (2011, 183). Many of these new spaces, they suggest, can be understood as “simultaneously gay and straight” (183), and further, as spaces that both enable and constrain individuals’ ability to occupy, be visible, and even be present within different urban spaces due to their relation and embodiment of classed, racialized, and gendered categories. From the conversations with collective members and individual players, several themes emerged with respect to leagues’ efforts and the desire and/or potential to view leagues as engaged in a queering of community sport spaces: a strong sense of community responsibility and pride; current practices/strategies in play; and what community means – in practice.

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c o m m u n it y a n d s port – f o r t h e l ov e o f queer For Ahmed “it is not only that queer surfaces support action, but also that the action they support involves shifting grounds, or even clearing a new ground, which allow us to tread a different path” (2006a, 170). For many, joining a queer sports team, stepping out onto the playing field or court, and interacting with other queer bodies not only supports the creation of a queer space, but further holds the potential for different ways of relating to others, different ways of engaging in sport – and different forms of sport. I don’t want to make myself sound like a little kid but I was in awe … it was an opportunity to kind of make friends outside my particular circle, which was great. I was, “oh man this is awesome, I just want to high five everybody!” … 2nd year: I’ve come down off that cloud but yes, sometimes it’s still the same thing. When I see somebody walk in with a girlfriend, I’m like, “what, this is great! Oh my god, you’re black, this is great.” – Jasmine, 28, Black bisexual New and different paths are precisely what queer sports made possible for Jasmine, by offering a space where she could meet friends “outside my circle.” This extends into Jasmine’s second year playing with Rainbow Hoops basketball, which, critically, she reflects, is a space that embodies the intersection of queerness and Blackness. Jasmine grew up in a suburb of Toronto and she is not out to many of her friends. While she thinks many of her friends know she is queer, she is still navigating how to interweave her Black and bisexual identities in her home community, where there is an assumed heterosexuality. Entering the space of queer basketball, Jasmine has found a place to experience the interaction of these identities as well as interaction with other forms of queerness – such as athletic femininity as discussed in the previous chapter.

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Yeah, when I moved to Vancouver … with my boyfriend and started playing soccer on the … Metro Women’s League team that I play on now. So I’ve been on that team for ten years and I got on that team completely by chance because I happened to, I was renting an apartment and my neighbour played on the team and there was no queer anything connected to any of us and it happened to be that the team was managed by a queer couple and that a lot of the folks on the team were queer, but I was like totally heterosexual at the time and just anyway – so I always blame [the] soccer team for – (laughter) turning me. It’s actually true … so that has been my whole queer community since, my whole life, that’s my whole queer ­community had been my soccer team. – Susan, white lesbian A different medium of community, the Michigan Womyn’s Festival, attests to the importance of creating and maintaining community spaces for lesbian and queer women. A participant of the festival highlights the importance of space, stating, “hets get to act it out everyday on the streets in every place they live,” while queers are only “just starting to be able to do that,” and Michigan was integral as a space “to realize desires as lesbians through some notion of community” (Cvetkovich and Wahng 2001, 139). While the Michigan Womyn’s Festival takes place in the United States and therefore has a different context, I reference it here for two reasons. First, it was an intentional space, created to foster women in community around music, similar to queer community sports being intentionally formed to develop and secure community spaces. The second reason is that Michigan is well known for its assertion of a “women born women”–only policy and is a reference for many in queer community about limits and gender/sex definitions that have been and still are asserted within some community spaces. For some, the experience of being immersed in a queer space or the chance to experience a queering of space, such as a soccer team managed and occupied by queers, can open up the possibility of changing the object of one’s desire, which “makes a difference

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to other things we do” (Ahmed 2006a, 101). In Susan’s case, engagement with queer sport has led to significant shifts in her intimate and social worlds, such that her whole life and community have emerged out of her sports team. The above two comments reflect some of the positive aspects of what queer community sports make possible, as they are spaces where some queer individuals feel welcome, are able to be themselves/out, and experience a shift in how they move through space and interact with others. Kern, in analyzing the “viewing community” of The L Word, speaks to the “personal, social and cultural validation” that many queers found through their engagement in a “mediated, imagined, community” (2014, 235). As with Susan and Jasmine, and others within queer community sports more generally, many viewers of The L Word “felt supported by a newfound community in ways they did not often find in their daily experiences” (235). Queer community sports enabled spaces of “new dialogues” (235) and, for some, new understanding of what it means to be gay or queer; for Jasmine it offered a space of positive embodiment of race and sexuality, and for Susan, sports opened up a world of queerness, of new ways of being in relation with other queers/queer women and with herself. I don’t think we have a very political agenda or a very you know, just seems like sports oriented. Most of our problems seem to come from just trying to figure out the logistics of playing the sport, as opposed to the association with, you know, who we all are. – Jennifer, white heterosexual What I’m noticing too is that there’s so many politics. And there’s like, so much in-fighting amongst the different identities. Really, if we can’t even find cohesiveness how the hell … I’m just finding in meeting people from the trans community to the lesbian community and people are just like, this person doesn’t like this term and that person gets upset. I am like Holy Hanna sometimes people don’t [in]tend to offend or upset and it’s really about education

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as opposed to let’s jump down their throat. But if that’s even happening within the queer community how can we represent ourselves to the other communities in Regina. You know what I mean? … Oh my god, at what point can we just say let’s just have fun? – Kerri, 38, white lesbian Community sports necessarily involve a politics of engagement, of whom the community represents and supports – or includes, and these boundaries are not easily negotiated or agreed upon. For some, the focus should be on “just playing sports” and “having fun,” to some extent informed by a concern about how disagreement within queer community will be perceived by broader heterosexual culture. Whereas for others, as highlighted below by Sam, there is a need for recognition of queer history and for a political agenda informing queer community spaces. These debates have long existed within queer community and queer representation, from a liberal assimilationist agenda that prioritizes appearing normal in order to gain political rights to a more radical political movement that asserts differences and challenges status-quo relational, sexual, and gendered norms (Gamson 2002). Symons and Hemphill (2007) also spoke to these tensions in relation to the Gay Games, and the struggle to have queers, especially during the a id s crisis, appear normal, healthy, and strong as a way to counter homophobic stereotypes versus promoting an image or representation of queers as radical and different. What is particularly noteworthy about Jennifer’s comments that the league is not very political is that their ability to continue, year after year, to get a permit for their playing field is dependent on their identifying as a “specialized interest group,” arguably a very political action. Asserting a political identity is necessary in order to receive beneficial and privileged access to a desirable field within central Toronto. Morgenson argues that “queer studies tends to historicize g l b t q politics as the work of white middle-class organizations operating within racial and national bounds of electoral politics” (2011, 142). Further, however, Morgenson suggests that “this political model

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historically led people of colour to gather apart in communitybased activism where they challenged multiple oppressions” which enabled “white activists and scholars to frame them as  ‘cultural’ groups concerned with ‘identity,’ and reserve the ‘political’ status for groups that arise near and engage the (white, national) political establishment” (142). In this way, the league could be said to be engaging in a political action by identifying as a specialized interest group within an electorally governed city council but can distance itself – as made up of historically and currently still primarily white settlers – from being perceived or self-identifying as culturally political. This supports King’s argument that “the mainstreaming of lesbian and gay identities over past [few] decades [has] enabled what Lisa Duggan has called ‘the new homonormativity’ – a politics in which equality is defined as ‘access to institutions of domestic privacy, the ‘free’ market, and patriotism’” (2008, 420). Well, the reasons for not wanting to play softball, my first season, I just, honestly, the big answer is, they’re not my people. And by that, I mean, in my first season, I connected with just two people on my team. And they were people that I would say really are queer, and the rest are lesbians. And when I say lesbians, I mean straight lesbians, and that’s generally what I mean by the word lesbian. ­Saying dyke is harsh for their ears, ya know? And I don’t think they would say that their sexuality is political. And I don’t think that they would see themselves in the world with an element of survival, like, my senses are always pricked up because I know what can happen. What has happened. Just, there’s always an element of survival in a heterosexual world, so, I feel that they move through the world with blinders. – Sam, 36, white dyke Focusing on “having fun” or “playing the game” can function to dismiss and silence important critiques and/or desire for engagement by diverse queer bodies. Bell and Binnie argue that “boundaries of community spaces may be necessary, to keep

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‘unwanted others out’” but what can happen when boundaries are regulated is that the “boundary of ‘unwantedness’ gets redrawn so that in opening up to (non-gay identities) consumers, the spaces push out what might be called ‘queer unwanted’” (2004, 1810), and thus the “production of safety becomes an element of regulation” (1813). Queer sports represent important community spaces that were created to provide a safe space within the broader homophobic society where queers (and earlier gays and lesbians) could socialize, find support, and enjoy playing a sport without having their sexual identity be the focus. Sam seeks a space that incorporates recognition of what it is and has been like to live “in the world with an element of survival,” a political space and not just a space of fun. For her, community spaces are a “pressing matter” because “it matters which bodies, where and how, press up against” these spaces, and further, Probyn argues, “most important of all is who these bodies are with, in what historical and actual spatial configuration they find and define themselves in” (1995, 81). For Sam, “dyke” and “queer” are intimately tied to a critical awareness of history and community politics of survival, and she defines herself as such in distinction to the “straight lesbians” on her team who do not possess or seem interested in that engagement. I guess that fact that I’m not thinking oh yeah, it’s really diverse makes me feel like maybe it’s not that diverse. – Susan, white lesbian I don’t think it’s the most diverse queer space … There’s definitely much more diverse queer spaces doing other things. Especially people having political conversations and forms of activism I would say those spaces are much more diverse. – Gina, white lesbian While queer leisure and sports spaces may offer greater potential to queer more of the city, it can be a “social landscape that lacks the very diversity it aims to include” (van Ingen 2004, 265). The “accommodation of difference” within the mandate

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of Toronto Front Runners (t f r ), which characterizes itself as an inclusive “safe” place for “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered runners and their supporters,” does not involve “critical interrogation” or recognition of the “terrain of struggle faced by people in asymmetrical power relations,” and thus serves to maintain rather than disrupt existing social relations (van Ingen 2004, 265). Though it is primarily focused on gay men, I reference van Ingen’s study here because she clearly articulates a surficial “good intention” or language of inclusion, without the necessary action and reflection necessary to make effective change. In a similar vein, queer community sports leagues express a commitment to be inclusive on their websites, but some have not engaged in critical reflection as to why they are not diverse with respect to race and ability. It is noteworthy that the comment about greater diversity in spaces of political conversation and activism took place within two months after the Black Lives Matter protest during the Toronto Pride Parade in 2016 (Greey 2018). On the one hand there is recognition by Susan and Gina that soccer and community sports are not very diverse, which is necessary for change to occur. But, on the other, the idea that diversity exists in other spaces, or that its lack is only realized upon reflection, reinforces the notion that sports and queer spaces are assumed white and/or are not activist. Reflection about diversity within leagues, about which bodies come out to play and why others do not, and about the spaces where other, racialized bodies are expected to reside is necessary. Without it, queer community sports reinforce normative constructions of sexuality as “apparently removed from the effects of racial formations and racialization” (McDonald 2009, 16). Queer community sports need to more effectively engage in critical reflection of “how bodies become racialized and sexed in how they ‘extend’ into space: differences are shaped in how we take up space or how we orient ourselves towards objects and others” (Ahmed 2006a, 99). This work requires that collective members of leagues “move the discussion beyond the recognition of absence” (van Ingen 2004, 265), for, as Morgenson highlighted with respect to Indigenous peoples, “the very absence of Native people [and people of colour]

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in a story is telling us a story about qualities of settler subjects, cultures and social life” (2010, 121). The story that is being told above about queer community sports spaces is that they are not activist spaces, they are not political spaces, nor are they diverse spaces; and yet they are upheld as inclusive community spaces. Bodies that are absent from these spaces challenge this story and the various decisions and processes required to maintain it, such as the political institutions and identifications leagues are required to navigate and assert in order to obtain (desired) permits.

c o m m u n it y r e s p o n si bi li ty: yo u h av e a du t y to play! I’ve said that to my friends who have left um … I feel like they kind of have a duty, they’re queer and they love soccer, like, it’s your community you don’t get to pick and choose who else is in your community. Like you have to sign up for Pink Turf, you know what I mean, like come on! (laughter) – Quinn, white lesbian The importance and commitment many players have not only to (show up to) play, but more so to maintain the community space of the league, are evident in Quinn’s assertion that “you have a duty to play, this is your community.” Further, Quinn’s comments suggest a responsibility towards queer community as a whole, not simply one’s friends or people like oneself – but all members of the community. This sentiment goes beyond the mere socialization that many theorists cite as a key motivator behind joining queer leagues, though that is obviously present as well; to support those members one wouldn’t necessarily “choose” is identified as tied to one’s community responsibility. In this way, there is a potential for an individual’s participation in queer sports to go beyond “hanging out with friends,” to enable new ways of relating to and interacting with a diverse population of queers as well as non-queers through sport. In similar fashion, Jude reinforces critical characteristics of queer

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leagues, stating that participation is “for fun, it is about looking after each other and trying to be as honest and fair and playful as possible.” This sense of broader community responsibility informs how some leagues represent themselves and their connection to community members. When asked about changes to the descriptor of the Women’s Hockey Collective of Toronto on their website, Eleanor, one of the collective members, states, “Ya know as the community expands we just want to let people know we’re welcoming.” In her study on trans men’s access to queer and/or lesbian spaces in Toronto, Nash found that many trans men go to queer events with the expectation or hope that they will be welcome, only to find once they arrived that the space was in fact “really lesbian-­only or women-only, or really gay male, or really queer” (2011, 199–200, emphasis in original). This highlights the complexities of socio-political dynamics informing community spaces and the emotional labour required of individuals to assess whether they should attend and/or are recognized/ accepted as part of the community. Thus, Eleanor’s reflection is important as the onus is understood as on leagues to ensure that they acknowledge changes in the community and are responding, rather than on individual trans or genderqueer people to enquire about whether or not they are able to play on a given team or league. I think there was a need for a more trans inclusive space and I would argue now like gender non-conforming kind of friendly spaces, everything was really gendered, yeah not really inclusive of different bodies and different ­identities and so that league was developed to fill a gap. – Susan, white lesbian Similarly, the Queer Van Soccer league was created to address changes in the community, notably the lack of community spaces that were inclusive of trans and genderqueer individuals. This meant that certain conversations and/or league descriptors around trans-inclusivity were foregrounded, as opposed to needing to be revised or updated, including registration

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information asking for preferred pronouns. Further, there was recognition that the broader queer community needed to provide and support community spaces that were inclusive of diverse trans and genderqueer individuals. I identify as straight and … I think one of the things I was actually genuinely conflicted about when I first joined was, am I taking the space of somebody for who this might be their only kind of safe space in their life, but also I made a lot of friends and I decided I didn’t want to quit. – Kimberley, African Canadian heterosexual Critical reflection about differing access to space in community, and what it means to support queer community as a heterosexual ally/someone in solidarity with queer and trans people is highlighted above by Kimberley. While Pink Turf soccer is welcoming to straight women, Kimberley’s comments illustrate an awareness of the importance and limited nature of “safe” spaces for queers. One could read her decision to stay as prioritizing her own enjoyment over leaving the space for someone else, but I believe it can also be read as revealing a commitment to develop relationships and invest in queer community, particularly as she is a long-standing member of the leagues collective. That’s for community building, I think you have to stay in the community and show an investment to that community and working on it and not be – well cause I left that night and I was very hurt, I was very upset cause I mean it was hostile, it was aggressive, it was violent, it was ­erasure, it was a lot of things and I think that to just be like fuck it I’m out, nothing changes. – Eli, 29, white genderqueer/queer Here Eli shares an account of transphobia they experienced at a team social event where teammates, rather than providing support, expressed their frustration at Eli’s request for correct pronoun use; the focus was on how hard it is for cis players to do the work of changing pronoun use, and not how to foster

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an inclusive space for trans and genderqueer players. In response, Eli acknowledges that they could have quit, to protect themself from further harm and erasure, but for them this would mean that “nothing changes.” To be in community for Eli means investing and working with people on issues of inclusivity. To be clear, this was Eli’s decision and is not something I am advocating for anyone who experiences violence or discrimination; these decisions must always be up to the individual and need to be supported, and not judged. I engage with Eli’s commentary because it highlights a deep commitment to community, one that recognizes different knowledges and experiences, and that sees community as a process that involves tension and discomfort, and that changes over time. To foster spaces that enable us to experience new ways of relating to each other, to engage in a turning away from the “straight lines” of sociality, difficult investments and work are often required. Ahmed notes that “if heterosexuality is compulsory, then even the positive movement of lesbian desire remains shaped by this compulsion” (2006a, 102). In a similar vein, cissexism is deeply internalized, normative, and compulsory, such that even positive moves towards queerness “remain shaped by this compulsion”; Doan argues that to “‘queer’ a city means to implicitly recognize the heteronormative nature of most urban spaces and through overt action to create a safe place for people who identify as queer” (2007, 57). The above narratives reflect a commitment to community responsibility and in many ways indicate not only recognition of the importance of queer spaces within heteronormative urban spaces but also actions taken to “create safe places” for the continually changing membership of queer community. The narratives, and the reflections and actions they embody, need to be contextualized within the societal compulsion of heterosexuality and cissexism, which can be experienced as violent, exclusionary, uncomfortable, and painful work. Various “overt actions” will be discussed in more depth in the following section that extend and deepen sentiments around community responsibility, from thoughts or beliefs to practical strategies to queer sports, and offer potential for new ways of relating to others and being in community.

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s t r at e g ie s in p l ay Well, some of it’s policy isn’t it? Or is it though? … Like is it called expectations for the league or regulations or policy, I don’t know? … I mean it’s easier – like I think when you’re really trying to be inclusive there’s fewer things to enforce because you’re like, sure welcome. – Susan, white lesbian Ahmed articulates that “it takes time and work to inhabit a lesbian body; the act of tending toward other women has to be repeated, often in the face of hostility and discrimination, to gather such tendencies into a sustainable form” (2006a, 102). For queer community spaces to exist and be sustainable takes work, and for them to foster inclusivity and to grow – or at least maintain themselves – takes work. Various strategies have been introduced and/or engaged in by different leagues, to respond to community changes with respect to trans- and genderqueer-inclusivity, as well as efforts to increase racial diversity and to enable sports to be more accessible to diverse bodies. The challenge for many is that leagues are run by volunteers, who may or may not have the time necessary, nor the understanding or awareness (or willingness to educate themselves to that effect) of what is needed to be effectively inclusive. To return to my opening reference to Queer Eye, there is often an implicit assumption that queer spaces are “welcoming” for all and that all members of queer community are knowledgeable about the differing intersecting issues individuals face, such as transphobia, racism, ableism, and fatphobia. Further to this, as Ahmed highlights, this work has to be repeated, often in the face of hostility and discrimination, both of which require commitments to continually do the work of inclusivity, on a c­ ommunity and individual/personal level. As Susan’s comments illustrate, part of this work is tied to an understanding of what that work involves, and her questioning – is it a policy or a recommendation, and what is necessary given, as a league, they are welcome/inclusive – suggests uncertainty. This speaks to the good intentions of leagues but also to the necessity for

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more grounded understanding of what work is needed to ensure that the space of queer sports is welcoming, in that members and organizers have thought through and consulted on potential barriers and issues that differently positioned members may face and what can be done to address them. I mean guess largely it’s [pronoun rounds] for them, you know, for their safety and comfort, but I feel it’s really important and it can slip the mind for people who it’s not important for, so that’s why we have to, as organizers, keep sort of just gently reminding people that it is important and here’s why and that helps I think and then it ­validates those kinda feelings – the feedback we hear throughout [the] season, um, that you’re being heard and we’re doing something about it which I think is something important as well … I think that we weren’t consistently doing pronouns. Like we did pronoun rounds in the beginning of the season with the teams and they were ­saying it would be great to continue each week … so we just tried to remind the teams to continue doing that throughout the season and not just kind of assume you’ve done it once … and you never do it again. – Susan, white lesbian Dialogue between collective members: “Atta girl” or something like that and she got very mad at me, just like “I’m not a girl,” I was like ok sorry. – Jennifer, white heterosexual I think it’s fair for people to respond that way given the way we advertise the league but we don’t communicate with our reps about, about not using that kind of language so … – Gina, white lesbian The above excerpts reiterate the necessity of repetition within the work of inclusivity: it is not enough to suggest pronoun rounds or to advertise that the league is trans- and genderqueerinclusive; there needs to be ongoing commitment and work for

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meaningful and effective community change. These comments are also examples of critical reflection occurring within these community spaces that suggest that the desire is there to do better, to take feedback into account, and that they are accountable to the messaging and/or commitments they make in their promotional materials. Here, the onus is on leagues to examine their practices, and the language used in their descriptors and within community sports spaces. Practices or strategies that teams and leagues adopt “are always in some way imbricated within or mediated by contemporary practices or existing … patterns of behavior” (Lloyd 1996, 246). Susan states that the practice of pronoun rounds was done for them, for trans and genderqueer members, but also acknowledges that this practice can “slip” the minds of those for whom it was not intended. In this way, her comments reflect how imbricated certain ideas and practices are within existing codes of conduct or rules of play, and that making changes to them, such as introducing pronoun rounds at the start of games, takes repeated work and conscious action. Further, I would argue that there is a necessity for an acknowledgment that the work of inclusivity is not just for them; it has broader implications for communities as well as the potential for individual growth and transformation.

c o m m u n it y r e s p o n s i bi li ty a n d   e x pa n d in g c o m muni ty Queer community sports were initiated to fill a void, to create a space for individuals who did not feel at home or comfortable within cis and heteronormative sports environments, and as has been outlined, they sought to disrupt/challenge many deeply entrenched sporting norms, including prioritizing fun and socialization over competition, and gendered stereotypes about physicality. This work is ongoing and involves constant interrogation of the shifting and differential impact of societal norms on individuals and groups within broader queer and trans communities. This is especially the case as some queers experience more societal privilege and sense of being “at home” within queer spaces, while others, notably queers of colour,

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trans and genderqueer individuals, and disabled queers experience both direct and indirect exclusion from these spaces. Ahmed argues that “the only way of undoing the privilege of … bodies-at-home” within social spaces “is to open the community to those others precisely in a recognition of their failure to inhabit the [community] ideal” (2006a, 109). This recognition requires critical awareness, not only of the ways particular individuals and social groups “fail to inhabit the [community] ideal,” but also what practices and forms of welcoming will be felt and/or heard by diverse individuals and groups in meaningful ways. This brings Ahmed’s queer phenomenology and Foucault’s technologies of self into effect together, as what is required is the intertwining of critical reflection and action geared towards new ways of relating to oneself and being in relation with others. One thing I do love about Double Rainbow Dodgeball is that when a deaf and hard of hearing team – asl – joined we changed the way we count in the game so that it’s visual instead of sound based, and then also when we play them, we cheer differently, and there’s you know, a way we try and create an accepting environment … in Double Rainbow, like specifically not using gendered ­pronouns is a way we’ve made a change, so that everyone feels included – there’s no assumption of pronoun and when people do it they’re, the ambassador always tries to speak to them about it and it’s discouraged, and we talk about it at finals, at the beginning of each season. – Simone, 32, white queer Simone’s recounting of how the Dodgeball League changed some of its practices to make the space more accessible demonstrates a willingness to engage with how some individuals “fail to inhabit the community ideal.” Changing counting protocols and the necessity of using pronouns are direct examples of questioning taken-for-granted practices within sports, and rather than excluding people as a result, the league found new and more inclusive ways to reimagine the space.

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In a similar vein, Cleo (quoted in chapter 1) talks about what made Notso Amazon Softball in Toronto more accessible and possible for them. By incorporating accessible practices, such as being able to hit the ball and have someone else run, the community space becomes more reflective of the community and reframes traditional readings of athletic or sporting bodies. This shift is illustrative of the community collective engaging in technologies of the self through critical reflection on how sporting practices were currently in play, leading to the potential exclusion of some individuals and groups, and actions they took in response to that realization (Lloyd 1996). Well we’ve done our best with flyers and reaching out and sort of meeting with people, but we’ve found the most effective solution is to actually pick someone out in your life and try to encourage them to join, yeah so my best friend is Trinidadian and two years ago I was like you should join my league, and I was like I’m not gonna lie, it’s super white … you might be the only person of colour on our team, probably not the only person of colour but probably the only black person, but try it … We’ve set aside ten spots in our registration that are going to be locked with a passcode and are telling people, if you find a person of colour or trans woman who wants to join the league give them the passcode … those ten spots are saved for them … we’re not one of those leagues that are trans inclusive in the name only … we would like to be more reflective of the community … we are instituting a policy [but] even without us doing anything our league has been moving away from team names that I would call biologically essentialist, like clam diggers and like beaver this … so we’re instituting a policy this year, we have two people on the collective whose job is equity and outreach and we’re gonna draft a best practice for naming your team document. – Martine, white queer In an analysis of the Vancouver Olympics, Sykes cites Pride House organizers’ acknowledgment that “there ‘was not sufficient programming targeting Two-Spirited, trans and queer

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youth’ and that it would have been beneficial to have ‘representation of these groups on the Steering Committee, with responsibility for targeted programming’” (2016, 61). Martine highlights two strategies that are in line with the organizers’ acknowledgment of the current lack of queers of colour and trans women in their membership: the league not only decided to set aside targeted spots on the wait list for queers of colour, but also invited a queer of colour to be president of the league, a move they felt was critical for inclusivity. Further, the league assessed their promotional and recruiting strategies, as well as how team names may function to exclude or discourage people from participating and/or feeling comfortable in the space. These efforts go some way to “undo the privilege of bodies-athome” within queer community sports.

c o m m u n it y r e im agi ned: “e v e ry b o dy n e e d e d a place to play” But I was actually just overhearing a conversation, we had a tournament over the weekend and I was overhearing a conversation from an older play[er], who was explaining to someone who had asked about a player who is trans – totally passes – who was on the field and it had sort of been like, what? Like you’re letting guys in now, type of thing. And this other player was explaining about how the Mabel League ended up coming to the policy that we have now, with being trans inclusive. Which was interesting because I have heard it explained a number of times from friends of mine and people who know the politics, so I was kind of interested in hearing how this person explained it … I appreciated it though, because what she ended up saying was that you know, it came to like everybody needed a place to play, where they felt included. And I really appreciated it because that’s what it is. – Eli, 29, white genderqueer/queer Within “inclusive” community spaces, how do some individuals become aware of their bodies, of their bodily differences, of being perceived as different, as out of place within particular

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spaces? Ahmed suggests that “it is through experiences such as pain that we come to have a sense of our skin as a bodily surface, as something that keeps us apart from others, but as something that also mediates the relationship between internal and external, or inside and outside” (2006a, 101). Thus, skin, the bodily boundary and often marker of difference, “is felt only in the event of being ‘impressed upon’ in the encounters we have with others” (101). Eli recounted earlier an experience where they were made aware of their skin, were impressed upon and experienced the pain of being impressed upon as different and out of place. The sense of work required by cis teammates to use correct pronouns for Eli and the initiation of pronoun rounds for them – meaning trans and genderqueer players – within another league reveal the imbalanced power relations that exist in the mediation of internal and external, inside and outside of queer community membership. That cis players expect to be referred to by correct pronouns and desire to be recognized as members of the team and community are not seen as work that is informed by league policies or practices. In this way, cis players are constructed as having to do work out of their own good will for others and not as part of a mutual desire for identification (using correct pronouns) and to have a recognized place in community. However, in the discussion above, the use of everybody highlights that the league is a community space, and further that it is everybody’s space, and as such, league policies are in support of the community space, not just a space fostered “for them.” In Eli’s quote directly above there is a marked shift, a distinction from doing work “for them” to the articulation that “everyone needs a place to play.” This attitude, which stems from changes in the league’s policy and the practices in play on the field, is illustrative of what is made possible when there are changes to how bodies are able to come into contact with others (Ahmed 2006a, 105). It is through “how bodies come into contact with other bodies that allows the [community] as a collective body to emerge” (95). In highlighting the distinction above, I am not trying to be dismissive or reduce the impact of efforts to support trans and genderqueer players, as

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I believe practices such as pronoun rounds were done with genuine desire to make community spaces more inclusive. Rather my intent is to highlight the demarcation of “stranger/ host” that is almost implied within the separation of for them – which is critical reflective work that leagues are continuing to engage with. The various strategies leagues have utilized to try to become more inclusive could be indicative of an effort to turn “attention to queer doings rather than queer beings” (Jamieson and Villaverde 2009, 233) or, as Travers and Deri articulate, a shift to cultural versus biological affinity (2010). What can happen when queer bodies are able to come into contact with other queer bodies? Rather than thinking about the “queer being” or identity, the focus perhaps is on what these bodies – and their movements – can/could make possible. A continued focus on the “queer being” would serve to maintain the boundary distinction between host/stranger and inside/outside. As the opening quote by Browne articulates, “focusing on enactments and not categories of discrimination, renders visible the illusion of stable heterosexual space,” and makes possible, even if momentarily, a queering of space and of bodies (2007b, 1012).

c o n c l u s ion Queer community sports are rooted in a desire to create community spaces where individuals can engage in physical activity while feeling safe, be comfortable in their diverse embodiments/ identities, and meet other queer people. Rooke suggests that there is a “utopian, validating promise” inherent in creating and maintaining queer spaces which “lies in an unspoken promise that the coordinates of the matrix [of oppression] will somehow melt away on entry” (2007, 249). What occurs instead is that these spaces can thus produce new “peculiarities of homonormativity,” and that some “queer moments and spatialities are passed over and lost” when community is viewed “as points of arrival rather than the chaotic process that [they] so often [are]” (249–50). Rooke suggests a reimagining of community work that recognizes “moments of possibility, finding

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potential in these moments of flux” rather than assuming ­community work is complete once the space, or in this context the team, is formed (250). A queering of community sports, then, is premised instead on the notion that “certain forms of acknowledged fragmentation might facilitate coalitional action precisely because the ‘unity’ of the category [queer] is neither presupposed nor desired” (Butler 1990, 21). Without a defined or fixed notion of community, queer sports teams must continue to engage in critical reflection and work, as community will necessarily change in the “direction of urgent and expanding political purposes” (Butler 1993, 228). These community spaces are not sites of arrival, fixed and complete as soon as their collectives are formed. Instead, as the narratives indicate, new questions and new bodies continue to emerge which necessitate a reimagination of community norms and membership, but also enable, through desire and a sense of responsibility, new forms of relating and embodying queerness. A queering of community involves struggle, chaos, flux, as well as a move away from identifications and biology to enactments and cultural meanings and groundings. Ahmed has suggested that the distinction between outside and inside is affected through experiences of “intensification of feelings” such that “bodies and worlds materialise and take shape, or that the effect of surface, boundary, and fixity is produced” (2006a, 101). For Eli, the intensification of feelings they experienced as a result of their teammates’ reactions materialized the boundaries and assumed bodies of queer community sports. When individuals, potential or actual team members, experience their skin being impressed upon by, for example, uncertainty over whether they are welcome in a space/on a team, misgendering by teammates, or lack of visibility of other players of colour, a particular version of community takes shape. While queer community sports are spaces where these moments occur and forms of oppression are reproduced and upheld, they are also spaces that enable queering moments. Queer sports are also spaces of queer desire that are “shaped by contact with the heteronormative,” and these spaces, Ahmed argues, can function as “contact zones” which open “up lines of connection between

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bodies that are drawn to each other in the repetition of this tendency to deviate from the straight line” (2006a, 105). Queer spaces put us into contact with different bodies and worlds, and “this contact involves following rather different lines of connection, association, and even exchange” (105). The contact – of bodies in queer spaces – involves the “everyday work of dealing with the perception of others, with the ‘straightening devices’ and violence that might follow when such perceptions congeal into social forms” (107). At times, these can function to further the violence and discrimination, but, as evidenced by players’ narratives, they can also be experienced as moments of connection, of commitment, of re-imaging that enable individuals to “inhabit the intensity of the moment of the disorientation of the queer moment, the slant that resists being straightened” (107). The implications of these moments go beyond queer sports and queer community spaces to challenge norms inherent in mainstream sports: assumptions about bodies and correlating rules of play; grassroots interventions of inclusivity work grounded in “everybody needs a place to play” over prioritizing spots for best players/competitive basis; and being purposeful in creating spaces and initiating various strategies – from reserved spots for players of colour, to changing methods of score-keeping and cheering. Queer community sports enable experiences that are off the heteronormative path and embody (at times) a critical attitude and reflection on bodily norms and visibility around gender, ability, and race. This work, when sustained and repetitive, this chapter has argued, goes some way in challenging or making visible the illusion of the stability of heterosexual (sporting) space (Browne and Bakshi 2011).

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Concluding Thoughts: Forging New Paths …

Over the course of these projects, I have been asked several times what teams/leagues I am a part of, and/or what sports I play. Given the research topic, and that I was asking individuals about their experiences in community sports, it was a very reasonable thing to ask. I found that I would often give answers with some brevity, stating that I tended to do more individual sports, such as weight-lifting and the various sports that make up recreational triathlons, and that my current city of residence didn’t have any queer leagues. But over the years that I have been working on this project and having conversations about relationships with sports, I have come to acknowledge that my relationship to community sports leagues – or lack thereof – goes much deeper. I did competitive synchronized swimming growing up and my favourite part of the sport was the community I felt with my team. I didn’t much care for the individual figures that we all had to perform at competitions, but rather it was the joy I experienced and skill required moving with other bodies and creating and demonstrating something dynamic. I had a healthy competitive drive, but the collegial relationships were what mattered; they were far more highly valued for me. As a middle-class white able-bodied settler, presumed to be heterosexual, these recreational spaces were made available and encouraged to me, though due to my gender identity some sports more so than others. Upon graduating high school and moving across the country to attend university, I attempted team sports twice, rugby and water polo. I loved

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both sports, but very quickly realized that I no longer wanted to be coached. My years of competitive sports had worn me down and oftentimes had not fostered a confident sense of self; despite being told that I was very strong in practice, where I struggled was in individual figure competitions. Rather than expecting or being provided with strategies around performance anxiety, I internalized that I was not good enough and was to blame for what I perceived as my poor performance and lack of skill: common for many girls and women (Young 2005). So being granted the opportunity to start over in a new city, across the country, I – unconsciously I believe – decided that I would be my own coach; I would create workouts to challenge myself and learn new skills without feeling any sense of having to prove myself or potentially let teammates down as I learned. On a writing retreat to work on concluding this project, I took a yoga class, and the instructor made an obvious but welcome – and useful – comment about learning new bodily and life skills. When learning to walk, toddlers fall and stumble all the time; it is an accepted part of learning to walk. They don’t have a choice about it, and in my own experience with my children they don’t get hung up or upset about it, unless they have a more dramatic fall. So what happens for many of us in youth and as adults that we feel we have to know or be able to perform a bodily skill – such as a yoga pose or the ability to dribble a ball down the court – perfectly on the first try, with no room or possibility for a learning curve and making mistakes? I have distinct memories of my youth, where every grade I would tell myself, oh, you can’t join the volleyball or soccer team because you have never played and everyone else on the team has been playing forever. Of course, forever was one or two years at that point! This mentality kept me from playing sports; already having enough bodily anxiety, the idea of having poor coordination or skill at a new sport was enough to prevent me from signing up. This continued into adulthood and informed my decision not to sign up with a former partner for Rainbow Hoops basketball in Toronto. While I craved interacting with a broader community outside of my friendship circle, I was convinced that I would humiliate myself and that fear

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alone deterred me. Over the years, I also realized that I wanted those spaces to be critical and deeply engaging, that I didn’t want to just play sports but wanted to have thoughtful conversations with potential teammates about queer politics, social justice, and art. While this seemed possible, I remained hesitant to sign up, and since moving to a city where there are currently no queer leagues, I have not – as of yet – started my own. What is ironic and noteworthy – and why I have started the conclusion with a personal narrative – is that my reasons over the years not to join queer community sports were in many ways counter to the very mandates and goals of those leagues: namely, a collegial versus competitive drive, a focus on fun over expertise or skill, and a (sense of) dedication to dialogue about ever-changing queer community spaces. I myself was seeking and struggling to embrace the guiding principles informing queer community sports, and to unlearn dominant ideas about physical activity and exercise and the corresponding impact on my embodiment of gender. This distinction, between community sports and exercise, is critical to the potential disruption queer community sport spaces offer and/or may enable. This book has brought together Ahmed’s notion of queer phenomenology as a disorientation device with Foucault’s concept of technologies of the self to analyze three aspects of queer community sports: bodies/body image; gender identity; and community spaces and sporting norms. In particular, this book has asked what the potential is for queer community sports to disrupt the reproduction of the heteronormative body ideal, the sex/gender binary, and the norms concerning rules of engagement in mainstream sports. To conclude, I want to return to a few points central to Ahmed’s queer phenomenology within the context of queer community sports, notably disorientation and the fleeting nature of queer moments, and connect these with King’s critique of sport sociology scholarship that “equates visibility and identification with power and legitimacy” (King 2008, 420). Queer sports leagues were formed out of a desire to find a space and place where individual queers could feel (more) at home, able to express their sexual and gender identity and not

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have them be a central focus or determinant of skill, and to be amongst other queer bodies. Many of the individuals I spoke with talked about experiences of feeling “out of place,” that they did not feel comfortable or at home within mainstream sports and/or mixed or co-ed recreational leagues. From having their skill called into question, to struggling to negotiate change­ rooms, to communal talk, as Amanda noted, about “husbands and houses,” they experienced moments of disorientation. Ahmed suggests that disorientation is part of the process of becoming orientated (2006a, 5), such that “orientation is about making the strange familiar through the extension of bodies into space … disorientation occurs when that extension fails” (11). For individuals I spoke with, this was often their experience, the failure of their bodies to extend comfortably into dominant sports spaces; however, this experience of disorientation opened up and/or led to becoming differently oriented within new spaces. Queer community leagues offer the potential to be spaces to “gather to form new patterns and new ways of making sense” of oneself and one’s relation to others (Ahmed 2006a, 171). In her discussion of the spatiality of sexuality – of sexual orientation – Ahmed states that different orientations involve “a difference in one’s relation to the world,” that “different ways of directing one’s desires, means inhabiting different worlds” (68). In this way, queer “desire can be rethought of as a space for action, a way of extending differently into space” (100). This, as I have discussed within each chapter, holds the possibility to subvert and reimagine the dominant norms that inform sports, from what bodies are expected in play, to how they should move, to the very purpose of gathering and playing. But it is not simply about having queer bodies gather together in space, though this is significant, but the experience of disorientation, which, as Ahmed states, involves different relations to the world, which can lead to different actions. These actions and practices, drawing upon Lloyd’s articulation of feminist applications of Foucault’s technologies of the self, must be “allied with critique” and/or reflect critical awareness of the context, implication, and relation to societal relations of power (Lloyd

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1996, 250). Disorientation then makes possible spaces for different ways of making sense and different kinds of action; becoming disoriented instills reflection on orientation itself, what it means and where one is “located” in the world and in relation to others. Within queer spaces, individuals still experience moments of disorientation; the interacting and/or coming into contact with diverse bodies has led to moments of disorientation around gender, race, and bodily ability. These moments of disorientation have provided opportunities – some not always welcome – to interrogate the boundaries of “queer” and “community”: who are imagined as members/part of these community spaces? Ahmed states that the compulsion of heterosexuality, and I add cissexism, will frame efforts and moments of disorientation within queer community. Many leagues promote that they are inclusive and welcoming of diverse queers, including trans and genderqueer individuals, differently racialized queers, and disabled queers within some leagues. However, as discussed, there is some hesitancy about the extent to which they enact or take up that effort at inclusivity beyond merely stating it. On reflection, some collective members commented that they were not that diverse and/or that they should return or re-commit to practices such as pronoun rounds, suggesting that efforts at inclusivity were not always part of the game. Without acknowledging the ways teams and community spaces may be experienced as marginalizing and actively addressing it, they remain exclusionary under the guise of inclusivity (van Ingen 2004). Queer community sports have become increasingly visible and recognized as part of urban life in major cities in Canada. This visibility can align queers with “the normal, the legitimate, the dominant,” most notably as healthy citizens engaged in recreational, not seemingly political, activity (Halpeirn cited in King 2008; see also Symons and Hemphill 2007). Further, Ahmed articulates that, “if heterosexuality is compulsory, then even the positive movement of [queer] desire remains shaped by this compulsion,” which can be useful when thinking about the queering potential of queer community sports (2006a, 102). As volunteer-led entities made up of individual and differently

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positioned queers and allies, they will undoubtedly draw upon normative frames of reference and “common sense” with respect to the organization of recreational sports, even in their efforts to disrupt some elements. The pressure or weight felt by some queers in Canadian society for visibility and legitimacy, stemming from historical (and current) discrimination and violence, and the background or framing of compulsory heterosexuality and ­cissexism certainly inform league initiatives, or lack thereof. However, the goal of fostering or creating new paths, new forms of gathering, which stem from experiences of disorientation within mainstream sports, should not be to “stabilize the queer [as an identity category],” to become fixedly orientated in queer ways, even if that were possible given societal compulsions (Ahmed 2006a, 172). To organize leagues around a sense of fixed sexual orientation, such as same-sex desire or lesbian/queer identity, would diminish the queer potential made possible by diverse experiences of disorientation that push us to reflect, reconsider, and reimagine our ways of engaging and being with others. As such, disorientation can be a political tool leagues could draw upon to extend the meaning of queer/queer moments by enabling a means with which to maintain an awareness of and engagement with experiences that differently positioned individuals have within community spaces of being “out of place” and/or not welcome/at home. In this way, “queer” is understood as a category that does not only speak to sexual orientation and that is in constant formation, “always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes” (Butler 1993, 228). There can be pleasure in queer moments, moments of disorientation that orient us toward new paths and forms of gathering, as Ahmed suggests in the re-articulation of queer gatherings as “family gatherings,” the making a “familiar form strange” (2006a, 177). In similar fashion, there is undoubtedly pleasure experienced within queer community sports in their making seemingly familiar forms of play strange. Disorientation, however, is not and should not be viewed as a “politics of the will, but an effect of how we do politics, which in turn is shaped by the prior matter of simply how we live”

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(Ahmed 2006a, 177). Thus, how queer community sports are actively played out on the field (or rink or court) is where the focus needs to be. Assertions of inclusivity are critical, and I am not dismissing their motives or intentions, but they need to be reflected in everyday actions and routines informing the “doing” of community sports; and there is evidence, as I have illustrated, that this is taking place. Finally, with respect to disorientation, Ahmed states that it should not be obligatory or a requirement, notably because for many queers this would “demand too much,” as “for some, a life-long commitment to deviation [from the normative or straight line] is not psychically or materially possible or sustainable” (2006a, 177). This needs to be recognized within the political work of disorientation that queer community sports engage with; the playing field of disorientation is not level. While they may be increasingly normalized and visible and continue to be framed by normative compulsions of heterosexuality, cissexism, racism/whiteness, and ablebodiedness, queer leagues are also sites of disorientation, of dialogue, of creative action, and of commitment to new directions and ways of being in relation with other (queer) bodies. As I stated earlier, my analysis of queer community sports spaces is not to judge their commitment nor to diminish their significance and importance for many queers. Rather, it is because of what these spaces can offer, their potential, that I’ve been so engaged with this endeavour, both as someone who loves physical activity and as someone who identifies as queer. In creating queer sporting collectives, I have argued, there has been an effort to forge new ways of doing sports through explicit policies, including reserved wait-list spots for queers of colour, and a focus on recreation and fun, as well as through the initiation of new practices, such as pronoun rounds and changes to score-counting that are more accessible. Ahmed suggests that when we do this work, “when we tread on paths that are less trodden, which we are not sure are paths at all[,] we might need even more support,” and that we need to be mindful of “how we come into contact with other bodies to support actions of following paths that have not been cleared” (2006a, 170). Further, she articulates that “the queer body is

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not alone; queer does not reside in a body or an object, and is dependent on the mutuality of support” (170). Ahmed’s comments here reflect the interconnection of three themes of this book, notably that bodily relations are tied to our experiences of and/or identifications with gender, and that the community we spaces we inhabit are shaped by our – and others’ – bodily presences and embodiments of gender. The narratives highlight queering moments, moments of disorientation, and of hope for new directions. Efforts at community-building and recognizing the diverse meanings and potential of queer are evident within queer community sports. There are individual initiatives, but they reflect investment in community and, to be effective, are dependent on a “mutuality of support.” With respect to bodies and body image, there are shifts afoot within these spaces resulting from changes that have been made in support of particular segments of the queer community but that are having community-wide benefits. For example, the inclusion of diverse trans folks on leagues, as Jesse articulated, will do away with assumptions about what bodies will be present and how they should appear, opening the space up. The greater bodily diversity present, the more comfortable differently positioned queers will feel, ranging from appearance to perception of skill to feeling (more) welcomed to join the space. Various leagues have begun this work, in particular around trans-inclusivity and to some extent around greater accessibility. There will be ongoing moments of disorientation to come, but hopefully they will be embraced as offering new ways to engage in play and to be in relation with other bodies. Racial diversity and fatphobia/healthism remain pressing issues that continue to inform ideas about bodies in community spaces: where certain bodies are assumed to be found and where certain bodies are assumed not to be found or able to keep up/participate. The predominant whiteness of queer community sports needs to be acknowledged and current practices interrogated to foster the inclusivity leagues desire. Most leagues have not only endeavoured to promote gender diversity and trans-inclusivity through changes to their websites and membership language but have also critically reflected on

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practices in play that function to reinforce the gender binary. From engaging in pronoun rounds at the start of games, to reminders of gendered language in play, such as “ladies,” and attention to changeroom and bathroom accessibility, there is thoughtful attention to the everyday routines of sports. Increasing dialogue with trans and genderqueer members as well as amongst all community members about changing community dynamics seems vital. In Travers and Deri’s research on lesbian softball leagues, they cite KD, a trans woman, who felt conflicted about trans men’s inclusion in lesbian softball leagues; on the one hand, she supports trans rights first and foremost, but on the other, she also has a desire for a women’s softball league (2010, 500). Further, they articulate that the participation of trans men in lesbian leagues has “less to do with biological or medical categories of sex and/or sexual orientation, and more to do with cultural history, friendship groups and the sense of belonging to the lesbian community” (501). Their research illustrates the importance of dialogue and gives some indication of the range of experiences and voices that need to be heard and engaged with. Reflection about the effectiveness of current practices and a sharing of “best practices” amongst leagues are fruitful starting places; are pronoun rounds helpful/experienced as supportive? Is the policy on trans-inclusivity an effective means of communication for members or would a different or additional one be of benefit? This dialogue is happening within some leagues and I imagine will continue. Travers and Deri highlight that leagues that are moving away from sex/sexual orientation binaries as defining features of their membership are “providing a window onto a less sex-binary-based sporting future” (503). In this way, moments of gender disorientation can inform, and have informed, new ways of relating and engaging with diverse members of queer community. Finally, the realm of queer community sports has the potential to shift common-sense sporting practices not only within their own spaces, but in ways that can be carried over into mainstream sports. The focus on fun and recreation over competition and ranking of skill (not that these aren’t important; they are just not deemed the most important or defining

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characteristic), of interrogating the spaces of play and their potential exclusionary effect, notably around race, ability, and gender, and the strong sense of commitment and effort in maintaining the availability of the spaces all exhibit different “rules of engagement.” The various distinctions between queer community sports and more mainstream sports can be experienced as disorienting, especially for those who have been socialized/ grown up with sports. By creating and prioritizing different reasons for gathering, queer community sports offer a space from which to challenge assumptions about how sports should function and who can participate. These moments of potential disruption or queering are fleeting and are framed by compulsions to intersecting societal norms and the related pressures of visibility and legitimacy sought by some. However, while queering moments and potential to create new paths, new ways of relating to each other, may be fleeting, and are set against increased visibility and acceptance, and the occasional sense of compulsion to be like other leagues and to separate sports from politics, these moments register efforts to be “at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant” (King 2008), as illustrated by their continued commitment to critical reflection and action. Ahmed suggests that “the point is not whether we experience disorientation (for we will and we do), but how such experiences can impact on the orientation of bodies and spaces … the point is what we do with such moments of disorientation, as well as what such moments can do – whether they can offer us the hope of new directions, and whether new directions are reason enough for hope” (2006a, 158). Or put another way, how can queer community sports put the instability of queer and of community to good use (King 2008)? Are queer moments, moments of disorientation, “able to offer hope of new directions” and “are new directions reason enough for hope” (Ahmed 2006a, 158)? Disorientation within queer community sports, I argue, does hold the potential for new directions that are reason enough for hope. There is sufficient hope that ongoing queering around thoughtfulness with respect to trans-inclusivity, taking Travers and Deri (2010) and the needs of diverse trans individuals and communities in mind,

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will foster new lines and gathering places. Continued interrogation of the whiteness and able-bodiedness of community sports is required, such that a queering of community sports necessitates critical reflection and action on the racial diversity and accessibility of these spaces. For example, the invisibility of whiteness reflected in comments such as “well if I have to think about it, I guess we are not that diverse” and “you’ll find queers of colour in different, more political spaces” needs to be made visible and given attention. And finally, hope can be found in the interrogation of the norms informing the construction of the active, athletic, and healthy body that is mindful of fatphobia, healthism, ableism, and transphobia. Queer moments are fleeting, but rather than seeking or desiring a sense of permanence, Ahmed suggests, with reference to Berlant and Warner, that we “listen to the sound of ‘the what’ that fleets” (2006a, 106). This includes listening to the openings that are made possible when femme-inine is read as active, when a fat-identified team asserts its name, The Heavy Hitters, and when awareness of the league’s whiteness is translated into several actions to increase participation of differently racialized queers. These sounds are offerings, guides for what needs our attention and for putting the instability of queer to good use.

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accessibility, 118, 130, 131, 132. See also differently abled and disabled people Adams, L., 57 Adele (Trinidadian-Canadian trans woman), 37, 86–7 Ahmed, S.: on bodily experience, 120, 131; on desire, 14, 16, 91, 93, 122–3; on disorientation, 15–16, 19, 127, 129, 130; on gendered embodiment, 58, 69; and heterosexuality, 77, 90, 113, 128; on taking action, 103; on taking space, 14–15, 49, 54–5, 86; on tendencies/ orienting toward, 14, 47, 70, 73, 76, 80; on work required, 18, 56, 114. See also queer phenomenology ai d s pandemic, 31, 106 Ainsley (white butch), 75–6 Alex (white genderqueer), 81 Amanda (white lesbian), 39, 52, 79, 80–1, 127 Amelia (white lesbian), 38, 82–3 Anderson, E., 10, 62, 66 Andrea (white gay), 43–4, 83, 84

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androgyny, 9, 22, 25, 83, 86 Asian Canadians, personal stories of, 39, 45, 51, 86 Bakshi, L., 102 beauty, 22, 25, 30 Bell, D., 83, 107–8 Bergenson, S., 24 Bias, S., 32 binary sex differences. See gender binary; sex segregation Binnie, J., 107–8 biologism, 84 biphobia, 83 bisexuals, personal stories of, 38, 39, 41, 44–5, 48, 81, 83–4, 103 Black bodies: and beauty standards, 25; personal stories of, 38, 41, 45, 81, 103; in white spaces, 16, 118 Black Lives Matter, 109 Blackman, L., 30 bodies, 18–55; body positivity, 26, 51–3; dysmorphia, 37; and healthism, 29–34; healthy, 26–34, 43–7; management of, 30, 33; shaming, 32, 51; silence

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about, 24, 26; size and gender, 40–3. See also Black bodies body image: differences and similarities, 34–40; and exercise, 11–12, 19; of lesbian/queer women, 20, 21–6; literature, 19, 20, 33, 55. See also under heteronormativity Bombak, A., 31, 43 Bordo, S., 30 boxing, 63, 82 Broad, K.L., 72 Browne, K., 91, 102, 121 Brumberg, J., 35 Bump Volleyball Vancouver, 4, 12 butch/butchness/soft-butch/butch lesbianism: appearance, 25, 27, 41–2; personal stories of, 75, 78; rejection of, 8, 12 Butler, J., 18, 35, 39, 70, 93

Cleo (South Asian gender/queer bi/pansexual), 39, 118 clothing, 35–7, 40, 68, 72, 74–5 Clydesdale runners, 28 co-ed/mixed leagues, 4, 77–80. See also leagues Cogan, J., 24–5 coming out, 26, 50, 51, 91 community sports, 91–123; and inclusivity, 116–19; responsibility to play, 110–13; role of, 47–55; and social belonging, 103–10. See also leagues; spaces; teams competition, 5, 18, 28–9, 64, 80, 132–3 Court of Arbitration of Sport, 96–7 Crawford, R., 30 Cvetkovich, A., 102

Cameron, L., 36 Canadian National Women’s Rugby, 27 care of the self (Foucault), 16–17, 19, 33, 53–5, 117–18, 126–7 Carmen (white bisexual), 44–5, 47–9, 83–4 Carter, Claire, 7, 11–12, 15, 124– 6, 130 Caudwell, J., 18–19, 27, 32, 65, 83, 92, 94 Chalklin, V., 32 Chase, L.F., 29, 36 Chinese Canadians, personal ­stories of, 43, 73–4, 77 Chloe (white lesbian), 35, 72 Chmielewski, J., 8, 25, 29, 51 Choi, P., 30, 43

Darcy (Two Spirit genderqueer homo-romantic asexual), 88–9 Davidson, J., 97–9 DeGeneres, Ellen, 11, 35 Deri, J., 9, 65, 95, 121, 132 Dhoot, S., 99 diets/dieting, 30, 31, 46 differently abled and disabled people, 7, 39, 66–7, 117, 128. See also accessibility Doan, P., 102, 113 Double Rainbow Dodgeball, 4, 117 drag community, 88–9 Drakes, G., 25 drug testing, 100 Duggan, Lisa, 107 Dyke Marches, 43–4

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dykes: personal stories of, 54, 72–3, 78; who “look like men,” 85, 95–6 Dylan (white queer), 36, 42, 45–6, 47, 50, 51, 53 eating disorders, 24, 37 Eli (white genderqueer/queer), 52–3, 112–13, 119, 120, 122 embodiment, 19, 33, 54, 58–9, 60–1, 63, 69 emotional labour, 73, 111 Eng, H., 64 Exercise and Gender Norms: Analysing the Implications of the ‘Fit’ Body for Queer Women (Carter), 11–12 Exercise and the Queer Body: Implications of Exercise on Gender Identity, Body Image, and Community for Queer and Trans Women (Carter), 11–12 exercise/physical activity: and body image, 11–12, 19; and discrimination, 5; and femmes, 86; and gender, 11–12, 85–9; physical education in school, 28; and social belonging, 11 fat activism, 22, 32 fatness/fat athletes/fat-identified people, 28, 32, 36, 37–8, 66 fatphobia: and being out, 26, 33; and butchness, 42; experience of, 7–8, 28–9, 44–5, 49–50; and healthism, 53, 131, 134; presence of, 12, 47, 114; in rugby, 28

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femininity/feminine bodies: as attitude, 89; embodiment of, 60–1; and healthy bodies, 31; moving through space, 75; normative, 4–5, 30. See also women feminism, 22, 62, 64, 66–8 femmes: discrimination against, 65, 83; and exercise, 86; ­invisibility of, 12, 25; personal stories of, 46 f i fa Women’s World Cup (2019), 79 fitness personnel/professional trainers, 17, 45 football, women’s, 27, 65 Foucault, M., 16–17, 19, 55, 58–9, 117, 126–7. See also technologies of the self (Foucault) France, Tan, 91 gaie athletes, 27, 66 Gay Games, 5–6, 97–8 gay/gayness: and binary sex differences, 65; men, 29; personal stories of, 43, 83; in study, 13 gaze, 32, 69–77 gender: and body size, 40–3; and exercise/physical activity, 11–12, 85–9; expression/­ identity, 79, 82, 85–9, 126; norms of, 21, 85; performance of, 24–5, 76; within queer leagues, 80–5; and sports, 56–7, 59–66, 94 gender binary: disruption of, 9, 57–9, 76, 96, 98, 100, 126; non-alignment with, 15;

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146 Index

presumption of, 69, 85, 89; reinforcement of, 63, 94, 132. See also sex segregation in sports gendered embodiment, 58–9 genderqueer: about, 11, 21; increased visibility, 65; literature on body image, 33; navigation of spaces, 76; personal stories of, 39, 51–3, 81, 86, 88–9, 112, 119; in study, 13 Gina (white lesbian), 108, 109

inclusivity, 91–123; and community sports, 116–19; language vs practice, 9, 98–9, 109, 128, 130; in leagues, 10, 92–3, 96–7, 109, 111–12, 131–2; methods of, 114–16; of transgender people, 96–7, 111–12, 119, 131 Indigenous peoples, 109–10 intersectionality, 20, 103 invisibility/visibility of queer folk, 6, 12, 25, 36, 59, 65, 94

Hammidi, T., 25 Hardy, Elizabeth, 8, 28, 33, 42, 60, 64, 79 health/healthism, 4, 26–34, 43–7, 53, 131, 134 The Heavy Hitters, 50 Hemphill, D., 99–100, 106 heteronormativity: body ideals, 7, 20, 22, 23, 52, 82, 85; and femininity, 32, 34, 36, 40, 63; of mainstream spaces, 9–10; and muscularity, 75–6; pressure to conform to, 26, 32, 64, 86, 129; queerness disruptive to, 15, 54, 55, 57–8, 94; trans athletes disruptive to, 66 heterosexuality, 14–15, 103, 105, 112, 115 hockey, 62–3 homonationalism, 99 homonormativity, 10, 107 homophobia, 22, 24, 28, 70, 71 hormones/steroids/testosterone, 83–4, 96–7, 100

Jamie (queer/genderqueer Asian Canadian), 51, 86 Janet (white lesbian), 71–2 Jasmine (Black bisexual), 38, 41, 45, 81–2, 103 Jean (white queer), 49–50, 61 Jenner, Caitlyn, 23 Jennifer (white heterosexual), 105, 115 Jesse (white lesbian), 37, 47–9, 69, 79, 84–5, 131 Johnston, L., 75 Jones, J., 25 Jordan (white queer), 46–7, 74–5, 82, 87–8 Jude (trans man), 71–2, 110–11

identities and subject positions, 67

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Kaiser, S., 25 Kate (Chinese Canadian queer), 43, 73–4, 77 KD (trans woman), 132 Kelly, L., 24–5 Kern, R., 105 Kerri (white lesbian), 105–6 Kimberley (African Canadian ­heterosexual), 112 King, S., 107, 126

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Index 147

Lambert, Karen, 97 language, 9, 95, 108, 116. See also pronoun rounds Larsson, H., 20–1, 57–8, 82 leagues: co-ed/mixed, 4, 77–80; as community/social spaces, 6, 9–10, 67, 126; and feminism, 64, 94; gender within, 80–5; inclusivity in, 10, 92–3, 96–7, 109, 111–12, 131–2; membership language of, 9; politics of disorientation, 18–19. See also community sports; teams; technologies of the self; individual leagues Lenskyj, H., 32, 59–60, 64, 94 lesbian/queer women: and body image, 8, 20, 21–6, 42; habitus, 101; literature on body image, 20, 55; and obesity, 31; in rural areas, 25–26; terminology, 21n1; visibility of, 36; who “look like men,” 85. See also butch/butchness/soft-butch/ butch lesbianism; l­esbians, ­personal stories of lesbians, personal stories of. See Amelia; Andrea; Carmen; Chloe; Cleo; Gina; Janet; Jesse; Kate; Kerri; Quinn; Susan; Tiffany “Lesbians in Space” (Probyn), 76 Leslie (white queer/dyke/soft butch), 78, 79, 80–1 l g bt community, 27, 28, 66, 95, 99, 106 Linghede, E., 20–1, 57–8, 82 Lloyd, M., 16, 55, 127 Love, A., 64, 96–7

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The L Word / Generation Q, 8, 23, 42, 42n3, 105 Lyle, J., 25 Mabel League, 4, 12, 13, 48, 51, 119 Malson, H., 30, 43 Markula, P., 17, 33, 55, 58–9, 67, 80 Martine (white queer), 118–19 masculinity, 29, 56, 59, 78 McPhail, D., 28, 31, 37, 43 Michaels, Jillian, 23 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, 102, 104 Moore, S., 31, 43 Morgenson, S., 99, 106–7, 109 Morris, J., 26 muscularity, 27, 60, 62, 64, 79, 87 Myers, A., 26 Nash, C., 101–2, 111 neoliberalism, 4, 30 netball, 6 non-binary people, 9, 65, 79, 85, 92. See also queer folk North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (nagaaa), 96 Notso Amazon Softball League, 4, 12, 39, 118 obesity, 31 Olympics, 9, 28, 94, 99, 118–19 Orange Is the New Black, 23 out, coming, 26, 50, 51, 91 pansexuality, 39 Pardis, E., 63, 82

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148 Index

patriarchy, 22 Payton (white queer), 82–3 personal stories: bisexuals, 38, 39, 41, 44–5, 48, 81, 83–4, 103; Black bodies, 38, 41, 45, 81, 103; butch/butchness/­ soft-butch/butch lesbianism, 75, 78; dykes, 54, 72–3, 78; femmes, 46; gay/gayness, 43, 83; genderqueer, 39, 51–3, 81, 86, 88–9, 112, 119; transgender people, 37, 71, 86–87. See also lesbians, personal ­stories of; queer folk, personal stories of physical activity. See exercise Pink Flamingo Race, 98 Pink Turf Soccer, 4, 12, 112 Pride House, Vancouver Olympics, 118–19 Pride Parade, Toronto, 109 Pringle, R., 33, 55, 58–9, 67, 80 Probyn, E., 76 professional trainers/fitness personnel, 17, 45 pronoun rounds, 115, 120, 130, 132 queer, personal stories of. See bisexuals, personal stories of; Dylan; Eli; Jamie; Jean; Jordan; Kate; Martine; Payton; Simone; Sonia Queer Eye, 91, 114 queer phenomenology, 14–15, 19, 55, 73, 117, 126 queers: about, 13, 21; and clothing, 35–7, 40, 68, 72, 74–5; of colour, 12–13, 107, 109–10, 116–19, 122–3, 130, 134;

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­ ifferently abled and disabled, d 7, 39, 66–7, 117, 128; queerness, 15, 31, 57, 93, 98, 99–100, 129; sport sociology and, 68, 94–102; in study, 13; visibility/ invisibility of, 6, 12, 25, 36, 59, 65, 94; youth at Pride House, 118–19. See also bodies; body image; butch/butchness/softbutch/butch lesbianism; dykes; fatness/fat athletes/fat-­ identified people; femininity/ feminine bodies; femmes; gay/ gayness; genderqueer; lesbians; non-binary people; transgender people; women queer spaces: Browne on, 121; disruption of cis heteronormative body ideals, 21; inclusivity of, 5; literature on, 101; and political agendas, 106–7; as relational concept, 102; vs straight spaces, 19–20 Queer Van leagues, 4, 12, 111 Quinn (white lesbian), 110 racial diversity, 11, 13, 109, 114, 131. See also Black bodies racism, 24–6, 66, 99, 109 Rail, G., 8, 27, 32, 42, 66, 94 Rainbow Hoops Basketball, 4, 79, 103 Rapinoe, Megan, 79 Ravel, B., 8, 27, 32, 42, 66, 94 Regina, 11 registration spots, targeted, 118– 19, 130 Rice, C., 23–4 Riley, S., 31 Rooke, A., 101, 121–2

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Index 149

Rothblum, E., 26 rugby, 27–8, 60, 62–3, 64, 79 Sam (white dyke), 54, 72–3, 107, 108 self, care of the, 16 Senn, C., 24 sex segregation in sports, 19, 65, 67, 68–9, 70, 74, 94 sexual exceptionalism, 99 Shogan, D.A., 56, 67, 80 Simone (white queer), 117 Slevin, K., 22, 24 soft butches. See butch/butchness/ soft-butch/butch lesbianism Sonia (Asian queer), 45 spaces, 56–90, 91–123; Black bodies in white spaces, 16, 118; designed for sex segregation, 69–70; disruption of heteronormativity, 69–77, 122, 126; as safe, 108, 112, 119–21; straight vs queer, 16, 19–20, 70–5 sports, 56–90; and bodily capabilities, 85; competition, 5, 18, 28–9, 64, 80–1, 132–3; definition of, 60; feminist/queer visions, 66–8; and gender, 56–7, 59–66, 94; sex segregation, 19, 65, 67–9, 70, 74, 94, 100–1 sport sociology, 62, 63, 94–102 steroids/testosterone/hormones, 83–4, 96–7, 100 Striegel-Moore, R., 22, 24, 34 Susan (white lesbian), 34–5, 41–2, 104–5, 108–9, 111, 114–16 Sykes, H., 5, 28, 37, 85, 94, 118–19 Symons, C., 99–100, 106

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Tagg, B., 6 Taub, J., 26 teams: and community, 92; and feminism, 94; membership ­criteria, 65; motivations for joining, 65; for social interactions, 81. See also community sports; leagues technologies of the self (Foucault), 16–17, 19, 33, 53–5, 117–18, 126–7 testosterone/hormones/steroids, 83–4, 96–7, 100 Theberge, N., 59 thinness: and fitness, 29–30, 64, 86; as normative body ideal, 8, 23, 34, 37, 42; pressure to achieve, 22, 41, 43. See also body image; heteronormativity Thompson, B., 22, 23–4 Tiffany (white lesbian), 40–1, 43, 70 Toronto, 3, 11 Toronto Front Runners (tfr), 10, 29, 108–9 Toronto Pride Parade, 109 trainers, 17, 45 transgender people: about, 6, 21, 42, 91–2; and hormones, 83–4, 100; inclusivity of, 4, 96–7, 111–12, 119, 131; literature on body image, 33; navigation of spaces, 9, 76, 101; personal stories of, 37, 71, 86–7; Pride House, 118–19; self-identification vs medical-legal identity, 96; and transphobia, 24, 28, 112–13; visibility of, 65 Travers, A.: cultural vs biological affinity, 121; lesbian/gay vs

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150 Index

trans athletes, 66; lesbian softball leagues, 132; queer sports and sex segregation, 9, 10, 62, 65, 74, 95 Trinidadian-Canadian woman, personal stories of, 37, 86–7 Two Spirit, 11, 88–9, 118–19 Vancouver Olympics, 99, 118–19 van Ingen, C., 10, 29, 109 Vanity Fair, 23 Veri, M.J., 59 visibility/invisibility of queer folk, 6, 12, 25, 36, 59, 65, 94 Waddell, Tom, 97 Wahng, S., 102 Waitt, G., 98 “The Weaker Sex?” (Saini), 60n4

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whiteness, 22, 23, 99, 100–1, 131 white spaces, Black bodies in, 16, 118 women: bodies as less capable, 77, 83; restrict their bodies/ take up minimal space, 61, 69, 78–9, 88; “The Weaker Sex? Science That Shows Women Are Stronger than Men” (Saini), 60n4 “women born women”–only ­policy, 104 Women’s Hockey Club of Toronto, 4, 12, 111 wrestling, 62–3 Yost, M., 8, 25, 29, 51 Young, I.M., 61, 63, 78

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