Ideas for Journal Entry #2

Hi Everyone, As mentioned in our last class, I wanted to give you some ideas of things that you might write about for your second Journal entry. Ideally at least 4 or 5 people will post entries by Tuesday of this week. In that way, there will be options for others in class to post comments. We have now had three classes upon which you can base your entries, so here are some ideas you might think about when posting your next entry: 1) Although we have discussed various definitions of sport, we did not talk as much in class about why it is important to define sport in a class where we are considering the relationship between sport and gender. If you think about the sports that were considered to fulfill the definitions discussed in class, what patterns did you notice about the breakdown by gender? For example, who mostly plays football, soccer, etc? Is that significant? 2) In discussing the "Pros the Pros Would Pay to See," what are some of the qualities people look for in watching and/or paying for tickets to sporting events? How does gender factor into the decisions people make about going to sporting events? You might also consider the five suggestions made by Wertheim et al. (2004) about how to enhance the growth of women's sports. Someone in class said it depends on the sport. Why is that? Which women's sports seem to be most popular (compared to the men's sports that are most popular)? What are the important factors in determining the popularity of those sports? 3) While we did not finish discussing the categories of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, we have begun to examine the complexity of these categories when it comes to deciding what is fair and what guidelines should be used to determine if someone competes as a male or female. In our discussions of intersex individuals and/or transgender athletes, how do each of these cases complicate the typical categories used to decide where someone should compete? How can we determine what is most fair in a case like Caster Semenya? We spoke of examples that occurred in Women's basketball (Kye Allums); Women's Tennis (Renee Richards); Women's Track & Field (Caster Semenya). Do you think there would ever be a case where a transgender athlete might be problematic in a Men's sport? Are you aware of such cases in your sport? 4) Someone asked if you could write about the assigned article for this Tuesday and you can certainly do that (i.e., "Creating the fiction of gender"). If so, you might relate your experiences to what the author (Messner, 2002) wrote about his observations of his own children playing sport. Hopefully these suggestions give you some ideas of what you might want to write about or elaborate on. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Dr. Spencer (nspencr@bgsu.edu) or Casey. See you Tuesday in class! Dr. Spencer