Judith Butler Redux – the Heterosexual Matrix and the Out Lesbian Athlete: Amélie Mauresmo, Gender Performance, and Women’s Professional Tennis

Abstract

Lesbian athletes, no matter their gender performances, are viewed as masculine. The on-court persona of Amélie Mauresmo illustrates this. Even though Mauresmo’s gender expression was indistinguishable from other women on the pro tennis tour, her sexuality, being an out lesbian, led the public to view her as masculine. Judith Butler’s ‘heterosexual matrix’ (a sex-gender-sexuality tripartite system) accounts for how we make assumptions based on what we see. Her theory explains the experiences of most people, where sex and gender are the known categories, so the viewer, then, assumes a particular sexuality. However, the concept does not work for people who are out, when the known categories are sex and sexuality. This leads the viewer to assume a particular gender and, for Mauresmo, the assumed gender was masculinity. This paper transforms Butler’s theory, extending the usefulness of her ‘heterosexual matrix’.

Keywords:

• lesbians
• athletes
• masculinity
• femininity
• homosexuality
• feminist theory

Acknowledgements

I need to thank many people for reviewing this paper and providing feedback that helped me strengthen this paper. They are: J.S. Russell, the editor of JPS, and the two anonymous reviewers; the anonymous reviewers on the graduate paper committee for the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport annual conference of 2011; and Jay Johnson and the anonymous reviewers for the Barbara Brown graduate student essay for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport annual conference in 2011.

Notes

1. The diagram for Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix is from the Sport and American Society course (Kinesiology 287) created by David L. Andrews at the University of Maryland.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristi Tredway

Kristi Tredway, University of Maryland, Department of Kinesiology, College Park, MD, 20742 USA.