Toward sport reform: hegemonic masculinity and reconceptualizing competition

Abstract

Hegemonic masculinity, a framework where stereotypically masculine traits are over-emphasized, plays a central role in sport, partly due to an excessive focus on winning. This type of masculinity marginalizes those that do not possess specific traits, including many women and men. I argue sport reform focused on mitigating hypercompetitive attitudes can reduce this harmful and marginalizing hegemonic masculinity in sport. I make this argument first by challenging the dichotomous nature of sport, especially in recognizing that all outcomes are a blend of winning and losing, that ties are relevant and informative outcomes to contests, and that winning and losing do not always tell accurate stories of the outcome. Secondly, I contend that expanding the potential outcomes in sport can help broaden the emphasis of competitive sport to take into account playing well and improving, in terms of both the test and the contest. I conclude that these reforms decrease hegemonic masculinity, making sport better for all.

Keywords:

• Competition
• masculinity
• gender
• values

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Scott Kretchmar and the editor and anonymous reviewers from the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Despite the fact that gay sport clubs are more inclusive of differing types of masculinity, some note that they are still very competitive. In fact, some straight players in the gay clubs noted their surprise at how tough these clubs were and the high skill level of the club members (Jarvis 2015, 290).

2. Some non-Western sporting practices do, in fact, take into account non-dichotomous notions of sport. One such example is Zen archery. For further analysis of Zen practices, see Herrigel (1999) and Richardson (2012).

3. The 32 potential outcomes were arrived at as follows. Winning and losing give two potential outcomes. When playing well on the test or playing poorly is added, the number of potential outcomes increases to four. By adding another set of two potential outcomes, playing well in the contest and playing poorly in the contest, the number of potential outcomes increases to eight (4 × 2 = 8). When another set of potential outcomes, improving on the test or declining (or reaching stasis) on the test, is included, the number of potential outcomes increases to 16 (8 × 2 = 16). Finally, including the paired outcomes of improving on the contest or declining (or reaching stasis) in the contest increases the number of potential outcomes to 32 (16 × 2 = 32).