Internalized misogyny and sports?
- Thread starter lorial
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- female fitness
@lorial I think the competitive mindset may be another thing to unlearn from gym class/childhood sports. The idea that the primary reason to do exercise is to be better than other people. Of course you can compete if it is fun or motivating to you. But it’s not the only reason to do it. And as you get older it becomes physically impossible to be the literal best at many things.
I have had to get used to not only running slower than men but also than most women, including women older than me, because when I started I was 100lbs overweight and in such bad shape I struggled walking up a flight of stairs. So I don’t compete with the people around me but against myself, and try to give myself credit for how far I’ve come.
I have had to get used to not only running slower than men but also than most women, including women older than me, because when I started I was 100lbs overweight and in such bad shape I struggled walking up a flight of stairs. So I don’t compete with the people around me but against myself, and try to give myself credit for how far I’ve come.
@yowan Absolutely it's so hard to let go of that competitive mindset taught in school. I'm a historian so it's been very helpful to actually pick up books about the history of modern sports and how all this competition, misogny, fatphobia, racism, etc came to be involved with them. E.g. the founder of the Olympics was a virulent white supremacist who thought that "athletic competition" would prove his ideas about racial superiority.
@melody7 Sure. "The Brutal Legacy of the Muscular Christian Movement", an article explaining how games went from being something considered vulgar and lower class to being how upper class European men demonstrated their "sportmanship" and thus superiority over women, the lower classes, and the colonized. "Racism and sport, a sorry story of modern times", an article discussing the racist views of Pierre de Coubertin, how they shaped the Olympics, and how American+Nazi eugenics shaped modern sports. "‘The Revenge of Plassey’: Football in the British Raj", about how colonized South Asians re-appropriated colonial sports as vehicles of new national identities (not my favorite article but there's soooo many studies of sports as gender performance and how colonial sports transformed local masculinities, they get very academic tho).
@lorial Think of it this way. Women excel in academics these days and are far better at getting and maintaining both personal and professional relationships than men. Should men hate themselves for not being on average similarly successful? I’m sure when you manage to see a similar problem outside your own situation you would be able to objectively judge that much more efficiently than you do your own. I’m the same way. I never manage to understand my own issues but I’m great at giving suggestions to others 
. So for me, the best way to figure stuff out for myself is to pretend like I’m helping someone else so I can get an outside view. It’s not always successful but it’s worth a shot.
. So for me, the best way to figure stuff out for myself is to pretend like I’m helping someone else so I can get an outside view. It’s not always successful but it’s worth a shot.@lorial I used to be more like that, but I've always been strong without even trying, so I accepted that as my thing.
Even amongst women, it bothered me in the sports I wanted to play because the taller women would always be better at it. Though there are some sports that a shorter body does better at too.
I am wondering if there are family or cultural issues impacting how you are feeling about this. My own family (including older relatives) wwret always supportive about anything I wanted to try, and didn't force me on specific paths. My country's culture is much better than what it was in the 60's, but media can still be
about it. Then there is local culture, culture of other groups you're involved in...
If my family was really overbearing and opinionated on how I should be, my experience would be totally different. Same if my parents had followed a different branch of the religion they followed. Kinda like the "10,000 hours to master something", 10,000 more negative messages about something is going to impact you in a significant way.
Where it still bothers me between genders is how a "women's side" gym is equipped compared to the "men's side" (which is really co-ed). My gym is better than most, but there is more "this is how women should exercise" equipment, and the equipment is not as good as the other side. Though, it doesn't get broken as much.
The content on the TVs tends to be very male dominated, and the little women's sports content tend to be the "traditionally female" sports. Unfortunately, that is a reflection of the sports network. I wish there was a service they could use where it was more like a guided algorithm playlist - choose 50/50 gendered sports on the coed side with a wider variety of sports, choose 90/10 on the women's side.
Even amongst women, it bothered me in the sports I wanted to play because the taller women would always be better at it. Though there are some sports that a shorter body does better at too.
I am wondering if there are family or cultural issues impacting how you are feeling about this. My own family (including older relatives) wwret always supportive about anything I wanted to try, and didn't force me on specific paths. My country's culture is much better than what it was in the 60's, but media can still be
about it. Then there is local culture, culture of other groups you're involved in...If my family was really overbearing and opinionated on how I should be, my experience would be totally different. Same if my parents had followed a different branch of the religion they followed. Kinda like the "10,000 hours to master something", 10,000 more negative messages about something is going to impact you in a significant way.
Where it still bothers me between genders is how a "women's side" gym is equipped compared to the "men's side" (which is really co-ed). My gym is better than most, but there is more "this is how women should exercise" equipment, and the equipment is not as good as the other side. Though, it doesn't get broken as much.
The content on the TVs tends to be very male dominated, and the little women's sports content tend to be the "traditionally female" sports. Unfortunately, that is a reflection of the sports network. I wish there was a service they could use where it was more like a guided algorithm playlist - choose 50/50 gendered sports on the coed side with a wider variety of sports, choose 90/10 on the women's side.
@monty58 There are 100% family and cultural issues affecting me. I grew up with a narrative that cis men's genitals and superior strength justify their gender roles, and these physical aspects are why young women have to be afraid of being raped by men and ending up pregnant. It's taken me a very long time to be able to make friends with men and even allow myself to spend time alone with a man as a result. It took a LOT of help from friends and lovers and therapy to work through how men are not just "able to rape" willy nilly because they're individually strong, violence doesn't happen in a social vaccuum, they're able to do it and GET AWAY with it because we live in patriarchal societies that give men legal and social power over women regardless of their age or muscle tone. (And also we live in hierarchical societies that favor the "strong" over the "weak" at large, and this harms men too.) Switching from a "men rape because they have dicks" to a "people rape when they have social power" narrative has helped me understand the dynamics of abuse MUCH better - e.g. why disabled folks and children and the elderly are abused at such high rates, why domestic violence is so commonly excused by the courts, why financial power causes abuse in same-sex and queer relationships too, why men are unfortunately also frequently raped by more powerful men, etc. But yeah I didn't expect how this internalized narrative affected how I saw sports as well, and that's why I've posted here.