And so, in this issue of S&F Online, we also take a fresh look at Title IX and ask how we are to move beyond this moment, both protecting the gains that have been made and adopting new strategies for changing women’s role in sport and sport’s role in our culture. Laurie Priest explodes some of the myths that surround the debate over Title IX, showing that men’s sports teams have not been cut in response to the legislation, but have shown a net gain since its enactment. In fact, sports like wrestling that have diminished in size over the last several years were actually cut at higher rates during the years when Title IX was in court-ordered abeyance than in the years when the act was enforced. Similarly, Priest shows (and Gee concurs) that large programs like men’s football and basketball do not support other programs, but rather cost more to run than the revenues that they bring in. As Gee notes, all collegiate athletic programs, including men’s football and basketball, are subsidized by their colleges and universities.
Jo Ann M. Buysse traces the positive, as well as the negative effects of Title IX. The success of the legislation meant that an initially resistant National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) eventually wanted to take over the government of women’s sports from the women’s governing body, the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (AIAW): “In accepting the demise of the AIAW, many female coaches and administrators hoped that women and men would work together to transform intercollegiate sport. Instead, most women’s programs were modeled after the men’s, and female leadership declined.” But, even as Title IX is under attack there are also moves from a number of quarters, like the Knight Foundation’s Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, to continue the interrupted project of transforming collegiate athletics.
Chancellor Gee argues that these efforts have the best chance of success if Title IX is a beginning rather than an end point. Too many universities have depended upon Title IX as the answer to the issues raised by the culture of collegiate athletics, taking what should be a baseline of avoiding federal litigation and using it as a goal. This approach has several negative effects. It brings the courts more into the process of university management, something despised by Title IX’s opponents and something that could be avoided by universities taking more proactive approach to gender equity. Colleges and universities can, however, take the initiative in fostering cultural change around sport, as Vanderbilt did in restructuring its athletic programs by incorporating them into the Office of Student Life. The goal of this move was to ensure that Vanderbilt’s athletic programs would reflect the educational goals and values of the university. As Gee describes the process, the Vanderbilt decision was not externally imposed, “it evolved here out of our truest values. The change belonged – and belongs – to us. It is now part of our self-definition. And because we created our own change, the change ‘took.'”
To move beyond Title IX, we not only have to look at how institutional change is best accomplished, but return to the broader set of issues that influence cultural values and thus inform the possible directions for institutional change. In just one example of the type of broad analysis necessary to conceptualize this task fully, we include Tamir Sorek’s essay on masculinity and women’s exclusion in Israeli soccer. Sorek makes the crucial point that the treatment of women depends not just on representations of women and femininity, but on representations of masculinity as well. If athletics is a site for the construction of masculinity and masculinity is tied to nationalism, then those sports which represent the body of the nation – whether soccer in Israel or football and baseball in the United States – are more likely to exclude women. Basketball is more open to women in both countries, in part because basketball is not the “national pastime” in either country. Like many essays in this issue, Sorek shows how symbols, representation and values are crucial to possibilities for equity and justice. In the second half of her essay Buysse follows some of the changes in media representations of women in college athletics. Such representations have a wide ranging cultural impact – that form and inform cultural values – and thus that are a central part of the struggle for social change.
Karla FC Holloway focuses our attention on precisely such issues of cultural value in her discussion of the recent situation at Duke University in the coda to this issue. This is the second time that we have had to provide a coda to an issue of S&F Online in response to racially charged campus incidents that were relevant to our topics. When we were in the process of production for “Jumpin’ at the Sun: Reassessing the Legacy of Zora Neale Hurston,” a series of racist incidents here on the Columbia University campus required comment in an issue that included consideration of Hurston’s treatment as the first African American student at Barnard. As we were gathering the last of the essays for this issue we were overtaken by the media storm surrounding Duke University, after members of the Duke Men’s Lacrosse team on the night of March 13 hired two women of color as exotic dancers for a party that involved extensive drinking and rapidly degenerated, ending in accusations of rape against three of the players. A few weeks later it was revealed that after the party a sexually graphic email had been sent by one of the players to the rest of his teammates, describing his fantasy of committing violence against women at similar events. The revelation of the email and a series of violations of campus codes by the lacrosse players resulted in the dismissal of the coach. The media coverage of these events, which can most accurately be called a circus, has focused on the question of whether the three accused players will be found guilty in a court of law, but Holloway, a professor of English, Women’s Studies and Law at Duke, as well as a former Dean at the University, draws our attention to much broader issues of culture and of values that are at stake regardless of what happens in court. The facts that are not in dispute – the out of control nature of the party, the harassment, including racial slurs, directed at the two dancers (who had been hired under false pretenses of working at a much smaller bachelor party with far fewer people), the email, and the previous pattern of drinking and rule-breaking – are themselves quite serious. And the effects on the campus have also been serious. As a result, Duke must wrestle with a set of questions about the cultural value of sport and the culture which values sport in the way that the United States currently values college athletics. While the rest of the nation seems obsessed with deciding the question of guilt or innocence in advance of the trial and on the basis of race, class, and gender (on either side), Professor Holloway brings our attention back to the question of who has been hurt by a culture of sport that granted license for repeated infractions to a particular group of racially and class-privileged athletes. Even more poignantly, Professor Holloway raises the question of who is being asked to fix this culture. Perhaps we should not be surprised, but feminist analysis suggests that we should be concerned, that the very people most injured or at risk for injury are the people whose labor is called upon to address “the problem.”
And so, we are returned to the question of cultural values with which Catharine Stimpson started us off. Only with a wide-ranging approach, one that takes into account social relations, institutional change, and cultural values, can the potential of feminism for sport and the feminist potential of sport be realized. E. Grace Glenny’s essay and its accompanying slide show provides not only a trenchant analysis of how the visual culture of sport influences gender and race relations, but also some suggestions for how feminists might undo the tangle created at the nexus of sports, media and business. By comparing images from Sports Illustrated with those from the independent sports photography exhibit, Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?, we can see how women and sport might be envisioned differently. Not only does Game Face show women whose athletic accomplishment is impressive and sometimes breathtaking, but it shows the range of sport in which women participate, amateur and professional, organized and neighborhood, highly competitive games and games played simply for the wonder of physical activity. This is a very different and much wider world of sport than the one available through most media outlets. By pursuing such visions we might very well change the terms on which the game is played. Glenny suggests that there are also other places where alternative cultural possibilities might develop like the cultures of fandom that have grown up around women’s teams, including the U.S.A. women’s soccer team, the teams of the WNBA, or even local pick up games. By participating in a culture that values women’s athletic accomplishment at various levels and in various ways, it is possible to embody values outside of those offered by the major media. So join Professor Stimpson and the other contributors to this issue: become an athlete, become a fan, and do so in a way that broadens rather than narrows the realm of sports and athletics, of gender and race, of culture and of values.
