Sports Culture Will Never Care About Women

I was waiting for the 64 tram to Caulfield on a Friday afternoon, the one I catch most weeks to go to Shabbat, and it came ten minutes late. Grumbling to myself about Swantson St traffic, I got on and was visually assualted by bright orange pamphlets strewn all over the tram reminding commuters about changes to tram timetables on Friday 28th September due to the public holiday. Ah yes, it’s labour day or something. As the tram trundled through Flinders St Station, I was confused by the masses of bodies in either black and white or yellow and blue swarming the CBD streets. They were all headed east, ah yes, there’s a big footy game or something. And then two and two finally made four and I realised that the entire state of Victoria gets a public holiday on Friday in honour of the AFL grand final (which I later found out was in fact played on Saturday so I’m still unsure what the fans at Flinders St on Friday were actually doing). Labour day makes sense; workers’ rights are pretty cool. But I couldn’t shake the slight discomfort of that fact that my tram ride, my weekend, my entire university semester timetable was centred around a football game.

A football game.

A handful of men running around an overpriced patch of grass kicking a ball in front of a stadium of fans who either paid exorbitant memberships or committed a mid-tier crime to nab a ticket. Whenever I complain about the footy I’m met with eyerolls about Sydneysiders or boring women or filthy feminists or some other significant aspect of my identity. Footy’s great! And anyone who disagrees is an imbecile who doesn’t appreciate Melbourne culture. And if you’re worried about the whole gender thing - which you shouldn’t because that’s dumb and annoying - it’s ok because there’s a women’s football league and some people are actually slightly interested in it!

But you cannot separate AFL from gender. You cannot separate sport from gender. There have been increasing measures taken to equal the literal and metaphorical playing field in recent years in regards to pay rates and women’s leagues, but feminising sport is a weak attempt at squaring the circle of an inherently masculine activity. Because with the current cultural standard of what we perceive as “good sport”, women will never be as good as men. Their games will never be as interesting to watch and the crowds will never pay the same amount for a ticket.

Whilst acknowledging the incredible biological diversity within one binary sex, as a generalisation people with XX chromosomes develop less muscle than those with XY, have shorter limbs, smaller hands and feet. Stepping outside of biological essentialism, women’s physical bodies are heavily affected by sexist socialisation. If you’ve been told your entire life that smallness is the epitome of feminine attractiveness, your mind will internalise this to the point where you feel unable to reach outwards into space to catch a ball because you subconsciously know that space does not belong to you (further reading: Throwing Like A Girl, Iris Marion Young). Saying that women are less able to play sport well unfortunately isn’t so much a misogynistic comment as simply stating the truth. However the factor missing in any conversations about women’s AFL, the Matildas or the Hockeyroos is that women’s subpar performance on the field does not at all reflect poorly on femininity. Rather it is our fault for glorifying activities in which only men are actually able to do well.

A quick Wikipedia gander reveals that sports probably originated as military training exercises, both in terms of fitness and team bonding. Rifling through my own limited general knowledge on the history of sports brings to mind the Ancient Greek Olympics, and that one story of how Oedipus accidentally killed his father with a discus and then had sex with his mother. Either way, it is pretty clear to see that sport was literally invented by and for men. Women were only included in the Olympics in 1900, and only in tennis and golf. Sporting activities were created specifically to cater to men’s abilities - long legs are good for running, big hands are good for handling balls, testosterone is good for lifting weights, and so these are the skills most cherished in sport. We’ve created the standard for “good sport” exclusively around what men can do, which coincidentally is what women aren't so great at. When the cultural consensus is that the best bit about cricket is hitting big fours and sixes, and the biggest talent in basketball is dunking balls, naturally we are less interested in women’s games where female bodies struggle to meet these expectations. If we as a society decided that the most coveted ability in cricket is constant blocks, with minimal opportunities for a score, perhaps we would value women in the Ashes. But this is not the case; we assume the standards of sport are objective and genderless, which places shame on women for being unable to match men in activities specifically designed to suit male bodies.

The glorification of sport directly translates to the glorification of men. At the expense of women.

When the biggest global event is the soccer World Cup, when the Olympics costs more than the annual budget of the United Nations, when an entire state has a public holiday for a single football game, we reiterate that this society values men’s physical abilities above all else. Giving women equal pay for equal play or supporting their leagues is a bandaid solution for a much deeper problem - femininity can never be desirable in sport; the best female players are the ones who most closely resemble men in their physical capabilities. The only viable option is to lessen our mindless worship of sport, to recognise that we teach ourselves to hate women when we laud a culture that will never value female participation.

My response to this idea is to remove myself from sporting culture, to shrug off the AFL and politely decline when someone offers to explain the rules to me. I stick to physical activities that value my body - gymnastics, circus, dance, rock climbing, yoga and pole. Occasionally I am a Bad Feminist, and sit in my undies with a bowl of ice cream watching the Ashes, but ideally this too will be removed from my life. Sporting culture hurts women. Hurts our ability to be taken seriously, to be valued as contributors to a national culture, to have our bodies respected. The grand final public holiday is shameful, and reducing the value of masculinity in sport should be our obligation.