Sportsiology

Often we forget that March Madness is not just the Men’s basketball bracket but that women play championship basketball too. They also play football (and sometimes not in their underwear), hockey and…I guess…softball. And yet, women’s sports, professional or otherwise, are often ignored, made fun or subordinated to men’s sports. Are we so intrenched in our gender roles that we can’t see women in roles that don’t fit our expectations of their gender? Is this why we will accept women in sports such as gymnastics and swimming? Because they are more delicate and ladylike? Or is it that we have been socialized to believe that some sports belong to men and others to women and anyone of the opposite sex attempting to play them is an imposter?

Let me ask you this. If basketball had been a woman’s sport before it was a sport for men, would we then think that men had bastardized this sport and taken this once wonderful thing and made it violent and ugly?