Why I refuse to explain my love of baseball to the obnoxious fan at this week's World Series game

Perhaps you've grown used to Gender Lens' intelligent analysis of those important political or media-related issues that influence women and men today. Perhaps you look forward to my twice-monthly posts and their well-considered approaches to gender.

Well, this is not one of those posts. This, my friends, is a rant. Plain and simple.

It began this Christmas, when my dad purchased a pack of partial season tickets for our family to share. This meant that several times this year, my brother and his partner and me and my partner were able to cheer on our favorite team -- the Philadelphia Phillies.

I'd like to note that my dad did not simply buy tickets for himself, my brother, and my husband. This is because my dad understands, and has always understood, that baseball is a sport loved by both men and women. Dad coaches high school ball, and ever since I was in the crib, I had a baseball in my hand.

Until I was 13, I played baseball on a team with all boys. I spent a lot of my time trying to prove myself worthy. One of my fondest memories was during a particular game when the entire infield and outfield moved in about ten steps as soon as they saw that I was a girl up to bat. I got my favorite type of pitch -- low and across the plate -- and I wailed it over all of their heads. Vindication was mine.

Unfortunately, these moments were few and far between, and I found myself constantly trying to be more like the boys and prove myself as such instead of just enjoying the game. I switched to softball in high school, but I remain an avid baseball fan.

So as you can imagine, when my dad told my partner and I that we had tickets to Game 3 of this year's World Series, we were beside ourselves with excitement. Not only was this a World Series game; this was MY TEAM in the World Series. I'm not exaggerating when I say that for this lifelong baseball fan, it was a dream come true.

It would have been even more of a dream come true if it were not for two things:
1. We lost.
2. I sat next to this most obnoxious and intolerant fan in the history of baseball.

The guy sitting next to me not only claimed the armrest for the duration of the game, sticking his pointy elbow in my face every other second, but he also managed to offend Native Americans, Japanese people, and Mexicans in a very short amount of time. He'd shout completely offensive things over and over again, including chides to the Phillies pitcher to "Hit the batter right in the face! Just smash his entire face up!"

Finally, one of the women sitting in front of us turned around and said, "Wow, you have quite a bellowing voice!"

I thought this was a rather polite way of telling the fool to shut his intolerant mouth, but he obviously disagreed.

He said, "Listen, lady. I'm not going to apologize for cheering at a baseball game. That's what I came here to do. Some of us have actually been here all season. We didn't just buy a World Series ticket."

The woman turned to him and said, "I've been here all season too."

What disgusted me about this exchange was the fact that the guy assumed that because the individual was female, she certainly couldn't be a REAL Phillies fan.

When I whispered a summary of this exchange to my partner, he said, "I don't think he meant anything gender-related by his comment."

I responded that he (my partner) had never been to a sporting event as a woman. Meanwhile, I've spent the better part of my life trying to justify my interest in sports to men and trying to prove to them that I am a real fan.

Just last week in one of my classes, the students were talking about a great football play from the week before. Interested, I asked them what had happened, and one of the male students responded, "You wouldn't understand. It's a guy thing."

I took him to task for that comment and gave a short lecture on sexist language. I'm not sure it did very much though.

The effect that this kind of attitude has on women, particularly young girls, is that it encourages them to get involved in only certain gender-approved realms of life -- cooking, talking on the phone, shopping. Thankfully, I believe that the current generation of girls is beginning to change this paradigm. With the passage of Title IX, more and more girls are participating in sports than ever before.

Still, our culture needs to change its overall attitude towards girls and sports. We need to take down the "No Girls Allowed" signs when we consider who is and who isn't a real fan.

I don't have an inspirational remark with which to end this rant. All I have to say is this: Tonight, oh blogosphere, as I root on my dear Phillies, I will not be explaining to ANYONE why I love baseball and why I deserve to be counted as a real Phillies fan.

Go Phils.

Defining gender

I ended my last post by talking about the gray areas of life, particularly when we realize that the clear black and white categories that we've set up do not always work.

Several news stories within the last week have brought to light the very gray area of gender itself.

First, a brief review of definitions:

Sex= The physical make-up of a person that generally gets "male" or "female" stamped on their birth certificate. Sex characteristics include genitalia, one's ability to bear children, and the presence of hormones like testosterone or estrogen.

Gender= A person's sense of themselves as male or female.

As I mentioned in my previous post about tennis star Sarah Gronert, many individuals feel that their gender is different from their sex. (A great explanation of the resulting "transgender" label can be found here.)

Well, last week, another athlete's genitals were subjected to scrutiny, but this time with allegations that the athlete herself was not fully informed about the test's intent. 18-year-old Caster Semenya has spent much of her life fending off comments about her masculine nature. Now, the media has outed her as a hermaphrodite, someone carrying both male and female physical traits. In this case, her sex does not fit into our tidy categories, despite the fact that in her mind, her gender was always pretty clear. For a beautiful explanation of the term "hermaphrodite" and "intersexed," I highly recommend Hida Viloria's first person reflection on this story.

Also in last week's news, a 12-year-old boy in England returned to his school as a girl after summer vacation. The school held an emergency assembly to inform students of the change but were criticized for offering "too little too late" in terms of preparation. As a result of not adequately readying teachers, peer groups, and family members to accept this change more fluidly, bullying and intolerance occurred.

These two examples seem so parallel in that both reflect our insistence on neat, mutually-exclusive categories when it comes to gender. When people don't fit these tidy classifications, we criticize them as being "other" instead of rethinking our categories.

Sarah Gronert Update

It's been a few weeks since my last post. (Blame it on the end-of-the-semester blues and a stack of research papers to grade that reaches from floor to ceiling.) To make up for lost time and tide you over until my next post, I thought I'd give an update to one of my most popular previous posts.

I use Google Analytics to follow my blog's traffic, and never had I seen such a spike in interest than in regard to my post on Sarah Gronert, the transgendered tennis player. I was disturbed, not by the level of interest, but by some of they key words that folks used to try to find more information about Gronert. Key word searches such as "naked pictures of Sarah Gronert" and "what was sarah gronert's genitalia like" make me reiterate my claim that we need to stop broadcasting this woman's private life to the world and instead treat her like a human being.

The tennis world has done just that, and according to an article in the Telegraph, Gronert is allowed to play as a woman on the women's circuit. Of course, this didn't happen without a process of "gender verification," which involved a review of her "case."

I suppose this kind of invasive investigation is still relevant in a society where gender binaries are the norm, but it reeks of, say, the forced examination of prostitutes in the 19th century. The British Army, fearing "contamination" of venereal diseases, forced women to submit to invasive exams on a regular basis (even though the very same men were never examined), and if women were suspected of STD's, they were sequestered in a locked hospital until assumed "cured." According to the Victorian Web (a fantastic resource for everything Victorian, by the way), "These acts became a feminist cause because they permitted the police to detain and inspect any woman suspected of venereal infection, and, it was claimed, innocent women found themselves forced to undergo humiliating inspections."

As a result, a law that purported to protect women actually harmed them. I sense the same feeling of paradox in regard to Gronert's case. Certainly, she must feel vindicated by the WTA's ruling. I mean, it allows her to continue to compete in the sport she loves. At the same time, though, this victory did not come without a significant personal compromise. For heaven's sake, people are searching for pictures of her genitalia on the internet! Is this trade-off fair, or do our gender categories need amendment? I'd lean toward the latter.

Coincidentally this week, I was catching up on old This American Life episodes and found a wonderful little gesture toward a better understanding of transgendered people. For an insightful listen, check out the story "Tom Girls" from the February 13, 2009 program, "Somewhere Out There." You can listen to it online for free.

This story, and others like it, offers us corrective gender lenses-- a prescription that helps us see those that don't fall into prescribed gender binaries as real human beings.

Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor

I'm guessing that many female authors are using Women's History Month as an opportunity to release their new books because as we approach the end of the month, I'm finding my Amazon wish list growing to gargantuan proportions.

The newest edition is Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor by George Washington University professor of women's studies, Bonnie Morris. Her book is apparently based on her one-woman play by the same name that she's been performing since 1993.

I heard Morris interviewed on the Bob Edwards Show on XM Public Radio this afternoon. I think you can download the episode through Audible.

Morris offered personal anecdotes about her experience as a women's studies professor, including the backlash she's received from students who still believe that feminists are "feminazis."

One of my favorite stories involves President Bill Clinton, who visited GWU to attend an NCAA men's basketball game. Morris explains how she shook Clinton's hand after the game and asked him to please stay for the women's game as well, especially since it would set an example for his daughter. Clinton apologized, saying he had a meeting at 2:00 and couldn't stay. Morris looked at her watch and didn't skip a beat. "Well," she said,"then you have time to stay for the first 20 minutes of the game." Clinton did stay, and that year, he became the first president to congratulate a women's basketball champion.

Morris' point is that our society treats women differently, and yet many of us convince ourselves that this is OK, that it's "always been like that." Morris asks why men's basketball should generate any different level of interest than women's. And she's right. Still, even as an enlightened feminist, this year, I've only filled out my NCAA bracket for men.

Morris is feisty and witty. She's down to earth and intelligent. In short, if her writing is anything like her interview, I'll devour her book in one sitting.

Tennis and the "T" in LGBTQ

A fascinating debate has ensued over tennis pro Sarah Gronert, who was born with both male and female genitalia. The question is whether or not she should be allowed on the female competition circuit.

Three years ago, amid intense scrutiny and harassment from friends and the media, Gronert underwent surgery to remove the male genitalia. The whole ordeal almost made her quit tennis altogether.

I don't blame her. Can you imagine having your genitalia discussed and criticized all over the news?

This is one of those moments when the debate itself is not good enough. Instead, we need to remember that we're dealing with a human being here.

My mom works in the medical profession, and I remember the first time she encountered a transgendered patient. She called me just about every day, telling me that the young person was very ill (with an illness unrelated to sexual reassignment surgery), and how much compassion my mom felt for her. My mom said to me, "I don't know if I should call the patient 'him' or 'her.'" We talked about what was acceptable (in this case, the gender one has chosen in surgery) and how it's completely appropriate to ask the patient's preference. But more importantly, I told my mom that the best thing she could do was to care for this individual and offer compassion.

My mom comes from a relatively conservative church background, and in our small town, transgendered folks are not generally visible to the public eye. I was a little concerned that my mom would act awkwardly, but on the fourth day that the person was in the hospital, Mom called and said, "I realized today that it doesn't even matter what gender she is. She's just a human being who is in need of care."

The issue of transgender individuals is a complex one because it defies our society's definition of gender binaries. We like to cling to our "firm" ideas of male and female, despite evidence to the contrary.

The APA defines transgender as the following:
Transgender is an umbrella term used to describe people whose gender identity (sense of themselves as male or female) or gender expression differs from that usually associated with their birth sex. Many transgender people live part-time or full-time as members of the other gender. Broadly speaking, anyone whose identity, appearance, or behavior falls outside of conventional gender norms can be described as transgender. However, not everyone whose appearance or behavior is gender-atypical will identify as a transgender person.

Here's an excerpt from an eye-opening article from the Advocate that describes how high the transgender population really is:

Next time you find yourself in a crowd of 5,000 people, consider this: In the crowd there will be on average one person living with muscular dystrophy. There will also be on average two people who have already undergone male-to-female sex-reassignment surgery. And there may as many as 75 in that crowd who fall under the transgender umbrella. Are you surprised?

And while novels like Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex are bringing this issue to light, there is still much ignorance surrounding the topic.

I wish our society would stop attacking Sarah Gronert, the individual, and instead allow this situation to cultivate dialogue on our binaries of gender in the first place. In many ways, we've stopped volleying the issue of gender identity in thoughtful ways. Instead, we've served up a verdict on Sarah Gronert that is anything but love-love.

Really, Alex.

He looks like a dufus in this picture, and tonight, he looked like a dufus on the show.

Just after anouncing that the Final Jeopardy category would be "The Heisman Trophy," host Alex Trebek quipped, "Uh oh. All the ladies just went ughhh."

Of course, the camera was focused on Alex and his amazing blue question board, so we couldn't see if the ladies did indeed slump towards the floor like sacks of potatoes in utter despair over a SPORTS category, of all things, or if they held their heads high.

What we did see was both "ladies" answering the question perfectly.

Really, Alex. Aren't we past this ignorance of women's interest in sports? Apparently not.

When I was twelve, my brother and I had the entire Philadelphia Phillies roster memorized. I played Little League with Mike Schmidt's number 20 proudly stamped on my back. We loved everything baseball.

Yet when my grandparents waited in line to get Mike Mussina's autograph (my dad had coached against his high school team), I ended up with his scrawled signature across the newspaper scrap that announced his visit, while my brother got a crisply signed new baseball, complete with one of those nifty plastic baseball holders.

Sibling rivalry, or gender disparity? This is why it's so complicated for women today. We sense that something is off, but we can't quite articulate it.

Consider this: from the moment we could walk, my brother and I were wielding plastic whiffle ball bats. My dad taught my brother to bat left-handed, even though he threw right-handed. It was an advantage against most pitchers. But I was just a girl. I was never taught to switch hit.

To be fair, my dad is quite the pro-feminist guy. I mean, how many other dads encouraged their pre-teen girls to play baseball with the boys?

Still, if we as a society can't get past these rigid gender roles, starting as early as childhood, we will continue to communicate, as Alex did tonight, that women are largely ignorant of sports. They're not cut out for it.

Well, Alex, Title IX was passed in 1972, and women are interested in sports: playing them, watching them, rooting for their teams.

I can't close this Jeopardy-related post without throwing up a cheer for Larissa Kelly, who became the third all-time money winner in non-tournament Jeopardy play this May. She's the highest female scorer in Jeopardy history. Great job, Larissa! Way to show Alex that women know about not only sports, but quite a bit of everything else as well!