Humans run almost every day, even without noticing – trying to catch a bus, crossing the street on the red light, or just when we realise we are late. When I think about running as an actual sport, I notice two themes that we cover in this course – the body and gender (and race) and destabilising normativity.
Debates on the biological sex vs social gender have been long present in anthropology. The works of scholars such as Judith Butler critique the idea of definitive gender and show that this body category should be constantly reworked in contemporary cultural spaces. In running, as an Olympic sport, this category is still very fixed. There is a clear distinction between men and women, which separates the two sexes into different competitions. Nevertheless, the famous case of the South African Olympic runner Caster Semenya also urges us to rethink how we actually define male and female. After her uncanny win at the World Championships in Berlin in 2009, questions were raised about her sex and possible drug use. The investigation revealed that she was born with XY chromosomes. Her hermaphroditism and high level of testosterone (3x the female norm) have excluded her from the competition until she decided to undergo a hormonal treatment to lower those levels and came back to the game.
Firstly, Semenya’s story calls the nature vs nurture debate. Epstein (2013) distinguishes between hardware (nature) and software (nurture), claiming that in elite athletes, one is useless without the other. He also examines race and gender. On the latter, he asks: „If only accumulated hours of practice matter, then why do we separate men and women in athletic competition?” (ibid.). Secondly, her story is about the constant efforts by sports governing bodies to create gender divisions that are fair to all athletes. But it’s also about what happens when an athlete, especially a black athlete, doesn’t „fit” into general ideas about womanhood. Her case shows how when people challenge perceived norms about masculinity and femininity, their bodies can become fodder for public discussion, often against their will.
Bale & Sang (1996) quote John Hoberman: „The romanticizing of an African champion has served to link exotic physiological states with the racial alien and his alleged biological advantages”. Was is it also the case with Caster Semenya? Africa is often viewed as an emerging continental giant on the modern sporting stage. The Kenyan running itself has become and imaginative world in the mental map of the Western sports fan and general public. Nevertheless, their success is often explained in stereotypical and racist terms (ibid.)
Thus, we can say that a white male is „the norm”. But isn’t it problematic?
Yet another norm that is problematic is body’s ability. In most Western societies, medical sciences have usually defined disabled bodies as „broken”, „impaired” or „deficient”. Inevitably, this thinking makes the physical capabilities and limits of the human body intertwined in our social life by creating the binary approach and labelling people as „able” or „disabled”.
Oscar Pistorius is another professional sprinter from South Africa, with both feet amputated. After becoming a Paralympic champion, he attempted to enter non-disabled international competitions, against constant objections by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), who claimed that his artificial limbs gave an unfair advantage. Pistorius eventually won this legal dispute and at the 2011 World Championships, he became the first amputee to win a non-disabled world medal.
Again, this shows how a human body that is not „normal” is scrutinised in professional sports.
Looking at the cases of these athletes through the lens of Scheper-Hughes’ and Lock’s (1987) analysis of individual body, social body and body politic, it may be that they do feel normal in terms of „phenomenally experienced body-self”, but in terms of representational uses of the body as a natural symbol to think about relations between nature, culture and society (as Mary Douglas suggested), the body in health offers a model of harmony, whereas a body in sickness – of disharmony. Thirdly, a body can be an artefact of social and political control à la Foucault. Apart from controlling the bodies in times of crises, societies constantly reproduce and socialise the types of bodies they need. In our increasingly „healthist” and body-conscious culture, the politically correct body is the strong, lean and physically „fit” form, through which the cultural values of autonomy, toughness, youth, and self-control are realised (ibid.).
Therefore, we might say that Olympics is an institution of power, which creates models of gender normativity and dictates the performance of our bodies.
References:
- Bale, J. and Sang, J. (1996). Kenyan Running: Movement Culture, Geography, and Global Change. London: Frank Cass & Company.
- Epstein, D. (2013). The Sports Gene. Talent, Practice, and the Truth about success. London: Yellow Jersey Press, Random House.
- Scheper‐Hughes, N. and Lock, M. M. (1987). The mindful body: A prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology. Medical anthropology quarterly, Vol. 1 (1), pp. 6-41.
The Body in sports 