Sports Injury, the Pain Principle, and the Promise of Reform

Abstract

It has been said that the fish are the last ones to discover the ocean. And so it is with patriarchy. During the 19th century, a few social philosophers in France and England, as well as leading thinkers and activists in the suffrage and women’s movement in the United States, began to “perceive” the ocean of patriarchy and to describe its workings and gender politics. Feminisms evolved during the 20th century and culminated in women’s studies, feminist theory, and later gender studies. But the recognition of feminist scholarship as bona fide social theory that explains human behavior and social processes has been hobbled by its ideological moorings and presumed lack of scientific rigor. Ironically, it has been scientific method and evidence-based research that have, during the latter 20th century, begun to shore up the explanatory power and theoretical claims of what are now called “gender theories.” One application of gender theory has been applied to understanding variations in women’s and men’s health (Payne, 2006; Sabo, 2005). In this article I reflect on Mariah Burton Nelson’s keynote, “The Damage I Have Done to Myself: Physical Intelligence Among College Athletes” within a sociocultural analysis of sports injury that takes gender relations and male-dominated social organizations (i.e., patriarchy) into account. Within the biomedical model, sports injuries are explained basically as physiological processes. An orthopedic surgeon or athletic trainer brings a clinical sensibility to understanding sports injury. Psychologists work with the emotional facets of sports injury. Sociologists study the institutional contexts and cultural practices that give rise to and surround sports injury. In the end, the injured ankle or arthritic knee is attached to an individual psychology or personal identity that, in turn, develops within a culture and hierarchical gender order. Mariah Burton Nelson’s knee injuries and subsequent chronic pain can be partly understood within this larger context.

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