The Gendered Unapologetic: Queer Resistance in Women’s Sport

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of women’s rugby in the U.S. in the early 1990s, this article suggests that women’s participation in sport represents a type of resistance that can be understood as “queer” resistance, albeit a gendered one. The article argues that queer theories and politics of resistance offer a lens by which to explain how women who played rugby in the early 1990s subscribed not to a “female apologetic,” but rather an unapologetic . The results show the unapologetic to be comprised of transgressing gender, destabilizing the heterosexual/homosexual binary, and “in your face” confrontations of stigma—all characteristics of queer resistance. Furthermore, the results illustrate that each aspect of unapologetic queer resistance in sport is gendered. The article concludes that both the female apologetic and the gendered unapologetic are types of resistance observable in sport and suggests that further research needs to examine the extent to which gendered queer resistances are new and the degree to which they are specific to the institution of sport.

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