October 21: Intersectionality & Discrimination (Yannick)

I have been interested in the concept of intersectionality for quite a while now, which is why I really liked reading “It’s Not About the Game: Don Imus, Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Media” by Cooky, Wachs, Messner, and Dworkin this week. I think that the authors (2010) make a very strong point when they argue that “media representations of female athletes of Color cannot be analyzed outside of a consideration of the simultaneous, interlocking forms of oppression (gender, race, sexuality, class)” (p. 143). By doing a detailed textual as well as content analysis, the authors (2010) found that the media’s coverage of Don Imus’ comments on the 2007 NCAA women’s basketball championship game framed the media event as “predominantly a racial event” (p. 155, emphasis in original source). However, the women’s construction as Others was not only based on their race, but also on their gender, sexual, and class identities.

What I find very interesting in this context is the procedure that in events like this, the media focuses on either racism or sexism; the fact that both interact in a complex interplay that contributes to the creation and perpetuation of social inequality is oftentimes overlooked or ignored by the media and/or the public in general (which is one of the observations the authors of the article point out and criticize as well). Equally interesting is the fact that there seems to be a certain “hierarchy” between forms of discrimination. While discrimination based on racial issues tends to get more coverage, issues related to sexism (or heterosexism) receive significantly less attention. While I do not consider this to be a trend that is specifically tied to the sports world, I definitely think that it is very apparent and dominant in sports. Sexism oftentimes goes unnoticed and is either trivialized, extenuated, or belittled. Of course, this is highly problematic and contributes to the immense sexism within the sports world.

Finally, I think that it is very disturbing how “ the mainstream media silenced [the women athlete’s and women coach’s] voices and perspectives” in this example (Cooky, Wachs, Messner & Dworkin, 2010, p. 148). As such, the women are denied access to the hegemonic discourse; they are constructed as subaltern – the Other – by dominant ideology as embodied by the mass media. Again, this phenomenon is not unique to the sports world; it is rather an implication of the position of women in contemporary American culture in general. For instance, news coverage on abortion oftentimes focuses on the political effects of the issue but fails to include the voices of the ones that are the most affected by unwanted pregnancies: the women.