The Complex Nature of Intersectional Identities - Dissertation Example

It is argued that there is a public romance with sports in which black athletes such as Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Pele together with homosexual Carl Lewis have challenged stereotypical attitudes toward homosexuals and racial minorities.4 In other words, there are opportunities for minorities in sports to penetrate intersectional boundaries and not only gain acceptance but also be admired. This research study will demonstrate the opportunities according to competitive sports for transcending intersectional boundaries by reference to South Africa’s Rugby League.

South Africa, a country that has transitioned from apartheid to democracy in the late 20th century provides an example of both extremes: oppression and equality in sports. This study will therefore be divided into four parts. The first part of this study defines intersectionalities and provides an analysis of sports generally. The second part of this paper provides an intersectional analysis of sports in South Africa’s Rugby league during apartheid. The third part of this study conducts an intersectional analysis of sports in post-Apartheid South Africa’s Rugby League.

The final part of the paper analyses intersectionalities in sports today. Part I: Introduction Davis defines intersectionality as: …the interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power.5 The term intersectionality was introduced by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 as a means of providing more profound insight into the experiences of non-white women.

Crenshaw felt that feminist studies did not adequately address the special circumstances that women of diverse racial minorities experienced. Crenshaw argued that there was a need to demonstrate how both gender and race interacted to inform the experiences of women of colour.6 Today, intersectionality theory is understood as a means of analyzing the intersection between gender, race, class and ethnicity and how these interactions are manifested in community settings, institutions and the daily lives of individuals and their interactions with others.

7 Essentially, intersectionality takes the position that different social entities are made up of different identities. For example, black people are comprised of black heterosexuals, black homosexuals and other identities. Intersectionality theory argues that the different status identities of members of a social group will correspond with the extent to which the individual will likely be discriminated against.8 Over the last ten or so years there has been an intensifying growth in intersectional analyses as a result of an appreciation for the realization that identities are multidimensional and are constantly changing and formed by “power” through “additional categories as social class, sexuality, and nationality”. It is generally accepted that all individuals have either opportunities or are denied equal opportunities that correspond with their specific identity markers.

Intersectionality analyses of sports maintain that social constructions of identities have shaped assumptions relative to sports. Common utterances such as “you throw like a girl” or “you could play with the boys” illustrate the point. Statements such as these demonstrate that there is a pre-existent attitude toward sports identities. For instance, the first statement incorporates the attitude that athleticism is linked to masculinity