By David Shelmon
Overall, I thought that this class did a
good job of discussing gender within the context of sports. It is a topic that
needs to be addressed because gender has always been an issue of concern in the
world of sports. Therefore, if a person is planning on entering the field of
sport I believe that he or she should be aware of the gender issue. I think we
are all aware of the issue of gender to a degree, but we do not usually talk
about it. This class challenged us to think critically to evaluate and give our
opinions on some of the issues that have come up over the years.
The class discussions were most useful
to me. They were able to clarify some of the issues that we were talking about
better than the readings did sometimes. The video clips that we were shown
provided us with the visuals that we sometimes needed to get a better
understanding of how serious of an issue something was. I also thought the blog
posts did a good job of summarizing the topics that we covered each week. Every
person who did a blog provided more insight into certain topics and sometimes
even gave his or her own opinions on these issues as well. Also, by leaving
comments on other people’s blog posts we were sort of continuing on with the
conversations that we sometimes did not get to finish in class.
There were two topics that I found to be
the most interesting this semester. The first topic was the one about gender
issues in sports when we talked about African runner Caster Semenya and other
intersex athletes. These athletes face a lot of criticism in their respective
sports because when it comes to sports we always want to label an athlete as strictly
male or female even though history has shown us that some people can be born
with both male and female traits. Without a third category to place these
intersex athletes, they continue to struggle to fit in with which ever category
they were initially placed. Once these athletes begin to excel in their sports
they are put into the spotlight and harshly criticized for being different and
having what many people call unfair advantages over their competition. The
second topic that I found to be interesting was the incident that Venus and
Serena Williams went through at Indian Wells. If Venus and Serena had not
stayed true to their word and boycotted the event afterwards, we may have never
even known about what had happened. The Williams sisters are bringing to light
an issue that goes beyond the game of tennis. Racism is still a problem in the
world and the Williams sisters recognize that they have the power to let people
know about it. The president of Indian Wells dismissed the claims of the
Williams sisters and their father in a public statement and backed up the
people who attended the event by saying that those people would never have done
what they were accused of doing. No apology has ever been issued to Venus and
Serena, but they are always expected to go back to Indian Wells because of its
newfound importance in determining players’ rankings. In the Williams sisters’
case, they do not have to worry about missing out on Indian Wells because they
are two of the most successful tennis players of all time, regardless of race,
and they are both financially rich.
Keeping a blog forced me to think deeper
about a topic because we were expected to do more than just summarize what we
talked about in class. We were expected to give our own interpretations and
opinions about whatever events and issues we wanted to write about. Also, if a
person already submitted a blog post that was similar to one I wanted to do I
either had to think of a different perspective to take on the same subject or
come up with a different subject entirely. Fortunately, this was not that big
of an issue, but it did force me to think critically outside of class.
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