Figuring Female Absence in the Sports World

Why is it more common to see a man enter a woman-dominated sport - like cheerleading - than it is to find a woman enter a male-dominated one, like football or baseball? 

Amidst conversation unfolding during group work on Monday, one of the girls in my group recounted her attempt to join Allegheny's baseball team. After speaking with the coach, it was decided that the only capacity in which she could take part in the team would be either statistician, water boy (or girl), or designated laundry girl (which you could call a maid). 

She accepted the terms of this agreement (much to our group's collective astonishment - how could she stoop so low after being rejected like that?), but one of the questions which arose in our conversation was, why, exactly, couldn't a woman play baseball? Even a sport which does not necessitate intense physical contact, where weight proportions do not completely qualify or disqualify a person's aptitude to play, why was she not allowed to participate with other male athletes? 

Although women may be close to the same size as men, there is something very foreign about having a woman play baseball. Baseball – like other American sports – is a facet of our culture where women have been and remain absent. For as long as the game has existed, this is the way it has been. 

In “When Bodies are Weapons,” author Mark Messner elaborates on the non-instances in which women venture onto the baseball diamond. Not isolating baseball, he says that “the conscious agency of women provided a direct threat to the ideology of male superiority” (93). By having women enter the male-dominated environment of the sports world would be a breach on male dominance. 

Back in our class discussion, we explored the possibilities of men entering female-dominated facets of culture – cheer leading, dancing – and decided it was more commonplace to have men enter environments dominated by women, but the other way around would be preposterous.

So - really - what is the relationship which allows men to enter women-dominated sports but not the other way around? Why can a man dance and cheer lead, but why can’t a woman play baseball?

The answer is grounded in this line from Messner’s article, implying that men are, at the bone and bare of it, protective about their turf. They don’t want to forfeit a realm of culture that has been from the beginning singularly theirs. For a man the baseball diamond belongs to men and men only. And that's that. It would be a frightening proposition for a woman to join the team - something so alien that men would simply be unable to grasp.  

Observing this from the lens of Messner's argument we can push this further. It is not a intrusion into a male dominated sport that proves to be so troublesome, but something deeper, more intimate than that. Having a woman enter the sporting world is an invasion and belittlement of masculinity as a whole. Women can't be allowed to enter the baseball diamond, because the space already belongs to men and any variance would tamper - and perhaps even cripple - the male psyche. 

So, in the end, it was the girl in my group's passion for the game which brought her this position on the baseball team. Personally, I don't know if I would take a secondary job like washing the team's clothes if I was told that something besides my skill was going to prevent me from playing, but she enjoys it, so hey, good for her. As a consolation, she can appreciate that it wasn't her - it was inflated masculinity which kept her off the team.