Gender Policing In Sports, 1937
Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 -- by Bacchus
Gender policing in sport has been popping up all over my social media timeline, recently. Given the discourses of the day and the upcoming Olympics, I guess it’s not surprising. I have taken my cues from a distant observation of the discourse, and noticed that pretty much every cis white dude with Strong Opinions About Gender And Sports seems to be some sort of homophobe/transphobe, or else is just drunk on TERF memes. So me, I’m mostly resolved to shut up and stay that way.
But I do think it’s interesting and worthy of note to point out that there’s nothing at all new about these gender-policing conversations. In evidence, I offer the following full-page spread of three stories from the February 1937 issue of Look magazine, headlined “When Is A Woman Actually A Woman?” For the times, the language is not especially brutal (you can click the image or this link for a larger version to read the fine print), but the policing is brisk nonetheless:
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