Freshmen year of high school, my two best friends persuaded me into trying out for a spring sport: women’s lacrosse. Although, it remains one of the most impactful decisions I have made, as I continue to play lacrosse during college, I am able to look back onto the four seasons during high school and reflect on how my experience was unknowingly gendered. At the time, the commonly northeastern sport was gaining popularity within southern California, and many school districts were beginning to fund lacrosse.
During my sophomore year, I remember playing against Mar Vista High School, a lower-income school relative to my alma mater, Bonita Vista. I realized then that the class differences were prominent, but never gave them a second thought. Compared …show more content…
Nonetheless, unlike other sports, there are blatant differences between women and men’s lacrosse. Whereas men’s lacrosse consists of brutal physical contact, women’s lacrosse is deemed a non-contact sport. As a consequence, women’s lacrosse is often described as boring, because for every safety foul called upon a player for being too aggressive, the momentum of the game uniformly stops. Men’s lacrosse, however, is solely based upon aggression and masculinity, and who can knock down the opposing player for the ball. The gender differences can also be seen in their uniforms and equipment: women’s lacrosse players typically wear skirts, goggles for their eyes, and a mouthguard; men’s lacrosse players wear shorts, helmets, and pads. And although the ball used to play the sport with is the same, the stick used by either team is different, although it serves the same purpose. There is an obvious societal desire to keep women as feminine as possible even while playing a sport. I may play the same sport as a man, however because I am a woman, I must wear a skirt to showcase that I am ladylike. R.W. Connell accomplishes this domestic yearning in her article “Masculinities and Globalization” by illustrating that while instabilities arise within the world gender order, one response “on the part of groups whose power is challenged, but still dominant, is to reaffirm local gender orthodoxies and hierarchies.” In order to keep society comfortable, there must be a distinction between the two binary
During my sophomore year, I remember playing against Mar Vista High School, a lower-income school relative to my alma mater, Bonita Vista. I realized then that the class differences were prominent, but never gave them a second thought. Compared …show more content…
Nonetheless, unlike other sports, there are blatant differences between women and men’s lacrosse. Whereas men’s lacrosse consists of brutal physical contact, women’s lacrosse is deemed a non-contact sport. As a consequence, women’s lacrosse is often described as boring, because for every safety foul called upon a player for being too aggressive, the momentum of the game uniformly stops. Men’s lacrosse, however, is solely based upon aggression and masculinity, and who can knock down the opposing player for the ball. The gender differences can also be seen in their uniforms and equipment: women’s lacrosse players typically wear skirts, goggles for their eyes, and a mouthguard; men’s lacrosse players wear shorts, helmets, and pads. And although the ball used to play the sport with is the same, the stick used by either team is different, although it serves the same purpose. There is an obvious societal desire to keep women as feminine as possible even while playing a sport. I may play the same sport as a man, however because I am a woman, I must wear a skirt to showcase that I am ladylike. R.W. Connell accomplishes this domestic yearning in her article “Masculinities and Globalization” by illustrating that while instabilities arise within the world gender order, one response “on the part of groups whose power is challenged, but still dominant, is to reaffirm local gender orthodoxies and hierarchies.” In order to keep society comfortable, there must be a distinction between the two binary