Establishing and Challenging Masculinity: The Influence of Gendered Discourses in Organized Sport

This study examined how coaches and players constructed and regulated masculinity in organized sport. Using participant observation, we examined the role of discourses in the construction and regulation of sporting masculinity within a semi-professional British football (soccer) team. Two predominant discourses were present: (a) masculinity establishing discourse, and (b) masculinity challenging discourse; heuristic tools to understand the use of toxic language in the construction and maintenance of masculinity. Coaches frequently used discourses that drew on narratives of war, gender, and sexuality in order to facilitate aggressive and violent responses for enhancing athletic performance. However, we also found that these discourses have limited influence beyond the playing field, highlighting the segmentation of the sporting and social identities of these players, and a loosening of the traditional and empirically-evidenced ability of sports to socialize men into narrow forms of masculinity.