Male netball players in Singapore : transgressing gender lines in sports

• Main Author: Chin, Le Estee
• Other Authors: Genaro Castro-Vázquez
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66110
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper uses a postmodern and social constructionist lens to study the mutually intertwined structural and interactional elements to the gender identity construction and performance of gender by male players of mixed-sex netball in Singapore. Through participant observation and interviews with male players of varying degrees of experience, it was found that although they did demonstrate their subjectivities by redefining an ideal masculinity for themselves that was in opposition with certain hegemonic masculine traits, and were cognizant of the inconsistencies of essentialist notions of sex differences, they also simultaneously reproduced dominant gender ideologies in their prevailing paternalistic attitudes towards female players, their policing of the masculinity of other male players as well as continuous ‘doing’ of gender through deliberate concealment of their participation in netball and neutralization techniques for their perceived gender transgression in playing a female dominated sport.