Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1994

Department

Kinesiology and Physical Education

Abstract

This paper examines how participation in physically demanding sport, with its potential and actual injurious outcomes, both challenges and reinforces dominant notions of masculinity. Data from 16 in-depth interviews with former and current Canadian adult male athletes indicate that sport practices privileging forceful notions of masculinity are highly valued, and that serious injury is framed as a masculinizing experience. It is argued that a generally unreflexive approach to past disablement is an extraordinary domain feature of contemporary sport. The risks associated with violent sport appear to go relatively unquestioned by men who have suffered debilitating injury and whose daily lives are marked by physical constraints and pain.

Comments

This article was originally published in Sociology of Sport Journal, 11(2): 175-194. (c) 1994 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.

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