The document summarizes a study on fat phobia in physical education. It discusses how fat students feel alienated in PE due to an environment that promotes thinness and athleticism. Dodgeball is used as an example of a game that encourages humiliation and exclusion of fat students. Popular representations of dodgeball in media and culture show how it can be a site of both violence and pleasure. The study suggests physical educators should work to reduce fat bias and create an inclusive environment by learning from fat-positive spaces and teaching against fat stigma.
This document discusses group membership and identity. It explores how individuals derive self-esteem and identity from the groups they belong to. Social identity theory proposes that people are motivated to join groups that enhance their status and self-esteem. Group membership provides norms and behaviors that help shape members' identities. However, strong conformity to groupthink can undermine independent thinking and potentially lead to poor decisions. The document examines several studies demonstrating how central group members highly conform to norms compared to more marginal members.
The document provides an overview of how CrossFit is viewed through the lenses of four subdisciplines of kinesiology: sport psychology, sport history, sport sociology, and exercise physiology. It discusses how CrossFit creates communities and competitions, reflects American culture and values, elicits varied opinions both within and outside its community, and provides anaerobic training benefits while also potentially overtraining risks. The author concludes kinesiology is an important major given its focus on human movement and health, though suggests some classes could better integrate physical activity and health perspectives for PACC majors.
This document discusses various theories of motivation. It begins by defining motivation as a need or desire that energizes behavior toward a goal. It then outlines several perspectives on motivation, including instinct theory, drive-reduction theory, arousal theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Specific motivations discussed include social motivation, control motivation, hunger, and sexual motivation. The document examines the biological and psychological factors that influence these motivations.
This document discusses the concepts of queer theory and queer pedagogy. It defines queer as meaning different, unacceptable, and un-normed. Queer theory examines un-normed sexualities and relationships as well as what else is "queered" or un-normed. It discusses how sex, gender, and sexuality exist on spectra rather than binaries and how heterosexuality and gender norms are socially constructed and enforced through various power structures. The document argues that queer pedagogy aims to support students of all sexualities and genders through asking thoughtful questions rather than claiming answers.
The document discusses the topics of gender inequality and sexism. It defines key terms like patriarchy, misogyny, and sexual objectification. It also examines examples of sexism such as sexist jokes, the objectification of women in media, and the minimization of women's voices. The document suggests exercises for students to explore underlying values and impacts of these issues, and considerations for counselors and social workers in addressing them professionally.
This document summarizes a quantitative social science study that examined body perceptions among queer women. It discusses terminology, prior research showing queer women report better body image than heterosexual women, and hypotheses about why including potential protection from heteronormativity and the male gaze. The Michigan Smoking and Sexuality Study is described which surveyed 232 non-exclusively heterosexual women ages 18-24 on body esteem, gender role identification, and connection to the LGBTQ community. Results showed connection to the LGBTQ community was protective of body weight perceptions, particularly for those with non-feminine gender identities. This suggests escape from objectification and affirmation of non-heteronormative gender roles/identities contributes to more positive
The document discusses the physical self and how it is impacted by both biological and social factors. Biologically, physical characteristics are determined by genetics and heredity. Socially, body image and self-esteem are influenced by cultural ideals of beauty promoted by the media and society. These ideals can negatively impact individuals and potentially lead to body image issues or eating disorders. Developing a positive body image involves broadening one's perspectives on health, beauty, and acceptance of all body types.
1 Hour Session delivered to 3rd and 4th graders at Friends Academy in North Dartmouth, MA. We started off the session with an exercise - imagine a police officer, a doctor, a nurse, a criminal, a fire fighter, a family, a teacher, a basketball player, a boy, a girl, and more. Afterward, we compared similarities and differences. To our surprise, almost all of us had imagined the same family: a mother, father, and children who look like them. Almost all of us had imagined male police officers, fire fighters, and criminals. Almost all of us had imagined female teachers, nurses, and nannies. Several of us drew girls in skirts. Several of us imagined criminals in dark colors. Several of us imagined only White people. Several of us imagined only able-bodied people (no wheelchairs, glasses, etc.). And we did it all without having been told to imagine this way. After comparing, we pondered what would an alien species, whose only exposure to humans was in the form of these pictures, assume about the human race. We then extended the metaphor into the fact that we were, at one point, naive to all these messages in our very beginnings - we WERE aliens to this way of thinking at one point. We then analyzed where we got these messages. Clearly, everyone knew that men can be nurses, children do not always look like their parents, crimes can be committed by people in business clothes, etc. And yet, here we were, so clear on what society has taught us who these people are. We learned about the cycle of oppression, where stereotypes can become prejudice, then discrimination, then oppression, then internalized oppression/dominance. We learned about isms (racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, ableism, etc.), where prejudice plus the power to enforce it can result in systemic unfairness to groups of people. We then learned to identify situations where stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and isms might be at work. Finally, we discussed ways we can interrupt the cycle of oppression so that we, the people around us, and future generations can get beyond societal messages of what we should believe about one another.
This document discusses group membership and identity. It explores how individuals derive self-esteem and identity from the groups they belong to. Social identity theory proposes that people are motivated to join groups that enhance their status and self-esteem. Group membership provides norms and behaviors that help shape members' identities. However, strong conformity to groupthink can undermine independent thinking and potentially lead to poor decisions. The document examines several studies demonstrating how central group members highly conform to norms compared to more marginal members.
The document provides an overview of how CrossFit is viewed through the lenses of four subdisciplines of kinesiology: sport psychology, sport history, sport sociology, and exercise physiology. It discusses how CrossFit creates communities and competitions, reflects American culture and values, elicits varied opinions both within and outside its community, and provides anaerobic training benefits while also potentially overtraining risks. The author concludes kinesiology is an important major given its focus on human movement and health, though suggests some classes could better integrate physical activity and health perspectives for PACC majors.
This document discusses various theories of motivation. It begins by defining motivation as a need or desire that energizes behavior toward a goal. It then outlines several perspectives on motivation, including instinct theory, drive-reduction theory, arousal theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Specific motivations discussed include social motivation, control motivation, hunger, and sexual motivation. The document examines the biological and psychological factors that influence these motivations.
This document discusses the concepts of queer theory and queer pedagogy. It defines queer as meaning different, unacceptable, and un-normed. Queer theory examines un-normed sexualities and relationships as well as what else is "queered" or un-normed. It discusses how sex, gender, and sexuality exist on spectra rather than binaries and how heterosexuality and gender norms are socially constructed and enforced through various power structures. The document argues that queer pedagogy aims to support students of all sexualities and genders through asking thoughtful questions rather than claiming answers.
The document discusses the topics of gender inequality and sexism. It defines key terms like patriarchy, misogyny, and sexual objectification. It also examines examples of sexism such as sexist jokes, the objectification of women in media, and the minimization of women's voices. The document suggests exercises for students to explore underlying values and impacts of these issues, and considerations for counselors and social workers in addressing them professionally.
This document summarizes a quantitative social science study that examined body perceptions among queer women. It discusses terminology, prior research showing queer women report better body image than heterosexual women, and hypotheses about why including potential protection from heteronormativity and the male gaze. The Michigan Smoking and Sexuality Study is described which surveyed 232 non-exclusively heterosexual women ages 18-24 on body esteem, gender role identification, and connection to the LGBTQ community. Results showed connection to the LGBTQ community was protective of body weight perceptions, particularly for those with non-feminine gender identities. This suggests escape from objectification and affirmation of non-heteronormative gender roles/identities contributes to more positive
The document discusses the physical self and how it is impacted by both biological and social factors. Biologically, physical characteristics are determined by genetics and heredity. Socially, body image and self-esteem are influenced by cultural ideals of beauty promoted by the media and society. These ideals can negatively impact individuals and potentially lead to body image issues or eating disorders. Developing a positive body image involves broadening one's perspectives on health, beauty, and acceptance of all body types.
1 Hour Session delivered to 3rd and 4th graders at Friends Academy in North Dartmouth, MA. We started off the session with an exercise - imagine a police officer, a doctor, a nurse, a criminal, a fire fighter, a family, a teacher, a basketball player, a boy, a girl, and more. Afterward, we compared similarities and differences. To our surprise, almost all of us had imagined the same family: a mother, father, and children who look like them. Almost all of us had imagined male police officers, fire fighters, and criminals. Almost all of us had imagined female teachers, nurses, and nannies. Several of us drew girls in skirts. Several of us imagined criminals in dark colors. Several of us imagined only White people. Several of us imagined only able-bodied people (no wheelchairs, glasses, etc.). And we did it all without having been told to imagine this way. After comparing, we pondered what would an alien species, whose only exposure to humans was in the form of these pictures, assume about the human race. We then extended the metaphor into the fact that we were, at one point, naive to all these messages in our very beginnings - we WERE aliens to this way of thinking at one point. We then analyzed where we got these messages. Clearly, everyone knew that men can be nurses, children do not always look like their parents, crimes can be committed by people in business clothes, etc. And yet, here we were, so clear on what society has taught us who these people are. We learned about the cycle of oppression, where stereotypes can become prejudice, then discrimination, then oppression, then internalized oppression/dominance. We learned about isms (racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, ableism, etc.), where prejudice plus the power to enforce it can result in systemic unfairness to groups of people. We then learned to identify situations where stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and isms might be at work. Finally, we discussed ways we can interrupt the cycle of oppression so that we, the people around us, and future generations can get beyond societal messages of what we should believe about one another.
"Body Image and Sexual Health" by Clinical Sexologist Dr. Martha Tara Lee of Eros Coaching for "Symposium - Sex and the Spine: All You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex and the Spine but Were Afraid to Ask" by NSpine as part of SpineWeek, at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre on Mon 16 May 2016.
Dr Martha Tara Lee is Founder and Clinical Sexologist of Eros Coaching since 2009. She is a certified sexologist with ACS (American College of Sexologists), as well as a certified sexuality educator with AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists). Martha holds a Doctorate in Human Sexuality as well as Certificates in Sex Therapy, Practical Counselling and Life Coaching. She was recognised as one of ‘Top 50 Inspiring Women under 40′ by Her World Singapore in July 2010 and ‘Top 100 Inspiring Women by CozyCot Singapore in March 2011. Website: http://www.eroscoaching.com.
Identity satisfaction in sexual minorities: A queer kind of strength - Associ...MHF Suicide Prevention
Presentation by Associate Professor Mark Henrickson at the symposium LGBTTI Wellness & Suicide: What do we need to change? Hosted in Auckland on 27 February 2013 by Auckland DHB, Affinity Services, OUTLine NZ, Rainbow Youth and the Mental Health Foundation.
Ways of seeing: theology, culture,spirituality, cinema (LMU course 11/13Rose Pacatte, D. Min.
This is the outline for two classes I taught as a substitute for Fr. Alan Deck, SJ, at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, November 2013. The course explored "the nature of and the connections between culture, faith, and spirituality … in the context of cultural, ideological, and religious pluralism and secularism using popular film …"
This document discusses the development of self from infancy through adulthood. It covers how self-awareness emerges around 17-24 months as infants begin to recognize themselves in mirrors. Culture influences when self-recognition occurs. During childhood, self-concept is formed based on physical and academic attributes, and adolescents struggle with developing identity. Adulthood brings changes to self-concept through life experiences like marriage and career. Work plays a role in adult identity and self-esteem is influenced by social comparisons and evaluations of how one measures up to standards and peers.
This document discusses gender identity and expression. It begins with an essential question about how humans develop gender identities and outlines learning objectives. It then defines sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression. Several theories on the origins of gender are presented, including evolutionary theory, biological theory, and social learning theory. Criticisms of these theories are mentioned. The document discusses the development of gender identities in children and asks students to reflect on their own experiences. It stresses that gender is complex with biological and social influences, and that people exist along a gender spectrum. Transgender identities are defined and discussed.
This document discusses body image issues and eating disorders in young athletes. It begins with background information on body image, disordered eating, and eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. It then examines factors that can influence body image in athletes, such as sport type, comparisons to teammates, and societal pressures. The document outlines personality traits that athletes and people with eating disorders share. It concludes with an overview of treatment methods for eating disorders in athletes, emphasizing the need for a multidisciplinary approach and one that does not prioritize sport performance over health.
This document discusses sexuality from various perspectives including biological, psychological, social, and religious. It addresses topics like puberty, gender roles and stereotypes, influences of friends, media and culture on sexuality. The section on sexuality and Islam emphasizes that matters of religion should be discussed openly, and outlines an Islamic curriculum for sex education covering puberty, reproductive physiology, sexually transmitted diseases, and establishing ethics and values.
Racism: We White People are the Dangerous OnesJane Gilgun
It's way past time that white people see that we are dangerous to Afican Americans and other people of color. In this powerpoint, I share the idea that white people are the dangerous ones and I provide ways to change racist beliefs and practices that make us dangerous. We define who they are and we act on our definitions. If we define them as inferior, we act as if they are and don't believe they deserve the rights and privileges we have. If we view them as dangerous, we are afraid of them. We may avoid them, talk about them behind their backs, bully then, beat them, or kill them. We are the dangerous ones.
What every coach should know about international cultureT. Leo Schmitt
This document provides an overview of key concepts coaches should understand about different cultures based on Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions model. It discusses the dimensions of individualism vs collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, short-term vs long-term orientation, and indulgence vs restraint. Throughout the document, the presenter poses questions to encourage reflection on how these dimensions may influence behaviors and perspectives in different cultural contexts. The goal is to provide coaches with insights into cultural tendencies rather than definitive truths, in order to better understand clients from diverse backgrounds.
This document discusses adolescent development from physical, cognitive, social, and emotional perspectives. It describes the transitions from childhood to adulthood, including puberty and its physical changes. Key developmental tasks are outlined for early, middle, and late adolescence, such as developing identity, independence, social skills, sexuality, and career choices. Cognitive advancements like abstract thinking and decision making are also reviewed. Challenges adolescents may face include school, family, or mental health issues. Theories on moral, social, and language development are summarized as well.
This document discusses stereotyping, including its definition, sources, and consequences. Stereotyping is judging groups based on opinions rather than individual characteristics. Sources of stereotyping include social learning from parents and peers, and cognitive biases like social categorization and outgroup homogeneity. Consequences of stereotyping include influencing perceptions and behaviors, self-fulfilling prophecies, and stereotype threat. Teachers are encouraged to avoid promoting stereotypes, get to know students as individuals rather than labels, and use techniques like contact between groups and cooperative learning to reduce stereotyping.
This document discusses stereotyping, including its definition, sources, and consequences. Stereotyping is judging others based on group characteristics rather than seeing them as individuals. Sources of stereotyping include social learning from parents and peers as well as cognitive biases like categorizing others and favoring one's own group. Consequences of stereotyping include influencing perceptions and behaviors, confirming stereotypes through self-fulfilling prophecies, and creating prejudice, discrimination, and denial of opportunities. Teachers are encouraged to avoid promoting stereotypes, get to know students as individuals rather than labels, and use techniques like contact between groups and education to reduce stereotyping.
The document discusses the differences between sex and gender, explaining that sex is defined by biological traits while gender refers to the social and cultural roles associated with one's sex. It explores how gender roles are learned through socialization and reinforced by various institutions, and how this can lead to the development of limiting gender stereotypes regarding the traits and behaviors expected of different genders.
Racism: We White People are the Dangerous OnesJane Gilgun
We project beliefs and images about race onto others. These beliefs are often outside of our awareness. These beliefs become activated in a variety of situations. We construct others based on our beliefs and images and not on who they actually are. We may see others as dangerous when they are not. We are the dangerous ones. Our beliefs and images bring great harm to others. This powerpoint shows contemporary understandings of racism, how to become aware of our racism, and how to change racist beliefs, images, and practices.
The document discusses different theories of motivation including:
1. Instinct theory which proposes that motivation comes from innate tendencies to respond to stimuli.
2. Drive theory which suggests motivation comes from biological needs like hunger that create tension.
3. Incentive theory where external goals pull or push behavior.
4. Arousal theory where people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal.
5. Humanistic theories like Maslow's hierarchy of needs from basic needs to self-fulfillment.
This document discusses gender and its impact on children's development. It begins by defining gender as the social and cultural construction or interpretation of differences between the sexes, as opposed to sex which refers to biological distinctions. The document notes that gender identity develops as children progress through cognitive stages of understanding their own gender. It explores the nature versus nurture debate around gender and discusses various psychological theories for how children learn gender roles and norms. The document advocates for gender equality and considers ways to achieve more balanced gender representation in classroom environments and teaching practices.
This document provides information about gender and sexuality from a biological and social perspective. Biologically, sex is determined by anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and can be male, female or intersex. Gender refers to social and cultural roles and expectations of masculinity and femininity that are distinct from biological sex. Sexuality encompasses sexual orientation, acts, meanings and drives that are influenced by social and cultural factors. Theories around essentialism view gender differences as innate while social constructionism sees gender as a social construct.
This document outlines a block plan for a 10th grade social science class focusing on gender issues. The plan spans one week and includes daily lessons and activities. On Monday, students will listen to and interpret a song about gender equality. Throughout the week, they will explore gender roles in different social institutions, discuss personal views on gender stereotypes, and create a documentary promoting respect for gender and sexuality rights. Assessment includes group work, poems, posters, and a debate on the Reproductive Health Law. The culminating activity is a 5-minute documentary addressing gender equality in society.
We started off the session with an exercise - imagine a police officer, a doctor, a nurse, a criminal, a fire fighter, a family, a teacher, a basketball player, a boy, a girl, and more. When we compared similarities and differences, to our surprise, almost all of us had drawn the same family: a mother, father, and children who look like them. Almost all of us had imagined male police officers, fire fighters, and criminals. Almost all of us had imagined female teachers, nurses, and nannies. Several of us imagined only able-bodied people (no wheelchairs, glasses, etc.). And we did it all without having been told to imagine this way. After comparing, we pondered what would an alien species, whose only exposure to humans was in the form of these imaginings, assume about the human race. We then extended the metaphor into the fact that we were, at one point, naive to all these messages in our very beginnings - we WERE aliens to this way of thinking at one point. We then analyzed where we got these messages. Clearly, everyone knew that men can be nurses, children do not always look like their parents, crimes can be committed by people in business clothes, etc. And yet, here we were, so clear on what society has taught us who these people are. We learned about the cycle of oppression, where stereotypes can become prejudice, then discrimination, then oppression, then internalized oppression/dominance. Finally, we discussed ways we can interrupt the cycle of oppression so that we, the people around us, and future generations can get beyond societal messages of what we should believe about one another.
This document discusses a lecture on gender and sexuality. It defines sex as biological while gender is socially constructed. It discusses how masculinity and femininity are defined in society and the process of gender socialization where children learn behaviors deemed appropriate for their sex. It explores how schools reproduce gender inequalities through practices, procedures and discourses that position some students as "winners" and others as "losers". It also discusses bullying and how sexuality and gender are intertwined in schools.
Presentation on indigenous education by fatima, teresa, jessica & mirandasykeshea
The article explores how poststructuralist, postmodern and postcolonial paradigms have influenced the development of Aboriginal curriculum. It discusses memory work and how reflecting on her own teaching experiences helped the author articulate a view of curriculum that is reflective of Aboriginal experiences. The story of curriculum is examined, noting how Western theories conceptualized curriculum to create an efficient society, while Aboriginal curriculum has been defined by colonization through policies aiming to assimilate Indigenous peoples. The article advocates for understanding the relationship between power and knowledge in Aboriginal curriculum to dismantle Eurocentrism. It also discusses defining curriculum through Indigenous interpretations like the medicine wheel and viewing learning as a lifelong process obtained through holistic and visionary means.
Interpretive paradigm presentation by vicky & savithirisykeshea
This document provides an overview of the interpretive research paradigm, including its key assumptions, origins, methods, and evolution. It discusses interpretivism's focus on understanding meaning and interpretation through socially constructed realities. The document outlines interpretivism's ontology of multiple subjective realities and epistemology of dynamic, context-dependent meanings. It also summarizes common interpretive research methods like interviews and observations. Finally, it notes some challenges of interpretive research and criteria for evaluating interpretive studies.
"Body Image and Sexual Health" by Clinical Sexologist Dr. Martha Tara Lee of Eros Coaching for "Symposium - Sex and the Spine: All You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex and the Spine but Were Afraid to Ask" by NSpine as part of SpineWeek, at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre on Mon 16 May 2016.
Dr Martha Tara Lee is Founder and Clinical Sexologist of Eros Coaching since 2009. She is a certified sexologist with ACS (American College of Sexologists), as well as a certified sexuality educator with AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists). Martha holds a Doctorate in Human Sexuality as well as Certificates in Sex Therapy, Practical Counselling and Life Coaching. She was recognised as one of ‘Top 50 Inspiring Women under 40′ by Her World Singapore in July 2010 and ‘Top 100 Inspiring Women by CozyCot Singapore in March 2011. Website: http://www.eroscoaching.com.
Identity satisfaction in sexual minorities: A queer kind of strength - Associ...MHF Suicide Prevention
Presentation by Associate Professor Mark Henrickson at the symposium LGBTTI Wellness & Suicide: What do we need to change? Hosted in Auckland on 27 February 2013 by Auckland DHB, Affinity Services, OUTLine NZ, Rainbow Youth and the Mental Health Foundation.
Ways of seeing: theology, culture,spirituality, cinema (LMU course 11/13Rose Pacatte, D. Min.
This is the outline for two classes I taught as a substitute for Fr. Alan Deck, SJ, at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, November 2013. The course explored "the nature of and the connections between culture, faith, and spirituality … in the context of cultural, ideological, and religious pluralism and secularism using popular film …"
This document discusses the development of self from infancy through adulthood. It covers how self-awareness emerges around 17-24 months as infants begin to recognize themselves in mirrors. Culture influences when self-recognition occurs. During childhood, self-concept is formed based on physical and academic attributes, and adolescents struggle with developing identity. Adulthood brings changes to self-concept through life experiences like marriage and career. Work plays a role in adult identity and self-esteem is influenced by social comparisons and evaluations of how one measures up to standards and peers.
This document discusses gender identity and expression. It begins with an essential question about how humans develop gender identities and outlines learning objectives. It then defines sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression. Several theories on the origins of gender are presented, including evolutionary theory, biological theory, and social learning theory. Criticisms of these theories are mentioned. The document discusses the development of gender identities in children and asks students to reflect on their own experiences. It stresses that gender is complex with biological and social influences, and that people exist along a gender spectrum. Transgender identities are defined and discussed.
This document discusses body image issues and eating disorders in young athletes. It begins with background information on body image, disordered eating, and eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. It then examines factors that can influence body image in athletes, such as sport type, comparisons to teammates, and societal pressures. The document outlines personality traits that athletes and people with eating disorders share. It concludes with an overview of treatment methods for eating disorders in athletes, emphasizing the need for a multidisciplinary approach and one that does not prioritize sport performance over health.
This document discusses sexuality from various perspectives including biological, psychological, social, and religious. It addresses topics like puberty, gender roles and stereotypes, influences of friends, media and culture on sexuality. The section on sexuality and Islam emphasizes that matters of religion should be discussed openly, and outlines an Islamic curriculum for sex education covering puberty, reproductive physiology, sexually transmitted diseases, and establishing ethics and values.
Racism: We White People are the Dangerous OnesJane Gilgun
It's way past time that white people see that we are dangerous to Afican Americans and other people of color. In this powerpoint, I share the idea that white people are the dangerous ones and I provide ways to change racist beliefs and practices that make us dangerous. We define who they are and we act on our definitions. If we define them as inferior, we act as if they are and don't believe they deserve the rights and privileges we have. If we view them as dangerous, we are afraid of them. We may avoid them, talk about them behind their backs, bully then, beat them, or kill them. We are the dangerous ones.
What every coach should know about international cultureT. Leo Schmitt
This document provides an overview of key concepts coaches should understand about different cultures based on Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions model. It discusses the dimensions of individualism vs collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, short-term vs long-term orientation, and indulgence vs restraint. Throughout the document, the presenter poses questions to encourage reflection on how these dimensions may influence behaviors and perspectives in different cultural contexts. The goal is to provide coaches with insights into cultural tendencies rather than definitive truths, in order to better understand clients from diverse backgrounds.
This document discusses adolescent development from physical, cognitive, social, and emotional perspectives. It describes the transitions from childhood to adulthood, including puberty and its physical changes. Key developmental tasks are outlined for early, middle, and late adolescence, such as developing identity, independence, social skills, sexuality, and career choices. Cognitive advancements like abstract thinking and decision making are also reviewed. Challenges adolescents may face include school, family, or mental health issues. Theories on moral, social, and language development are summarized as well.
This document discusses stereotyping, including its definition, sources, and consequences. Stereotyping is judging groups based on opinions rather than individual characteristics. Sources of stereotyping include social learning from parents and peers, and cognitive biases like social categorization and outgroup homogeneity. Consequences of stereotyping include influencing perceptions and behaviors, self-fulfilling prophecies, and stereotype threat. Teachers are encouraged to avoid promoting stereotypes, get to know students as individuals rather than labels, and use techniques like contact between groups and cooperative learning to reduce stereotyping.
This document discusses stereotyping, including its definition, sources, and consequences. Stereotyping is judging others based on group characteristics rather than seeing them as individuals. Sources of stereotyping include social learning from parents and peers as well as cognitive biases like categorizing others and favoring one's own group. Consequences of stereotyping include influencing perceptions and behaviors, confirming stereotypes through self-fulfilling prophecies, and creating prejudice, discrimination, and denial of opportunities. Teachers are encouraged to avoid promoting stereotypes, get to know students as individuals rather than labels, and use techniques like contact between groups and education to reduce stereotyping.
The document discusses the differences between sex and gender, explaining that sex is defined by biological traits while gender refers to the social and cultural roles associated with one's sex. It explores how gender roles are learned through socialization and reinforced by various institutions, and how this can lead to the development of limiting gender stereotypes regarding the traits and behaviors expected of different genders.
Racism: We White People are the Dangerous OnesJane Gilgun
We project beliefs and images about race onto others. These beliefs are often outside of our awareness. These beliefs become activated in a variety of situations. We construct others based on our beliefs and images and not on who they actually are. We may see others as dangerous when they are not. We are the dangerous ones. Our beliefs and images bring great harm to others. This powerpoint shows contemporary understandings of racism, how to become aware of our racism, and how to change racist beliefs, images, and practices.
The document discusses different theories of motivation including:
1. Instinct theory which proposes that motivation comes from innate tendencies to respond to stimuli.
2. Drive theory which suggests motivation comes from biological needs like hunger that create tension.
3. Incentive theory where external goals pull or push behavior.
4. Arousal theory where people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal.
5. Humanistic theories like Maslow's hierarchy of needs from basic needs to self-fulfillment.
This document discusses gender and its impact on children's development. It begins by defining gender as the social and cultural construction or interpretation of differences between the sexes, as opposed to sex which refers to biological distinctions. The document notes that gender identity develops as children progress through cognitive stages of understanding their own gender. It explores the nature versus nurture debate around gender and discusses various psychological theories for how children learn gender roles and norms. The document advocates for gender equality and considers ways to achieve more balanced gender representation in classroom environments and teaching practices.
This document provides information about gender and sexuality from a biological and social perspective. Biologically, sex is determined by anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and can be male, female or intersex. Gender refers to social and cultural roles and expectations of masculinity and femininity that are distinct from biological sex. Sexuality encompasses sexual orientation, acts, meanings and drives that are influenced by social and cultural factors. Theories around essentialism view gender differences as innate while social constructionism sees gender as a social construct.
This document outlines a block plan for a 10th grade social science class focusing on gender issues. The plan spans one week and includes daily lessons and activities. On Monday, students will listen to and interpret a song about gender equality. Throughout the week, they will explore gender roles in different social institutions, discuss personal views on gender stereotypes, and create a documentary promoting respect for gender and sexuality rights. Assessment includes group work, poems, posters, and a debate on the Reproductive Health Law. The culminating activity is a 5-minute documentary addressing gender equality in society.
We started off the session with an exercise - imagine a police officer, a doctor, a nurse, a criminal, a fire fighter, a family, a teacher, a basketball player, a boy, a girl, and more. When we compared similarities and differences, to our surprise, almost all of us had drawn the same family: a mother, father, and children who look like them. Almost all of us had imagined male police officers, fire fighters, and criminals. Almost all of us had imagined female teachers, nurses, and nannies. Several of us imagined only able-bodied people (no wheelchairs, glasses, etc.). And we did it all without having been told to imagine this way. After comparing, we pondered what would an alien species, whose only exposure to humans was in the form of these imaginings, assume about the human race. We then extended the metaphor into the fact that we were, at one point, naive to all these messages in our very beginnings - we WERE aliens to this way of thinking at one point. We then analyzed where we got these messages. Clearly, everyone knew that men can be nurses, children do not always look like their parents, crimes can be committed by people in business clothes, etc. And yet, here we were, so clear on what society has taught us who these people are. We learned about the cycle of oppression, where stereotypes can become prejudice, then discrimination, then oppression, then internalized oppression/dominance. Finally, we discussed ways we can interrupt the cycle of oppression so that we, the people around us, and future generations can get beyond societal messages of what we should believe about one another.
This document discusses a lecture on gender and sexuality. It defines sex as biological while gender is socially constructed. It discusses how masculinity and femininity are defined in society and the process of gender socialization where children learn behaviors deemed appropriate for their sex. It explores how schools reproduce gender inequalities through practices, procedures and discourses that position some students as "winners" and others as "losers". It also discusses bullying and how sexuality and gender are intertwined in schools.
Presentation on indigenous education by fatima, teresa, jessica & mirandasykeshea
The article explores how poststructuralist, postmodern and postcolonial paradigms have influenced the development of Aboriginal curriculum. It discusses memory work and how reflecting on her own teaching experiences helped the author articulate a view of curriculum that is reflective of Aboriginal experiences. The story of curriculum is examined, noting how Western theories conceptualized curriculum to create an efficient society, while Aboriginal curriculum has been defined by colonization through policies aiming to assimilate Indigenous peoples. The article advocates for understanding the relationship between power and knowledge in Aboriginal curriculum to dismantle Eurocentrism. It also discusses defining curriculum through Indigenous interpretations like the medicine wheel and viewing learning as a lifelong process obtained through holistic and visionary means.
Interpretive paradigm presentation by vicky & savithirisykeshea
This document provides an overview of the interpretive research paradigm, including its key assumptions, origins, methods, and evolution. It discusses interpretivism's focus on understanding meaning and interpretation through socially constructed realities. The document outlines interpretivism's ontology of multiple subjective realities and epistemology of dynamic, context-dependent meanings. It also summarizes common interpretive research methods like interviews and observations. Finally, it notes some challenges of interpretive research and criteria for evaluating interpretive studies.
Dalia, bo & heather—gender & sexuality sykeshea
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1. ‘Fatkid Dodgeball’
From the PE Hall of Shame
to the
National Dodgeball League
Heather Sykes
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
Western Society for Physical Education of College Women
November 2007
10. Fat Phobia in Physical Education
Hostile educational climate
makes it extremely difficult
to feel
Fat
&
Athletic
&
Healthy
11. Fat Phobia
• fat itself is not unhealthy, fat phobia is
(Norman, 1983; Hubbard, 1983; Lyons, 1989; Freespirit & Alderban, 1983; Mayer, 1983)
• maintains discursive & psychic boundary fat/not fat
• underlying cultural anxieties
• miscegenation (Gilman, 2006)
• female reproduction (Kristeva, 1982)
• pollution (Douglas, 1970)
• Western mind/body dualism
• Mind overdetermined as whiteness, rationality, patriarchy
• Fatness hyper-represents the Body
• Fatness conflated with woman, failed men, racialized bodies
(Bordo, 1993; Malson, 1998; Mosher, 2001; Shaw, 2005)
12. Alienation, Dread & Disembodiment
• Alienation
• Trauma at home, trauma in PE about weight loss (Temperance)
• Dread
• Dreading gym class, hating physical activity (Starburst)
• Disembodiment
• survival mechanism for teasing, dieting & PE lessons (Elizabeth)
visibility motor control moral control
13. Disciplining Fat through Measurement
• Publicly weighed in PE lessons 1950s (Starburst)
• Skin fold measurements in Kinesiology undergraduate
classes 1990s (Karyn)
Measurement retains, as it seeks to remove, fatness (Kristeva, 1982)
14. Constructions of Sexuality/Gender
in Fat Phobia
Sporty boys vs. fat lazy girls (Sarah)
• Fatness conflated with femininity & laziness
A certain amount of baggage (Johnathon)
• Men can ‘have’ fat without ‘being’ fat
Fascist standards of Church Street (Moe)
• Fatness decreases sexually desirability in gay male culture
Men can take up more space (Karen, Sammy-Jo)
• Butches & masculine women ‘have’ fat in queer women’s
communities
It was hard to negotiate my space (Scout)
• Rigid standards of female beauty in gymnastics
• Lack of knowledge and role models for intersex student
15. How have we, as physical
educators, understood
problems associated with
the game of Dodgeball?
16. PE Hall of Shame
・ Absence of objectives
・ Potential to embarrass
・ Eliminating students
・ Lack of teaching about skills
・ Low participation time
・ Luck, aggressiveness, competitiveness
・ Danger, injury, and harm
17. PE Hall of Shame
Fear
Intimidation
Humiliation
Nausea
Abject failure
Angst
Neurosis
All that -- and showers, too!
(McCallum, Sports Illustrated, 2000)
18. Seeing and
Being Seen
Becoming someone (a
subject) by seeing and
recognizing one’s body as
separate
requires
visual and aggressive
idealization of bodies
19. Body in Bits and Pieces
• Disconnected limbs
• Organs inside/out
• Growing wings
21. Fortified Body
• Sense of coherent,
bodily wholeness
• Structure of the
stadium
• Armor of alienating
identity
22. Idealized bodies
• When a subject’s
image coincides with
the idealized image
… “joy”
• Physical education
develops culturally
ideal bodies
23. De-ldealized Bodies
Fat body is rarely the
ideal in Western
physical education
Fat students are
deprived of self-
recognition …and
“joy”
24. Illusion of
An Ideal Body
Idealized body is,
for any body,
impossible to
fully achieve
25. Agressivity & Rivalry
Rivalry between what
we know and what we
have repressed
Difficulty in approaching
the ideal I generates an
“aggressive pull”
towards idealization
26. “This is awful”
“What’s the next unit in gym? What can I anticipate
happening? Is it going to be horrible? Please don’t
make us run laps today. Please don’t get lazy and
simply have dodgeball.”
Dodgeball was like all the time.
All my classmates would yell “hurray”. They were
so excited to go and do gym. And I thought, “this is
awful.”
(Temperance)
27. Awful! Horrible! … Fun! Excitement!
• Complicated fun
• Sadistic fun
• Jouissance
28. Jouissance
• Bliss, merging, arrival,
coming, orgasmic
• Pleasure mixed with
pain
• Coming closer to death,
self-shattering
• Approaching the limits
of our selves, in a
confrontation with our
own lack or otherness
Homme addiction par Chambre 419
Maury Perseval
29. How can we make sense
of the reappearance of
Dodgeball in popular
culture?
35. Participants’ Suggestions for
Educational Change
• Change unlikely - ineffective left-wing, privitization,
educational budget cuts
• Eliminate physical education as a subject
• Aware of harm caused by initiatives to reduce obesity
• Critique official views about fatness
• Teach against fat bias in PE
• Fat activists into schools
36. Ethics of Vision
• Active Gift of Love (Lacan)
• Learning to idealize one’s previously
deidealized corporeal images (Bal)
37. Ethics of Vision
• Learning to idealize one’s previously de-
idealized corporeal images in physical
education
• Learning from fat bodies in fat-positive
spaces
38. Interview Topics
• Memories of physical education
• Confidence in physical abilities
• Feelings about their body
• Impact of PE teacher
• Adult movement culture
• Insights for educators, professionals
44. Theme #5
Fat-Positive Movement Spaces
[My instructor] was very flab fat. She’s sweating and shaking all
over the place (Sarah)
Grey space between being allowed to be fat (Temperance)
Curves was like a f**** party to me. Lots of fat women worked out
there and remained fat. (Temperance)
45. Theme #3
Constructions of Sexuality/Gender
in Fat Phobia
Sporty boys vs. fat lazy girls (Sarah)
• Fatness conflated with femininity & laziness
A certain amount of baggage (Johnathon)
• Men can ‘have’ fat without ‘being’ fat
Fascist standards of Church Street (Moe)
• Fatness decreases sexually desirability in gay male culture
Men can take up more space (Karen, Sammy-Jo)
• Butches & masculine women ‘have’ fat in queer women’s communities
It was hard to negotiate my space (Scout)
• Rigid standards of female beauty in gymnastics
• Lack of knowledge and role models for intersex student
Editor's Notes
Thank you for inviting me to talk.
I’m very excited to be here.
Thanks to Rita and the program committee for inviting me.
Especially, I want to thank Terry Coblentz for being really great, driving me down here…
I was thrilled to learn that the theme for the conference was “Weighing in on the Body” What a great title, but more importantly, this is just such an important issue right now as the discourses about a global obesity epidemic are spinning out of control, and millions of dollars being funneled through health initiatives around the world and physical education both in the US and Canada to cure this supposed health crisis. It is so urgent that we, as physical educators, talk about what is actually going on and figure out how to intervene in the fear mongering and moral panic about fatness that is all around us right now.
I only started to think seriously about the lived realities and politics of fatness over the last 6 or so years, really because of some wonderful graduate students I’ve had the privilege to work with at OISE, my education department at the University of Toronto.
So, the title of my talk is ‘Fatkid Dodgeball’From the PE Hall of Shameto theNational Dodgeball League.
In this presentation I will share my thoughts about four questions.
What is fat phobia in physical education?
Secondly, How have we, as physical educators, understood problems associated with the game of Dodgeball?
Third, How can we make sense of the reappearance of Dodgeball in popular culture?
How many people have seen the Dodgeball movie?
Hands up!
Don’t be shy!
Yeah, well, we’re going to go there!
And then finally, I’m going to ask us to consider whether understanding the phenomenon of Dodgeball in new ways might help us reduce the effects of fat phobia on our students, and ourselves, in physical education.
Most of my ideas have come out my current research project which examines heterosexism, transphobia, ableism and body-based discrimination in Canadian physical education.
Alongwith an amazing team of graduate research assistants, I’ve interviewed 39 people for the project.
Participants in the project were required to self-identify with one or more of the following marginalized social groups:
sexual or gender minority;
having a physical disability;
having an undervalued body size/shape.
The narratives and examples I will share are all based on interviews with 15 people in the project who self-identified as “fat” or “overweight”.
Oh, I should also mention that we interviewed adults, not actual students, which allowed us to learn from participants’ retrospective sense-making about their experiences at school.
The participants who identified as ‘fat’ or ‘overweight’ had diverse gender/sex identities - female, male, butch, intersex, biofemme and gender-queer.
They described their sexual identities as straight, gay male, bi, lesbian, queer.
Although the 39 participants in the larger project were racially and ethnically diverse, the 15 people who self-identified as fat or overweight identified primarily as white and/or Jewish.
The examples can therefore only give a limited analysis of racialized experiences with fat phobia -- and I hope our discussions and the workshop tomorrow can help us to think about this more.
Just quickly, for those who like to know what ideas lie beneath the surface,
Theoretically, I draw upon the work of
-corporeal feminists such as Rosalyn Diprose, Moira Gatnes, Liz Grosz and Gail Weiss
-queer theorists who have engaged with fat politics such as Eve Sedgwick, Micheal Moon, Le’a Kent and Kathleen LeBesco.
-Psychoanalytic theories of embodiment by Didier Anzieu and Julia Kristeva’s work on abjection.
The analysis is particularly informed by Deborah’s insight into second and third wave feminist fat theory.
Fat phobia, excessive fear and dislike of fat in oneself and in others, is a relatively new phenomenon, born during the 20th century (Lilka Areton, 2002).
Here are a few simple facts and myths:
Fact: 90 percent of all women overestimate their body size.
Fact: By the age of 13, sixty percent of all North American girls have dieted.
Fact: Female children as young as five expressed fears of getting fat.
Myth: Diets work. 95-98% of people who diet gain back all or more of the weight they lost.
Myth: Being overweight causes heart disease. Studies show that average to 30% above average body weights, have lower disease and mortality rates than those 20% under weight.
Myth: Fat people eat more than thin people. People's body weights are not directly related to the amount of food intake. We all have "natural" body fat which our bodies attempt to maintain. Body fat determination is related to our genetics and early childhood nutrition. (Mullin, 2007)
(Gretchen Mullin, University of Western Ontatio Health Watch, http://www.shs.uwo.ca/publications/mindbody/fphobia.htm)
Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volume 5, Jan. 15, 2002www.ejhs.org
FACTORS IN THE SEXUAL SATISFACTION OF OBESE WOMEN IN RELATIONSHIPSLilka Woodward Areton
In my research I’m trying to find out how this fat phobia both constitutes, and is continually negotiated by, “fat” and “overweight” students during their physical education experiences.
Generally speaking, fat people’s memories of physical education at school illustrate how fat phobia create extremely difficult situations that demand constant psychic/emotional work, provide pitiful opportunities for learning and numerous alienating, traumatic movement experiences.
Thus, just as Susan Bordo (1993) argued that being fat in contemporary culture is an unbearable weight for women, we suggest that being fat makes physical education an unbearable lesson for many students.
But within this hostile educational climate, our interviews reveal how students did, in fact, form fluid rather than fixed identifications as “fat”, “athletic” and “healthy”.
Fat phobia is all about trying to maintain a precarious boundary between being fat and not being fat.
In the cultural imagination, fears about be/coming fat arise from underlying anxieties about female reproduction, miscegenation and pollution of bodily boundaries (Bordo, 1993; Gilman, 2006; Kristeva 1982).
Fat phobia underpinning the “obesity epidemic” involves the abjection of supposedly “unhealthy”, “unathletic” and “unskilled” bodies from the imagined spaces of physical education and health education. I’ll talk a little bit more about this idea of abjection - since I think it is part of what is going on during dodgeball.
Evans et al (2003) describe the contemporary biomedical discourse of the obesity epidemic as a “cultural toxin. Thus, healthy living comes to require the elimination of fatness from the psychic, social and national body.
Symbolically speaking, fat people are excessively body, all body.
Now, one way of understanding how we have come to think about fatness in such negative terms is to look at broader ideas about the relationship between the mind and body, good and bad, male and female.
Within the Western Cartesian logic of mind/body dualism, women are defined as “the body,” and their reproductive capabilities are cited as the reason (Malson, 1998).
Many feminists argue, fat is pathologized because fat is symbolically conflated with “woman”. So, as Carla Rice (2006) argues, the “war on fat” is a “war on women”.
Moreover, these representations are racialized in ways that shore up unnamed, yet idealized, whiteness. Not only does Cartesian dualism overdetermine women as “the body”, but also people of colour and racialized people (Bordo, 1993). This conflation is due to racist and long-held understandings of people of colour and racialized people as closer to nature and animalistic (Hill Collins, 1997). In Cartesian logic, then, not only is fat feminine, but it is also racialized. For example, Shaw (2005) traces how iconic representations of the black female body in the United States overwhelmingly define the standards against which white femininity is constructed. Fatness and blackness, she argues “display an uncanny coincidence of boundaries” (Shaw, 2005: 152) such that the black female fat body signals a concentration of asexualized, maternal plenitude.
Fat phobia makes physical education extremely difficult for many students.
Many people we interviewed highlighted the continuous psychic work required to inhabit fatness as an “emotional size” (Colls, 2002: 219) in physical education.
Most women, and some men, that we interviewed reported how their experiences fatness in physical education produced feelings of alienation, dread, and, at times, disembodiment.
Temperance said: My experience of phys ed and school went hand-in-hand with trauma I had at home around weight loss, and trauma I had at school around fat phobia. It was all part of one package and alienated me from my body.
When Deborah, one of the researchers very involved in fat activism asked Startbust What she tought she’s learned from physical education?
Starburst replied: How to avoid it. [Both laughing]. I think that I learned that I didn’t like anything that had to do with moving... It harkens back to how much I dreaded gym class, how I came to hate all of that.
Elizabeth recounted: I feel like walking through the gym doors every single time was an exercise in disembodiment. Disembodiment would be the norm for me…because your body’s on display and, so, I go somewhere else when that happens.
Within what Hillel Scwartz calls the “lean meritocracy” (p. 331) of physical education, fat bodies are almost always regarded as not skilled, fit or fast because, in visual terms, fatness is a representation of non-control.
In the current historical moment, as Brian Pronger (2002) explains, this is because fatness incites anxieties about the potential loss of motor and moral control, and threatens the boundaries upholding a sovereign self. Overall, people interviewed for this project testified how difficult it was to contest these negative discourses about fatness.
Weighing and measuring students in physical education was one of the most explicit manifestations of fat phobia. Several people told extremely distressing narratives about being publicly weighed.
Starburst recalled how devastating it felt for her to be publicly weighed when she attended school in northern Ontario during the late 1950s.
Starburst: The most traumatic thing was that at the beginning of every year, they used to bring the scale in, and they would weigh everybody publicly….That was, like, public humiliation,
Fifty years later Karyn, who identified as fat, straight and white European, experienced similar public humiliation when being measured with skin calipers in her undergraduate physical education program.
Karyn: I thought I'd go into kinesiology. I started taking these classes and they were horrible. They were like, oh my God, I still have nightmares about them. We were doing all these fitness testing. Do you know those fat pinchers?
Q: Calipers?
Karyn: Yeah. Oh my God! In front of the class, get up and let's see how much fat is on your arm. I wanted to die! And all the super calculating we had to do. It was basically your body was the test subject, the test area.
Endless refinement of weighing and measuring techniques, justified through supposedly non-ideological, bio-medical discourses of body composition and the body-mass index, strives to banish from fatness from the “child”. Yet these same disciplinary techniques also work to retain fatness through the ongoing the biomedical investment in calculation, prevention and measurement. In the Foucaultian sense, physical educators’ attempts to eradicate or reduce obesity through weighing and weight reduction simultaneously work to incite and sustain an abject fascination with fatness. The experiences of our participants testify to the harmful and enduring effects these disciplinary techniques have on fat students’ subjectivities within physical education.
Fat bodies may be slightly more accepted within queer women’s communities, especially when associated with butchness and female masculinity. Sammy-Jo, who identifies as a queer dyke, feels she has more latitude to be overweight as a queer woman than when she identified as a straight woman: “I feel there is more room as a queer woman to fit a little outside the norm with my body”. Similarly Karen, who described herself as queer with a “complicated” gender identity told us how “exploring more of my butchness, my stereotypical masculine traits have helped me become more comfortable with my size because guys are allowed to take up space, right? but women are not supposed to”
However, the claim that female fatness is more easily constructed in conjunction with female masculinity or queerness in physical education settings needs to be cautiously examined in relation to the intense transphobia and homophobia of those contexts. Karen wasn’t able to openly embrace her masculinity while she at school.
Scout, who has been “thin” and “overweight” at different periods in her life, described changes in her body size in multi-faceted relations to her racial identity as “poor white trash”
Q: Would you say physical education has influenced how you feel about your body? Scout: Dramatically... Dramatically It shaped a perspective of what bodies should look like - what desirable bodies should look like. They should be white, and they should be blonde, and they should have blue eyes, and they should have tits out to here, and a heart shaped ass, and you know legs that go on for miles. It [physical education] was formative because it was the precursor to regiment and denial. So, yeah, it played a major role but in a disciplinary way.
Her narrative only provides a very partial sense of how Scout articulated the complexity of changes in her body size, from “thin” when she was involved in gymnastics and then later becoming “fat” in relation to her sexed identity. Scout recalled “growing up without knowing she was an intersexed girl” and was deeply frustrated by the lack of knowledge or recognition about being intersexed “because there was no mirror for me.
Both Scout and Karen talked about how their bodies occupied space in relation to their marginalized sex/gender identities. Being intersex was unintelligible within Scout’s school context who said “it was really hard to negotiate my space” as a student. Being butch at school was transgressive and risky for Karen who, by “exploring more of my butchness”, has become more comfortable taking up space with her size as an adult. But, even as the underlying associations between fatness and femininity construct more potential to be fat and butch rather than gay and fat, intersex and gender minority students such as Scout and Karen face particular challenges when negotiating their fat subjectivities at school.
So now I’m going to return to how Sarah remembered dodgeball in her school, and how she talked about how the ‘sporty guys’ are going to pick off the ‘fat lazy girls.
What is going on here, in educational terms?
Obviously sexism is getting reproduced.
And, perhaps, equally obviously fat students are getting labelled as being lazy.
But why does this happen, why does it seem obvious?
How has this type of stereotyping and discrimination been dealt with by physical educators -- who, let’s face it are an amazingly insightful and caring bunch of people who have been working against these harmful dynamics, often quietly and without recognition, since…well, since our profession started.
But, as I put out some thoughts about how physical educators have tried to deal with educational problems in dodgeball, I’m also going to suggest some reasons why we haven’t quite understood everything that is going on in this little game, nor have we perhaps thought about fatness and dodgeball in as much detail as we might.
How have we understood dodgeball as a problem in physical education
Q&A:
Shame
Humiliation
Embarrassment
Physical harm
Emotional harm
As I’m sure many of you know Dodgeball was one of the first inductees into the Physical Education Hall of Shame in 1992, a move led by Neil Williams (1994).
・Absence of the purported objectives of the activity or game
・Potential to embarrass a student in front of the rest of the class
・Focus on eliminating students from participation
・Overemphasis on and concern about the students having "fun”
・Lack of emphasis on teaching motor skills and lifetime physical fitness skills
・Extremely low participation time factors
・Organizing into large groups where getting a "turn" is based on luck or individual aggressiveness or competitiveness
・Extremely high likelihood for danger, injury, and harm
Accounts of dodgeball abound, and I’m sure we have a rich archive right here in Asilomar thisevening.
Jack McCallum, writing in Sports Illustrated which is not known for it’s insightfull emotional depth, lists the following emotional learning outcomes associated with dodgeball:
Fear
Intimidation
Humiliation
Nausea
Abject failure
Angst
Neurosis
All that -- and showers, too!
(McCallum, Sports Illustrated, 2000)
Here I want to think about dodgeball in terms of what students are doing on emotional, psychic and physical levels. That is, how having fun, or for many, not having fun in dodgeball if actually a very central, almost unavoidable part, of becomging a person.
To phrase it slightly differently, the aggressive processes that make dodgeball “fun” for some studnets are an integral part of forming a normal, able-bodied sense of oneself, or we could say, of forming a normal subjectivitiy in the physical education context.
Visual images of bodies within physical education are always being looked at in physical education and this is an important part of becoming what Kaja Silverman calls “an idealized body”.
Our pedagogies in physical education are permeated by the visual - demonstrations by both teachers and learners, observable bodily performance and assessment, public displays of motor skill or physical ability.
Seeing and being seen in physical education is not merely a problem of personal dignity and privacy, but is also how students create a self-image, perhaps their body-image, by a constant visual and aggressive idealization of bodies. I’m suggesting this is a key process through which students as ‘subjects’ come to see and know themselves.
Infants enter this world with a very fluid, non-differentiated and fragmented sense of their body. They can’t distinguish between inside and outside the womb, between the breast or bottle that feeds them and parts of their own bodies, about being touched and held by a parent, where their own body begins and ends.
Somehow we all have to figure this out.
We have to find a way to create a sense of ourselves as a separate being, an individual, that little person who is “me”.
Jacques Lacan suggests that this infantile sense of having a “body in bits and pieces” reappears to us as adults in our dreams as “disconnected limbs”, “organs exoscopically represented” and “growing wings”.
To illustrate this rather frightening idea of having a fragmented body image, Lacan refers to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.
Indeed, I recall a dream of my early childhood in which I held a smooth, grey femur bone. Each of my hands gently cupped the head and condyles of the smooth bone, always in the same diagonal position in front of my chest. The smoothness, position and length were similar and palpable in every dream.
What the infant must do, and education tries to develop, is form a sense of coherent, bodily wholeness.
In contrast to the notion of a body in bits and pieces, this is a sense of the body as a fortified, self-contained structure. Lacan actually uses the example of a stadium to illustrate what this feels like.
He calls this a sense of “orthopedic” reality. Consider how we design and move in gymnasia - it is purposefully designed to develop the “armor of alienating identity” through motor control, health and fitness, hygiene and productive movement. The gymnasium is justified by, and at the same time fortifies, physical education’s aim of transforming disorganized, uncoordinated limbs and body parts into integrated, combined and productive movements, knowledge and skills.
So, perhaps you will concede, for now at least, that these metaphors of fragmented body and fortified stadium capture the purpose and organization of physical education generally, and the fundamental dynamic that keeps us fascinated with dodgeball in particular.
Silverman (1979) states that achieving one’s ideal image produces immense pleasure. She writes that immense jubilation arises when ‘we imaginarily coincide with the ideal imago which we usually worship languishingly from afar’ (p.39). This pleasure exceeds the satisfaction afforded by the even most intense ‘object-love’. Thus, if we consider the pedagogical demand to become physically educated is, at some level, always a demand to come closer to a personal, curricular, culturally ideal body then learning proceeds through the ‘narcissistic transport’ towards one’s body ideal.
Consider the common technique of the ‘skill demonstration’ when the teacher, sometimes a proficient student, performs a skilled movement for the student to observe. This is an exemplary moment of spectacular teaching, when the eyes of the masses (students) are trained towards the exceptional few (skilled body). The visual demonstration provides an embodied ‘ideal’.
“A demonstration by the teacher (or by a surrogate performer) has enormous impact on the observing learner. A demonstration has the following characteristics:
It presents an image or model of the activity.
This model establishes the performance standard for the learner.
It is rapid (unless shown on video in slow motion)
It can present the entire activity, parts of it, or any combination of the parts
It saves time. A demonstration tells the whole story quickly, and the visual impact is very powerful” (Mosston & Ashworth, 1986: 165).
In this crystallized yet emblematic teaching moment, the teacher’s body provides a model to be emulated. The model is more than a mere possibility, it is provided as an ideal. Such identifications provide opportunities for students to recognize themselves, to identify with something in the image of their teacher and thus sustain either a sense of themselves as learners or a social identity. These identifications seem to reinforce the process of role modeling in physical education. Indeed, when identifications support identity the process may appear similar to social constructionist explanations.
However, if we think about this ‘best’ practice of the visual demonstration in physical education in psychoanalytic terms there is more going on than meets the eye. Each particular body generates a ‘constellation of meanings’ (ref), is intelligible only through always already cultural discourses that precede it (Butler), is codified through the pedagogical ‘gaze’ of the student body-mass and multiple articulations (Laclau?) or nodes with individual students’ psyches in their devouring role as spectators.
However, the story changes when identifications are considered in relation to the socio-cultural context, the normalizing gaze and the unconscious. The gaze and socio-cultural power relations imbue, but do not fully determine, the identifications made available to subjects, and in this context, to students immersed in the visual field of physical education.
FAT BODY AS ABJECT BODY
Within physical education the ‘fat’ body does not approximate the idealized body. The abjection of the fat body is both overdetermined and intensified within this area of schooling. Fat identified people we interviewed spoke (frequently? consistently? uniformly?) about learning that their bodies were not ideal.
My experience of phys ed and school went hand-in-hand with trauma I had at home around weight loss, and trauma I had at school around fat phobia. It was all part of one package and alienated me from my body. (Temperance pseudonym)
I think that a survival mechanism for fat people around taunting and mocking and dieting, which I was always doing throughout grade school, is to separate yourself from your body to a degree because your body is never perceived as something that’s okay. So in order for you to even mildly get a sense that you’re okay you need to distance yourself from it in some degree. So in terms of disembodiment, I feel like waking through the gym doors every single time was an exercise in disembodiment. Disembodiment would be the norm for me…because your body’s on display and, so, I go somewhere else when that happens. (Elizabeth pseudonym)
However, Gail Weiss (1999) reminds us that any subject faces serious challenges in the process of constructing a coherent body image” (p.89). The desire to fully become or attain an idealized bodily image is, ultimately, unattainable for any of us. “The ideal image is impossible to approach except in moments of mania or delusion. For the most part, the subject who yearns to approximate it experiences not repletion, but insufficiency, not wholeness, but discordance and disarray (Silverman, 1979: 39).
This search for or journey towards an idealized body is, Silverman points out, is not a matter of merely assimilating or becoming in any straightforward, developmental way.
Complications in the identificatory process stem from, on the one hand, a fundamental skepticism towards the unitary, coherent body in psychoanalysis and, on the other, necessary engagements with a fragile, porous and fragmented bodily ego. “The claustral binarism,” writes Silverman “which leads relentlessly from the
We are constantly oscillating between our desire for unity and an unconscious anxiety about the fragmented body, -- our body being, once again, in bits and pieces. Here I think about the dreams I have about my teeth falling out one by one, then faster and faster. I can’t spit them out, and my mouth becomes filled with them. When do I have this dream…yes, you guessed, just before the start of a new semester, before meeting a new group of students.
How do we cope with this? How do our students cope with this?
WE are all engaged in trying to create a ‘normal’ body develops that gives us a sense of homeyness and completeness of the body - but, and here’s the kicker, this is unavoidably based on a dynamic act of repression.
We are always involved in a rivalry between what we know and what we have repressed. This gets played out in our relations between the subject and others" (Homer, 2005: 26) and how we play our games with others.
So I hope we now arrive at an argument is that, in physical education, the process of looking at, devouring and trying to become a normalized, idealized body is, in fact, a rather complex dance of rivalry.
That is to say, the expected project of becoming normal, athletic or fit is, rather than being a mundane, reasonable educational project is, psychoanalysis reveals, a highly aggressive process.
Let’s catch our breath for a while, and return back to someone else’s memories of dodgeball as a fat student:
Temperance: There was a lot of psychic energy that was spent trying to be a step ahead of the teacher. Like, “OK, so they said that the volley ball unit was in the last three weeks, and now it’s week four. What’s the next unit in gym? What can I anticipate happening? Is it going to be horrible? Please don’t make us run laps today. Please don’t get lazy and simply have dodgeball.” Dodgeball was like all the time. If we had a supply teacher and they didn’t have anything prepped we always had to go to the gym and do dodgeball. All my classmates would yell “hurray” they were so excited to go and do gym. And I thought, “this is awful.” And my experience of gym affected my experience in the rest of the courses. I became hyper-skilled in English, Math, Social Studies, everything. My whole class dynamic, my whole role in the community was totally different in gym class. I was hyper-aware of every next step. So, the controlling was about trying to stay a step ahead of the game in order to be perceived as normal.
Temperance knew only too well how her body would be visual interpreted and literally targeted by other students during dodgeball, that hers would be the body which other students used for target practice literally and psychically. As is so often the case, a student who is fat serves as an easy target in the dodgeball game, in the physical education class and in culture more broadly.
One way of describing this, is that the body of a fat student becomes the target, one might say, the repository for other students attempts at self-formation. For other students’ projected anxieties about their own unstable positions with social hierarchies and sporting meritocracy of the class and school.
And the target through which they can attempt to build this fortified sense of self, this athletic mastery and a physically educated body.
Let me spend a little time unpacking this, as it is, I think, a rather crucial dynamic in what is being taught and learned through games.
EMOTIONS of HORROR & EXCITEMENT
Let’s think again about the emotions and affects that dodgeball produces.
Temperance anticipated dodgeball with horror whereas her classmates anticipated dodgeball with great excitement and yells of “hurrah”.
This language of horror and excitement indicate the emotional and psychic intensity felt by students in relation to dodgeball. It also points to a complicated form of fun. For quite a while in my teacher education classes I would urge and plead with my students not to evaluate their teaching by wondering if the students were having “fun” during a lesson. I’d stress over and over that “fun” is, of course, nice but it is not enough; fun may even be necessary for students to learn but it is never sufficient. There has to be more going on in a PE lesson than just fun! But more recently I’ve come across ways of thinking about fun that are more complex and, I think, bring us closer to articulating what we have probably known in one way or another for a long time. So, bear with me, as I map out a rather complicated way of thinking about “fun”.
SADISTIC FUN
We can start by thinking about fun as having an element of sadistic pleasure.
Finly de Monchy (1995) described childhood games is “domesticated sadism” where the rules and fair play intervene before the other is completely annihilated. What is easily recognized as horrific (we might think of children’s cruelty and capacity for bullying) is disguised and tempered within the framing as a game. However, the cruelty and sadism that gives pleasure in games is not far beneath the surface as “the correct sadist turns back before annihilating the partner in the game, and this moment of turning back is the moment of ‘jouissance’” (Finlay de Monchy, 1995:28).
JOUISSANCE
Such feelings of horror and excitement point toward the ‘jouissance’ offered by dodgeball.
This jouissance is a complicated form of pleasure which some students anticipated with excitement.
Jouissance is a French word which can mean, according to literary theorist Robert Clarke (2004):
Extreme or deep pleasure
Sexual orgasm
Having the right to use something.
However, Jacques Lacan has a more emotional, or psychic, description in which jouissance is a feeling of bliss, arrival or merging with another.
Here we might think of playing in the zone, or experiencing flow in movement.
But Lacan points out how this depth of fun is not merely pleasurable but happens at the very limits of pleasure, at the point of discomfort and pain. And here we might think of the blissful pain of running a marathon, of being tackling and being tackled so hard in rugby, of taking that pain while being in a place of pleasure.
Freud described this experience of going beyond pleasure as coming closer to death.
Lacan, however, describes this mixing of pleasure with pain as an attempt to abolish, avoid, deny, escape an underlying, inescapable, beyond any words or meanings human condition of lack. (Clarke, 2004). The lack is, in one sense, the rather awful prospect of feeling your body is, once again, just bits and pieces.
For students, such as Temperance, the threat of annihilation was quite literal and all too predictable. Temperance developed extremely sophisticated responses to the immanent threat posed by physical education, explaining how she became “hyper-aware” and “controlling” in order to protect herself from the predictable humiliation and damage caused by fat phobia.
Clarke, R. U of East Anglia. “Jouissance.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 1 Jan 2004. The library dictionary company. 7 November 2007.
http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=602
Let’s return then to thisfamiliar mise en scène– the game of dodgeball.
Despite being one of the first inductees into the Physical Education Hall of Shame in 1992 or, indeed, because of this, dodgeball is recreating its iconic status in popular culture.
There is a professional NDL National Dodgeball League (four teams with one being the aptly named Wisconsin Icons), recreational X-treme Dodgeball leagues, a dodgeball TV show and, ironically, now a Dodgeball Hall of Fame.
Twentieth Century Fox recently released ‘Dodgeball: A TRUE underdog Story’ and ‘Fatkid Dodgeball’ are the official band of the National Dodgeball League. These are fascinating irruptions in popular culture of precisely that which produced shame within, and therefore needed to be expunged from, physical education.At the symbolic level, these are fascinating displacments. But there is also something fascinating happening within the imaginary register.
In his seminar on The Imaginary Dissolution, Lacan talks about the pleasures of collision, destruction, engagement, tracking, targeting or dodging an other as “something fundamental to the human being” (p.96) which, if not mediated in some way, threatens to reduces all bodies to pulp. Here he is illustrating what might happen if subjects related to one another merely at the imaginary level. Without the intervention of the symbolic i.e. culture, language, codes and rules:
Think of these little automobiles that you see at fairs going round at full tilt out in an open space, where the principal amusement is to bump into the others. If these dodg’em cars give so much pleasure, it is because bumping into one another must be something fundamental in the human being. What would happen if a certain number of little machines like those I describe were put onto the track? Each one being unified and regulated by the sight of another, it is not mathematically impossible to imagine that we would end up with all the little machines accumulated in the center of the track, blocked in a conglomeration the size of which would only be limited by the external resistance on the panelwork. A collision, everything smashed to a pulp. (Lacan, 1981/1997: 96).
It is the ludic licence to hurl an object at an Other that gives dodgeball its nefarious thrill. Modern incarnations of Dodgeball within popular culture represent, in part and within the visual economy of bodies, aggressive attempts to achieve an idealized body. Identifying with the ‘underdog’ is a partial acknowledgment of this difficulty yet it coexist with simultaneously projecting other more abject aspects such as femininity, disability and fatness. Lacan used dodg’em cars to point out implications arising from the imaginary register of human subjectivity, inaugurated at the mirror stage. “The aggressive tensions,” he claims “of this either me or the other is entirely integrated into every kind of imaginary functioning in man” (p. 95) such that, without some sort of regulation, the imaginary relations between dodg’em car drivers, dodgeball players, students in physical education and subjects within the social could collide, merge, pile up into an undifferentiated mass of bodies or fall apart into the body “in bits and pieces”.
Something is needed to maintain “the gap in the imaginary relation” (p. 96) between the subject and an other. For Lacan, this is the symbolic order of language and narrative, specifically the Name of the Father whose laws control one’s desire and rules of communication. Dino Felluga (2003:2) put it simply: “once a child enters into language and accepts the rules and dictates of society, it is able to deal with others”. While the symbolic is not the focus of this paper, it is probably the most accessible and familiar of Lacan’s three registers. However, the imaginary realm continues to exert its influence throughout the life of the adult (Felluga, 2003) which is why I want to consider some intractable difficulties facing students which, at first glance, give the impression of merely being problems of looking at bodies and having one’s body looked at in physical education.
The teams lurch across the grass to grab the familiar balls waiting in the center and let them fly."It stings!" bawls a member in mock anguish."You're out!" shouts an opponent.Two players dash from their home court to the back line of the opposing team."Watch your back!" shouts Morgan Frank, who has admitted to pants-ing a fellow student on the dodgeball court once upon a time. (The opposing team, of course, took advantage of the entanglement, striking said student with a ball at full force.) Twenty-two-year-old Logan Gilbert, a powerful player with a lower-back tattoo and a spiked leather belt, catches an opponent's ball with a resounding thwack and holds on."You're out!" shouts Speer to the thrower.While there are countless variations of dodgeball, the SFBS concentrates on three basic games: Prison Rules, in which a circle of throwers surrounds a group of dodgers; Fortress or Four Square, in which every person hit joins the team that hit him; and Trench Ball or Roman, the most common game, in which the court has two sides and two back lines. In all, a caught ball eliminates the thrower; and one ball may be used as a deflection of another ball, as might the skull, since a hit on the head is considered a miss except in the case of a dive. According to the International Dodge Ball Federation rule book, the head-to-ball immunity does not apply if a player is diving to catch an opponent's ball."You've got to love a game that considers head shots fair play but still uses 'bouncies,' 'dropsies,' and 'returnies' as official jargon," observes 34-year-old Justin Drenttel, who has stopped by the field to find out when the next game will be held.We watch as Paul Madrinan does the splits in midair and catches a ball, only to be hit by another as he lands. A short time later, Kevin Lewis catches a ball in one hand while wielding another ball in the other hand, eliciting the nickname "Spartacus" from a fellow teammate. In one round, Madrinan finds himself the last man standing in a court before he is bombarded with three balls in rapid order. Early on, Shashi Kara, aka Sixo, is hit in the head, and, as his sunglasses go flying into the warm yellow afternoon, I notice Andrew Flurry's face, which shows a mixture of horror and surreptitious delight at having beaned someone. Players are swapped, laughter shared. The games come fast and furious between beer breaks, too fast for anyone to really care about skill levels. Feats of physical prowess and ineptitude blend in the summer sun. Laughter and alcohol run together, as do the rules."None of my cheers will work for this game," pouts Wesley Kingsbury, a one-time cheerleader who looks more comfortable these days behind a cigarette than a pom-pom. Her prayers are answered with the arrival of Roky Roulette, who decides to strip off another article of clothing every time he finishes playing a game.Whether in spite of childhood trauma, which included being strung up by his underpants to the cold-water faucet of a shower when he was 9, or because of it, Roulette is a dodgeball star, successfully catching and evading balls while holding his blond wig in place.Wearing nothing but tennis shoes and a pink G-string studded with rhinestones."R-O-K-Y!" shouts Kingsbury while Roulette's wife, Margot Montmartre, and daughter, Liberty, also cheer from the sidelines.Roulette's opponents express a suitable amount of dodgeball-fueled fury, pummeling him with balls, but there are no injuries, even of feelings, and by the end of the day, the SFBS cheerleading squad has gained a member, and so has the team."Man, that was fun!" says Flurry with an unfamiliar glint in his eye.
Ball of ShameThe violence, humiliation, exclusion, degradation, and sheer joy of dodgeball in the parkBy Silke TudorハPublished: June 30, 2004"It was called 'war ball' at my school," explains Andrew Flurry as we tool toward Golden Gate Park for the opening game of the San Francisco Bombardment Society. The flicker of long-buried, unwanted memory darkens his big blue eyes.・・James Sanders・The San Francisco Bombardment Society in action.・・James Sanders・Roky Roulette is a dodgeball star.・"We played on rainy days, when the whole school was stuck indoors. Seven classes all crammed together in one room. They brought out all the yellow balls -- it seemed like there were hundreds of them. Yellow balls are harder than red balls ...."Flurry trails off, taking a long, deep breath, as if to steel himself for what comes next."At first, the hooligans would completely ignore the little kids, until all the big guys in school were on the same side. Then they would choose one kid and they would all aim for him. ... It was absolutely terrifying."To see Flurry now -- tall, broad shoulders, square jaw, solid forearms, easy laugh -- it's difficult to imagine him as a scrawny little kid, cowering on the dodgeball court, but I remember his youth, engulfed by a voluminous leather jacket, topped by half a head of spiked baby down. He was skinny enough to get blown over by a sneeze. Is it any wonder then, in an urban landscape devoid of natural predators like hyenas and lions, that dodgeball left an impression on his still-developing cerebral cortex? No sir, not when a well-directed sphere of schoolyard misanthropy could have snapped his head off, or mine, for that matter. Which might be as good a reason as any to support the seemingly barbaric pastime of using a child's body as a moving target. Certainly, it's better to develop a preternatural fear of a fast-moving rubber ball than of, say, intimacy, failure, or solitude. But as we all know, dodgeball isn't limited to the glee of physical brutality. As "pro dodgeballer" Patches O'Houlihan explains in the latest misfit comedy, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, it is a sport of violence, humiliation, exclusion, and degradation."The statement is blatantly misleading. Dodgeball is so much more than that," says Sean Speer, founder and president of the SFBS. "Dodgeball is also about one-upmanship, domination, punishment, belittlement, coercion, schadenfreude, and the inherent beauty in a well-aimed crotch shot."Initially created just to make a fantastic T-shirt logo (which depicts the silhouette of a head getting hit hard enough by a dodgeball to cause globs of spit to fly from its slack mouth), the SFBS now meets in Bunny Meadow, just east of the Conservatory of Flowers, on most Sundays of the summer. And what started as a tightknit group of friends has grown to include any player with a like-minded approach to the sport."They're the most excellent group of human beings ever assembled," says Speer seriously. "They're the reason for the season."When the SFBS was formed two years ago, dodgeball was getting a bad rap. There was, in fact, a national movement to eliminate dodgeball from the physical education curriculum; it was spearheaded by Neil Williams, chairman of the health and physical education department at Eastern Connecticut State University and creator of the Physical Education Hall of Shame. "Dodgeball is one of those games that encourages aggression and the strong picking on the weak," said Williams during an interview with Education Week. Despite his position in the debate, which was waged in journals and newspapers from Maryland to California, even Williams publicly admitted a soft spot for the game."I have to say I enjoyed it," said Williams. "I was a skinny little runt of a guy, but I was incredibly sneaky and nasty in the game.""Oh, it's a love/hate relationship," admits 33-year-old Pilar DeGama, who wears a number seven on the back of her SFBS shirt corresponding to nothing much at all. "It's fun, but it's kind of like therapy, a chance to get over all that old dodgeball trauma, to reclaim the game. I still can't throw for shit, but I'm more coordinated and less attached to my ego. And I'm not picked last for every single team anymore."I watch as two team captains stand opposite a motley gaggle of dodgeball enthusiasts. One by one, names are called as grateful players happily bound over to their respective sides, until only an unfamiliar newcomer remains."Damn it!" says Flurry, good-naturedly kicking the sod. "Picked last again!"A few of the dodgeballers laugh in support, but there is painful recognition in their titters. It's only funny because it's true."Game on!" shouts 26-year-old Kevin Lewis, whose most embarrassing educational moment was throwing up in kindergarten.
Silverman argues that idealization and this aggressive pull towards normalization is necessary but there is possibility to create a different relation to the normalized, idealized image. (She approaches this shift as an ethical move via Lacan’s active gift of love.) She calls for an ethical relation to the fantasy of bodily fragmentation. Her hope is this might provide some relief to the aggressive affect emanating from the over-determined project of achieving one’s idealized body. In a similar vien, the way out of this aggressivity is, in Gallop’s reading of Lacan, the subtle difference between the teacher’s body/role model as a mirror and as a mirror image (Gallop, 1985). Gallop explains how psychoanalysis creates an opportunity to recognize the subject’s imagos and, perhaps, figure out ‘the deforming effect’ (p. 61) of these imagos on the subject’s understanding of her relationships. Within the psychic-pedagogical space of physical education, the purpose of the teacher/analyst is to provide the student/analysand a mirror (image?) that can has the possibility of revealing, or rather hinting at, the student’s imagoes. The space of possibility, of resignification, of reimagining is crucial to this pedagogy within physical education.
This is where the visual politics of differently queer spaces might, I hope, have something pedagogical to teach teacher, schooling and education. Kelly Oliver (2002) hopes that minority subjects might resist the “flattening” (p.62) or colonialization of psychic space through developing positive self-images and social support. Visual culture theorist Jose Esteban Munoz (1999) suggests that queers of color have survived, sometimes thrived, by generating visual cultures based on disidentifications, that is reappropriating and reworking colonial heteronormativity and colonial representation of white gayness. Increasingly the in-your-faceness of queer intersects with the in-your-wayness of crip (Mcruer, 2003) such that Gay Pride week and Special Education are recognized, most often by students, as isolating ventures that might address the liberal content but do little to re-structure of how schooling addresses fat, disabled, queer bodies.
So my project looks for a way, learning from queer body cultures, to re-imagine the teachers body to be, in the Kleinian sense, a good enough teacher for students like author and activist Eli Clare (1999):
…trembling with CP [cerebral palsy], with desire, with the last remnants of fear, trembling because this is how my body moves…I want to enter as a not-girl-not-boy transgendered butch…Enter with my pockets and heart half-full of stone. Enter knowing that the muscled grip of desire is a wild, half-grown horse, ready to bolt but too curious to stay away (pp.137-138).
During the interviews, we asked people to talk about their
memories of physical education;
confidence in physical abilities and feeling about their body;
the impact of physical education teacher;
and how physical education might learn from participant’s experiences of marginalization.
Fat subjectivity refers to the incorporation of fat subject position(s) into a person’s overall embodied subjectivity.
Embodied subjectivity is a poststructural conceptualization of the self that refers to the intersections between the body, the social and the psyche.
So, we start from the assumption that students’ fat subject positions are constructed within a heteronormative gender-sex system (Benhabib, 1992: Prosser, 1998) that is racialized (Ahmed, 2004; Shaw, 2003) and overvalues productive, thin bodies (Bordo, 1993; Herndon, 2002; McRuer, 2004).
Older feminist literature on fat experiences, regarded the “fat kid” experience as given;. Later literature regards fat as more fluid, and the identity category as contingent upon other discursive interpolations of identities. By way of illustration, this comment from Elizabeth reflects the shifting and, often, belated nature of forming an identity as fat:
Elizabeth: Often I went through phases where -- and this is in Judith Moore’s Fat Girl book where she said, “I didn’t realise I was fat until I was in situations where it was pointed out to me.” And so often when I was growing up, I really did like myself, I was pretty proud, I had a pretty good level of self-esteem.
Historically-specific understandings of fatness were articulated to different degrees by participants. We became ethnographic witnesses (Jacobs, 2004) to the Holocaust in our interview with Moe
Moe: I was born in Germany in a displaced persons camp, a sort of a holding camp. My parents came to Canada with me in '48. I was about 18 months old. My father worked hard. My mother stayed at home. I think the fact that she went hungry during the war…food became a very important thing. She just cooked and baked constantly. So maybe that was some of my problem. I think I developed into a pretty big eater.
This figure of the overfeeding M/other is historically contingent on memories of famine during the Holocaust across generations of the North American Jewish diaspora. Thus, histories of fat allow us to contextualize past and current understandings of fat in social structures like gender, diasporas and economies. Along with contextualization, histories also urge us to be specific about fatness and fat phobia; to always qualify any discussion of fat with a definitive nod to its historical fluidity.
Two women talked about changes in their own perspectives about fatness as a result of being influenced by, or involved in, fat activist politics. Indeed, the main reason we decided to interview adults, rather than current schools students, was to find out how people’s experiences with fatness and physical activity changed after leaving school.
Sarah explained how important it is has been to see positive representations of fat bodies involved in physical activity, such as her aerobics instructor:
For me it depended on who the instructor was. [Laughing]. She had amazing lung capacity and was really muscular, but also just had a giant layer of fat on top of her muscles. It was very flabby fat. You know, those kinds of hard fat and flab fat?
Q: Yeah.Sarah: She was very flab fat. And she’d wear a tank top and little shorts, so when she’d do aerobics, she’d just be shaking all over the place. And all…
Q: [laughing] That’s awesome.Sarah: I know, I fucking loved it! She’s loving just sweating and being active and beingfit.
Temperance proclaimed she would never “take gym” again after grade 10 due to her traumatic experiences as a fat student. As an adult, Temperance recounted how she gradually began to exercise and associated this activity with “my body feeling really healthy”.
For some individuals, it was possible to temporarily negotiate a “fat” identity within physical education, This involved confronting and resisting fat-phobic assumptions and practices through emotionally draining and intricate social, psychic and kinesthetic maneuvers. These moments of fat survival and resistance by students within physical education spaces testify to their ethical responses in the face of contemporary unethical cultural and pedagogical investments in fat phobia. Being a fat kid in physical education is close to what Kelly Oliver (1998) describes as being a subject without subjectivity. It is important, then, to name the agency of our participants to negotiate and survive pervasive fat phobia in physical education. It is also important, however, to temper such discussions of agency with a pointed political recognition of the subjugation of fat people, and the social structures like patriarchy, capitalism and racism which facilitate and create that subjugation.
The difficulties fat students experience in physical education are compounded for many people because fat subjectivities are, as Sara Ahmed (2004) explains, constantly negotiated in terms of multiple racialized, classed and sex/gender identities.
In her recollections of dodgeball, Sarah described how:
There was no effort on the part of the teacher instead of playing dodge ball - where obviously the couple of ‘sporty guys’ are going to pick off the ‘fat lazy girls’ -
Here, normative masculinity is linked with athleticism, whereas fatness is correlated with femininity and laziness. This enduring association between fatness and laziness is a gendered and racialized construction, underpinned by the need to contain and vilify threatening, polluting fluids of female reproductivity.
Johnathon recalled having fat on particular parts of his body, which he describes as being “not defined” rather than subscribing to the identity-category “fat”. He went on to articulate a gendered construction of fatness in which men can have fat without being fat whereas women cannot (Bordo, 1993). Johnathon: For men, men can have certain amounts of baggage in a kind of simplistic sense and not be viewed as being fat or whatever.
Within mainstream gay male culture, however, it is generally more difficult for gay men to have fat in the same way. Gay men, such as Jean-Paul, are confronted with a far more limited range of acceptable and desirable body sizes due to the “cult of male beauty” arising from the aestheticization of fit male bodies in consumer and gay cultures (Monaghan, 2005). Here Jean-Paul describes the “fascist body standards of Church Street”, which is in the centre of Toronto’s gay men’s community:
I think there is, increasingly, a defined body type that is very muscular and lean. It requires one to spend a great deal of time working at the gym, eating properly and taking steroids if necessary. In this pursuit in the perfect body, if you don't fit into this category, then you're not sexually desirable.