I am an athlete. I’ve been an athlete ever since I could crawl. As soon as I was able to run, I started playing on organized sports teams. While these teams solidified my self-given title, they also gave new meaning to the word “athlete,” a term I naively thought was my own.
When I was ten years old, I started seriously playing competitive volleyball, and other sports slowly faded with time. I grew into my body through volleyball. Playing gave me strength and confidence; a purpose, an outlet. I loved it. I still love it. But I was also aware from the start that volleyball was more than just a game, it was a spectacle. Beyond my technical ability and performance, it was ingrained within me that my success as a player was linked to physical and social conformity. For years I obsessed over my appearance and actions, desperately trying to fit into the mold of my teams and the mold of the “successful female athlete.”
When I was twelve years old, I showed up wearing longer spandex than the rest of my team to the first practice. My exposed legs had small stubbles of hair. When I lifted my arms to hit or set, little tufts of hair showed from under my arms. After a whole practice of laughter and snickers, one girl finally pointed out the hair on my body and told me that I needed shorter spandex. I immediately went home and bought new spandex online and used my mother’s razor in the shower. I promised myself that would never happen again.
At tournaments my teammates and I watched other teams play, and we would point out any player that didn’t conform to the rest of their team’s appearance. These players would have short hair, a larger body type, tattoos, dyed hair, anything non-conforming. I would laugh and whisper with my teammates because that’s what I thought I should do. We assumed these players were not as good as the rest of their team before they even touched the ball. We were shocked if they made a good play. I told myself over and over again that I never wanted to be like them even as I secretly admired them.
Off the court, my teammates and I primarily bonded, without fail, over boys. We talked about crushes and celebrities, dates and sexual experiences. When I was younger, I would sit and listen and laugh and when it was my turn to talk, I would say some generic “boy” name that I was into or use a story from one of my friends at school as my own.
By the time I was a senior in high school, I didn’t have to make up any names or fear standing out from my team. I fit the mold almost perfectly. I looked the part, I had a boyfriend, I was committed to playing volleyball at Vassar. It was supposed to feel right. But it never felt right. I never felt myself. Aware of my discomfort, I began to disdain the word “athlete.” But I didn’t quite understand why—until my first season on the Vassar Women’s Volleyball team came to an end.
Out of season, I was able to reflect upon my experience and better understand myself. I thought a lot about my body and my various environments. I gained the language to articulate my discomfort. I began to accept my queer body and self.
I no longer disdain or hide from the word “athlete.” But I reject and dispel a singular, collective definition. I am an athlete, yes. But I am my own athlete. I refuse to conform anymore.
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Queering Athletics is about disrupting athlete culture at Vassar. It’s about reclaiming and expanding traditional definitions of, and associations with, athleticism. Cis-normativity and heteronormativity run deeply through the structure of organized athletics: sports teams are most often defined and physically separated by gender; ideas about what men and women should embody can conveniently be placed on gender-separated teams, and individuals are pressured to conform to such binary gender expectations. While social environments on different teams vary, the overarching reputation and nature of athlete culture is exclusionary to queer, trans, and genderqueer people.
To students outside athlete culture, it may often seem that all athletes at Vassar are white, cis, straight, wealthy, and painfully unaware. Teams are entitled. They walk around campus in packs. Men’s teams reek of toxic masculinity. Women’s teams, while admittedly less “problematic,” often enforce conformity. Especially in relation to the rest of campus, the athlete community sticks out as being homogenous and non-inclusive.
But there are many different athletes at Vassar. Some are on varsity teams, club teams, intramural teams, and some are not even on teams at all. Our perceptions and our accepted definition of “athlete” need to change, and athlete culture needs to change.
My experience as a queer athlete is my own, and it is far from the only one. This semester, we’ll hear many people share their experiences as queer/trans/genderqueer-identifying athletes at Vassar, through interviews, poetry, essays, art, and more. While the main focus of this series is queerness within athletics, this is not to exclude other identities, such as race, ability, and class. It is my hope that this series provides insight into a widely unvoiced reality for many on this campus, and that it is a step towards a more inclusive athletic community.
If you would like to be a part of this series, or have any inquiries or questions, please reach out to me at [email protected].
BP
