Konstruksjon av kjønn og seksualitet i en dramaturgisk idrettskontekst

Abstract

This article focuses on how the dominating gender and sexualized order is reproduced, and on how new constellations between femininities and masculinities are constructed in the elite sports media. The point of departure is a drama in the Norwegian national papers, VG and Dagbladet, in April 1997, about whether Anja Andersen, a Dane, should play for the Norwegian handballclub, Bækkelagets Sportsklubb, or the Spanish club, Valencia Urbana. Other central agents were the captain of the team, Susann Goksør, and the coach, Frode Kyvåg. The article relates the idea of the dominating gender and sexualized order and the notion of ambivalence to Pierre Bourdieu, Jorunn Solheim, Jennifer Hargreaves and perspectives from Judith Butler. The dominating gender and sexualized order may be interpreted as an enormous symbolic machine of masculine dominance, an order taken for granted as the «natural world» and not reflected upon - and therefore not questioned. According to Wencke Mühleisen, the signs of gender and sexuality of today are much more fluid, unstable and ambivalent than earlier, with the barriers between femininities and masculinities woven in new constellations. The article also deals with the non-conventional and what may be understood as queer in relation to the gendered stereotypes and the «heterosexual matrix».