Terms blog

I thought that the most interesting terminology was involved with the coaching titles. That is, Teddy Bear, Crossing Guard, Drill Sergeant, CEO. The teddy bear is the coach for young individuals and they are very soft and caring. This is typically attributed to the "soft" coaches who are soft spoken and easy going. They understand the game of young children. They coach young children and they hardly ever get mad or yell at the kids. This is not common for women to have these coaching jobs although it is seen as less competitive and a less powerful position. The next coaching spot up is the Crossing Guard. This coach brings coaching to the next level. They get increasingly more competitive and louder. They yell more and use their power more often. They require respect from their team. They are much more demanding then the teddy bear coach. Then is the Drill Sergeant. This type of coach is much louder and is completely a one sided method. They do not listen to anyone else, but simply give orders and rules. They are extremely competitive and not sympathetic at all. They are much more harsh then the other two levels and are by far the loudest of the coaches. Then is the CEO. The CEO is almost always male, and is naturally respected. The kids never question them, and listen to them. The CEO does not have to be loud, they are simply respected. These different levels of coaching seem completely accurate to me which is fascinating. I have played three sports my entire life and these definitions were spot on. I began with the Teddy Bear, and then moved through the stages until the CEO. I never saw this as gender stereotype until I realized the only woman coach that I had that was female was the Teddy Bear. Then each coach who yelled was a male and I had an assistant coach that was female who acted as the Teddy Bear simply listening and helping us with our problems. Now that Messner pointed out the gender divisions of labor, I have realized how apparent it truly is in our society.

Term Definitions

Culture of Silence: The reluctance to speak up about a matter which is known to exist, but is not discussed or acknowledged due to communal, unspoken consensus. An example of this would be Our Guys, a book by Bernard Lefkowitz in which he describes a 1989 gang rape of a "slightly retarded" 17 year old girl by a group of high status athletes. There were 13 boys in total, 6 of them leave before the rape begins. These 6 boys KNOW what's about to happen, and know that it is wrong, but because they are all members of the same team, they don't say anything to an authority figure. Of the 7 who stay, only 2 actually commit assault, the other 5 serve as the audience members who facilitate the rape by cheering on the 2.

Dynamics of the Athletic Male Peer Group: Audience: These are the "wannabe boys and men who actively applaud and support the words and practices of the Leaders - High Status boys and men at the center of their group who perpetrate misogynist, homophobic, assault at the Target - vulnerable, feminized object of ridicule, degradation, sexual assault, and conquest. Also, the Marginals are the lower status group members who support leaders with their silent complicity. An example of this can be the rape described by Lefkowitz in his book Our Guys, where the 17 year old girl serves as the Target, 6 boys who first leave are the Marginals, the 2 who actually rape the target are the Leaders, and the 5 who cheer them on are the Audience. Although this is the rape of a female, a male often serves as the target. For instance in fraternities, sports teams, the military etc, where there are all males, and all have to have initiation rituals (hazing).

Defined terms

Agency: In Messner’s book “It’s all for the Kids” he seeks to prove that people are active participants in creating gender. He states that, “in the language of social theory, people exercise agency in the creation of everyday social life. Agency can be either reproductive: “When our actions are consistent with traditions and conventions of existing gender differences and hierarchies” or resistant: “when our actions contradict t or challenge existing gender differences or hierarchies.” Reproductive agency does just that—it reproduces and helps to perpetuate the existing norms in society, whereas resistant agency helps to change or challenge existing gender norms and relations. Messner asserts that reproductive and resistant agencies are often simultaneously evident in sports. For example (from the book): “when a heavily muscled woman bodybuilder gets breast implants in order to appear strong and conventionally hetero-sexy.” The body builder is a resistant agent in that she is heavily muscled, which is resistant to the feminine body norm and a reproductive agent in that she got breast implants to appear more feminine, reproducing the relation between feminine and large breasts.

Drill Sergeant Coach: male coaches who are involved in junior level youth sports around typically around the ages of 11-12 years old. This type of coach is more evident in this age group because this is the time when the sport tends to get more serious: the coaches and parents expect to win. This coach is very hyperkinetic and bossy, he makes no effort to restrain his thoughts and often displays his directions to his players on his team through hand signals from the side line in the coaches box. This coach doesn’t hold back when his team is doing bad, and has no problem expressing disappointment in his players, he is loud and commanding and will do whatever it takes to win, including making a strong attempt to control the game with the goal of winning. Often times “less intense” coaches have opted out by this age bracket, leaving the more “serious” coaches who often have a commanding leadership style. In the book, Messner uses Coach Gordon’s level of intensity in the playoffs as an example of a Drill Sergeant Coach. Coach Gordon rides one of the most talented players on the team the hardest in an effort to get the player to reach his full potential, which would be beneficial to the team and help the team to win. As Coach Gordon grows agitated with the players, it manifests into visible physical agitation and also into louder and more commanding vocal instructions to his players. When the coach’sa starting catcher isn’t doing well, he pulls him out of the game, publically scolds him and sits him down in the dugout. The Drill Sergeant coach will do whatever it takes to win.

Presentation- terminology

1)Concerted cultivation: Annette Lareau describes it as a form of upbringing of children that exists in middle to professional classes. Parents feel a sense of obligation to provide myriad of opportunities of extracurricular activities, tutors, lessons, and etc. to their children, and they also feel obliged to contribute volunteer time for their children’s youth sports as team parents, coaches, league officials, or referees. The parents strive to reward their children with self motivation through internalization of rules, sense of entitlement, class privilege, and knowledge that will facilitate the children’s ability to steer around their path in social institutions. i.e. all families mentioned in Messner’s book embody this term

2)Hegemonic masculinity: Within the context of soft essentialism, it is the predominant form of masculinity that is favored and honored by the society. Messner directly correlates the term to CEO coach in his book, by describing them as the emergent form of masculinity in sports who exercise controlled, competent, and effective style of coaching in South Pasadena, CA. The professional class based hegemonic masculinity of CEO coach is produced and affirmed only among a small group of men within the social context of youth sports, families, and professional-class workplaces.

term defination

The pain principle: Stifles our awarrness of our bodies and limit our emotional express; it also encourages us to false the feeling that boil up inside us; feelings of insecurity and stress from striving for success. Example: Brett Favre, he had a car crashed and supposed not allowed to play the sports for a year, and he played all season and also got MVP.

Vertical segragation vs horoizontal segregation: this idea is developed by sociologist Charles and Grusky in 2004, vertical segregation represents the cultural values, for example male dominated; and vertical segregation may change over time. Horizontal segregation represents the gender essentialism, the biological differences separate men and women in occupations; for example, men are physical labor, women and emotional labor. Horizontal segregation may not change over time.

Term Definitions

Gendered Language: the use of a certain words or phrases that fosters divisions in the roles of men and women. By attaching the modifiers male/female before a job occupation, this creates distinctions on what is a "normal" career path for each gender. An example can be taken from the riddle in It's All for the Kids: where a man hits a boy with his car, only to realize that the boy is his son; but when he takes the boy to the hospital, the doctor claims "Oh God! I can't do surgery on this boy! He's my son!" This example shows that the general assumption that doctors are men, where in the riddle, the doctor is actually the boy's mother.
Teddy Bear Coach: men who coach at the youngest level of youth sports. They tend to be men with the highest level of kids-knowledge relative to the other coaching types, who have higher technical-knowledge. Coaches at this level tend to squat down and mute the level of their voices in order to seem less threatening to the children. These coaches take on the role of nurturer in order to foster a positive environment for the children. However, some men choose not to coach the younger levels for these very reasons. An example of this would be Messner's use of Doug Berger, a coach who refrained from coaching younger levels because he was uncomfortable with the feminine context in which these coaches had to interact with children.

Presentation

Publicly visible family type is one composed of a male professional-class primary breadwinner and a college-education female who has opted out of a fulltime career to become a homemaker and who often is an active volunteer in community activities. Example, Barbara Jones who opt out her career and volunteered to be a team mom; her husband has a high-powered, high-paying career of his own.
Gendered organization of time it is when people talk how they negotiate the tensions between work, family, and community volunteering work. Example is how Carol Morris spoke of how men’s careers constrain their time, and of how family work constrains women’s time ( volunteering).

presentation

Soft essentialism: Soft essentialism is from the book Kids (chapter 5). This term defines as how adults’ beliefs about gender differences, along with the ways that they treat boys and girls in youth sports, creates a professional class based gender ideology. Unlike the “hard” categorical essentialism created by sport in the pre-Title IX era, soft essentialism sees sports as a viable choice for girls, whose participation teaches them competitive values and physical skills that counter the limitations of their supposed feminine nature. Boys are simply assumed to be competitive and aggressive, their natures consistent with the values of sport.

Second-Shift: Second-Shift is from the book Kids (Chapter 2). This term was made popular by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, whose study of two-career, heterosexual families showed that women were still doing the vast majority of the housework in these families.

Presentation

CEO coach: a kind of coaches who are in junior level youth sports. They are always quiet, restrained, and contemplative with strong controlling of what happens on the field. They are like CEOs of companies in which they expect kids have internalized rules and embodied basic skills. The CEO coach emerges over the years as the hegemoic form of musculinity in the South Pasadena youth sports context. Example: In professor Messner's book, he found that the CEO coach is the dominant coaching style in South Pasadena youth sports; after one loss which was observed by Messner, the coach of the team did not bark or shout at the sloppy plays of the kids,but he just concluded the reason, and the coach was considered as a "CEO".

Opting out: the word comes from the book Opting out: why women really quit career and head home? by Pamela Stone. Opting out means that women choose to quit work and be housewife completely, the trend which is called "the third shift" by prof. Messner. One example is that in the book Opting out, the author found out that most women did not "opt out", which was contrast to the public view. Women who did that spoke of inflexibility of work and of husbands, and some husbands had high incomes that can afford their families.

Hope it is useful!