Please note: For week 8, I accidentally posted about Group B’s week 9 reading. So now, for the actual week 9 blog post, I’m going to be talking about Futbolera!
What I Knew
Much of the information presented in Chapter 2 was new to me (and quite interesting – I wouldn’t have guessed this prohibition of women’s football was as recent as it was), but some themes were familiar to me because of our previous class discussions about women in sports! For starters, I was already familiar with the opinion of many in the medical field in the early 20th century believing that women playing sports like football caused all sorts of medical ills and imbalances that would be detrimental to their femininity. Additionally, the concerns by many about sports causing female homosexuality and diminishing their femininity was something that stood out to me when we first read chapter one of Futbolera a few weeks back.
What Was New to Me
First, I had no idea the extent to which women’s football was opposed in Brazil (or anywhere in Latin America, for that matter). Learning that there was such a public ban on it that women had to go to great lengths (like making women’s football a part of the circus just to be able to play, since to many, women playing was an absurd enough idea that the only place it would fit was the circus) to play was pretty interesting and eye-opening. Many of the events discussed in this chapter happened less than a century ago. Understanding this piece of history helps me to contextualize what I already know in terms of barriers to and milestones for women in sports since this time in history.
Another thing I found especially interesting in this chapter was the use of sports as a means for “genetic improvement” – basically, sports to promote whiteness (for example, European dancing, showcasing white athletes in sports media). Unfortunately, coming into this reading with some knowledge of Latin American history and the knowledge of the other bad science applied to women’s sports to prevent them from playing, this is not all that surprising to me.
The way this chapter includes stories of resilience among women in the narrative presented was also really valuable to my understanding! It has a similar effect as Raanan Rein’s presentation of Argentine Jews as important, active figures in their history rather than just victims to the hostile conditions and oppression they faced. Even if there aren’t many documentations of the women’s games played under the radar during the prohibition of women’s soccer, it was valuable to my overall understanding to know that they still happened!
