Abstract
Tamar Rapoport and Daniel Regev employ the concept of “passing” to examine women’s fandom, drawing on the classical sociological and feminist rendering of this notion (Butler 1990; Goffman 1968) that refers to crossing the boundary of social categories (race, class and gender). The analysis reveals several fandom practices which women employ, including, on the one hand, a genuine attempt to pass and perform bodily practices according to the hegemonic masculine model, and on the other hand, a conscious choice to be present in the fandom field yet not to pass. The discussion of the practices suggests that because of their marginal and noninstitutionalized position in the stadium, women do fandom in their own way: As their fandom is not constrained by habitus, their scope in doing fandom within this model is relatively wide-ranging. They perform diverse fandom practices that depart, to a lesser or greater extent, from the standards of authenticity dictated by the masculine model of doing fandom. Women’s deviation from men’s hegemony (Connell and Messerschmidt) in doing fandom challenges conventions in the fandom field and in research regarding gender and fandom, which tend to dwell on women’s marginality and objectification without attending to their different voices. The chapter’s conclusion is that as long as men symbolically and in practice “own” the fandom field, the disassociation of fandom from gender remains a utopian ideal realizable only if society’s gender regime were to transform.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Doing Fandom |
Subtitle of host publication | Lessons from Football in Gender, Emotions, Space |
Publisher | Springer International Publishing |
Pages | 135-159 |
Number of pages | 25 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783030468705 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783030468699 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.