Revolution on the American Gridiron: Gender, Contested Space, and Women’s Football in the 1970s
2015; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 18 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09523367.2015.1016916
ISSN1743-9035
Autores Tópico(s)Canadian Identity and History
ResumoABSTRACTScholarship on the 1970s ‘women’s movement’ in the USA has grown in recent years. However, this area has yet to fully incorporate women’s athletic experiences. This paper brings together these two areas of scholarship through analysis of women’s experiences playing professional football in 1970s America. Women athletes articulated little connection between football and the larger feminist campaign for corporeal autonomy and equality and some pronounced a distinctly antifeminist identity. My intent is not to force the feminist mantle on these women or to contest their self-descriptions. Rather, I seek to locate their experiences within the larger women’s movement using historian Anne Enke’s idea of ‘contested space’ (Finding the Movement, 2007). Drawing on interviews with 13 women on three different teams during the 1970s, I argue that while women football players did not explicitly align with the feminist movement, they were a part of the larger revolution in women’s social rank. Football players fought for the freedom to be physically active in public, and to gain all of the positive attributes that sport can offer. It is therefore imperative that we take seriously women’s sporting participation and locate it within the broader social context of the 1970s.Keywords: Genderfootballpoliticsfeminisminterviews AcknowledgementsThe author thanks Drs Jaime Schultz, Sarah K. Fields, and Lindsay Parks Pieper, along with the anonymous reviewers, for their helpful and generous feedback on this paper.Notes1. Author’s interview with Olivia Flores (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.2. Stephanie Gilmore (ed.), Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 1.3. For a general overview of gender politics during the 1970s, see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 159–89. Scholars of the second wave have articulated various feminisms that emerged during the 1970s. They have analyzed the differences between women who fought simply for inclusion into already established social structures and women who fought to radically transform gender hierarchies. As Sara Evans explains, feminisms in the 1970s included ‘the politico-feminist split, the gay-straight split, the radical-cultural feminist split, the chasm between liberals and radicals, the so-called sex wars, and a plethora of personalized battles within organizations over strategic and ideological choices’. See Sara M. Evans, ‘Foreword’, in Stephanie Gilmore (ed.), Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), ix. For histories on ‘second-wave feminism’, see the chapters in Feminist Coalitions. Also see, Sara M. Evans, Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End (New York: The Free Press, 2003); Stephanie Gilmore, Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America (New York: Routledge, 2013); Estelle B. Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002); Carol Giardina, Freedom for Women: Forging the Women’s Liberation Movement, 1953–1970 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010); For an example of radical feminism, see Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).4. Susan Ware, Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 10.5. For an example of how scholars have attempted to broaden the scope of the second wave to include more than just white middle-class women, see Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Furthermore, agrees historian of the second wave Sara M. Evans, ‘feminists in the 1970s formed numerous and highly diverse coalitions across lines of race, class, and political ideology’. See Evans, ‘Foreword’, vii. For histories of women’s sport in the second half of the twentieth century, see Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 252; Mary Jo Festle, Playing Nice: Politics and Apologies in Women’s Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Sport scholars have suggested the marginalization of women’s sport in the media, their substantial growth following the passage of Title IX, and women’s lack of opportunities in key functionary positions. Scholar of sport and culture Jaime Schultz has recently argued for more analysis of events that directly affected women’s sports in the twentieth century. See Jaime Schultz, Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women’s Sport (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).6. Schultz has argued that women, such as those in early twentieth-century ‘suffrage hikes’, used their bodies for political gain, coining the term ‘physical activism’. Schultz also employs this concept in a study of 1970s tennis star Billie Jean King. Few others have analyzed the explicit or implicit connection between women’s sport and social politics. See Jaime Schultz, ‘The Physical Activism of Billie Jean King’, in Stephen Wagg (ed.), Myths and Milestones in the History of Sport (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 203–23; Jaime Schultz, ‘The Physical is Political: Women’s Suffrage, Pilgrim Hikes and the Public Sphere’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 27, no. 7 (2010), 1133–53.7. Betty Liddick, ‘Women’s Pro Football: Off with the Pompons, on with the Pads’, Los Angeles Times, 15 April 1973, sec. H, 1.8. Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 4.9. Ibid.10. Ibid.11. Ibid., 107.12. This paper draws on interviews with 13 women on three different football teams: the Columbus Pacesetters, the Oklahoma City Dolls, and the Toledo Troopers. The players interviewed were Mitchi Collette, Pamela Schwartz, Carla Miller, Olivia Flores, Jacqueline Elaine-Allen Jackson, Gloria Jimenez, Joellyn (Joey) Opfer, Pam Hardy, Laurel Wolf, Julie Sherwood, Kim Waggoner, Nancy Erickson, and Jan Hines. Some of the players played just a few games, others played for nearly a decade. One player (Julie Sherwood) decided to become the team trainer after one practice with the Pacesetters, but was with the team for three years. Three interviews (Collette, Schwartz, and Wolf) were done in-person and recorded by the author. Five players (Miller, Flores, Jimenez, Opfer, and Hardy) were interviewed together as a group and recorded by the author. The other five players (Sherwood, Waggoner, Erickson, Hines, and Allen-Jackson) were interviewed via telephone and the discussions were recorded by the author.13. Joan Sangster, ‘Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History’, Women’s History Review 3, no. 1 (1994), 5.14. Susan K. Cahn, ‘Sports Talk: Oral History and Its Uses, Problems, and Possibilities for Sport History’, Journal of American History 81, no. 2 (September 1994), 600.15. Carly Adams, ‘Softball and the Female Community: Pauline Perron, Pro Ball Player, Outsider, 1926–1951’, Journal of Sport History 33, no. 3 (Fall 2006), 324.16. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 252.17. Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Ronald A. Smith, Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). American football emerged as a hybrid of association football and rugby football. Although forms of football had been played on university campuses since the middle of the nineteenth century, rule changes implemented by Walter Camp at Yale University in 1880 and 1882 marked the beginning of American football. Little scholarship on women’s football exists. Brief examples of women’s professional football appear in Michael Oriard, King Football: Sport & Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio & Newsreels, Movies & Magazines, the Weekly & the Daily Press (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 351–63. In 1985, sociologist John Bridges penned a piece detailing the experiences of a women’s team. See John Bridges, ‘Women’s Professional Football and the Changing Role of the Woman Athlete’, in Wiley Lee Umphlett (ed.), American Sport Culture: The Humanistic Dimensions (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1985), 143–58. In an unpublished paper presented in 1995, Jill Ginstling argued that there was a persistent belief about women’s ‘incompatibility’ in football and that males had anxieties about women in sport due to a crisis of masculinity in the 1970s. See Jill Ginstling, ‘Goal Line Stand: The National Women’s Football League and the American Resistance to Women on the Gridiron’ (presentation, Annual North American Society for Sport History Conference, Queen Mary and California State University, Long Beach, CA, 1995). Recent studies on women’s football in the twenty-first century include sociological accounts of individuals on the teams. For example, see Bobbi Knapp, ‘Becoming a Football Player: Identity Formation on a Women’s Tackle Football Team’, Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal 20, no. 2 (Fall 2011), 35–50. Also see, Bobbi Knapp, ‘Smash Mouth Football: An Interpretive Study of Identities Constructed and Performed on a Women’s Football Team’ (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2008). Other accounts of contemporary women’s football include Todd A. Migliaccio and Ellen C. Berg, ‘Women’s Participation in Tackle Football: An Exploration of Benefits and Constraints’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42, no. 3 (2007), 271–87; Josh Packard, ‘Running Off-Tackle through the Last Bastion: Women, Resistance, and Professional Football’, Sociological Spectrum 29, no. 3 (2009), 321–45. Finally, sport historian and legal scholar Sarah K. Fields shows how some women have used the courts to fight for access to football teams in high school and college. See Sarah K. Fields, Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 34–54.18. Oriard, Reading Football, 248.19. ‘The Climate of San Francisco’, San Francisco Chronicle, 31 December 1893, 21; ‘Football Game By Girls’, Sun (New York), 23 November 1896, 4. A brief mention of women playing ‘a football game’ appeared in the press as early as 1893 and New York’s Sun printed a story about a women’s ‘football contest’ played near Sulzer’s Harlem River Park in late 1896.20. See Oriard, King Football, 351–63, for a brief analysis of women’s football in the 1930s to 1950s. Quotation on 363.21. Stuart Kantor, ‘The History of Women’s Professional Football’, The Coffin Corner 22 (2000), https://www.profootballresearchers.org/Coffin_Corner/22-01-837.pdf (accessed 8 January 2014). Kantor provides a short outline of the evolution of women playing tackle football. He states that the original WPFL had eight clubs: Cleveland, Akron, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Dayton, Pittsburgh, and Toledo.22. Mona Gable, ‘Women in Football’, womenSports 3 (September 1981), 28.23. Author’s interview with Pamela Schwartz (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.24. General histories on women’s football from the 1960s through the 1980s can be found at Kantor, ‘The History of Women’s Professional Football’. Former player and current team owner and head coach of the Toledo franchise has written a short history of women’s football. See Mitchi Collette, ‘The History of Women’s Football’, http://www.theetoledoreign.com/womens_football_history.php (accessed 31 December 2013).25. See womenSports, cover, June 1975.26. They presented a plaque to the Toledo Troopers, but the Pro Football Hall of Fame has not honored women’s football teams from the 1970s in any other way.27. See ‘The Oklahoma City Dolls’, IMDb.com, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082840/ (accessed 15 January 2014).28. Author’s interview with Mitchi Collette (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.29. In 1978, athletes and organizers formed the Western States Women’s Professional Football League (WSWPFL) on the west coast to alleviate travel hardships. The WSWPFL later changed its name to the American Professional Football Association (APFA) and later re-merged with the NWFL. In 1988, some teams broke off from the NWFL and formed the Women’s Tackle Football Association (WTFA). See ‘A History of Women in Tackle Football’, Queens of the Gridiron, http://www.angelfire.com/sports/womenfootball/nwflhistory.html (accessed 27 January 2015); ‘Women’s Pro Football Timeline’, The Seattle Times Online, 21 January 2001, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date = 20010121&slug = time21 (accessed 27 January 2015); ‘The History of Women’s Football’, Central Florida Anarchy Women’s Football Team Home, http://www.cfanarchy.com/history.htm (accessed 27 January 2015).30. Some women’s teams (including NWFL clubs) gravitated toward ‘flag football’ – a similar style of the sport played that includes ‘tackling’ the opponent by pulling a flag located around their waste – to attract more athletes to the sport. See ‘The History of Women’s Football’. Throughout the end of the century and into the beginning of the twenty-first century, some US states, such as Florida, began flag-football programs at high schools. By 2002–2003, 75 high schools in Florida had flag football teams for girls and women. See Katie Thomas, ‘No Tackling, But a Girls’ Sport Takes Some Hits’, New York Times, 15 May 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/sports/16flag.html?pagewanted = all&_r = 0 (accessed 27 January 2015).31. Patricia Palinkas played for the Orlando Panthers of the Continental Football League on 15 August 1970. See Gary McKechnie and Nancy Howell, ‘Pat Parlinkas, the Only Woman to Play Professional Football’, Orlando Sentinel, 5 April 1999, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1992-04-05/news/9204031063_1_palinkas-pat-fans (accessed 27 January 2015). Kate Hnida played for the University of Colorado and the University of New Mexico from 1999–2004. Hnida became the first woman to play in an FBS (NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision) game. After her playing career had ended, she described in an interview that she had been a victim of sexual abuse while she was at the University of Colorado. She admitted that she had been raped by other members of the football team. See Katie Hnida, Still Kicking: My Journey As the First Woman to Play Division I College Football (New York, Scribner, 2006). Most recently, Jen Welter became the first woman athlete to play at a non-kicking position when she suited up at running back (she ran the ball three times) for the Texas Revolution of the Indoor Football League. See Nick Mandell, ‘Jen Welter Becomes First Woman to Play in Men’s Pro Football League in Contact Position’, USA Today, 16 November 2014, http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/02/jen-welter-becomes-first-woman-to-play-in-mens-pro-football-league-at-non-kicking-position (accessed 27 January 2015).32. In 1999, entrepreneurs Terry Sullivan and Carter Turner launched the second WPFL and organized the ‘No Limits Tour’, consisting of two teams (Minnesota Vixen and the Michigan Minx) in a six-game barnstorming tour. The story of the tour is preserved in a PBS documentary. See True-Hearted Vixens, VHS, produced by Mylène Moreno (Berkeley Media LLC, 2001). In the 2000s, various leagues emerged. As of 2014, two leagues (the Independent Women’s Football League and the Women’s Football Alliance) hold seasons in the USA. The Women’s Spring Football League (WSFL) also has teams and is scheduling play for 2015. Some teams from the WSFL have formed the Women’s Eights Football League. See ‘Official Website of the Independent Women’s Football League’, http://www.iwflsports.com/ (accessed 14 January 2014); ‘Women’s Football Alliance/Full Contact Football’, http://wfafootball.net/ (accessed 14 January 2014); ‘Women’s Spring Football League-WSFL Facebook Page’, https://www.facebook.com/wsflfrontoffice (accessed 27 January 2015); ‘Women’s Eights Football League’, https://womensfootballinsider.wordpress.com/schedules/w8fl-2014-schedule/ (accessed 27 January 2015).33. Nancy Theberge and Alan Cronk, ‘Work Routines in Newspaper Sports Departments and the Coverage of Women’s Sports’, Sociology of Sport Journal 3, no. 3 (September 1986), 195–203. Theberge and Cronk explain, ‘Because the media forms a powerful institution that does not simply reflect but indeed shapes perceptions and behaviors, their treatment of women is important to the larger struggle for women’s advancements’. Quotation on 196.34. Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (Autumn 1993), 51–8. The media perpetually framed the sport through its choice of what to emphasize about teams on the field and how to describe the players. See also Murry Edelman, ‘Contestable Categories and Public Opinion’, Political Communication 10, no. 3 (1993), 231–42.35. Roy J. Harris Jr., ‘What Kind of Team Has a 110-Pound End & a 265-Pound Tackle’, Wall Street Journal, 2 December 1971, 1, 32 (italics in original).36. Jack Murphy, ‘Test of Liberated Man, Football-Playing Wife’, San Diego Union, May 14, 1975, sec. C, 1.37. Theodore Bardacke, ‘B-Cup Jocks: 34-23-35, Hike’, San Diego Magazine 28 (September 1975): 76–79, 136, quotation on 78.38. ‘Women Tackle Football; Full Season Ahead’, Columbus Dispatch, July 8, 1979, sec. J, 1, 9.39. Jennifer Hargreaves, Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports (New York: Routledge, 1994), 145–73. Also see, Toni Bruce, ‘Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Women and Femininities’, Communication & Sport 1, nos 1–2 (2013), 125–37; Michael A. Messner, Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 31–46.40. Scholar Jan Felshin originally coined the term ‘female apologetic’. See Jan Felshin, ‘The Triple Option … For Women in Sport’, Quest 21 (January 1974), 36–40. Also see, Festle, Playing Nice. For analysis of media coverage of women’s sport, see Mary Jo Kane and Susan L. Greendorfer, ‘The Media’s Role in Accommodating and Resisting Stereotyped Images of Women in Sport’, in Pamela J. Creedon (ed.), Women, Media and Sport (London: Sage, 1994); Susan Birrell and Nancy Theberge, ‘Ideological Control of Women in Sport’, in D. Margaret Costa and Sharon R. Guthrie (eds), Women and Sport: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1994), 341–59; Michael A. Messner, Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 91–134; Janet S. Fink and Lina Jean Kensicki, ‘An Imperceptible Difference: Visual and Textual Constructions of Femininity in Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated for Women’, Mass Communication and Society 5, no. 3 (2002), 317–39. Others have talked about women who push back against these dominant images of women’s sport. See Vikki Krane, ‘We Can Be Athletic and Feminine, But Do We Want To? Challenging Hegemonic Femininity in Women’s Sport’, Quest 53, no. 1 (2001), 115–33. Furthermore, sport scholar Pat Griffin has pointed out that when underscoring ‘femininity’, the media accentuates women’s heterosexuality. See Pat Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1998), 68.41. Judy Klemesrud, ‘Young Women Who Prefer Gridiron to the Steam Iron’, New York Times, 5 May 1972, 36. For another example, see ‘Troopers’ Middle Guard Maintains Her Femininity’, West Toledo Herald, 26 September 1979.42. John Bergener, ‘Troopers Establish Grid Identity’, Blade (Toledo), 5 November 1977, 20. Also see, ‘Linda Jefferson: OJ Simpson’s Counterpart?’ Philadelphia Tribune, 3 July 1976, 17, where the author referred to Jefferson as an ‘attractive 5 foot-four halfback’.43. ‘Weaker Sex? – My Foot!: Women Take to Gridiron in Their Own Version of the National Football League’, Ebony, November 1973, 182, 184, 186, 188, 190, quotation on 190.44. Betty Liddick, ‘Women’s Pro Football: Off with the Pompons, on with the Pads’, Los Angeles Times, 15 April 1973, sec. H, 1. The IOC introduced a chromosomal check in the 1968 Olympics in an attempt to prohibit male masqueraders. See Lindsay Parks Pieper, ‘Sex Testing and the Maintenance of Western Femininity in International Sport’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 13 (2014), 1557–76.45. John Husar, ‘They Block, Tackle, Cry – And Usually Win’, Chicago Tribune, 4 February 1978, sec. F, 1–2.46. ‘Weaker Sex? – My Foot!’, 182, 184, 186, 188, 190, quotation on 190. A similar story appeared in an Ohio State University newspaper. According to the author, the Columbus Pacesetters’s Connie Perry enjoyed ‘getting in a good hit on the football field’. But, she continued, ‘I like to cook and play with the kids too. I like wearing a dress’. See Matt Moffett, ‘Women, Football A Healthy Mix’, Ohio State Lantern, 13 November 1981, 4.47. Dennis Rudner and Mike Samet, ‘Columbus Has a Winner!’ Ohio State Lantern, 17 October 1978, 448. Jennifer Williamson, ‘120 Answer Lobos’ Call’, San Diego Tribune, 19 May 1975, sec. C, 4.49. ‘German Import Studies Grid Rules’, West Toledo Herald, 10 October 1979. For another example, see Ron Rapoport, ‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am’, womenSports, November 1974, 38–43, 52, 67–69. Rapoport reported that a player for the Los Angeles Dandelions told womenSports that ‘I don’t think my boyfriend wants me to play. I just don’t think he thinks it’s very feminine’.50. Jack Murphy, ‘Test of Liberated Man, Football-Playing Wife’, San Diego Union, 14 May 1975, sec. C, 1.51. For historical scholarship on the relationship between masculinity and American football, see Oriard, Reading Football; Oriard, King Football; Michael Oriard, Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Sociologists have further suggested that football remains the most exalted form of masculinity and the sport’s relationship with manhood manifests into mainstream culture through television, among other mediums. See Donald F. Sabo and Joe Panepinto, ‘Football Ritual and the Social Reproduction of Masculinity’, in Michael A. Messner and Donald F. Sabo (eds), Sport, Men, and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1990), 115–26; Nick Trujillo, ‘Machines, Missiles, and Men: Images of the Male Body on ABC’s Monday Night Football’, Sociology of Sport Journal 12, no. 4 (December 1995), 403–23.52. Oriard, King Football, 13.53. Clementine Bloomingdale, ‘First Down for Women’s Football’, Playgirl, 1975, 14. Found in Women in Football File, Pro Football Hall of Fame Archives and Information Center, Canton, Ohio.54. Betty Liddick, ‘Women’s Pro Football: Off with the Pompons, on with the Pads’, Los Angeles Times, 15 April 1973, sec. H, 1.55. Sport historian Jean Williams has made similar arguments about women football (soccer) players in England who do not strictly align with feminist ideologies. See Jean Williams, ‘Football and Feminism’, in Rob Steem, Jed Novick, and Huw Richards (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Football (London: Cambridge University Press), 183. Also see, Jean Williams, A Game For Rough Girls? Women’s Football in Britain (London: Routledge, 2003), 102–6.56. Author’s interview with Carla Miller (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.57. Author’s interview with Mitchi Collette (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.58. Author’s interview with Laurel Wolf (Toledo Troopers), 29 December 2013, Stow, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.59. Author’s interview with Olivia Flores (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.60. Author’s interview with Joellyn (Joey) Opfer (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author. Kim Waggoner of the Oklahoma City Dolls expressed similar opinions, stating that she was ‘aware of’ the larger campaigns, but she ‘wasn’t really involved in it’. See author’s telephonic interview with Kim Waggoner (Oklahoma City Dolls), 31 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.61. Author’s telephonic interview with Jacqueline Elaine Allen-Jackson (Toledo Troopers) 25 October 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.62. Author’s telephonic interview with Julie Sherwood (Columbus Pacesetters) 30 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.63. Author’s interview with Pamela Schwartz (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author. Fellow Trooper Mitchi Collette adamantly proclaims that ‘I think feminists hate men’. See Author’s interview with Mitchi Collette (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.64. Author’s telephonic interview with Julie Sherwood (Columbus Pacesetters) 30 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.65. Ibid.66. Author’s telephonic interview with Nancy Erickson (Toledo Troopers), 11 January 2014, notes and recording in possession of author. Erickson refers to the ideals behind the feminist movement as ‘equal opportunities’, ‘equal pay’, and the ‘availability of opportunity’.67. Author’s telephonic interview with Kim Waggoner (Oklahoma City Dolls), 31 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author; author’s interview with Olivia Flores (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.68. Author’s interview with Mitchi Collette (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.69. Enke, Finding the Movement, 4.70. Author’s interview with Laurel Wolf (Toledo Troopers), 29 December 2013, Stow, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.71. Interviews with Pamela Schwartz, Mitchi Collette, Gloria Jimenez, Julie Sherwood, and Jan Hines reveal similar ideas.72. Author’s interview with Pamela Schwartz (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.73. Author’s telephonic interview with Jan Hines (Oklahoma City Dolls), 11 January 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.74. Author’s interview with Olivia Flores (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author. For a historical account of the historical origins of female frailty, see Patricia A. Vertinsky, The Eternally Wounded Woman: Women, Doctors, and Exercise in the Late Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). For analysis of what scholars have referred to as the ‘frailty myth’ in American culture, see Colette Dowling, The Frailty Myth: Redefining the Physical Potential of Women and Girls (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2001). Also see, Nancy Theberge, ‘Women’s Athletics and the Myth of Female Frailty’, in Jo Freeman (ed.), Women: A Feminist Perspective (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishers, 1989).75. Author’s telephonic interview with Julie Sherwood (Columbus Pacesetters) 30 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.76. Ibid.77. Author’s interview with Gloria Jimenez (Toledo Troopers) 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.78. Author’s telephonic interview with Jacqueline Elaine Allen-Jackson (Toledo Troopers) 25 October 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.79. Author’s interview with Pamela Schwartz (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.80. Enke, Find the Movement, 2.81. Author’s interview with Mitchi Collette (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author. She played her last game in 2003 (at age 53) and is currently (as of 2014) the owner and head coach of the contemporary Toledo Reign of the Women’s Football Alliance.82. Author’s telephonic interview with Julie Sherwood (Columbus Pacesetters) 30 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.83. Trooper Pam Hardy expressed a similar theme when discussing community. ‘We had a lot of people that came from broken homes’, she explains, ‘we were their support system’. See author’s interview with Pam Hardy (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.84. Author’s interview with Laurel Wolf (Toledo Troopers), 29 December 2013, Stow, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.85. Author’s interview with Pamela Schwartz (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.86. Author’s telephonic interview with Julie Sherwood (Columbus Pacesetters) 30 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.87. Ibid.88. Author’s telephonic interview with Jacqueline Elaine Allen-Jackson (Toledo Troopers) 25 October 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.89. Author’s telephonic interview with Jacqueline Elaine Allen-Jackson (Toledo Troopers) 25 October 2014, notes and recording in possession of author; author’s telephonic interview with Nancy Erickson (Toledo Troopers), 11 January 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.90. As historian Benita Roth says, ‘racism within the (white) feminist movement was an inescapable issue’. See Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism, xi. Scholars, such as Roth, have begun to analyze the nuances of the second wave by paying more attention to intersectional identities. For analysis of this historiography see Evans, ‘Foreword’, vii–x.91. Author’s interview with Olivia Flores (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.92. Author’s interview with Pamela Schwartz (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author; author’s interview with Olivia Flores (Toledo Troopers), 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author; author’s interview with Gloria Jimenez (Toledo Troopers) 27 December 2013, Toledo, Ohio, notes and recording in possession of author.93. Susan K. Cahn, ‘From the “Muscle Moll” to the “Butch” Ballplayer: Mannishness, Lesbianism, and Homophobia in U.S. Women’s Sport’, Feminist Studies 19, no. 2 (Summer 1993), 343–68. Cahn’s larger work, Coming on Strong, also focuses largely on lesbian athletes. Specifically, see chapters 7 and 8.94. Other scholars in both history and sociology have looked at the experiences of lesbians in sport in North America. See Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets; Helen Lenskyj, Out of Bounds: Women, Sport and Sexuality (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1986); Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Out on the Field: Gender, Sport and Sexualities (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 2003); Helen Lenskyj, ‘No Fear? Lesbians in Sport and Physical Education’, Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal 6, no. 2 (1997), 7–22; Helen Lenskyj, ‘Out on the Field: Lesbians in Sport Fiction’, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature 12, no. 2 (1995), 99–112; Vikki Krane, ‘Lesbians in Sport: Towards Acknowledgement, Understanding and Theory’, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 18, no. 3 (1996), 237–46; Vikki Krane and Heather Barber, ‘Lesbian Experiences in Sport: A Social Identity Perspective’, Quest 55, no. 4 (2003), 328–46; Birgit Palzkill, ‘Between Gymshoes and High-Heels: The Development of a Lesbian Identity and Existence in Top Class Sport’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 25 (1990), 221–33; Hargreaves, Sporting Females, see specifically 260–4; Megan Taylor Shockley, ‘Southern Women in the Scrums: The Emergence and Decline of Women’s Rugby in the American Southeast, 1974–1980s’, Journal of Sport History 33, no. 2 (Summer 2006), 127–55.95. Author’s telephonic interview with Julie Sherwood (Columbus Pacesetters) 30 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.96. Author’s telephonic interview with Kim Waggoner (Oklahoma City Dolls), 31 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author. Jan Hines, quarterback for the Oklahoma City Dolls, reported a similar number. Author’s telephonic interview with Jan Hines (Oklahoma City Dolls) 11 January 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.97. Author’s telephonic interview with Kim Waggoner (Oklahoma City Dolls), 31 December 2013, notes and recording in possession of author.98. Ibid.99. Author’s telephonic interview with Nancy Erickson (Toledo Troopers), 11 January 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.100. Author’s telephonic interview with Jan Hines (Oklahoma City Dolls) 11 January 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.101. Allen-Jackson reports a similar experience. See Author’s telephonic interview with Jacqueline Elaine Allen-Jackson (Toledo Troopers) 25 October 2014, notes and recording in possession of author.102. Enke, Finding the Movement, 22.
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