If you know me than you know that basketball is a huge part of my life and my identity. Basketball has taught me countless life lessons and introduced me to lifelong friends and people I would not have met without this beautiful game. For this reason, the picture I chose to use is a picture of me playing basketball at Grande Prairie Regional College. There is a deeper meaning behind this picture for me than most people would see at the surface level. Basketball and sports in general tend to reinforce toxic masculinity in men along with other problematic traits that are encouraged in sports but can be problematic in everyday life.
As a young boy and eventually young man growing up playing basketball, I learned that if I wanted to succeed in sports, I had to have an attitude where I disliked the people I was competing against. I was also exposed to this concept of trying to prove how “manly” or strong or tough you were in order to prove your worth on your team or in the sporting community. Thankfully for me I have always been able to disconnect who I am on the basketball court from who I am off of it. This has allowed me to understand problematic things in my behavior. Among the things that you are taught or at least was taught to me growing up in sports is that a man is not supposed to cry and show emotions other than anger. The only time in men’s athletics that it is acceptable to cry is when your team loses in the championship or wins the championship. Athletics also reinforces the idea that a mans worth or social standing is bolstered by their athletic ability, muscle tone or physique.
Throughout my basketball career I have been fortunate enough to coach kids and even a year of coaching college. I loved my experience coaching kids. I had two teams, one made up of seventh grade boys and one made up of seventh and eighth grade girls. The way that I coached the two teams was completely different. Not because any of the things I was taught through basketball growing up but because of what life has taught me over the years and the disconnect between men’s and women’s basketball. The wage gap between the NBA and the WNBA is something that is talked about on a large scale because it is professional basketball. But the problem that I have seen in basketball is much more base level and an idea that is engrained in our society and I cannot stand it. I am talking about the double standard that exists between women’s basketball and men’s basketball. I am not telling you this as someone who has experienced it as a woman but what I have witnessed as a man who plays basketball and how it has affected my girls team that I coached. The biggest difference that I have personally seen is emotion during games and the response that draws from officials and onlookers. Let me start by saying I have cussed out refs, opponents, fans, and even parents while playing. I got away with a slap on the wrist most times. If one of my girl players were to act like this the repercussions would be astronomical. However, I have seen the difference in officiating when a girl reacts negatively to a refs call or get kind of physical with their teammates. I have seen girls get ejected from games for things that nobody would have batted an eye at in a guys game. These problems and differences are on my mind when I am coaching the girls specifically because I do not want them being quiet girls who don’t stand up for themselves. I want them to be strong girls who take up space. There is no reason that a woman cannot act the same way that a man can in sports or otherwise.
The relationship between gender and sports is something that could take up way more than two pages but I think the main points of this paper go along way with opening eyes to the problematic teachings of young kids in sports and eventually lead to the removal of this double standard.
