Wrestling With Jello: “Good Dads” and the Reproduction of Male Dominance in Children’s Baseball

in Sociology of Sport Journal

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Travers Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

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Jennifer Berdahl Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2021-0041
Keywords:
gender; coaching; organizational culture; hybrid; masculinities
First Published Online:
25 Oct 2021
In Print:
Volume 39: Issue 3
Page Range:
240–250
Restricted access

Despite being formally all-gender, children’s baseball in Canada and the United States remains highly male dominated. We draw on the autoethnographic fieldwork of Travers as a queer/trans volunteer coach to demonstrate the social processes that reproduce male domination among coaches in children’s baseball. We employ the theoretical lens of doing/redoing/undoing gender to demonstrate the enactment of a hybrid form of masculinity we term “Good Dad Masculinity.” Good Dad Masculinity reproduces male domination in children’s baseball as a de facto highly gendered organization wherein girls, women, and nonnormatively gendered people of all ages are peripherally included, at best. As Good Dad Masculinity reproduces male domination while appearing to embody and endorse gender egalitarianism, resistance to it is akin to wrestling with jello.

Travers (atravers@sfu.ca) is corresponding author, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5210-8254

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