'Vonntourages' and 'Iceholes': A Critical Examination of Sexism Arising from the Vancouver 2010 Games
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction This essay contains two sections that when combined demonstrate that the Olympic Games perpetuates sexism. More specifically, I will show that objectification is detrimental to women Olympians in not only a sexualized form, but also in consistently treating women athletes solely as bodies, or objects. It may appear as though I set out to accomplish too much in making this claim; however, an analysis of examples stemming solely from the recent Vancouver Olympic Games will show how the continued objectification of women athletes facilitates the proliferation of a sexist culture and approach to sport. Firstly, I will refer to examples of sexual objectification that occurred prior to (the release of a nude calendar featuring Canadian biathletes) and during the Vancouver Games (Lindsey Vonn's appearances in Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue). Secondly, I will describe how treating women athletes primarily as objects in a non-sexual manner can also be problematic for the advancement of women athletes in the Olympic Movement. To demonstrate this claim, I refer to the controversy and devastation at the Whistler sliding centre and the backlash of readjusting the ladies luge start position. Sexual Objectification Cases from Vancouver Interestingly, both the Canadian biathlon nude calendar images and Vonn's first appearance in Sports Illustrated were published prior to the Games. This similarity suggests a few key interpretations. It appears that women athletes, even at the Olympic level, continue to struggle for funding, fame and overall positioning at the Olympic stage. Furthermore, it is speculated that the release of the images was strategically timed to coincide with Olympic Games promotion fever. This suggests a marketing attempt to increase viewership and support for the female athletes. It appears as though women athletes need else or in order to be accepted and embraced as Olympians. Consequently, I believe this something extra is rooted in sexual objectification and the constant need to highlight and showcase women Olympians as heterosexual, sexy women first and foremost; regardless of their athletic achievements. Prior to the analysis of sexual objectification inferences, it is important to briefly mention theories and arguments surrounding sexual objectification. For purposes of clarification, I maintain that we can draw similar conclusions about the process of sexualization that we can about sexual objectification. In other words, I use the concepts of sexualization and objectification interchangeably. Given the extensive research and theories espoused on sexual objectification, I have decided not to indulge in an in-depth discussion; instead, I draw on several well-argued philosophical arguments. (1) Sexual objectification is not always problematic; for example, there are times when being viewed or viewing someone as a sexual object is not always wrong. Philosophers Robert Baker, Sandra Bartky and Martha Nussbaum argue that there are instances in which it is acceptable to view another person primarily as a sexual object. A popular example of such an instance occurs when two people are in a mutually respectful relationship. However, they also argue that consistent sexual objectification can become problematic when it is extended to one's entire being and identity. The typical North American media coverage of women athletes outlines such problematic conceptualizations. For example, Michael Messner and Cheryl Cooky's co-investigation analysis of gender and televised sports found that there was a significant decline of women's sport coverage in 2009. Additionally, they noted that sports journalists' continue to frame women athletes as girlfriends, wives and mothers in order to emphasize heterosexuality. (2) With respect to the two examples that will be described, I believe that because of the context of the images, the athletes' being and identity becomes objectified sexually regardless of their athletic status. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".