Michael A. Messner

In this essay, Michael Messner focuses on a key part of a broader research agenda on gender and sport and reflects on the context and meanings of media characterizations of men and masculinities in the sport setting. The first part of the essay focuses on how one’s core identity as a male who grew up experiencing understandings of sport through the lens of media continues to be influenced by sensibilities that can conflict with revised beliefs about gender. The second part of the essay reflects on the author’s scholarly journey in focusing on gender and televised sport and the importance of extending one’s work beyond academia and into the public sphere. The focus section of the essay on “Men and Masculinities” examines four clusters of research on: (1) scandals and fallen heroes, (2) consumption of sports media as a male preserve, (3) sports, masculinities, politics, and war, and (4) female athletes as visible cultural icons. The essay closes with observations for future directions in research on gender, sport, and media.

A scholarly literature on the intersectional realities of race, class, gender, and sexual privilege exists, but professors often struggle with how to teach it, especially given our own (often) privileged positions. Here, the author describes how he uses self-reflexive story-telling as a point of entre to encourage students to think about their own lives within a matrix of privilege and subordination. He shows how stories can illuminate the central role played by ideologies of individual meritocracy in privileged peoples' narratives. The author argues that personal stories are limited unless they also are contextualized within structural analyses that illuminate collective agency. He ends by describing an undergraduate study of USC janitors that reveals how the institution constrains these low-wage workers, while putting into stark relief the relative privilege of students and faculty. He concludes that a pedagogy of privilege should always be grounded in the standpoints of subordinated groups of people.