Subjectivity and moments of non-gendered embodiment: A discourse analysis of CrossFit women's bodies

Abstract

In sport, transgressing binary gender boundaries is especially challenging for women as physicality, muscularity and athleticism remain closely tied to male masculinity. In this feminist poststructural and posthumanist study, 14 South African women CrossFitters engaged in individual autophotographical activities and photo-elicitation interviews, with five then participating in a focus group discussion. Visual and textual data from these data production activities were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. The findings interrogate how CrossFit women, as a discursive object, are primarily constructed through their bodies. In this article, we theorise two novel discourses shaping CrossFit women's bodies (i.e., a sexual (dis)pleasure and (un)desirability discourse, and a muscular dilemma discourse). Relatedly, we theorise how these two discourses allow two subject positions for CrossFit women: submissive/deviant and oppressed/rebel. Importantly, (CrossFit) women's bodies are shaped through interactions with human and non-human forces (e.g. gym equipment) that impose precarious but precious opportunities for non-gendered embodiment and transformation. Our findings contribute to wider debates of how women's sporting bodies are both positioned within and against gendered cultural power. Specifically, the CrossFit women's bodies in our study reinforce how sport both celebrates and constrains femininity, and how these celebrations and constraints extend into women's psychological and sociopolitical subjectivities.