"Family-friendly" without the double entendre: a spatial analysis of normative game spaces and lesbian fans.
In this article, I demonstrate the importance of employing a feminist geographic framework in order to both read WNBA game spaces and to understand lesbian fan participation within these spaces. I argue that attending to the production of WNBA game spaces makes visible the ways that normative cultural politics become manifest, and brings to the fore the ways that dominant relations are naturalized and rarely questioned. Further, attention to the production of these leisure spaces compels an examination of the relationship between spatialized normativity and claims to, and performances of, lesbian identity. By understanding social space as a productive force, it is possible to conduct a critical reading of the materiality of WNBA game spaces and the implications for the reproduction of naturalized (hetero)normativity. In addition, it illustrates that lesbian fan experiences and interpretations of normative WNBA game spaces must be examined in a framework that takes seriously the factors that inhibit critical engagement with (hetero)normativity, as well as the central role that lesbian fans play in the co-production of these spaces.
Muller Myrdahl
Tiffany K
TK
Women's Studies, University of Lethbridge, A-812, University Hall, 4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, Alberta T1K 3M4, Canada. t.mullermyrdahl@uleth.ca
D000328:Adult; D001490:Basketball / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012931:Social Environment; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D012951:Socialization; D014481:United States