When football is of women: suspicions, regulations and transgressions in the field of genders and sexualities

Abstract

This study discusses the perceptionthat football playing youthshave of themselves, when faced with the relationships of gender and sexuality,based on a study that involved observations during training sessions and six semi-structured interviews with a female team from an inner-state municipality of São Paulo. Through anunderstanding of sexualityand gender as socio-historical constructs, focus was directed toward the practice of football and the devices that produce "ways of being a woman"fromnormative policies.The conclusion was reached that normative policies of gender regulate the bodies of theseyoung athletes guided by a sport considered as masculine; manage ways that aid in the body-styling of players; and institute rules aimed at steeringthem away from a possible approximation with the lesbian desire. Such findings revealed football to be a social practice of gender and gender dominated social practice, producing bodies/subjectivities that are managed through gender and sexuality devices. These also allow for one to (re)think the established relationships between gender, sexuality and body practices.