Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

Responding to calls about the need to ‘give voice’ to groups previously marginalized in research and to challenge meta-narratives about men in sports this paper explores the use of a narrative approach to illuminate men's experiences—and the doing of gender—within equestrian sports, a sport dominated by women in Sweden. Adopting the position of a storyteller three literary short-stories were constructed from interviews with men active in equestrianism. (Re)presenting research findings in this way evoke a lot of questions in academic circles. We have often been askedhowthe stories were constructed and how one judges whether they are representative and trustworthy. These are legitimate questions, no doubt. But questions that are of importance to all qualitative research. It is as if the writing of stories is some kind of mysterious abracadabra activity and not a deliberate and theoretically informed creative process. While reading critique of narrative ways to (re)present research findings, where some researchers suggest that narrative inquiry is a retreat from the difficult academic work of generating new and important ideas, our assumption is that it stems from this misunderstanding about story writing. And maybe the construction of stories has not been given enough attention in narrative research. The purpose of this article is therefore to illustrate the difficult but inspiring activity of transforming 19 interviews into literary short-stories and to highlight methodological concerns relating to presenting these stories. We also demonstrate that creative analytical writing is not just a way of presenting research findings but also a method of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inspired by calls for an emphasis on the "potentiality of the present" in feminist and queer (sport) studies, this article explores queering acts, moments, and spaces in stories of athletes living nonstraight. To do this, we use Haraway's and Braidotti's notion of figuration and creative analytical writing. With one foot rooted in what is, our three figurations of the queering athlete take us into and beyond heteronormativity to what can be(come). Two figurations enact how sex segregation and gender norms in sports can serve as conditions of possibilities that open up for other-worlds-in-the-making and the third works sexuality against identity and queers the hetero–homo binary. They are figurations—in form and content—of a "science of the possibility of science."

This paper is about glitching bodies - bodies that break, crash and confuse the conventions of pre-programmed and binary gender patterns. Exploring the promise of an intersex phenomenon; hyperandrogenism in women's sport, I discuss how glitching bodies and a feminist posthumanist understanding of gender can contribute to the field of gender and queer sport studies. Responding to calls for research enacting how non-binary bodies challenge the dualistic gendered ontologies that have structured the performative practices of sport in highly exclusive ways this paper is a travelogue into a messy nature-cultural phenomenon. It is partly a theoretical and methodological exploration and partly an analytic endeavour. The phenomenon of hyperandrogenism is explored and untangled by engaging in a diffractive analysis where I 'plug in' the concepts of intra-activity and glitch. I argue that a feminist posthumanist understanding of gender and diffraction as a methodological practice helps us move away from habitual and normative readings that zero in on either male or female, either nature or culture and either material or discursive. This implosion of binaries in turn opens up for alternative ways of thinking and being bodies in sport (studies).

Leisure studies have given scant regard to human-animal relations and intersectionality. In this paper, I respond to calls for research analysing leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon by exploring human-horse relations and intersectionality in boy's/men's equestrian stories through the concept of intra-activity and creative analytical writing. Thinking and writing through intra-activity brings insights into the co-constitution of humans and horses, as well as the entanglement of other power relations and social categories. The paper illustrates that becoming horseboy(s) is a process of material-discursive intra-activity where boys/men, by transcending the human-animal divide simultaneously transcend the female-male/masculine-feminine divide. Thus, engaging materially with horses can allow and encourage boys/men to be less constrained by dominant gender discourses. The paper also illustrates the importance of studying gender, not as a separate or primary category of privilege or inequality, but as one that is entangled with race, class, sexuality, age and other animals. I finally argue that bringing horses, as well as discourses, into discussions of the enactment of gender in leisure landscapes offers a productive site for elaborating the much-debated question, posed by feminist posthumanists, of the agency of matter.