This article was produced and funded by Norwegian Sports Academy – Read more.

PODCASTS: In sport, differences become very visible, whether through fixed attitudes about gender, prostheses, or different body variations.

Very few of us are physically perfect to live. The extremes of physical perfection and physical imperfection become especially apparent when sports competition is largely based on categorizations of gender, class, weight, age, and function.

In that way, sport can act as a magnifying glass – seeing how differences are understood when the logic of competition is challenged by bodies that cannot easily be categorized.

Language limits nuance

We humans allow ourselves to be easily categorized as one or the other. We can be thin, fat, kind or evil.

– In everyday life, we experience challenges with these stuck concepts. No one is just good and no less bad, says associate professor Kristin Vindhol Evensen at the Norwegian Academy of Sport.

Our language makes it difficult to talk about the nuances between, for example, good and bad. Therefore, we appear more innocent than we would like. This is called a dichotomy, which is a term in which two words stand against each other.

– The challenging thing about dichotomies is that the nuances in between are lost to us. For example, you are not fat if you are thin. One excludes the other.

According to Evensen, we like to talk in sports about the terms perfect body and imperfect body.

– We have the Olympic Games for perfect bodies and the Paralympic Games for those with imperfect bodies. The problem with this contradiction is that having a disability is seen as something negative, even if the athlete is feeling well. It’s a challenge.

Language and media are to blame

Sports gala at NRK often presents athletes with disabilities as people who continue to struggle against opposition and adversity.

According to Evensen, this can make it hard to imagine that living with a disability is also a good life, when the media says otherwise.

Evensen is clear that the media and language are largely to blame for the way we think about people with disabilities. Therefore, we are not good enough to talk about the nuances of being human.

– A functional disorder can be seen as an objective deviation in the body. However, it is the social framework that turns functional impairment into disability, says Kristin.

From male to female

As different athletes take over the sporting arena, unrest can arise in the ranks. One example is weightlifter Laurel Hubbard.

– Hubbard has lived most of his life as a man. Now she has become a woman. He thus crosses gender categories. When he competes in weightlifting at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, he tests the logic of the sport.

Evensen further explained that by participating, he challenged the logic of competition based on the male and female dichotomy. Despite growing up as a boy, his testosterone levels are now within what is acceptable in the female class. However, it is difficult to place it in a binary gender system.

Listen to the entire podcast on standing around differences here: