The Sexist Naming of Collegiate Athletic Teams and Resistance to Change

Abstract

Colleges and universities use nicknames, logos, and mascots as identifying and unifying symbols, especially surrounding their athletic teams. More than half of U. S. colleges and universities use sexist names and mascots for their women's athletic teams. We argue that these naming practices define, deprecate, and excude women. We show how these linguistic marking systems adopted by schools promote male supremacy and female subordination. They do so, just as sexist language does, by trivializing women, diminish ing them, and making them invisible. A case study of one university is presented where the name for male and female teams is a ram—a male sheep. When this name was identified in the school newspaper as sexist, various constituencies rallied to retain the traditional name. Their defenses are examined, looking especially at the parallels between these arguments and those used to resist changing sexist language in general.