This essay looks beyond the focus on team names and mascots to the larger issues of
naming and the use o f language in sports. It is argued that the language of sports backfires
on women through "rigged discourse" that perpetuates a structural bias that naturalizes
men as superior and women as deficient. This argument is supported by the relative
paucity of coverage of women in sports and the reliance on visual stereotyping of women
in sports coverage. Gendered and racial hierachies of naming in sports are highlighted as examples of the embedded biases of language that can be changed and affect existing
power relations.
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