Breaking Barriers? Examining Neoliberal–Postfeminist Empowerment in Women’s Mixed Martial Arts
通过四年田野调查和40次访谈，研究女性参与综合格斗（MMA）如何挑战性别观念，但新自由主义-后女权主义文化削弱了其赋权潜力，揭示了性别不平等的维持机制。
This article problematizes claims of women’s empowerment in “masculine” sports through an exploration of women’s participation in mixed martial arts (MMA)—a combat sport colloquially referred to as “cage fighting.” MMA, perhaps more than any other sport, allows women athletes to challenge patriarchal beliefs about gender by demonstrating women’s capacity for physical violence and domination. But whereas investigations into MMA have produced important findings for studies of men and masculinities, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to women’s participation in this hypermasculine world. This article begins to fill this gap through an ethnographic account of this growing sport. Drawing from more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and 40 semi-structured interviews with professional women’s MMA athletes, I show how the neoliberal–postfeminist culture of MMA undermines its empowerment potential by shaping gendered subjecthood in ways that are conducive to the maintenance of gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for women’s empowerment in sport.