When I was young, probably in Novice hockey my twin sister and I would change in the same dressing room with the boys. We had to go to the bathroom and put our long underwear on. In atom, we were a bit older so it was time that we got our own dressing room. In Rosetown rink we got a nice dressing room for the girls, then we had to walk down to the boy’s dressing room when they were ready for our coaches to talk to us. We played boys hockey until our second year bantam, then we went and played onto a girls’ team. Throughout the years of playing hockey, we have had the nicest of dressing rooms and also the worst and grossest of dressing rooms. In a couple rinks we got put into the janitor’s closet and in a few different rinks we also got put with the girls off the other team. That never ended well!
When we played boys hockey, the boys on the other team would always try to hit us because ‘we were girls’. Just because we were different genders as the boys, they just expected us to be scared of them and that they could do whatever to us and we would just take it and not do anything about it. Little did they know that they were wrong. No matter what we kept up with them and we also did not let them push us around and control us. That is when I first came to know myself as gendered.
Hi Kori,
Sounds like you had a rough time playing a male-dominated sport. Girls can face a lot of discrimination from boys while growing up! In your post, you mentioned that you got squished into some weird dressing rooms, including a janitor’s closet – how are girls going to want to be more engaged in sports if they won’t even accommodate their presence? Good for you for sticking with it for so many years!
As far as the assignment goes, you haven’t really narrowed in on a particular moment in time to tell us about; you’ve given an overall description of something that happened over many years, rather than a story that happened over a few minutes. Is there a specific moment in your hockey life you can share that could portray some of the gender discrimination issues you’ve discussed?
Kristin
Hey Kristin!
Yes, In my first year of Atom hockey, I am 10 years old. I was so excited to be able to play another hockey game! We pulled up to Kindersly rink. My parents, my twin and I get out of the vehicle. My sister and I throw our hockey bags over our shoulders, so excited to be there. We walked into the rink and ask the rink manager where the girls dressing room is. He leads us to a room, and we opened the door. We walked in and it was a janitors closet. There was three girls on our hockey team at the time. So we all pile in there. I looked over and I seen the dirty mop and mop pail. We got dressed, without complaining what they put us in. Why they think we deserve the little room compared to an actual dressing room. After we got dressed, we had to get piggy backed over to the other side of the rink, where our boys dressing room was. After the game we went back and got undressed. We went out to the lobby and told our parents what we had to get dressed in. They were disappointed, we were disappointed. We were the only game in the rink that day and we got stuck in the janitors closest.