Lecture to explore trivialization of women athletes

Laura Robinson will wrap up her week-long tenure as the 2011 Distinguished Visitor in Women’s Studies with three public appearances on campus tomorrow – Tuesday, October 25.

She will discuss how women are challenging the trivialization, sexualization and exclusion of women athletes in her lecture “The Lingerie Football League — and Other Insults to Women Athletes,” at 10 a.m. in Vanier Hall’s Oak Room.

She will deliver “Sport as Social Justice: Skiing and scrapbooking with Nawash girls on the Cape Croker Reserve” at 2:30 p.m. and “Thinking Outside the Box: Building a critique of sporting culture by listening to the voices of the excluded” at 4 p.m., both in Winclare A, Vanier Hall.

An accomplished athlete as well as a journalist, Robinson is a former Ontario cycling champion, Ontario and Canadian rowing champion, and remains an active Nordic skier and runner.

She is the author of five books: She Shoots, She Scores: Canadian Perspectives on Women in Sport; Crossing the Line: Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada’s National Sport; Great Girls: Profiles of Awesome Canadian Athletes; Black Tights: Women, Sport, and Sexuality; and Cyclist BikeList: The Book for Every Rider. Read a full biography.

All of Tuesday’s events are free and open to the public. Details are available on the women’s studies Web site.