User:Mpmill/Misogyny in ice hockey

Misogyny in ice hockey refers to the discourses, actions, and ideologies that are present in ice hockey, environments that contribute to the discrimination against women in the sport and their absence. This phenomenon includes issues related to sexism and male chauvinism. The social aspect of the sport supports issues related to misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and heteronormativity. The subject has been extensively discussed in both media and academia, with many women in the sport increasingly speaking out about the extent of misogyny in hockey and its negative impact on the sport.

Late 1800s to middle 1900s
In the mid-1800s, the first game of modern ice hockey was played in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, but the first woman to play was Isobel Stanley in the late 1800s. In the early 1900s, the first women's ice hockey league was founded in Quebec, Canada. Hockey appeared to be a masculine sport due to the sport's violent fight and aggressive nature, therefore, women only began playing ice hockey when they came to the U.S. from Canada. It wasn't until after World War I that women's hockey boomed.

Historically, organized women's ice hockey has only developed relatively recently as an enduring phenomenon. From the late 1800s, when the sport first began to organize formally, and throughout most of the 1900s, national ice hockey associations found little evidence of existing interest among the female population in regards to participation in ice hockey, while substantial interest existed for participation in other winter sports such as figure skating and broomball. In Canada, participation among girls and women in ice hockey by the 1980s registered less than six thousand players nationwide.

In the beginning, ice hockey was only played by either sex in the areas of North America that had the right climate to make a winter season possible, restricting the sport's growth. Until indoor ice rinks became more widespread, all players, male or female, had to play outdoors where ice was available and could be found. Since registrations were low before the mid-1980s, female players had few options for finding other girls to play with and against and felt intimidated by the fact that they had to compete against boys and men. The fact that males, compared to females, have a biological advantage that impacts athletic performance, including physical size, mass, weight, and power, all served as a major deterrent for potential female participants. In addition, body checking was still a part of the female category of the sport, causing further discouragement, until it began to be removed in Canada in the mid-1980s, after which registrations increased. A combination of factors crippled the growth of the female game by creating restrictions, namely those related to climate, a lack of interest among the female population, body checking, and a lack of girls and women to participate. Misogyny in ice hockey, however, became more evident in the late part of the 1900s and remains a complex subject.

1990s
On March 30th 1994, Billy Tibbetts—ECHL player—pleaded guilty to raping a 15-year-old girl when he was 17 years old at an outdoor drinking party in Massachusetts. In 1995, while on probation for the statutory rape case, Tibbetts was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (a BB gun), disorderly conduct and witness intimidation, and served 39 months in prison. In 2000, he signed an NHL contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins.