Masculinities and playing basketball in a wheelchair [Video]

I ask students in my gender classes to think about intersectionality and hierarchies of power within gender categories. This semester I used Coston and Kimmel’s (2012) article “Seeing Privilege Where It Isn’t: Marginalized Masculinities and the Intersectionality of Privilege” to encourage students to think about non-hegemonic masculinities.  Coston and Kimmel ask how men in their study who are disabled, gay, or working-class “navigate and access their privilege within the confines of a particular social role that limits, devalues, and often stigmatizes them as not-men.”  They apply Goffman’s (1963) three strategies used to neutralize stigma: minstrelization, normification, and militant chauvinism.
In addition to talking about Coston and Kimmel's study, I like to show students this advertisement of men playing basketball in wheelchairs.  I ask students to discuss the video clip in light of what we have learned about minstrelization, normification, and militant chauvinism.  You might consider asking other questions like: What assumptions do we have about masculinity and bodily ability?  What characteristics or qualities in men does this ad validate?

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwndLOKQTDs

References:

Coston, Bethany M. and Michael Kimmel. 2012. “Seeing Privilege Where It Isn’t: Marginalized Masculinities and the Intersectionality of Privilege." Journal of Social Issues 68(1): 97-111.

Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.