A League of Their Own tells the story of a women’s baseball team in 1943, showing the story of Carson Shaw who is a housewife that comes from Chicago to try out for the newly formed All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The story carries important aspects about lesbian culture in those times and shows the community among these women with a shared love for baseball. This essay will be focusing on Maxine Chapman’s character and her story which is set apart from all the other characters as a black lesbian woman who is creating her own story within the white and male-dominated sport.

Extra Steps she has to take as a Black Woman in Society

Her character and her goals mirror another character in the series, Carson, they both are passionate about baseball and are willing to leave their lives behind in order to have a chance at this dream even though people around them don’t give them much support. After the announcement is released, they both jump at the opportunity to fight for a spot on the team. Their story begins dividing here, from the start, Carson is trying out for the baseball team meanwhile Maxine can’t even get to try out because they don’t accept her in there. As Carson gets accepted into the team, Maxine has to think of other ways just to get a simple shot at trying out for any baseball team. No one speaks out for her when she gets kicked out of the try out and she gets excluded from the spaces she wished to be a part of making her have to work way harder for things her white counterparts get to have easily. “Historically, raced notions of women’s sexuality, morality, temperament, beauty, and behavior have portrayed black womanhood as the inferior other relative to the normative status of white womanhood” which translates to the show rendering Maxine’s narrative as hidden from the mainstream and unseen by the characters within the show with the exception of Carson (Moore, 2006).

She has to start working in the factory, in order to get into the league where black people are allowed to play. So she has to pose as a man to get hired and work night shifts without her mom ever knowing that she is working there by working at her hair salon during the day, making her daily routine a 24 hour long work nightmare. Even when she’s working at the factory, the coach doesn’t give her a chance to try out fairly and she feels humiliated after not being able to perform her best. Opportunities never come for her, not getting a chance on the team for women because she is black and not getting a chance on the team for black people because she is a woman. Her fight for opportunities because of her race also affects how her sexuality is perceived and her journey in discovering her sexuality which will be discussed in the next section.

Coming to Terms with her Identity being Both Black and Queer

Maxine has an openly homophobic and transphobic mother, which is later revealed to be stemming from Maxine’s uncle Bert who is a trans man that distanced himself from the family. He is fully erased from their lives and each time his name is brought up in conversations Maxine’s mother gets visibly angry. Wanting to learn the truth behind this silence, Maxine goes to visit her “aunt” and finds out that he has transitioned to a man. They slowly start to form a relationship as he becomes the only openly queer figure in her life.

The community that Maxine is introduced to by her uncle is also totally separate from the where the non-black queer people are socializing with one another. The party that she goes to is in her uncle’s house, which is totally far away from civilization, near the train tracks. Even the placement of his house shows how far he has been pushed out of society. Differently, the non-black queer people are out in a club in public, which is still hidden but more open to the public eye than a private house party.

Every queer character in the show is affected by homophobia and all hide their identities with the fear of being discovered. Maxine is no exception in this case and feels even more targeted by her own circle since her uncle is an openly out trans man which even her best friend calls a “freak”, causing her to feel deeply ostracized. This ostracization also causes her to be ashamed of hanging out with her uncle, as she is faced with “the fear of being identified by other blacks as “gay, queer, funny, or a bulldagger” which are names “embedded deeply within the overall homophobic attitude of the Black community, a phenomenon stemming from social, religious, and ‘biological’ convictions” (Moore, 2006). The homophobia that she feels in the show coming from her family and close social circle, cause her to be more unaccepting towards herself.

Another example of this is when Maxine overhears her mother talking about her sexuality, claiming that she could turn out to be an “invert”. This is resolved near the end of the series when Maxine and her mother have a heart to heart as her mom tells her that she knew that Maxine would never have a husband and she wanted her to have something of her own so she could support herself financially without the need for a man. Along with this conversation, her pushing for Maxine to take over the hair salon and keeping her from seeing her uncle is chalked up to her mother being protective and wanting the best for her, while the reality of Maxine feeling like an outcast within her own social circle stays the same.

Her Gender Expression

Maxine’s gender expression is complicated as she has only seen the figure of queerness from her transgender uncle who always presents masculine and she has also had to embody a more masculine expression as she has to work in a factory, first starting off from pretending to be a man in order to get hired in the first place. The fact that women are given no means to work at that time also plays a part in her having to be more masculine in order to be self-sufficient, such as her mom only being able to rent the hair salon since her name caused her to be mistaken for a man.

Her transgender uncle, who plays a huge role in her introduction to the queer community later in the series sews her a suit for her to wear at his party. She chooses not to wear the suit fully, allowing herself to present in a more androgynous way rather than fully masculine or feminine. He also is the one to cut her hair in a more masculine way, paralleling the scene where her mother cut her hair in a more feminine way.

There are characters in the show who clearly present themselves in a more masculine or “butch” way while calling themselves “butch”, educating Carson on the labels and how people identify within the queer community during the scene in a gay bar. Carson and Maxine relate to each other on this topic, both not feeling either “butch” or “femme” and feeling comforted by the fact that they are not alone. Taking a look at the history of these gender roles and labels within lesbian relationships in the past, they allowed for the structuring of sexual interactions. Gender presentation along with the “butch” and “femme” labels now “structure membership in and the organization of the lesbian social world”(Moore, 2006). The use of gender presentation in this case helps to allow lesbians freedom to express individuality that is specifically feminine or non feminine.

In the 1970s, during the women’s movement, lesbian-feminists took a stance in order to change the common feminine and masculine gender display among lesbians encouraging women to move towards androgynous gender presentations(Moore, 2006). Women of color and working class women asserted that these androgynous modes of expression are a cultural artifact of white middle class lesbians, not necessarily all lesbians. This insinuates that the black lesbian community stood for a more gendered self display and there are strict femme and butch dynamics present in the community. Meanwhile, the white lesbian feminism movement made it appear less important in white lesbian communities creating a divergence from other lesbian communities. Meaning that black lesbians are specifically more harshly impacted by these norms within their community to create a consistent gender presentation, leading to them creating a particular aesthetic self that is either feminine or masculine. Tying it back to the show, Maxine as a black woman herself can see the masculine and feminine presentations of lesbians around her. Especially during the scene with her uncle when she refuses to wear the full suit, she can be seen actively not subscribing to the norms set for her from her community and choosing to present more androgynously which is a brave move.

Maxine Chapman, shows the story of a severely underrepresented community that is heavily oppressed and ignored and her character manages to give a voice to the community. She is presented as a strong character who always chooses to be herself and succeeds in the face of adversity which at the end leads her to a happy ending. Her character remains a powerful representation

References:
Moore, M. R. (2006). Lipstick or timberlands? meanings of gender presentation in Black Lesbian Communities. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 32(1), 113–139. https://doi.org/10.1086/505269