Positioning participation in the field of surfing: sex, equity, and illusion

Surfing, a practice from ancient physical culture, is arguably a social field. The modern form (re)constituted in the early to mid-1900s, repositioned participants in this field, a new doxa employing a patriocolonial female/male sex binary differentiating access to waves, where those with a sex category ‘female’ were either absented as competent athletes or sexually objectified. Today, sex still works strongly to differentiate access to resources. Using a Bourdieusian analytical framework, I explore the logics of practice found in empirical work of an ongoing ethnography of surfing and its history. It reveals a doxa underpinned by (colonial) patriarchy demonstrating illusio, misrecognition and symbolic violence, providing perceptions of participation equity while sustaining and reworking a particular form of patriarchy and its dominant/dominating practices.