Keywords

Introduction

I have been researching roller derby since 2010. I have been a participant observer, skating in a league and progressing to bouting level, meeting the minimum skill requirements.Footnote 1 I have conducted interviews with over 70 derby skaters and officials, mostly from Australia . I have also collected a wealth of data online on key topics, including, policy and rule changes, governance issues, and the general growth and popularity of the sport. I have published numerous articles and a monograph on roller derby (Pavlidis, 2012, 2013, 2015; Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2013a, 2013b; Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014a, 2014b; Pavlidis & Olive, 2014; Pavlidis & Connor, 2016a, 2016b). Through this extensive work I have found that at the heart of roller derby are a range of complex power relations that shape the experience for participants and the growth and organisation of the sport in particular ways. I continue to be variously fascinated/challenged/in awe of the changes and scope of the sport as it continues to grow.

In particular, I have become interested in how roller derby, a sport which, like many “action sports” is predominately played by White bodies in the Global North (Pavlidis & O’Brien, 2017), is entering the Global South . Sport and nationalism are intimately connected (Rowe, 2017). The Olympics , the Football World Cup and other competitions pit nation against nation, fans surging with pride when their country is victorious. Yet this idea, of sport as attached to nation, is slowly changing. Forces of globalisation contribute major changes in sport (for example Donnelly, 1996), while simultaneously sport plays a role in “the intensification of global connectivity and growing social consciousness of the world as a single place” (Robertson, 1992, p. 8). Rowe (2017) has argued that “we are all transnational now” (p. 1) and that with sport we must pay close attention the “historically constituted variability of each context, to wider developments that link and mutually modify once-distinct context, and to the emergent relationships that are perpetually working to put the ‘trans’ into the ‘transnational’” (p. 14).

In the context of action sports, Thorpe argues that the “production and consumption of contemporary action sports … differ from traditional sports in their relation to the nation,” offering “new trends in the transnationalism of sport and physical culture” (Thorpe, 2014, p. 3). Action sport cultures are not bound by nation, but instead invoke a “transnational imagination ” (Thorpe, 2014, p. 12). Roller derby, as an action sport, is certainly in this camp—despite the sport’s origins in the USA, it is not often conceptualised as “American,” but instead as “feminist.” Hence roller derby offers not only new trends in the transnationalism of sport, but also in sport feminisms, hence my ongoing interest in the transformational capacity of roller derby.

This interest led me to travel to Beijing and conduct a brief “ethnographic visit” (Wheaton, 2013, p. 17) with a local roller derby league, supplementing this data with ongoing email correspondence and “virtual ethnography” (Hine, 2008). This experience gave me the opportunity to notice the feminist “values” that were being exported alongside roller derby. In particular, this experience in China reinforced the ways that roller derby has become a form of embodied politics in postfeminist times.

In this chapter I argue that roller derby acts as a kind of floating signifier for feminism. As a full contact sport played on roller skates, roller derby is challenging feminine norms in sport and providing diverse women with opportunities to experience their bodies in new and exciting ways. In China roller derby has been introduced by ex-patriot and development workers as a form of feminist intervention (see Pavlidis & O’Brien, 2017). In this particular national context roller derby signifies an embodied protest and challenge, and in doing so the sport has become an emblem of feminism, albeit a tricky and sometimes risky one.

Reflexive Sport Feminism

I am a White woman living in Australia . My parents were European migrants and I grew up in Melbourne’s West—a diverse community made up of waves of immigrants from around the world. I was privileged to be taught by passionate teachers and given opportunities to play sport throughout school. I have a PhD, with the tuition and living allowance paid for by the Australian government. As a White woman in Australia I have been the subject of sexism, sexual harassment and violence and despite my privileges the ongoing marginalisation of girls and women in Australia has incited me towards feminism.

My attraction to roller derby came from the explicit connection that I saw between protest and desire in the sport. Roller derby is a protest and a site for belonging and physical activity and “danger” and sport and femininity and masculinity and music and toughness and more (see Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014a, 2014b). It is, in Deleuzian terms, a multiplicity. “In a multiplicity what counts are not the terms of the elements, but what there is ‘between’, the between, a set of relations which are not separable from each other” (Deleuze & Parnet, 1987, p. viii). Roller derby is a set of relations which are not separable from each other and it is these relations, “the in-between,” that has been my research focus. The affective relations between roller derby and sport, or between roller derby and feminism, raises a whole new set of questions for sport sociology and physical cultural studies, and supports a reframing; from asking why roller derby?, to asking how does roller derby operate in different national contexts?

In this chapter the national context is China, a country that is sometimes defined as part of the Global South. I use this term not to essentialise geographies but instead to note the ways that particular places are, as Dosekun (2015) writes, “dialectically constituted and differentiated by historicized discourses, imaginaries, and material inequalities, including imperialist ones” (p. 961). As a White woman researching in the Global South the question of ethics is central. Drawing on Deleuzian and poststructural feminist frameworks the ethics I engage with are, as Malins and Hickey-Moody note, “very different from a ‘mortality,’ which operates as an overarching or transcendent system of prior rules and judgments. Such judgments work to close off and limit the potentiality of a situation, foreclosing its future” (2007, p. 3). Rather than judge relations prior to engagement, the ethics I practise “seeks to evaluate relations as they emerge” (Malins & Hickey-Moody, 2007, p. 3). Coleman and Ringrose (2013), in their discussion of Deleuzian methodological thinking, note, “empirical research should find new ways to see and transform the social” (p. 127). Hence, the ethics I practise is not the adherence to some overall judgement of “good” or “bad” research, but instead it is an active, emergent ethics , with social transformation as its goal. Through illustrating the ethical and political dimensions of roller derby in China below I explore the relations of power that can enable or impede social, and specifically feminist transformation.

My research “data” consists of ethnographic field notes and transcripts from 10 interviews conducted in China. In keeping with the Deleuzian ethics with which I approach this research I acknowledge MacLure’s (2013a) insight that, “data have their ways of making themselves intelligible to us” (p. 660). Rather than continue to use the “representational ‘fetters’ of identity, similarity, analogy and opposition” (MacLure, 2013a, p. 660) to analyse data and create “themes,” instead my approach focuses on what MacLure writes of as that which “glows” (MacLure, 2013a, 2013b).

MacLure has used the metaphor of a “cabinet of curiosities” (2013b, p. 180) as a way of thinking about analysing research data . A cabinet of curiosities is an object of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which was, according to MacLure,

A room or cupboard built to hold and display the collections of princes, merchants, scholars, apothecaries and priests … the cabinets held natural history specimens, optical instruments, mechanical toys, artworks, precious gems, maps, fragments of sculpture, strange objects, the stuffed carcasses of exotic animals and anatomical anomalies (2013b, p. 180).

This chapter is in some ways a cabinet of curiosities filled with a collection of artefacts related to roller derby in China. In the analysis below the focus is on what “glows” (MacLure, 2013a, p. 661) in this cabinet, along with the emergence of sense in my encounters with data for this project (MacLure, 2013a). My background researching roller derby in Australia and observing trends in derby across the globe has given me a “sense” of the research hotspots. In terms of an analysis of embodied politics in postfeminist times, the question of how roller derby operates in different national contexts requires a focus on power and potential hotspots, particularly relating to the status and laws regarding women in China. Before examining the specificities of roller derby in China, the next section provides an overview of some of the theoretical questions roller derby has raised thus far.

Roller Derby and Postfeminism

Roller derby is a “risky” sport—bodies are on the line and the risk of injury is one to be negotiated each time a player puts on her skates. It is a contact sport, where the object is to block or knock down/out of bounds opposing team skaters. It was a popular sport in countries like the USA and Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s, however, despite attempts at revival, the sport all but disappeared from the sport landscape after that time (Mabe, 2008). In the early 2000s an “all-girl” revival of the sport was initiated in the USA. In many ways this was a parody of the previous game (Ray, 2008), yet women were increasingly attracted to the sport and with the help of social media and increased mobility across the globe, the sport quickly spread to the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and eventually through Europe, and, as is the focus of this chapter, into Asia.

The extraordinary growth of this women-led, contact sport has gained the attention of media and academics around the world. In one of the first ethnographic studies of the sport Finley (2010) analyses the ways roller derby provides women with a context to enact alternative and pariah femininities and she explores the ways women in derby feminise the “tough athlete.” She observes that, “skulls and crossbones have pink bows … the bruises have fishnet patterns made from sliding across a rink floor with hosiery on one’s legs” (Finley, 2010, p. 373). In concluding Finley writes, “there are elements that are resistive and parts that are not … women can now kick ass, but it might not bring the society any closer to societal support of child care of equal pay, or sports that do not glorify bruises” (2010, pp. 383–384).

Chananie-Hill, Waldron, and Umsted (2012) further explore these contradictions, arguing for the conceptualisation of roller derby as a third-wave and postfeminist sport, insisting that it has the potential to both “transform and reinforce existing hegemonic gender relations.” In conceiving of a postfeminist model of sport they acknowledge the contentions of postfeminism, positioning it as different from social justice feminism “in its individualist and often consumerist approach” (Chananie-Hill et al., 2012, p. 35), while still “contributing towards the betterment of women athletes and to shifting norms of femininity” (p. 36). For them, (post)feminist ideologies contribute towards a model of sport that is “paradoxical, transgressive, transformative, and [that] reinforc[es] possibilities for structural gender relations” (2012, p. 37).

Kearney (2011) also uses a postfeminist lens in her analysis of roller derby, however in this instance her focus is on film and media. She asks, rhetorically, “who better, then, to embody that [postfeminist] ideal than hot female athletes?” (Kearney, 2011, p. 289). In analysing the short-lived prime time US cable show Rollergirls—a documentary style television series about the Texas Roller Derby, Kearny writes,

… as much as [the production company’s] willingness to program a prime-time series about women athletes reveals feminism being “taken into account” … the show and its promotional team nevertheless demonstrate post-feminism’s contradictory impulse to “undo feminism” by reproducing conservative values about gender, power , and women’s sports (Kearney, 2011, p. 298).

Despite this impulse to “undo feminism” in media representations of the sport, Kearney (2011) still sees the sport of roller derby as a space to seek out and become feminist role models in our local communities.

The tension, between being “taken into account,” or being taken seriously and maintaining roller derby as a sport which challenges conservative values about gender, power and sport is a difficult path to manoeuvre. Breeze’s (2015) ethnographic research on roller derby focuses on this precise problematic, noting, “women’s sport participation as a site of gender contestation is bound up with a struggle for legitimacy” (p. 22). In roller derby, many of the strategies employed in the sport’s initial revival such as mixing fishnets with athleticism, having all-female (narrowly defined) leagues and having themed teams (for example, “maids” or “nurses”) have been surpassed with new strategies. These new strategies, such as the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association’s new gender inclusion policy, emphasise roller derby as a sport to be taken seriously. Competition between leagues is fierce and the focus for many leagues, but certainly not all, has shifted: from support, fun and sharing, to winning (Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014a, 2014b).

This is not a straightforward shift. Sport, as we now know it, is competitive. Much of the time it is about winning. Yet teams and clubs (and codes) need to cooperate in order to organise competition. Hence there is a tension between competition and cooperation. In roller derby this tension is central as women and men work together to promote and grow the sport and in doing so grapple with the contradictions and complexities of this “new,” “women only” sport (Donnelly, 2012). Taking my lead from Toffoletti (2016) who draws on Gill’s (2007) notion of a postfeminist sensibility to analyse emerging formations in women’s sport I ask: is roller derby postfeminist? I argue that the focus on embodiment and difference central to poststructural feminist approaches to women and sport, is key to answering this question.

In using a postfeminist sensibility I seek to “contemplate what is distinct or new about representations of female athletes” (Toffoletti, 2016, p. 204) beyond making judgement as to whether it is feminist or anti-feminist. It is in this way the post in postfeminist is configured as a discursive, material and affective category. As Foucault wrote, “the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger” (1986, in Tamboukou & Ball, 2003, p. 9). I ask, where is the threshold at which women’s choices become “dangerous”? At what point is a woman’s sexual agency no longer considered her own? And who decides this? Competitive sport—where women strive to be the best, and to win—is the ideal site to analyse these often contentious and challenging issues. The sections that follow provide an overview of the cultural status of women in China before analysing what the entrée of roller derby into these countries might mean for the women involved and beyond and further extrapolation of what the “post” in postfeminism can mean in sport contexts.

Roller Derby in China

Prior to travelling to Beijing in November 2015 I contacted the league via Facebook letting them know about my previous work on roller derby and my interest in visiting them in China. My message was positively received, and league members communicated with me via email and Facebook to arrange a time to meet when I first arrived. I was also in contact with a professor of sport and gender from Peking University, China’s most highly ranked university, and through a competitive grant was able to secure funding for flights and accommodation to conduct the research. While in China I gave a lecture on sport and Australian society to Master’s students at Peking University and was introduced to a range of senior academics involved with sport research in China.

Once I arrived in Beijing I continued to communicate with one of the derby league members and we arranged to meet at their next training session and attend their committee meeting. It was at this time that I interviewed the majority of members of the league. After spending the day with the women (and one man) who made up the league, I organised to go to an indoor skate park with them on the following day. This was an opportunity to talk further to two of the league’s strongest skaters about their experiences of roller derby and more generally about their life in China. I also spent two other evenings with league members sharing meals later in the week (see Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 List of participants
Full size table

Ex-patriot workers brought the sport over to China from their respective countries and were attempting to attract local Chinese women to the sport. At the time of my visit there were three local Chinese women involved, as well as two ex-patriots with Chinese heritage. Most of the skaters were clear in my interviews with them that roller derby was a feminist sport, that it promoted understandings of gender fluidity and that it challenged normative gender ideals in China.

As noted by Li (2015), “an unavoidable issue in discussing feminist history and politics in China is the role of the state in mobilising and regulating women’s liberation” (p. 522). Despite women’s role as workers and in the domestic sphere, their role as gendered consumers has become increasingly important (Li, 2015; Thornham & Pengpeng, 2010). Thornham and Pengpeng (2010) note that advertising spending in magazines has grown exponentially over the past decade. Chinese versions of Western magazines , such as Elle and Marie Claire entered the market in the 1990s, soon joined by home-grown titles such as Rayli (Thornham & Pengpeng, 2010, p. 195). The popularity of these magazines, with their particular promises of femininity, “variously demure, coy, provocative and seductive” (Hooper, 1998, p. 171) has supported versions of femininity that privilege White skin (Mak, 2007) and “model looks” (Thornham & Pengpeng, 2010).

Historically, Hooper (1984) notes that women’s participation in the workforce was the key strategy in the achievement of equality. However, this strategy was introduced in the context of over 2000 years of Confucian ideology that positioned women as inferior (Hooper, 1984, p. 318). Women’s increasingly important role in the economic sphere of life in China is underpinned by this history of marginalisation which has impacted on women’s unemployment and difficulties in finding jobs in the new market driven economy (Du & Dong, 2009). As Thornham and Pengpeng (2010) note, young women in China are part of the first generation where jobs are no longer assigned to them—they will have to compete.

In competing for jobs women also need to avoid becoming what has become known as “leftover women.” This “sexist buzzword” is used in both popular media and government documents to refer to single, educated women in their late 20s and older. To (2013) states that the Chinese government attributes these women’s unmarried status to “overly high expectations for marriage partners” (To, 2013, p. 1). Single women in the Global North are both celebrated and scorned (Taylor, 2012), however in China, single women, as Li (2015) explores, are often “pathologized as a social problem to be solved” (p. 525). And so, women in China negotiate a fine line. They must educate themselves to compete in an increasingly private market, while still prioritising Western ideals of successful femininity, beauty and marriage to avoid becoming a “leftover woman.” Dosekun (2015) argues that postfeminism is a transnational culture and examples such as the “leftover women ” label demonstrate the complex negotiations and demands women in urban China must now navigate.

Despite the Chinese government’s attempts to mobilise and regulate women’s liberation throughout history, an independent Chinese feminist movement has developed. Recently this became visible to the world when five young women were arrested in the lead up to International Women’s Day in 2015 for organising to hand out stickers protesting sexual harassment on public transport. Fincher (2016) wrote a detailed account of the events from the perspective of one of the feminist women involved, Li Maizi. Li was subjected to humiliation, name calling, being regularly woken up at night to do chores and other interrogation techniques. The arrest of these women gained international attention and eventually, after a month in prison, they were released, although, as Fincher notes, they remain “criminal suspects under investigation” (2016, p. 86).

Fincher (2016) notes that the “feminist movement’s message of resistance to the traditional, feminine roles of wife and mother poses a unique threat to the Communist Party’s vision of a patriarchal family at the core of a strong, paternalistic state” (pp. 86–97). Roller derby has entered China at a time of growing awareness of feminism, and also increasing surveillance of feminist activist groups.

Roller derby was formed in China in 2013. The league’s website states, “Most modern leagues (their back-office volunteers included) share a strong ‘do it yourself’ ethic which combines athleticism and elements from camp, and feminist aesthetics consistent with third-wave feminism” (Beijing Roller Derby, 2016). Indeed, as Bonnie, a young American-Chinese woman emphasised, for her the league’s role was in educating and promoting ideas about gender fluidity and feminism. However others were more interested in the sport, in skating and learning the risky moves required to be a derby skater.

The women that formed the league discussed the possibility of having their very first exhibition bout associated directly with UN Women, the HeForShe campaign and the promotion of the recently legislated laws protecting women (and children and the elderly) from domestic violence. In the league committee meeting I attended Kerry, an Australian-Chinese woman proudly stated, “it’s like a secret club where I can be political privately.” In China, where feminist activism has been recently disciplined, roller derby has become, for some members, an explicitly embodied politics and forum for the dissemination and discussion of feminist ideas.

However in conversations with two of the young ex-patriot women from Canada and Australia (Tanya and Anna), who were also the strongest skaters in the league, they expressed a desire to “just skate.” They enjoyed the aesthetic and athleticism of the sport, but were not particularly interested in promoting understandings of feminism and gender fluidity to local Chinese women. For them, roller derby was empowering, but in a different way. Tanya stated, “it’s pretty empowering for girls to be in roller derby, it’s like, ‘oh I’m small but hey look I can do this,’ it’s quite fun in that way.” Roller derby supports Tanya to challenge conceptions of female passivity and weakness. For Anna, a maths and science teacher, roller derby was about skating, fitness and fun. It was not, for her, about feminism, nor was it particularly unique as a social phenomenon. She stated, “I think it has the same benefits as tai-chi or a knitting group.” Interestingly, she later went on to comment, “I don’t know how anyone else feels but it’s fun to belong to something that values me for what I can do with my body—instead of the body itself.” Anna is a tall and muscular woman and in roller derby she said she “felt good about my body.”

Analysing roller derby as a transnational postfeminist sport culture (Dosekun, 2015) enables what Dobson calls, “slowing down” when “we are affectively heat up” (2015, p. 7). Dobson was writing in the context of young women’s self-representation on social media and urges feminist researchers to attend to the meanings that young women give to their own practices, while also attending to the “material and discursive conditions that enable and produce personal ‘choice and agency’ as a primary, largely depoliticized, mode of self understanding” (p. 7). In “slowing down,” the interplays of power often reveal themselves to be less than certain, particularly in the promotion of sport for development.

Historically, Schultz (2010) found that sport and physical activity played a vital role within the US women’s suffrage movement. Today, sport, in particular action sports, are increasingly being used for development projects addressing cultural and gender divides around the world in a range of contexts (Thorpe, 2016). Women’s participation in sport has become an issue of human rights, with the International Working Group on Women and Sport formed in 1994, dedicated to “empowering women—advancing sport” (International Working Group on Women and Sport, 2016). Since then there has been increased interest in sport and new social movements (Chawansky, 2011) and feminist perspectives of sport for development are beginning to permeate broader sport cultures (Chawansky, 2011; Darnell & Hayhurst, 2013).

The UN has focused on women and girls as key to meeting its millennial development goals. They have developed “The Girl Fund,” and more recently “Girl Up” ( https://girlup.org/ ), a branch dedicated to supporting girls around the world, but particularly in the “places where it is hardest to be a girl” ( https://girlup.org/about/ ). Hayhurst calls this increasing focus on girls as key to bringing about social change , the “Girl Effect” movement (p. 532). Although this focus on the conditions of girls and women around the world is welcome, as Hayhurst writes, “the Girl Effect initiative has perhaps normalised such Eurocentric perspectives on gender by assuming that microfinance programs, self-empowerment and girls’ individual self-responsibility are the answers to ‘developing’ many countries in the Two-Thirds World” (p. 534). The (Western) focus on choice , agency and autonomy has been much criticised (for example, Gill, 2007) and I agree that, as Gill (2007) states, “we urgently need to complicate our understandings of choice and agency if we are to develop a meaningful feminist critique of neoliberal , postfeminist consumer culture” (p. 72).

Buying roller skates for both the ex-patriot workers and local women was an expensive and complicated process. Buying the skates from China was prohibitively expensive and so skaters would have to ask friends or associates from other countries to buy the skates and then post them. The skates would be sent to China and then they would pick them up, often at a cost because of the weight of the skates, and usually with questions from Customs officials about the package. Finding venues for training was also a challenge. When I visited the league their training facility was at an outdoor rink, which meant that rain or weather impacted their ability to skate. There were no community skate venues—most venues were state owned (schools ) and accessibility was an issue as most of the league members relied on public transport to get around.

Nearly a year after my visit, in May 2016, United Nations Women in China partnered with Beijing Roller Derby and a number of other organisations to host what was called an “invitational”—an exhibition roller derby bout in Beijing for the very first time. Fliers for the event boldly stated, “shining the Olympic spirit on gender equality ” and the event itself included key remarks from the Deputy Director, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Anna-Karin Jatfors. Jatfors noted in her speech that the derby event was part of the HeForShe global movement for gender equality and she stated,

We are very grateful for your [Beijing Roller Derby] support to UN Women and for your commitment to our common goal of advancing women’s empowerment and to the elimination of violence against women in China and beyond (Jatfors, 2016).

At the end of Jatfors’ speech to open what was the very first roller derby bout in China she stated, “while we root for the two teams that are about to play, let us all think about how, among our friends, in our neighborhoods, in our schools , and in our families, we can all be referees. Let’s all create a safer world to play in” (Jatfors, 2016). This focus on referees and safety is somewhat at odds with the emerging body of work on roller derby, as well as my specific interviews with women involved with roller derby in China. Being part of a “risky,” tough, unique sport was central to the experiences of “freedom ” and “independence” that the women spoke of. Two of the local Chinese women I interviewed described roller derby as a place to challenge themselves and their limitation. As Casey, a single Chinese woman in her early 30s stated, roller derby, “helps us understand each other better through interaction.”

Examining roller derby via a postfeminist sensibility demonstrates the complexity and multiplicity of roller derby in China. Roller derby is certainly not anti-feminist, for it is always a form of embodied protest of women’s rights to their bodies. Instead, roller derby may be conceived of as postfeminist, where the post is not a signifier for “after,” as in Mc Robbie’s aftermath of feminism (2009), but instead signifies an ethical engagement with women’s own desires to embody feminism. In China, women have long had access to the public sphere of life, however their bodies have always been regulated. Whether by the (recently amended) one child policy, or via cultural norms that require women to achieve White skin, opportunities to use their bodies in risky ways have been limited.

Roller derby’s entrée into China provides an opportunity for women to embody an alternative relation to femininity, as well as opportunities to discuss issues of gender embodiment . Because of roller derby’s roots as a DIY sport it is, for now, resisting becoming a site of gendered consumption in China. Moves to further regulate or incorporate the sport need to be done slowly. Even as a tool for development, as is the desire of UN Women for example, care must be taken to ensure that this is what the skaters want and that this does not get in the way of the primary purpose of the leagues: to play roller derby.

Final Remarks: The Limits of Embodied Politics in Sport

Roller derby is perhaps one of the most visible forms of embodied politics in sport. It is a contact sport played on roller skates with a colourful history, association with music subcultures, a non-traditional sport structure and majority women leadership. Of all sport in the current landscape roller derby aligns itself most closely to feminism, and it is this association that draws many women towards the sport. Yet roller derby is a sport. The women and girls around the world who play insist on this (Breeze, 2015; Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014a, 2014b). World championships are played, rankings published and players at the highest levels are paid, albeit not highly.

As an object of analysis, roller derby both challenges and adheres to neoliberal goals of competition , choice and “empowerment .” The women who made up the Beijing Roller Derby League were professional workers, many of whom were university educated, living in one of the most developed cities in the world, resonating with McRobbie’s “global girl” (2007, p. 733). Rachelle, an ex-patriot worker from the US who was also a member of the Black Derby Network (http://www.derbycentral.net/2015/03/roller-derby-and-diversity/), stated, “We’re really successful awesome ladies … So I think the fact that we’re all here in China because of our job and because of how well we do in our jobs, that’s impressive.”

Roller derby has been imported into China with clear development goals, not necessarily acknowledging the emergence of local feminisms. As with Dosekun’s research participants in Nigeria, the women playing roller derby in China are already empowered (p. 971) through their “choice ” to play roller derby (and their “choices ” in education ). Yet “Other women” in China are still considered as needing to be empowered, hence the need to grow roller derby. In this way roller derby occupies a complex and tricky position in the sport feminist landscape.

Roller derby acts as a kind of floating signifier for feminism, moving from different national contexts and transforming what it means to be “feminist.” As a full contact sport played on roller skates, roller derby is challenging feminine norms in sport and providing diverse women with opportunities to experience their bodies in new and exciting ways. In China roller derby signifies an embodied protest and challenge, and in doing so the sport has become an emblem of feminism, albeit a tricky and sometimes risky one. Yet what they are each protesting against is contextual, historical, material and affective.

Particular affects are central to roller derby—toughness, risk , uncertainty, belonging and female strength. Whether the women are protesting against perceptions of women as demure, as in China, or whether they are protesting restrictions on mobility, as often happens in countries such as Australia with the reclaim the night movement, these affects remain central. It is in this way that the sport of roller derby is able to continuously grow, in a range of contexts, with a focus on diversity and inclusion , while still pursuing competitive goals.

As mentioned in the previous section, roller derby may be conceived of as postfeminist, where the post is not a signifier for “after,” but rather signifies an ethical engagement with women’s own desires to embody feminism. Roller derby enables all types of women to embody feminism and live “the good life.” However, as Fullagar (2017) observes, “the more action sports become part of a mainstream fantasy of living ‘the good life’ (optimizing one’s agentic selfhood) the greater the inequality between those who can and cannot engage, between the flourishing self and the one who fails (to be happy, healthy, thin, desirable, successful, etc.) within the global conditions of advanced liberalism” (p. 371). The cost of participation, the risks for local women and the cultural norms that discourage muscle tone and outdoor activity are barriers for local Chinese women in engaging with roller derby.

Like the “post” in post structuralism, postfeminism is not an end, but a new beginning. We live in an increasingly complex and changing world. Globalisation , new communication technologies, increased rights for LGBTQ people, advances in biological sciences and ongoing innovations in the social sciences encourages and supports an affirmative politics. Roller derby enables transformation, where, to quote McRobbie (2009), “although capitalism is endlessly trying to capture and harness it, for its own purposes, nevertheless this potential for transformation takes shape in marginal practices and in the cultural activities of oppressed social groups” (p. 161). Whether in Beijing , Brisbane, Melbourne or virtual spaces, women and girls involved with roller derby conceive of themselves as strong, tough, capable and active. This is not without issue, as many women are excluded financially, socially and culturally (Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014a, 2014b). Yet roller derby, as a DIY sport that continues to resist traditional sport structures and co-option by governments and corporations, embodies feminism in affirmative and hopeful ways.