On 21 June 2014, police officers responded to a 911 call that a female suspect was striking people and refusing to leave a house. The suspect turned out to be Hope Solo, the star goalie of the US Women's National Soccer Team (and also the professional team, Seattle Reign Football Club), scheduled to begin a FIFA World Cup tournament that they would ultimately win. According to Solo's nephew and half-sister, the soccer star had drunk too much wine, made rude comments to her nephew, then began to assault him. According to Solo's lawyer, her nephew had, prior to her striking him, given her a slight concussion by hitting her on the head with a broom handle. Such stories of domestic assault are far from rare—as any reality show will attest to—but when a public figure such as a professional athlete is involved the ensuing legal drama is as public a spectacle as any soccer/football match. And despite the fact that Solo was eventually cleared of charges and the stories of her accusers changed and were discredited, most were ready to assume her guilt (see Macur) and suspicions may still linger that the charges were dismissed due to her status. The reasons for this suspicion may be, to take Kathryn Henne a bit out of context, that ‘elite athletes, by virtue of being superior physical specimens, are held to higher ethical standards than others … and thus navigate levels of suspicion and risk that other citizen subjects do not experience’ (12). Henne, however, is talking about suspicion of performance enhancement, or ‘doping.’ In a more general context, this chapter will argue, her argument is even more widely applicable. The athlete may be a part of a transnational ‘athlete citizenship,’ but this status is mutually exclusive of other citizenship—the athlete is not a citizen subject but a carefully abjected individual who, because of their physical superiority, is typically cast in terms of an inherently violent ‘hegemonic masculinity.’

Criticism likewise extends the notion of hegemonic masculinity often to cases involving women's sports. Henne would be quick to remind us that although the more ‘intersectional conditions’ of the female athlete make such cases different, female athletes still ‘occupy a common suspect status’ (113).