Avancée en âge/études, et le poids des groupes de pairs dans l’incitation et la régulation des ivresses estudiantines

Abstract

This article explores what appears as a double gender’s transgression: the “third half-time” among women rugby players. It is transgression because rugby is socially constructed as a “male” sport, but also because alcoholization, especially massive alcoholization, is considered as a virile practice. A series of ethnographic observations were carried out and semi-structured interviews were conducted with players (n=10) from an amateur league-level women’s rugby team in Western France. The paper focuses on the behaviours of these women, their alcohol use in the different spaces of this party. If grotesque dimension is important, suspending seemingly the standards, norms remain presents, under a new configuration. The results show the situated character of the deviance (in the interactionnist sense), according to spaces and protagonists, and especially the gender of the protagonists (especially men). Women have a specific relationship with alcohol: although drinking is deemed necessary to demonstrate their inclusion in so-called “rugby culture”, it is, nevertheless, far from being completely unrestrained. On the contrary, some of its effects are a construct of the group itself. In this sense, drinking in the third half-time poses a dilemma for women: how to establish themselves as women rugby players whilst remaining women at the same time.