'Ovary Motional': Constructing Gender and Identity in Roller Derby Names

The present work is concerned with roller derby, long considered a socially transgressive sport. It began with sports promoter Leo Seltzer’s marathon on roller skates, which took place in Chicago, Illinois in 1935 (Gieseler, 2014). Seltzer sought ways to make his marathon less repetitive than the participants simply doing laps, and began to add elements of both show business and contact sport, which drew in large crowds. In a 1971 interview with the New York Times, Seltzer described the basic appeal of roller derby as ‘noise, colour, body contact’ (Harlan, 2019, p.1).