How Can Female Sports Fans Legitimize Themselves Under Male Domination?A Study Based on the Weibo Super Topics of "National Table Tennis"

In male-dominated sports spaces, female sports fans consistently face stigmatization challenges regarding their identity and practices. This study focuses on the Weibo Super Topics of Chinese National Table Tennis ("Guoping") athletes to explore how female fans legitimize their identity and actions. The findings, on the resource level, reveal that strategies like adaptation, boundary-drawing and performance are adopted to navigate muscular sports culture. On the process level, narrative translation, moralization and the strengthened identity construction are used to link individual behaviors to societal values; while on the cognitive dimension, spillover effects and visibility labor are leveraged to broaden social recognition. The study also indicates that in the Chinese context, female sports fans can only seek recognition and gain legitimacy partially under the structural constraints of "state-market-society".