Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas should certainly be applauded for his courage in publicly `coming out of the closet` recently, as should referee Nigel Owens. Many commentators have been at pains to point out that it is time for the sporting world to stop `living in the 1950`s ` and shrug its muscular, manly shoulders with a nonchalant air of acceptance. Apparently any hardened sportsman who feels uncomfortable about a fellow athlete admitting to being homosexual deserves to be castigated for being a homophobic Neanderthal. However, anyone who promotes this simplistic view is fundamentally failing to understand the emotional complexities of the heterosexual male athlete.
Athletes such as John Amaechi (the former basketball player) and Gareth Thomas wait many years before `coming out`. Some, never admit to their sexual orientation, even after retirement.
Why is this? On a personal level, their close friends and family will have been accepting and offered unqualified support. The foolish banter of the occasional bigot is surely of no great significance to men who have achieved so much? So what is the problem?
At its purest level, male sport is about homocentric bonding. In other words, it is about people of the same gender getting together within a team environment. This links back to primitive times when our forefathers would put their lives on the line (as a team) to ensure the survival of the tribe. To hunt with your fellows involved placing total trust in those around you. Without their committed, unrelenting support the group would fail and the consequences, for the whole tribe, would have been dire indeed. Men would risk their very lives for eachother and the eventual success of the group. Consequently a very powerful bond would be formed between these male individuals; an intimacy which (while stopping short of a sexual commitment) could be described as love.
These primitive instincts remain inside us all. Within the committed `team player` it is particularly strong. Successful sports` teams thrive on male bonding. Heterosexual males display enormous affection for eachother through a whole range of physical gestures that confirm the unity of the group. The more aggressive and physical the sport, the more demonstrative the individuals become in their expressions of affection for their teammates.
However, most do not regard the closeness of the team bond as homoerotic. As a result, when it is revealed that a member of their intimate society is gay, some of the `hunters`may become less confident about expressing their feelings for them through macho physicality. When looked at from a liberal, 21st Century viewpoint these feelings can seem absurd. However, this is to misunderstand the context.
Could it be that instinctive sportsmen such as Amaechi and Thomas subconsciously felt that the unity (not to mention the continuing success) of their respective teams could have been threatened if they had `come out` earlier?
We live (thankfully) in a far more enlightened society these days. We happily accept a range of lifestyles. However, the recent revelations by Gareth Thomas and the consequent articles written in our newspapers, help to bring into focus the emotional complexities of a homocentric team environment. It is too easy to dismiss the defensive views of some sportsmen as "the rantings of a bunch of homophobes." What we have here is an opportunity to explore the fascinating group dynamics at play when a team of males bond together in search of sporting excellence.
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Well, since you asked me to comment:
ReplyDeleteYou make many valid points, sport has been homoerotic since Homer and that aspect of bonding is a fragile and well-protected heterosexual domain. It is because of the certainty of heterosexuality that so many straight men in sports, armed services, fraternities and stag parties can behave... well, so gay.
I didn't feel coming out would have "hurt unity," my teammates, like Gareth, knew I was gay, but none of them wanted to be an advocate, if challenged publicly, all I could expect was non-committal language as I saw when I did come out.
What I did know was that as an average player - not a superstar like Gareth - and living in America, not Wales, it was legal to fire me for being gay and I didn't think all the millions of good decisions that got me to the top should be sacrificed for something I never got a choice in deciding. The LGBT community doesn't need any more martyrs.
I think the assertion that we live in a "far more enlightened society" is only partly true, maybe not even that. Many people rank sexuality with all individual differences - interesting at first, then just part of the whole - gestalt-style. But many are still bigots at heart - more sophisticated for sure - they know who can be made fun of in plain language and who needs code to insult.
Sadly, LGBT people fall in the former category with "fag" or "gay" being the pejorative of choice in schools across Europe and the US. Many countries have laws actively discriminating, in Europe and the US I mean - not just Uganda.
The problem with Sport is that it simply isn't that enlightened, it is administered, owned, sponsored and televised all too often by dinosaurs: old, straight, white, conservative 'blazerati' who cling to the status quo as they do to their power, knowing, above all things, that the two are co-dependent.
Athletes stay closeted while active; or like Gareth and myself, come out at the twilight of their career or later, not because we are cowards, but because had I come out at 14 - you would never have heard of me.
I would never have become Britain's first NBA player, never made the basket that got me into the hall of fame and 2,500 young people per week would NOT be playing in the centre I built in Manchester.
There are enough bigots in power in sport to stop players- unless outed - from coming out because a gay boy in football, rugby, or most male team sports is far less likely to become the next Gareth Thomas.
The coaches, administration and owners of sport struggle to handle the idea of women in their board rooms and black people coaching their teams, never mind a gay person on their pitch. It is not the comments of unenlightened peers or ignorant fans I feared most, it was the actions of coaches and owners that I know from experience amount to constructive dismissal.
Anyway...a penny's worth of thoughts...