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High performance athletes more reticent about their homosexuality
from LE MONDE | Dec.25.2003 | 14h32
For top male athletes, being gay is still taboo since it raises questions about male virility, a recent study finds.
Two young men leaning on one another, naked bodies, sculpted muscles, their genitals hidden by white foam. This picture could well be on the cover of Têtu, a gay magazine. But it’s the October photo for the 2004 Stade Français calendar. This year, the “Rugbymen” of Paris invited rival club members (from Toulouse and Perpignan), as well as star soccer players from nearby Paris-Saint-Germain, a judo player and a wrestler, to pose for the photo with them.
“We take a playful approach,” explained Max Guazzini who heads both the Parisian rugby club and NRJ Radio. “In my entire 10 years of playing rugby, I’ve never seen or met any gay players in this sport. It’s in the realm of fantasy in contact sports”.
In Le Sport en question, a recent collective work published by Édition Chiron, researchers devoted a lengthy chapter to the theme of homosexuality in high perfomance sport. They observe that nowadays there are male politicians who have come out, as have tennis stars Martina Navratilova and Amélie Mauresmo. There are also female handball players and judo athletes who have openly admitted their sexual preference for women. Yet it’s rare for male athletes to openly acknowledge their homosexuality, a famous exception being four-time Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis, who is also a noted gay and lesbian rights activist.
Anne Saouter, associate member of the Institut d’ethnologie méditerranéenne et comparative (IDEMEE - Mediterranean Anthropological Institute for Comparative Studies) in Aix-en-Provence, who has done several years of ethnographic studies among rugby players, asks the question: “So why, after greeting each other with hugs and kisses, did they feel they had to set the record straight by telling me, Hey, don’t worry, we’re not fags!”.
Laboratory researcher Dominiue Bodin, of the Laboratoire didactique, expertise et technologies des activités physiques et sportives in Rennes, and Eric Debarbieux, Director of the Laboratoire de recherches socials en education et formation laboratory (Larsef) in Bordeaux, add another query: “Can athletic heroes be fags?”
Not in the public perception, say the researchers: “There’s a simple view in sports that equates jocks with strength, masculinity, virility, heterosexuality. Fearing they will lose their status as hero, which they’ve worked so hard to achieve, gay athletes would rather conceal their homosexuality. “Coming out of the closet” seems inconceivable to them.
“At school I was at best treated as a girl and at worst as a dirty fag. (…) my parents put me in sports to toughen me up and make a man of me! Letting everyone know I was homosexual seemed impossible,” said one gay athlete (among the dozen or so interviewed), who chose to remain anonymous.
Though inconceivable in male sports, homosexuality on the contrary is seen as a factor that explains women’s athleticism. “To conceive of homosexual athletes reflects a kind of thinking that views sport in its traditional sense: it’s all about men, or about women who are no longer women,” writes Anne Saouter. The example of tennis player Amélie Mauresmo is significant in this context. The way she plays, hitting the ball almost as hard as the men do, then the fact that she quickly went public with her homosexuality, served to reassure some men that, yes, here’s the explanation … ”.
THROWING PEOPLE OFF THE SCENT
Mauresmo’s “coming out” during the Australian Internationals in 1999 also served to reassure some women too. Swiss player Martina Hingis who had just beaten her in the finals even went so far as to remark that the French player’s performance could be explained by the fact that she was “half man”.
Unlike Martina Navratilova a few years earlier, Amélie Mauresmo didn’t lose her sponsors once her homosexuality was known. Nonetheless, researchers Dominique Bodin and Eric Debarbieux feel that “people’s reluctance to come out stems from the way athletes and sports are marketed”.
In their interviews, some gay male athletes related how their sponsors recommended they throw people off the scent by being seen out in public with women. Others, even if they weren’t so advised, still felt it best to remain secretive for fear of losing their contracts.
The researchers concluded that: “In coming out, male athletes are taking a risk and may feel blacklisted, trapped in their gender identity. While not in conflict with their collective identity or with gay activist movements, these athletes prefer to keep quiet and maintain their privacy so as to avoid jeopardizing their careers”.
Stéphane Menard
Le Sport en question (Pascale Durat and Dominque Bodin), Ed. Chiron, 2003, 256 p. 18, 50€
Gay and Lesbian Games threatened
Gays and lesbians also have their own Games. Founded in 1982 by American decathlete Tom Waddell, the Gay Games, after the fashion of the Olympic games, take place every four years and combine athletic and cultural events. San Francisco, the world capital of the homosexual community, hosted the first two editions.
The 7th Gay Games were slated to take place in Montreal in 2006 but talks between the organizing committee and the International Federation of Gay and Lesbian Games broke down last November. A new host city for the Games may be named in 2004.
There’s a pall hanging over the Games. The first three editions recorded major deficits. The 2002 Games in Sydney brought together more than 11,000 athletes from 70 different countries, participating in some 30 disciplines (from soccer to billiards to aerobics), but ended with a cumulative deficit of $2 million AUS (1.2 million Euros). In 1994, in New York, the organizing committee had to declare bankruptcy.
from Le Monde, Dec. 26, 2003
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