Queering sports

It’s rare that I find myself scanning the sports section of any paper. But it was a different story when Friday’s New York Times ran an article about the “revolutionary” website, Outsports.com, a support site for gay athletes — out or not. This website is slowly changing the sexless, homophobic sports world.

Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler, the founders of the website, didn’t design the site to out athletes. Rather, Outsports intends to give a voice to gay athletes and to provide them with a community that was previously absent.

Andrew McIntosh, a gay lacrosse player at Oneonta College, calls the website “a venue for athletes who have come out, or who are closeted, to get to know others, to not feel alone.”

In the sports world, it has long been taboo to even consider being an openly queer person. Lets face it, sports and being gay don’t really mix.

Athletes are typically homophobic and uncomfortable with queerness because it challenges everything an athlete should be: strong, masculine, competitive, able to endure and break a sweat. Being queer has been deemed the antithesis to all these physical attributes. For gay men especially — whose stereotypical attributes have been considered flamboyant, effeminate and unathletic — it’s unheard of to be out in any sport.

But more and more athletes, professional and nonprofessional, have come out of the closet.

Today, there are the Gay Games, which are every four years like a gay equivalent to the Olympics. And in the 2008 Beijing games, 10 athletes were openly gay, including gold medalist diver Matthew Mitcham.

Another website, Athleteally.com, helps earn pledges to stop sexual and gender discrimination.

The site was pioneered by Division 1 college wrestling coach and athlete Hudson Taylor, who donned equality symbols during wrestling matches.

Sports must be sexless. Just look at the prevalence of testosterone, the often rubbing up against each other (has anyone watched wrestling?), the grunting and physical contortions that sports often demand of the body.

Athletes have to suppress any notion of sexuality that would taint the pure image of athleticism.

With sports, an athlete immerses himself and his identity into a particular practice. There is no time, or room, to think about sexuality.

There is a whole culture of camaraderie that also must not be threatened in sports — that camaraderie isn’t something to be “queered.”

But come on. When you see guys pat each other on the butts for good luck, whip each other half dressed in the locker rooms with towels and shower together, you can’t tell me there isn’t a tiny bit of queerness built right into the culture behind sportsmanship.

Since an athlete spends hours training, working on their bodies and getting fit, the physique of an athlete inherently becomes an object of attraction.

Sex has been removed from sports to give sports a “purist,” safe environment.

But there is no denying one’s sexuality; someone who identifies as openly gay should be able to feel free to be open and comfortable about his sexuality within his sport.

However, this is rarely the case. Hopefully with the better acknowledgments of sites like Outsports.com and Athleteally.com, sports will better develop an open, visible forum for gay athletes in the sports world.
 
­— mfiandt@indiana.edu