Podcast transcript

Homosexuality in sport

Professor Russell Hoye

Audio

You can also listen to the interview [MP3 22.7MB].

iTunes

Visit this channel at La Trobe on iTunesU.

Transcript

Russell Hoye: Welcome to Sport Unpacked, a regular podcast that explores issues in sport and the views of researchers at La Trobe University. I'm Professor Russell Hoye, Director of La Trobe Sport, your host, and my guest today is David Lowden, Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry and Co-ordinator of the Undergraduate Sport Journalism Program here at La Trobe University. Our topic today is homosexuality in sport and we’re going to explore questions such as, why is homosexuality such a difficult topic for the media to cover, what is it about the culture and structure of sport, particularly male team sport, that seems to shun players who are same-sex-attracted, how does this affect gay players, and why is it so difficult for these players to declare their sexuality? Welcome David.
David Lowden: G’day Russ.
Russell Hoye: There are plenty of examples of homosexual or gay athletes in many individual sports. In tennis, we’ve had Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova. We’ve had golfers, Olympic diving medallist Matthew Mitcham, and Daniel Kowalski, in the swimming team for Australia. To what extent have gay athletes been open about their sexuality in team sports?
David Lowden: Hardly at all is the short answer, so in English Premier League football, in the National Football League in the United States, in the NBA and in the AFL, there have been only one or two cases and people who do come out, so to speak, usually do so after they’ve retired. In fact, Australian Rules Football is about 150 years old, 100 years old if you’re talking about the professional league, and we’ve never, ever had a same-sex-attracted player who’s open about their sexuality.
Russell Hoye: I’d like to explore some of the reasons why that might be the case. One possible reason is that declaring one’s sexuality might impact on an athlete’s career or ability to secure endorsement deals or sponsorship. Do you think that’s part of the equation?
David Lowden: I think that’s definitely part of the equation. I think it’s something that probably goes around the athlete’s head. Now I'm saying, probably, because my research is at a fairly early stage, so I haven’t got to the point of actually collecting data but in the reading that I’ve done, I think that’s certainly a consideration. There’ve also been unfortunate comments made by other professional sportspeople that would perhaps give that indication. I actually sense that the opposite might be true. You always go into research with an open mind but I actually sense that, when we do get to the point where we do have some openly gay footballers, for instance, in our competition, the Australian Football League, that it might be the opposite, that there might be sponsors who are willing to latch on and say, great, here’s somebody who is a representative of an inclusive game, or a game that’s open to all, and isn’t closed off, but certainly, historically I think that’s correct.
Russell Hoye: And what do you think some of the other reasons are that people are reluctant to declare their sexuality in a team sport environment?
David Lowden: In the team sport environment, the male team sport environment, because I think in female team sports there hasn’t been quite the same level and there are other issues, but not the same issue, so in the male team sport environment which is the area that I'm particularly interested in researching, I think the impact that disclosure would have on the team, I think if it was to happen today, and it was one individual, then there would be a lot of media attention, and that would have some impact. Now, again the anecdotal evidence is that most professional players in the Australian Football League would welcome and would be supportive of a same-sex-attracted player. We haven’t got to the stage of doing that research, but that’s what I hope to find out, but I think it’s certainly in their mind that if they were to be the first to disclose that they were same-sex-attracted, that it could have an impact on performance. Now, interestingly there are some research about people who do disclose that they’re same-sex-attracted, that their individual performance actually goes up, because living a lie, living in secret, actually has a detrimental effect, but in terms of the team performance, it is possible I suppose that the massive media attention that it would garner, would be detrimental to the team. At least in the short term.
Russell Hoye: The recent article from Jason Akermanis that was published in 2012, his message was really about discouraging gay footballers from disclosing their sexuality, it sort of raised the ire of groups such as the AFL Players’ Association. Why was that such a divisive statement, do you think?
David Lowden: Well, the irony of it was that the Players’ Association asked Jason to write it, so they were less than pleased with the outcome. It was a divisive statement because it ... I mean, I think Jason was actually right in some things, the issues that I’ve just mentioned. I think what he was right about was that it would have a massive media impact. It would be a complete circus if a same-sex-attracted player, who’s currently playing, came out, and I'm not overly in love with that term, but let’s use it for the sake of the audience, today, then I think he was right about the impact on the team, in terms of it being something that they would have to manage. Now it’s not to say that it couldn’t be managed. Where he came unstuck was this talk about being uncomfortable in the locker room, you know, and giving the impression that because you’re ... you know, you couldn’t have a shower in the same block as a bloke who’s same-sex-attracted, is absolute nonsense. And Jason, unfortunately this is his track record, is that he gets some things right but he gets some things horribly wrong. And so I guess in some ways it at least got the discussion happening, and there’s been a bit of ongoing discussion since the Akermanis article, so if the idea was to open up discussion, then I suppose at least from that point of view the article was a ... success is probably the wrong word, but at least a catalyst, but there were a lot of things that he said that were basically homophobic.
Russell Hoye: Okay. What’s some of the underlying fears that some gay footballers might have about disclosing their sexuality? Is it based on protecting their sense of identity, or some tensions about that?
David Lowden: There’s, again, sorry to keep saying this but I think it’s really important to just declare that I haven’t done any research so this is summation based on reading and reading personal accounts from professional sportspeople in other sports overseas, they are certainly concerned about the impact that it would have on the team, whether they would be accepted. I mean, it’s fine for a few players to say that they would accept, and I think, just talking to players, as I have, most players tell me they couldn’t care less, but it’s a big step to actually be the first one to test that theory out, and so in their mind, you know, going to work, as they do— the sporting place is their workplace— going to work and actually disclosing that to their team mates, is a massive step at the moment. I'm not a psychologist so I want to stop there and say that I'm looking at this from a sport management point of view, so I'm not trained to yet understand exactly why they might harbour those thoughts, but in terms of the reading I’ve done, they certainly do have concerns about whether they’d be accepted within their team and the wider community. And if you think about it, just yesterday I heard on the radio, the depiction of women as being the weaker sex in sport and that something that women favour, if a man was to do that, that would be an assault on his masculinity, and I think even with Michael Clark, the Australian cricket captain, we’ve seen a lot of cricket fans be quite negative towards him and I could never understand why. I must admit I don’t have a great detailed knowledge of cricket, so I thought I might have been missing something, but I actually think he was challenging the norms of masculinity and gay footballers, and there are gay footballers, they just live in silence at the moment, gay footballers I think fear how they’d be perceived and portrayed as something less than the norm, which is the alpha male, heterosexual Adonis that plays male team sport. If you think about, at the moment, society says that the heterosexual male who’s in magnificent physical shape, is kind of the king of the jungle, and anything less than that, be it women’s sport, or same-sex-attracted males, is an assault on that dominance if you like, and that’s what we’ve got to unpick as a society, not just in Australian Rules Football and not just in sport.
Russell Hoye: All right. You raised there the issue about the fan perception of gay footballers. Do you think football clubs in general are more fearful than they ought to be, given that fans generally might actually be more accepting of gay footballers than people actually think they might be, at the moment.
David Lowden: I think it’s probably the other way round. I think football clubs will probably be better able to be inclusive and assimilate a same-sex-attracted player than the fans. Unfortunately what we’ve seen with the gay marriage debate at the moment is that society just hasn’t quite got its head around same-sex-attracted people being just ... well Michael Kirby the former High Court judge puts it beautifully. He says that it’s just like left-handedness. Yes, we’re different, like a left-hander is different from right-handedness, and that we don’t actually want to be any different than that, and we just want to kind of be different but the same, if you like, and so I think, unfortunately this is one case, and I'm not a person who says that the AFL has to be the leader in society to change these societal norms, but I think in this particular case they’re going to be, because they’re pretty good at it, actually. They’ve done really well with racism. They’ve done quite well with respective responsibility towards women, and I think the AFL hasn’t quite got its head around how they’re going to tackle this issue but I think if the AFL, being such a popular game, can take a lead here, then I think that will help change the general fan’s perception. I do fear that if a player was same-sex-attracted and was the only one to be open about it, at the moment, that they would cop some abuse from over the fence. I don’t think that ... you know, it would be great if someone was willing to take that on, but what I actually think, is rather than focus on someone coming out of the closet, we’ve got to get rid of the closet. It’s actually up to us as a society to improve our behaviour as a collective and not put the pressure on one person to be the gay hero, to be the martyr if you like, to be the trailblazer. In fact that didn’t work. Ian Roberts was a trailblazer in the National Rugby League, and rather than open the floodgates, it probably bricked up the dam wall. We’ve had no one since.
Russell Hoye: Yeah, it’s a good point. Now, you’ve chosen a topic that’s obviously quite complex and you’re completing a PhD through the Centre for Sport and Social Impact here at La Trobe. Why did you choose to study that particular topic within that centre?
David Lowden: Well, that topic firstly. I’ve always been drawn to issues of fairness in sport. There’s quite a lot of talk now about cheating in sport. It’s an area that I'm interested in. I did my Masters on the use of medical records to report drug use by two AFL players and I just looked at whether or not that was a fair thing to do. So I'm kind of drawn to these issues anyway. I’ve always covered AFL football as part of my journalistic and television producing career, so there was partly a pragmatic approach, actually, and this will sound egotistical, but I actually thought I, my work background, gave me the ability to perhaps research this topic. I’ve got some contacts in the football field and I thought those contacts combined with my interest in fairness and inclusiveness in sport, ethics in sport, would marry up into this topic. Why the Centre for Sport and Social Impact? I could have gone down the route of gender studies but I really wanted to look at this from a sport management point of view. I always wonder whether to declare my own sexuality but I will do in my thesis, because a lot of researchers are gay, and they can take the gay activist perspective. And I think that’s appropriate. I don’t happen to be gay and so for me, I can’t get inside their shoes in that way, not in the same way. I certainly want to be able to speak to same-sex-attracted players and other people but for me, I wanted to know what it is about the structure of Australian Rules Football, as you raised before. Why do we have gay policemen? Why do we have gay soldiers who are open about their sexuality, but what, in Australian Rules Football, we can’t be open about it? Now, the players, you talk to a lot of players, and I’ve spoken to quite a lot of players just informally, and they just don’t care. The ones I speak to anyway. Now maybe they know that I'm doing this research and so they, you know, measure their response, but I really think that we’re at a tipping point here. I think we’re about to change the rules of the game if you like, to create a sporting analogy, so I think if we can focus on the structure of clubs, the structure of the competition, and then broaden out to, as I said before, to filtering that out to the attitudes of society, then going through the Centre for Sport and Social Impact was kind of the logical way for me to go to try to achieve, well, not achieve that end, but to make a contribution to achieving that end.
Russell Hoye: Now, I know it’s early days in your PhD study, but could you sort of give us a broad picture about what approach you will take in investigating such as sort of contentious topic.
David Lowden: Initially I was going to do unstructured interviews, so I wanted to ... I know one former AFL player who’s same-sex-attracted, who’s silent about it. I was fairly confident that I could get that person to speak anonymously, so I would not identify them. But I certainly wanted to speak to current players as well. But I had a conversation with a player who didn’t ... it was one of those conversations where we kind of both knew that there was another conversation going on. He was asking me about my research in a way that made me think he may be same-sex-attracted, or have a mate at the club who is, and has disclosed it to him, and it made me think about how these players have no idea what other players are thinking, and even though I might get on here and say that anecdotally I think they’ll be accepted, and I think the game’s moving forward, and you know, we’ve had IDAHO and we’ve had players be open about and coaches be open about the fact that they would support a same-sex-attracted player, nevertheless, as I said before it’s a massive step, it’s a big step to be the one that says, okay, I feel supported, I'm going to be open about it. So I’ve decided to, with the help I hope of the Players’ Association, have a survey of every player in the league. Now, it’ll be anonymous and I still have to work out how I actually undertake it, because I don’t want ... I want the data to be authentic, but I think it’s really important now to somehow have a conduit, a conversation between all the players and the players who are same-sex-attracted, and for them to, I hope, find out that, hey, you know what? Most of your colleagues don’t actually care. And so, that now, combined with unstructured interviews, will be the method of data, if you like, and then I'm still talking to my supervisor about how we, what the approach will be to that data, as to whether or not I take that view of, okay, here’s my theory. Does it match the data? Or, what did the data tell me? You know, that scientific approach. So, no, it’s really exciting actually. I'm really looking forward to ... hopefully this is data collection year and I'm really looking forward to finding out what people’s attitudes are.
Russell Hoye: Okay. You obviously mentioned one of the big hurdles about doing research in this particular field is the ... perhaps the social desirability of responses you might get from players, who say, yes, I'm all for other gay footballers being on my team, so I think the interviews are going to be quite useful in sort of counteracting that social desirability aren’t they?
David Lowden: Yes, although it’s a bit pot luck isn’t it? Because again, if people know why you’re interviewing, they’re inclined to perhaps give you the answers they think you want to hear, and so in my mind, and his might be just impossible, but in my mind, I would like to brief the players before they do the survey, to say I’d rather you were honest about being homophobic and there’s no trick here. You’re not going to be identified. No one’s going to know it was you. It would be better to have that, than have you know, 95% come back, oh yeah, we’re fine with it, and then, policy is written and then you know, somebody goes through a bad experience, so it’s better to know the truth. So it’s a good point. How the interviews will help, I guess, if gay players can tell me what they’re fearful of, that might really help match up what the data in the survey shows. And even in which order you do it. I suspect at the moment I want to survey first and then be able to take that to the players, but again, it’s something I’ll have to work out with my supervisor.
Russell Hoye: All right. It seems that the implications of research can be quite far-reaching in terms of changing the way that sporting clubs and fans approach or consider, gay footballers. What do you think you’re hoping to achieve by completing the PhD thesis? What outcomes do you think you might get from that?
David Lowden: Well, I want it to be more than a door stop. I want it to be a document that is an instructional document I guess, for the policy-makers. That’s about all. You know, as I said before, I'm not an expert in the field of psychology or other areas that might come to bear, even running a sport. So the people who do run sport can bring in these experts, but certainly I would like to be able to say, well, there’s a document that gives you a snapshot of what the entire playing community thinks now, and also a selection of players who are gay, who are not identified but who have given some personal accounts of what it’s like to turn up to work every day and basically be in fear. I mean, some of these players would be rocking up to work, looking over their shoulder, wondering, gee, does anyone know? Have I done something that gives me away? And I know, well, I don’t know for sure that happens in the AFL, but we know from other same-sex-attracted professional players in men’s team sport, that that’s how they lived. And it’s just a rubbish life actually. It’s just a really bad way to live, and it actually has health impacts, it’s massively stressful, it can lead to youth suicide, you know, outside of professional ranks. What I hope is that we can start the conversation and maybe get the AFL to a point where we do have same-sex-attracted players, where a same-sex-attracted bloke who’s good enough to be invited to the Brownlow, can bring his boyfriend, and people don’t bat an eyelid. Now, they’re going to bat an eyelid the first time. We all get that. But can we, as I said before, get rid of the closet? Can we make it so that actually it will be more a reflection on you as a media person, say, or somebody else, if you are making a big deal about it, rather than a reflection on the gay footballer.
Russell Hoye: Sure. It seems that there are a lot of imperatives for sporting clubs and coaches, to be cognisant of the importance of this issue because it obviously has wellbeing outcomes through individual players, but also clearly from a sport management perspective, impacts on performance. If players are continually stressed and in that stressful situation throughout their lives, obviously it can have a detrimental effect on their performance. Have you seen any evidence in the literature, or in your discussions with players, that this can lead to those sort of negative outcomes?
David Lowden: Not with the discussions with players yet, because they’ve been fairly informal chats, but certainly there’s been literature about performance, and that just the release, the relief that comes, having got it off your chest, and it’s been more centred on individual performance I have to say, but that’s because there hasn’t been much research on male team sport. There just hasn’t been that many players who come out, particularly while they’re playing. Now, Daniel Kowalski, you mentioned at the start of the interview, he was another one who came out at the end of his career. He didn’t feel, even though he was in an individual sport, he didn’t feel able to do it while he was competing. The Welsh rugby captain, same boat. There was an NBA player from England who played in the States for most of his career, same thing again. American soldiers, the list goes on. So there are performance issues for sure, and it would be amazing actually if, you know, one of your star players was same-sex-attracted, and could actually get better. Imagine if you could get 10, 15, 20% better performance, because they suddenly felt more relaxed and were able to just concentrate on being a great player. So I think you’re right. I think there are sport management issues. I think they’re probably secondary, and I know you think that too, but I think the wellbeing issue is just paramount, because it affects the wellbeing of so many other same-sex-attracted people, not just professional sportspeople, but all ... we’ve seen same-sex-attracted people starting to come out in the lower leagues now, so I think ... and that’s terrific, and I think if we can break down the barriers at the professional ranks, it’s just going to spill out into society on a wider level, and help so many people.
Russell Hoye: I certainly think your research will be central to sort of changing the mindset of people across society. So thank you very much David.
David Lowden: You’re welcome.
Russell Hoye: That’s it for today. My thanks to David Lowden, Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry and Co-ordinator of the Undergraduate Sport Journalism program here at La Trobe University. Thanks also to Matt Smith, from the Digital Media Team for his stellar production. You can also follow us on Twitter David Lowden @davelowden and me @russhoye. You can find a copy of this podcast on the La Trobe University website under the news tab and also at www.latrobe.edu.au/cssi.

News

Podcast transcript

Homosexuality in sport

Audio

iTunes

Transcript

Find an expert

Big FAT Ideas

RSS feeds

Connect

Study

Research

Library