Today in class we talked about how whether or not gay men would be accepted if they came out during their playing careers. No professional male athlete has ever come out during their career. We talked about the study that asked each of the major sports whether or not a player would be accepted by his team mates and the fans. It also asked them to estimate the number of people they thought was gay in their league.
In my opinion, I believe that players will not be accepted if they do come out during their career. In our society people that come out that do not play sports are not even accepted, so how is a guy that plays sports with other men going to be accepted? The main reason that they will not be accepted is because of the reason that we talked about in class and that is if guys know that someone in that locker room is gay that will not feel comfortable. That will cause tension in the locker room and it could hurt the team. Even thought this is not right, this is the way our society is. It would take one of the top athletes in any of the major sports to come out before it would be acceptable to be gay and play a professional sport.
We talked about how it was said that a athlete who beat his wife or got caught with drugs is not as bad as being called gay. I agree with that statement because of what we have seen in recent years with some players. Ray Lewis was accused of murder and most people do not even remember that he was. One of people in the class named Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez who used steroids. There are many more athletes that have been accused of serious crimes but as long as they are helping their team win they will be accepted by fans and teammates.
Maybe someday a person that is gay can come out and be accepted by society.
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I agree with you on this topic. I don't think that our current society would be very accepting of an openly gay athlete. In class someone mentioned that he thought it would be acceptable for a gay male to "come out" if he was still winning games. I disagree though. I think that winning games might help ease the blow, but fans and teammates alike would still be very judgmental. I think that it would also change the team dynamic. Most guys hate to think that they are being looked at sexually by other guys, which they would think more likely with a gay male on the team. This is definitely something our society needs to work on.
ReplyDeleteThat first sentence needs to be qualified--i.e., no gay male, in team sports, in the U.S. has come out during his playing career. There are gay males in other countries (Ian Roberts, a rugby player in Australia; and Justin Fashanu, a soccer player in England, both came out during their playing careers). In addition, several gay male athletes in the U.S. came out during their careers in individual sports (e.g., Greg Louganis, Olympic diver; and Rudy Galindo, Olympic figure skater).
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