The homosexual athelete in a male-dominated institution

Reading this story on the LGBT blog was very inspiring to me personally. Coming from a sporting background and having played sports all my life, the pressure around sport to succeed and fit the’ ideal male athlete role’ is extremely prevalent and easily viewable. Sport as a male preserve definitely comes into play here. The male athlete is seen as extremely heterosexual; not feeling pain, not complaining, and not being a ‘sissy’ or acting like a ‘girl’. I think there’s definitely a negative stereotype when it comes to gay men as well. The cultural assumption is that these men are very ‘hyper-feminine’ and being able to associate with the female gender better than the male gender. This blog is a great view into sport of how an athlete overcame cultural and sport boundaries. "Before I came out, I feared that I would be hated for who I am – all friendships would be gone, family would no longer love me, and all the stereotypes would come true," Jaime said. "I basically played along with my friends, pretending that I was straight." When he decided to come out, the responses from his teammates were what really surprised me. “You? Really” one athlete stated, which makes me realize even more that sport as a male preserve isn’t always the case. A sport like wrestling is even more masculine in my opinion, solely based upon the fact that the grappling and moves associated with the sport could be grounds for heterosexual athletes being uncomfortable with competing with a homosexual opponent. This also leads me to touch on the matrix of domination. Jaime didn’t have any control over how others viewed him, which made it difficult at first for him to come out. His story is unique though, because instead of seeing sport as a hyper-masculine dominated institution, he used it as his stepping stone to come out. At first he told a few players and coaches, then with their encouragement he became more confident and was able have the courage to tell others outside the team. His coach (who wrote this article) became his role model and mentor, encouraging and pushing him to be himself. It just goes to show that regardless of your sexual orientation, there are people breaking the traditional ideas of men in sport.