Welcome to this site about gay and lesbian participation in sport.

The opinions expressed in these pages are those of the author. Feel free to disagree with me.

Gay invisibility in sport

There are a lot of cultural myths and prejudices about sport and sexuality. Sports are often promoted as if they were the exclusive province of heterosexual men while women are frequently considered to have value in sport only as sex appeal. And gay men and lesbians don't exist in sport. At least, that's the impression we get from much of the media. 

To quote from Tom & TJ's website  "When it is possible to keep Gay and Lesbian out of the history books, it is done. When their accomplishments cannot be overlooked, their sexual orientation is edited out."

So there are lots of examples of gay and lesbian people involved in sport at this site, to remind you that the TV and papers don't tell us the whole story.

Many young gay men choose to avoid sports because much of men's sport has an aggressively heterosexual culture that is at worst threatening and at best unwelcoming. Some have argued that gay men tend more towards the solitary sports (eg diving, track) rather than team sports like football, because they  feel estranged from the heterosexualised rituals and presumptions of many team sports. An alternative view suggests that gay men in team sports are simply much more closeted - that is, they tend to "pass" as straight.

Whatever the truth, gay men and lesbians are, and always have been, actively involved in sport. Mostly we have not been gay-identified, but even in the elite sports ranks there are "out" gay men and women, though still far too few of them. As with any minority group, we need role models and heroes to remind us of what is possible,  and to combat the destructive anti-gay propaganda being fed to our young people by hate-mongerers.

To quote international body-building champion Bob Paris (interviewed by Jim Provenzano in 1998):

 "I think for a lot of us, we closed out the possibility because of that queer element in our early lives and in the myth we grew up with, that said 'You can't do this, You can't do that'.  ... People discovering their athleticism later in life is a wonderful thing, especially if they feel that outlet was denied to them."

In addition to participation in mainstream sports, in recent years many of us have elected to organise our own sporting clubs and teams, and to participate as openly gay athletes. The International Gay Games held every four years is host to many of those teams, and Gay  Games is one of the largest sporting events on the planet. 

Words cannot adequately describe the emotions I felt as 14,000 lesbian and gay athletes marched into the Amsterdam Arena in front of a crowd of 40,000 people at Gay Games V in August 1998. We did it again in 2002 in Sydney, and we'll do it again in Montreal in 2006.

It was not always thus. Always remember those who "kicked down the doors" of bigotry and discrimination by being "out " in the days when it was not so safe and there was little if any support. Some of those pioneers paid a heavy price for their honesty, and a few paid the ultimate price.

At this web site, you can explore links to other web sites dealing with gay and lesbian sports issues, clubs and identities, and profiles of some leading lesbian and gay athletes.

There is also a feature on combat sports such as boxing, kickboxing and martial arts. Why combat sports? Many gay men have been conned into believing that combat sports like boxing are somehow at odds with being gay - which is what the dominant culture tends to teach. Likewise, women have been socialised to believe that combat sports are "unfeminine" and therefore inappropriate for women. In many cases we have uncritically accepted this cultural propaganda, and retreated from combat sports, labelling them as barbaric and violent. Yet those of us who have tried combat sports have frequently come to love them with a passion.  

Because of the demands on my time I have not updated this site for a couple of years. I have decided to leave the content in place for information purposes, but please be aware that some of the material is outdated.

PS 24 August 2008. But I just had to add in a profile for Aussie diver Matthew Mitcham, who won a stunning gold medal in Beijing this weekend.

Tony Whelan
Canberra, Australia

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