What perce of womena athleats are gay
A story in the Globe and Mail yesterday bemoans the fact that only 10 Olympic athletes are openly gay in a public enough way to be counted by the website Outsports.com (don’t question me about their methods–not much on that over there). This includes nine lesbians and one same-sex attracted man, and for whatever reason does not enumerate one bisexual woman.
Given that there are about 10,000 athletes, the story reasons, ten gay athletes is so small that many more athletes must be gay and closeted…but how many? They venture a guess:
Outsports said this must be way short of the real figure and argued that a more accurate estimate could even reach 1,000.
Hmmmm…this seems very high to me. The Outsports people are basing this estimate on shaky premises.
The first premise:
Researchers such as Eric Anderson of the University of Bath in England (and a longtime Outsports contributor) say that the percentage of gays in sports mirrors the percentage in the entire population (estimated at between 2% and 10%).
A quick check of Anderson’s CV doesn’t signal that he’s published anything on this topic, and I don’t know why we’d assume that this would be
As a white homosexual athlete, sports enthusiast and sociologist, I have forever searched for stories about queer women who earned their livelihood playing sports.
Stories shared in Lois Browne’s non-fiction novel, The Girls of Summer (1992) and the Hollywood clip, A League of Their Own (1992), make scant refer of lesbian ballplayers.
There are some tales of bold souls who scaled cis-sexist and heteronormative barriers to reach out in sporting worlds: Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Amélie Mauresmo in tennis; Patty Sheehan, Rosie Jones and Alena Pointed in golf; Sheryl Swoopes, Sue Avian and Brittney Griner in basketball; and Abby Wambach, Erin McLeod, and Megan Rapinoe in soccer. Some of these women, like Swoopes and Griner, also dealt with racist barriers.
So, when Netflix released the documentary A Secret Love last year, I was thrilled that some of the little known history of gay women and sports was revealed. The production is a poignant portrait of a 71-year lesbian association between Terry Donahue, an infielder-turned-catcher with the Peoria Redwings of the AAGPBL, and her significant other, Pat Henschel.
Terry and Pat were two courageous women from the Canadian Prairies w
By age 14, many girls are dropping out of sports at two times the rate of boys.1Through more than 25 years of research, the Women’s Sports Foundation has identified key factors which contribute to this alarming statistic. Read on to learn more about how these factors influence girls’ sport experiences and why they need to stay in the game.
1. Why they drop out:
Lack of access. Girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play tall school sports than boys have. Lack of physical learning in schools and limited opportunities to play sports in both high university and college imply girls have to look elsewhere for sports –which may not exist or may cost more money. Often there is an additional lack of access to adequate playing facilities near their homes that makes it more complex for girls to engage in sports.
Why they need to stay in:
Through sports, girls learn essential life skills such as teamwork, management and confidence.
2. Why they drop out:
Safety and transportation issues. Sports require a place to participate – and for many girls, especially in dense urban environments, that means traveling to facilities through unsafe neighborhoods or lacking any means to g
It’s not just the football pitch we thrive on
BY PHOEBE IRIS, IMAGE BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The landscape of women’s sports is changing. The highest league of women’s football in England, Women’s Super League, experienced a729% growth in attendance between 2017 and 2022. It’s predicted that by the end of the competition, a record-breaking two billion people will tune in to the 2023 Women’s World Cup which is being hailed as ‘the gayest society cup ever’.
As women’s football gains mainstream success, we are seeing an increasing number of athletes opening up about their sexuality, including four of the England players currently competing in Australia and Recent Zealand.
And the normalisation of queer people in sports isn’t limited to football, LGBTQIA athletes are thriving in all different areas of sport. Here are three more sports where queer women are killing it.
Rugby
2023 was a tape year for women’s rugby with 58,498 people turning up to watch England’s “Red Roses” take place the Women’s Six Nations trophy for the fifth year in a row.
Two notable LGBTQIA players are power couple Holly Aitchison, 25, and Hannah Botterman, 24. The pair first met
Known homosexual Megan Rapinoe after the U.S. World Cup victory on Sunday. Maja Hitij/Getty Images
There's a couple of major differences between women's soccer and men's soccer. One: The U.S. women are excellent at it. Two, women's soccer is a hell of a lot gayer.
Yesterday, "content producer" Alex Binley from ITV News published an article about why, exactly, so many dykes excel at this sport. It's a wonderful question. By Binley's enumerate, there were at least 41 openly gay players or coaches during the Women's World Cup this year. The last Men's Word Cup, in contrast, had a whopping zero. So, what gives?
According to Binley, this is largely due to homophobia. She says that men's soccer, especially outside of the U.S., is chock packed of homophobes (as adequately as sexists and racists) who would not welcome openly gay male players in the sport. Binley spoke with a number of academics, gay soccer fans, and former players, and she writes they all agreed that the main factor is the "the stigma historically attached to homosexuality."
It's hard to argue with that. Outside of the U.S., Canada, and a few other countries, soccer is both the most popular and the butchest sport on the block. Games t