High school athletics. Some laud the locker room as a place where adolescents and teenagers learn the values of hard work and perseverance, while academics criticize it as a site of conservative masculine values and homophobia. Well, now one academic finds reason for hope: Eric Anderson’s recent study in Gender & Society (April 2011) finds a marked shift toward a more inclusive and supportive version of masculinity where teammates are teammates, regardless of sexual-orientation.
Anderson replicates his own research from ten years prior in conducting interviews with gay male high school athletes on their experiences coming out. In his first study, the only athletes willing to be interviewed had been boys in non-contact sports (running, swimming, and tennis) who were also the top athletes on their team. For this select group, their athleticism counter-balanced the negative stigma of being gay, though even these stars feared bullying, harassment, and violence.
The 2010 sample was composed of players of varying skill and from an array of sports (even contact sports like football). They told Anderson they faced little discrimination from their peers, and many—including a gay soccer player who said, “Gay doesn’t mean gay anymore” —felt even the derogatory terms have lost much of their homophobic sting.
While there are some limitations to the study (the boys are primarily white and middle-class) Anderson’s work clearly suggests that times are changing. For younger generations being athletic and being gay are no longer mutually exclusive. Perhaps most indicative of change is the confusion some study subjects expressed as to why teammates would care about sexuality. As a young, openly gay, high school runner expresses, “I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. Why would it be?”
