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发帖数: 2153 | 1 So spare a crocodile tear for Russell and Lauryn Mark, members of Australia
’s shooting team, who are not allowed to share a room, despite being
husband and wife. Reacting to this hardly unpredictable news on arrival in
London, Russell Mark complained, ‘There are tons of gay couples on the
Olympic team who will be rooming together. So we are being discriminated
against because we are heterosexual.’
Of course, while gender segregation does not wipe out opportunities for
heterosexual adventures, it might well improve the opportunities for same-
sex ones. There is no reason to suppose that such a huge gathering of
physically active, healthy, young people will be some kind of Festival of
Chastity.
The gay dating website Grindr crashed within minutes of the first wave of
athletes arriving at Heathrow. The site was down for twenty-four hours. One
theory is that arriving gay athletes had gone online as soon as they stepped
off their planes; another is that every gay man in London was getting into
the Olympic spirit by trying to link up with an overseas athlete.
That there are ‘tons of gay couples’ on the Australian team is good news
for those of us of a progressive frame of mind. But what is sad is the low
numbers of out-gay athletes, not only in this team but at the games as a
whole. According to the website www.outsports.com, of the 12,000 athletes at
London 2012, only twenty are openly gay. There are said to be only two
openly gay paralympians.
Of the twenty in the main games, only three are men: the Dutch equestrian
Edward Gal, the British equestrian Carl Hester and the Australian diver
Matthew Mitcham. The lesbian women come from a range of sports: field hockey
, basketball, beach volleyball, soccer, cycling, fencing, equestrianism,
triathlon, handball and tennis. But, with the exception of the one woman in
the triathlon, none of them is a participant in the blue riband track and
field events. The pressures on athletes to remain in the closet are still
extreme.
Think of the types—or stereotypes—of the masculine girl (‘tomboy’) and
feminine boy (‘sissie’). They may experience school sports in very
different ways. For the girl, sports may represent a welcome opportunity for
self-expression, whereas to the boy the sports field and locker room may
seem little more than officially sanctioned arenas for yet further bullying
and humiliation. A route to success for one; for the other a route to
failure.
This may go part of the way—but only part—to explaining the gender
imbalance in lists of lesbian and gay sports people. In tennis, to take an
obvious example, it is far easier to name great lesbian players of the game
—with Martina Navratilova at the top of the list—than (any?) gay men. It
could be that male numbers are proportionately no lower than female, but it
appears that sportsmen are under greater pressure to maintain their
watertight performances of machismo, involving at least a tacit implication
of heterosexuality. Female strength and agility do not carry the same
associations. This is a massive area for discussion and further research; I
don’t pretend to be addressing it in any depth.
At school, the British diver Tom Daley was continually bullied with the
unimaginative taunt ‘Diving Boy’—as if to be exceptionally good at
something were a matter for embarrassment or shame (what a comment on the
values instilled by the UK educational system!). Perhaps this experience
helped build his confidence, both in the pool and beyond it.
It was a sign of Daley’s maturity at the Beijing games, when he was only
fourteen, that he was completely relaxed in the company of the openly gay
Matthew Mitcham. They became friends. On the other hand, it was a sign of
the immaturity of corporate institutions that, even after winning gold in
Beijing, Mitcham struggled to secure the levels of sponsorship that his
straight counterparts attracted. He was eventually taken up by the telecoms
group Telstra, and then by Funky Trunks, for whom he is a ‘swimwear
ambassador.’
Gregory Woods is Professor of Gay & Lesbian Studies, School of Arts and
Humanities, Nottingham Trent University. Further information about his work
can be found at www.gregorywoods.co.uk. |
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