I personally did not know of any openly gay athletes at my high school or athletes that I competed against. I would like to hope that an athlete who chooses to come out would get support from his or her team at the very least. The reason that I do not think high school would be the right time for an athlete to come out is, because teens at that age are closed minded and are only comfortable with people that are similar to them. Which is why I believe that a high school athlete that is openly gay will be ridiculed everyday until he or she leaves for college. Gay males on college teams would change the atmosphere of the locker room. A men's locker room has a lot jokes that degard using gay slurs. On team sports, that athlete would be seen as the scape goat for when things go bad for the team. If everything goes well for the time that athlete is enrolled then I feel as though there will not be as big a problem as some people will make it out to be. In individual sports the athlete will be judged on performance too. This time if the athlete does not perform well people will point that it is, because the athlete is gay. I guess the point I am getting at is that there would be a larger support group for athletes in team sports and a smaller support group in individual sports.
With the results to the gear magazine poll, I think that every team in the three sports would have responses to each question. While their answers may not be what happens they will say what they would like to see happen. From a video clip shown in class one of the athletes went back for a reunion with his teammates and was greated with a warm welcome. To me that sounds like society says it is better to be an average person who is gay rather than an athlete who is gay. I feel as though today more people would be more ok with an openly gay athlete, because of the times. More people are opened minded today than 20-30 years ago. The younger generation accept being a something that takes part in society, where as the older generations have lived with the belief that you should not be openly gay no matter who are in the world. With the younger generation beginning to take leadership roles throughout society more organizations will begin to not let someone being gay put a damper on work based performance by that person.
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If things have changed in society, as you say, then why is it that in male team sports there is still no openly gay athlete in the U.S.? Even when David Kopay and Esera Tuaolo spoke about this in the video, Tuaolo said he thought the worst thing you could say about a male athlete was that he was gay. It does not seem to me that the changing societal views are reflected in sport.
ReplyDeleteI feel that it has yet to change, because the athletes that are still playing are from an older generation. They are the leaders of the team, because everyone looks up to them they will have the same beliefs. I feel that once the younger generation (Rookies) become the leaders of teams and the older players are gone maybe just maybe you might see an openly gay athlete in sports.
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