[Volcana]

It is because being Lesbian was never really socially oppressed but more socially encourage, even in old times woman to woman sexual encounters are found attractive and flaunted as man to man relations are found sick and disgusting. So there is no real comparison. Being Lesbian is nothing like being gay.

A new candidate 'Truly Uninformed Post of the Year'.

Tell it to all the women who killed, raped and who's families disowned them when they found out they were gay.

 

[Volcana]

Really thinking about the original question, I think it's really two unrelated questions.

Why do tennis fans accept lesbian tennis players? The answer is, largely, they don't. Women's tennis isn't nearly as popular as men's tennis, in part because a lot of people think all female athletes are gay, and it turns them off.

Why are no ATP players out of the closet? Maybe they are. At home. Matt Bomer (White Collar) managed to have a successful acting career, and three kids with his partner, without having a press conference to announce he was gay. He was famos. He was out. To the people he actually interacted with. If some player is out in his home town, why not tell the whole world? Wrong question. WHY tell the whole world?

Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi got together and chose to keep it private til they announced they'd gotten married. Some people like to keep their private life private.

 

[dencod16]

A new candidate 'Truly Uninformed Post of the Year'.

Tell it to all the women who killed, raped and who's families disowned them when they found out they were gay.

Can you actually tell me that it being sexually attracted to a woman during those times were as punished as gay men. They can still fulfill their desires sexually, as men would be butchered by just a moment of seeing it. This is not about family acceptance it is social acceptance. There is a huge difference.

 

[Expat]

LOL you said grand slam semis or finals, there is only 4 people that you can put an or to that is Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray.

del potro tsonga berdych all have more than one slam semi and at least one final.
ferrer also has multiple semis

 

[n1_and_uh_noone]

LOL you said grand slam semis or finals, there is only 4 people that you can put an or to that is Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray.

It is obvious he means Nadal. There has been endless speculation about it, and this is no exception. Pretty sure the 'proof' will be something quite jaw-droppingly inane, like something he said, or a look he gave in a pic or something.

 

[Pat Bateman]

Jim Courier's WIFE

Jim looks thrilled to be with her. I haven't seen body language like that since Serena met Shinto.

 

[LoveFifteen]

He's clearly talking about Nadal. A British female journalist, famous for her hatchet job interviews, insinuated Nadal was gay because he didn't seem to speak about Xisca with much passion. As much as I'd love for Nadal to be gay, I really doubt that he is. He's insanely famous. Something more definitive would have leaked by now.

 

[Navratil]

I agree with this.

It's crazy to use percentages to say that 1 in 10 men are gay so 10% of all male tennis players must be gay. It figures that if more than 95% of men who are fans of the eurovision song contest are gay ,so in other walks of life it might be less than 0.1% .

But getting to the point, does anybody really care ? These people play tennis and who cares if some might be gay or not ?

I doubt that. There are more lesbian tennis players as there are more gay ballet dancers

No prejudic - that's just the way it is

 

[Flavia P.]

Actually, ballet is pretty straight. Well, straight with quotation marks, since I've had a lot of the dancers and most tend to be very socially liberal, but there aren't a major amount of openly gay men in ballet.

There are ATP players who sleep with the same-sex and it's more than people would believe. Don't believe what you see on TV. Bearding isn't just a Hollywood thing. At the same time, most of these guys do NOT identify as gay and will not, for whatever personal reasons they have. And I'm not going to name names here.

To answer this thread-----sports is a hyper-masculine culture and hyper-masculine straight men don't accept homosexuality by and large, male or female. So you're not gonna see many athletes in any sports coming out, and you're not going to see many gay athletes at elite levels period, although we are seeing more do so. Things are beginning to break through, slowly. But there are SO many incidents of anti-gay abuse coming from the mouths of athletes, and that destroys the psyche of closeted non-straight athletes, and even the pro-gay straight athletes. Most of THEM are intimidated too and it hurts them, because some of them know what's what and they can't just be forthright. Sports culture is definitely, without doubt, among the top 2-3 most heteronormative and misogynistic cultures worldwide.

 

[Flavia P.]

We need people to accept themselves and not need someone to make them feel affirmed and accepted. Having heroes is amazing, but if you don't like who you are, then it doesn't matter. Personal acceptance, family acceptance, community acceptance are the three keys. That's what many on both sides fail to grasp.

 

[chuvack]

Given that half this board is gay males, I think that puts the notion that gay men are inclined away from the sports at rest.

What is true is that the macho heterosexist culture of professional sport makes it difficult for gay men who are into sports to pursue sports as a career and maintain their sanity (and most learned this probably via the high school gym culture), and those who do do not choose to come out. I think it's also more likely for gay men to pursue individual sports rather than team sports for a similar reason.

Besides your reasoning is circular, since your "evidence" for gay men not liking sports is presumably that there are not many out gay men in professional sports. I can only guess what other arguments you might make about race and gender, without considering socio-historical factors.

Come on. Out of all of the presumably hundreds or thousands of gay males who are on this board, how many do you think ever considered the possibility of playing professionally in one of the major global sports and actually pursued it to reach a point, that it was a serious life option? I am guessing a couple at most, maybe zero.

When I assume that gay men are inclined away from sports, I mean that they are inclined away from the major professional sports as a career. I certanly don't claim that gay men are inclined away from recreational athletics, various specialty professional sports, or posting on sports message boards.

I also don't buy the ciricular reasoning argument. A lot of gay people are pretty tough. Nobody can stop them from going where they want to go. If gay men were naturally inclined to the major pro sports, more of them would be there.

 

[moby]

Come on. Out of all of the presumably hundreds or thousands of gay males who are on this board, how many do you think ever considered the possibility of playing professionally in one of the major global sports and actually pursued it to reach a point, that it was a serious life option? I am guessing a couple at most, maybe zero.

When I assume that gay men are inclined away from sports, I mean that they are inclined away from the major professional sports as a career. I certanly don't claim that gay men are inclined away from recreational athletics, various specialty professional sports, or posting on sports message boards.

I also don't buy the ciricular reasoning argument. A lot of gay people are pretty tough. Nobody can stop them from going where they want to go. If gay men were naturally inclined to the major pro sports, more of them would be there.

A few quick points:

1) As another poster said in a post which he just removed, how many straight men on this board also considered the possibility of a professional sports career?

2) My understanding is that quite a few gay guys here play sports at the varsity level, which takes a lot of time commitment. I'm not seeing the big distinguishing line between that and pro sports.

3) Again, how do you know not more gay men are there? Even in Hollywood and more traditionally artsy fields that are more liberal, a lot of gay men are not out.

4) You missed my point about homophobic sports culture.

 

[dsanders06]

Did we ever find out who that guy who Nadal had an intimate hug with after he won RG was this year? I know some people with overactive imaginations were speculating (come to think of it, was Xisca at that tournament?).


EDIT: Ok, apparently I just showed my sports ignorance :lol: The guy he hugged was Pau Gasol, an apparently A-List basketball player. And seemingly straight.

 

[Morrissey]

Really thinking about the original question, I think it's really two unrelated questions.

Why do tennis fans accept lesbian tennis players? The answer is, largely, they don't. Women's tennis isn't nearly as popular as men's tennis, in part because a lot of people think all female athletes are gay, and it turns them off.

Why are no ATP players out of the closet? Maybe they are. At home. Matt Bomer (White Collar) managed to have a successful acting career, and three kids with his partner, without having a press conference to announce he was gay. He was famos. He was out. To the people he actually interacted with. If some player is out in his home town, why not tell the whole world? Wrong question. WHY tell the whole world?

Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi got together and chose to keep it private til they announced they'd gotten married. Some people like to keep their private life private.

Why do straight people need to broadcast to the world their boyfriends or girlfriends? Why do I have to watch Andy Murray or Novak Djokovic or Roger Federer's female partners on my television screen at grand slams? Or the commentators gush about Roger Federer's wife and his two children? Why are gay people treated as invisible and to be treated as being ashamed of ourselves?

The message society is still sending is to heterosexual is public but to be gay is PRIVATE and SHAMEFUL and it is not.

Heterosexual privilege makes heterosexuality seem as though it is normal while being gay is treated as abnormal.

Why should gay men in sports or lesbians in sports hide in the closet?

The reason gay male athletes should come out is because we should live in a world where heterosexist privilege is no longer supreme. There are so many negative assumptions people have about gay men that we aren't masculine, that we aren't tough, that we cannot compete in sports.

Look at Orlando Cruz the Puerto Rican professional gay boxer he is ranked number 4 in the world in the featherweight division and he came OUT. Cruz proved a gay man can be TOUGH and MASCULINE and SUCCEED in sports. Cruz said he wanted to come out to show gay people and the world that a gay man can do well in a macho sport like boxing.
I think sports is different than Hollywood though. People seem to be slightly more accepting of singers and male actors coming out like Frank Ocean and Matt Bomer. However, male sports is still seen and viewed as a domain of very macho men and heterosexual men. Straight men KEEP gay male athletes in the closet the lockerroom is a hostile atmosphere for gay men.
but Matt Bomer was never in the closet before he was always OUT he just lived in a GLASS CLOSET. There are numerous pictures online of Matt Bomer making out with other men. Everyone knew Matt Bomer is gay he never hid his homosexuality.

 

[Flavia P.]

The stereotypes that all gay men aren't tough are dying out. That was based on TV, specifically, Queer Eye, Will and Grace, and other shows where fem gay men were THE only representation of gay men. Now that masculine gay men are coming out, and now that people realize most gay men actually work out, and a large portion of us have better bodies and are more athletic than most every-day straight guys, that view is only held by the very ignorant. That's not the reason why there aren't openly gay players.

It's more garden variety homophobia and fear. Most these athletes and fans too, don't have much to any real experience with the gay community or gay people. That leads to ignorance. Which leads to hatred.

BTW, being fem isn't a negative thing. It's not something people should be trying to disassociate from. That's just another symptom of misogyny.

 

[Trickle]

The stereotypes that all gay men aren't tough are dying out. That was based on TV, specifically, Queer Eye, Will and Grace, and other shows where fem gay men were THE only representation of gay men. Now that masculine gay men are coming out, and now that people realize most gay men actually work out, and a large portion of us have better bodies and are more athletic than most every-day straight guys, that view is only held by the very ignorant. That's not the reason why there aren't openly gay players.

It's more garden variety homophobia and fear. Most these athletes and fans too, don't have much to any real experience with the gay community or gay people. That leads to ignorance. Which leads to hatred.

BTW, being fem isn't a negative thing. It's not something people should be trying to disassociate from. That's just another symptom of misogyny.

Let's not forget gay men can be absolute slobs too and have no sense of health decorum whatsoever. :lol:

Wasn't there a special one-off episode of QEFTSG but it was Queer Eye for the Gay Guy and I think they were making fun of how "un-gay" he really was. Or maybe I was imagining it.

 

[Flavia P.]

Let's not forget gay men can be absolute slobs too and have no sense of health decorum whatsoever. :lol:

Sooooo right. :lol:

Wasn't there a special one-off episode of QEFTSG but it was Queer Eye for the Gay Guy and I think they were making fun of how "un-gay" he really was. Or maybe I was imagining it.

It probably happened, but I don't remember at all

Stereotypes are only as real as one makes them.

 

[Level55]

There are ATP players who sleep with the same-sex and it's more than people would believe. Don't believe what you see on TV. Bearding isn't just a Hollywood thing. At the same time, most of these guys do NOT identify as gay and will not, for whatever personal reasons they have. And I'm not going to name names here.

Oh really. How on earth do you know this? See this is my problem. People claiming to know personal things about complete strangers. Saying "I won't name names" doesn't give your claims anymore credibility either! It is wishful thinking and projecting.
The same goes for your comments Morissey. If you ARE talking about Nadal, then saying you are "almost completely sure he is bisexual or gay" because of an article? WTF? When is an article concrete proof of anything. I bet you wouldn't believe an article that said he is dating Sharapova, for example. You can't pick and choose what to believe. A woman saying he might be gay cos he didn't talk passionately about his girlfriend? Ridiculous. If people actually believe someone is gay with zero evidence, you can't even reason with them

Believe me, it works both ways. I had an argument with some woman who claimed Matt Bomer was bisexual "cos she read it somewhere" :lol: So the man himself telling you he is gay means nothing?! This is the problem when sexuality gets discussed, people start making claims they cannot support. "A source said this", "my friend said that" etc. Ultimately, we know nothing about these people's lives. I would be shocked if NO ATP player was gay, but we cannot say for sure and we cannot expect people to come out if they don't want to. I don't think people should force the issue.

As for the person who said lesbians have it better than gay men, I am speechless. It's not a competition. Men like the idea of two women together, but only if they can somehow be involved. Believe me, my lesbian friends have been treated absolutely terribly. In the LGBT communtity, there have been many people who have been killed or committed suicide. To argue who is treated worse is actually quite insulting and helps no one

Sorry for the rant, but some things in this thread have irked me. Finally I will just say it would be great for more sportsmen and women to come out, but unfortunately I don't see it happening. But trying to "out" people, especially based on nothing at all, is not helpful at all to the cause.

 

[Flavia P.]

People who have asked for the names have gotten the names and I don't need to fabricate things. If you're in the know and in the circle, you know what the deal is. And as far as gay rumors, when there is smoke, there often is fire.

I agree that players should not be forced out, since that's an extreme violation of personal space. But discussion of a player's sex/relationship life is just that and it shouldn't be treated differently if the person is potentially gay. The thing is...........these players are closeted so they're lives are extremely discreet and not very public. So there isn't much to discuss.

 

[bandabou]

People who have asked for the names have gotten the names and I don't need to fabricate things. If you're in the know and in the circle, you know what the deal is. And as far as gay rumors, when there is smoke, there often is fire.

I agree that players should not be forced out, since that's an extreme violation of personal space. But discussion of a player's sex/relationship life is just that and it shouldn't be treated differently if the person is potentially gay. The thing is...........these players are closeted so they're lives are extremely discreet and not very public. So there isn't much to discuss.

Then put the names..now you're blah blahing, playing cute. Name names. Who's the who you're talking about?