CONFORME A LAS SIGUIENTES RESOLUCIONES

December 6th

people, but I knew that other teams would arrive after they had their own team pre-party drinking gatherings. I was excited that this weekend was a basketball party because I knew all the basketball players would attend out of social obligation, instead of just the few basketball players that attend the parties for all other teams, every weekend. It’s nice to get to hang out with the basketball players that are a bit less extroverted, or more focused on schoolwork, so I skipped my volleyball team pre-gathering in order to get some quality time with my basketball friends.

I could hear Connor right at the bottom of the stairs telling a story about a recent night out to bars in his home town, somewhere in the Midlands of England. I could hear him loud and clear from upstairs in Kate’s room, Connor really was a loud speaker and had already had a few drinks, which only escalated the volume of his voice.

Connor said, “and then this old American guy looked right at us, then turned to his mate and said ‘This country is full of Faggots’.” The word caught me off guard. It’s not a word I hear very often, especially in the UK where most homophobic people opt for the word ‘poof’, which I can’t help find at least slightly comical. Then, as Kate starts badgering me with questions about the outfit she’s trying on, I hear the word ‘Faggot’ said twice more, without hearing the full sentence of it, mostly because I was paying more attention to Kate than to Connor’s distant conversation at this point.

I know Connor, very well. In the past 3 years he has demonstrated that he is a true ally to the LGBT community. I know he’s just retelling a story about a homophobic American that he encountered, and I know that his intention isn’t to use offensive language. What I also know is that he would not be telling this story if he knew I was in earshot, he would never risk accidentally hurting my feelings.

I open Kate’s door and peek my head down the staircase and say “what’s that word I keep hearing come out of your mouth Connor?”. He looks up and sees me at the top of the

stairs and turns bright red, with a look in his eye light he just accidentally stepped on my puppy. “Frog, no, I was just telling I story, I wasn’t saying it, I would never say it. You know that, right?”, Connor says. I respond “Do I know that?”. I walk down the stairs as I continue to I put this charade of being offended on for a bit longer, even though I am in no way

offended. Connor says “c’mon, you know I’m not homophobic. I’ll prove it. I’ll kiss you in front of everyone”. I’m shocked by this, and it’s certainly an unnecessary gesture, yet I respond “okay, I’m waiting”. And Connor kisses me. I admit that I was never offended and we laugh it off.

The gesture meant a lot, not because of the kiss necessarily, but because of the fact that he was so heartbroken that I believed he would ever use homophobic language. As a straight elite male athlete, he prioritised my feelings over his heterosexual image; or he decided that being labelled homophobic is worse than being publicly seen kissing a man. At the time I didn’t know which one was more true, or if both were true, but it doesn’t matter, both made me happy to have Connor as a friend.

As I wrote this excerpt from my ethnographic diary, homophobic words like ‘faggot’ or ‘poof’ were not words that I heard very often during my ethnography, and definitely not from any of the athletes. The inclusive culture of Team Northern, demonstrated by the significant amount of male athletes that consider themselves ‘gay-friendly’, had an unspoken way of policing homophobic language. Of the 35 participants interviewed, only 5 had said that they have used or use language that they interpreted as homophobic. My own records show that I have never encountered homophobic language from this group of elite male athletes;

however, the nuances of how each individual defines and interprets homophobic language can help to explain the discrepancy in data, and my claim that the use of homophobic language is nearly absent throughout the ethnography.

One of the ways that studies have documented a decline or absence of homophobia has been through examining the levels of homophobic language (e.g. Anderson, 2005a; McCormack, 2012, 2014; Rivers, 1995; Sexton, 2017; White, Magrath, & Thomas, 2018). For example, Anderson (2002) showed that homophobic language stopped gay athletes from disclosing their sexuality. However, determining the prevalence of homophobic language is not necessarily a simple task, and scholars have used a range of ways to determine

homophobia in language. Sometimes this was done through a combination of the intent of the speakers and the way they said particular language (e.g. Nayak and Kehily, 1996). Nayak and Kehily (1996) showed, for example, that the ways boys enacted disgusts of same-sex sexual desire – forming a cross with their fingers and shouting to get away, as if homosexuality was similar to vampirism – meant that the words such as “gay”, “bender” and other words were unambiguously homophobia. Another way of determining intent was through the words that were used alongside the terms related to sexuality. Thurlow (2001) powerfully documented this by discussing the use of “intensifiers” – words such as “fucking” – that signified

particular mal-intent in the use of the language associated with them (see also Poteat, Kimmel & Wilchins, 2011; Poteat & Rivers, 2010; Woodford et al., 2013).

Participants had similar perspectives on definitions of homophobic language. During the interview, I asked each participant to define homophobic language as they understand it. Some athletes chose to define homophobic language broadly and simplistically, such as Archie, a Lacrosse player from the northeast of America, who said that homophobic language was “language used to make fun of someone who isn’t straight for not being straight, it’s pretty simple”. Similarly, American football player Sheldon said that homophobic language is “any language that could be deemed as offensive or insensitive to people who identify as gay or bisexual”. These definitions are broad, but helpful in understanding that these men

prefer an umbrella-like definition when it comes to harmful language; however, other participants were willing to get more specific about how they define homophobic language.

Of the 35 participants, 10 men defined whether some language was homophobic or not based on the intention of the speaker. These responses were coded as ‘intention’ if the word was specifically stated in their definition of homophobic language, or if their definition used intention-adjacent phrases such as ‘meant to harm’. For example, Chris, a volleyball player from America said, “homophobic language is used with a desire to be excluded from any aspect of gay culture, like language that is meant to harm or might offend a gay person”. He elaborated on some words that one might use to distance themselves from gay culture in a homophobic way, he said “I think this also encompasses inappropriate uses of the words ‘gay’, ‘fag’, ‘homo’, or ‘fudge packer’ and stuff like that, but not always, its contextual”. In his definition, Chris pointed out that the purpose of homophobic language is to distance oneself from being gay; however, he also touched on the nuances of words that are traditionally deemed homophobic by stating that those words are homophobic in some instances, but not others, and the differentiation between the two is dependent on the context of the situation.

British water polo players Colton and Benedict also put an emphasis on the intention, rather than just the words. Colton said “Anything that would offend that specific gay

individual. It doesn’t really matter if it’s that explicit, but if it is direct and its intended use is for malice than that would be inappropriate”. Additionally, Benedict said “Language spoken about or towards a gay person in a hateful or harmful way. So I would define it as the intent, not the actual words spoken”.

Another ten participants provided definitions of homophobic language based on the ultimate effect of whatever phrase or word was said. Definitions coded as ‘effect’ did not mention intent, rather they used buzzwords like ‘dehumanise’, ‘demean’, ‘discriminate

against’, or anything similar to ‘makes being gay seem negative’. These responses care little about the intention, and instead put emphasis on the general outcome of the use of

homophobic language, often drawing on social and political interpretations of homophobic language.

Keenan, a Lacrosse player, said that homophobic language is “using negative connotations to refer to a person who is gay, or has same-sex sexual attractions. It has become acceptable language by some people in order to challenge another person’s

masculinity”. In this definition, Keenan points out that the purpose of homophobic language is to police men’s masculinity by creating an association between same-sex sexual attractions and certain negative connotations. Keenan skips over the micro-level analysis of an

individual’s feelings, and is instead concerned with the macro-level social effects that this language has on men, more generally. Similarly, British volleyball player Nick defines homophobic language as “anything that degrades or dehumanises another person based on their sexual orientation”. He goes on to discuss how similar dehumanisation has been used throughout history to hinder certain minority groups from obtaining rights.

While some participants based their understandings of homophobic language on the intent and the social context of the words used, and others defined it by the effect that the words had, more generally, it is clear that homophobic language is best understood by recognising the interdependency of intent, context and effect. McCormack, Wignall and Morris (2016) call this inter-relationship the intent-context-effect matrix. These men are capable of interpreting each individual situation uniquely and skilfully to determine whether the language used in an interaction is homophobic or not.