While it has been shown that the elite male athletes at Northern University self-report inclusive attitudes, in varying degrees, it is also important to understand male inclusivity from a female perspective. Of the 18 elite female athletes that participated in interviews, all reported that the culture of Team Northern is generally inclusive to the gay and bisexual athletes, and all claim that they have never witnessed any discrimination towards gay or bisexual people from male athletes during their time at Northern University. Importantly, supporting these statements, four reported homophobic instances from local citizens in which heterosexual male athletes defended their gay and bisexual friends. Jess discussed one of these occasions:
“These guys aren’t homophobic all, they’re anti-homophobic. Remember the time you were using that support beam at the bar like a stripper pole and that old local guy called you a ‘faggot ass cunt’? Not that you cared at all, but Finn [water polo] and Sheldon [American football] made him come back over and apologise to your face. Homophobic straight dudes don’t do things like that.”
In interviews, female athletes were asked to discuss how they perceive the attitudes towards gay and bisexual athletes of the men from their same sport; meaning, the women’s
volleyball team discussed the men’s volleyball team, and the women’s basketball team discussed the men’s basketball team, and so forth. Due to similar practice times, the tendency for the men and women of the same sport to socially interact with each other more often than other sports and the fact that the men’s and women’s team of the same sport often travelled to games on the same bus, led me to believe that the most accurate representation of the men’s attitudes on a team would be best reported by their female counter-team.
The entire women’s volleyball team participated in interviews to discuss male athletes, homophobia and masculinity from their perspective as elite female athletes; these nine women corroborated the claim that the men’s volleyball team demonstrated inclusive attitudes towards gay and bisexual men. When asked, these female athletes’ ranking of the men’s volleyball team’s ‘gay friendliness’ averaged a 5.9 on the scale from 1 to 7.
When discussing the men’s volleyball team, Shelley, a volleyball player from the US said “I can’t really speculate on the inner team dynamics, but from everything I’ve seen, the men’s team seems super open and accepting of everyone on their team, no matter their sexuality. They’re a pretty affectionate team, and I know they have team bonding nights at gay bars sometimes”. Here, Shelley defends her view that the men are inclusive by listing examples that subjectively prove pro-gay attitudes, such as attending gay bars as a team and being homosocially affectionate. Agreeing with Shelley’s comments, Kim said “Most of the men’s volleyball team are extremely gay friendly, probably more than most of the other Team Northern athletes, which is kind of hard to do, they all seem pretty cool when it comes to sexuality”. From this statement, Kim describes the volleyball team as being the most inclusive team of all, while alluding to the idea that all Team Northern men’s teams are generally inclusive.
The two female leaders of the women’s water polo team also believe that their male counterparts are inclusive, giving the men’s water polo team an average of 6 on the 7-point
scale. Regina defends her position, “Those boys [the men’s water polo team] are really gay friendly, they have gay friends and I see the way they act around them, they really embrace their gay friends and even their culture”, and Jacklyn agrees, she said “The men’s team are all super close with each other, really affectionate, other’s might even construe them as gay. I’ve never heard any of them show any prejudice against gay people, they are an accepting group of people”.
However, not every women’s team is confident that their men’s team is inclusive of gay and bisexual men. The two elite female lacrosse players that participated in interviews had mixed views on the men’s lacrosse team’s attitudes towards gay and bisexual peers, giving the men an average of 5 on the scale of ‘gay friendliness’. Peggy discussed her opinion:
“I know the men’s team says they are super cool with gay men, but I feel like they still get a little uncomfortable around gay men. I just don’t think they have had a lot of experiences hanging out with gay men, or playing lacrosse with gay men, but I know their intentions are good and that they generally support gay rights.”
Here, Peggy made the point that the political and social intention of inclusivity exists on the team, but the lack of openly gay lacrosse players has hindered some of these men from truly demonstrating their inclusivity.
The men’s basketball team is the least inclusive according to their female
counterparts. The five female basketball athletes gave their male counterparts an average ‘gay friendliness’ score of a 4.4 on the 7-point scale. While some of the women claimed that many of the men are gay friendly and willing to attend gay bars, others highlight cultural
differences as the major catalyst for the low score. Sandra, a basketball player from America, said:
The men’s team isn’t anti-gay but I don’t think they are really able to be super outwardly ‘gay friendly’ either. Black men dominate collegiate and professional basketball, and the ultra-masculine stereotype of the black man, largely created during slavery, is still alive and well today. Anything that challenges a black man’s
masculinity is a huge ‘no’.
Sandra’s views are informed by her experiences as an African-American woman; however, she also reported that the men’s basketball team at Team Northern is more inclusive than most of the teams she has encountered in the NCAA, and she has never heard any explicit homophobia from any of the Team Northern men’s basketball players. Furthermore, it is possible that Sandra is unfairly generalising from her experience given recent research that suggests black communities may have also grown more inclusive of homosexuality (e.g. Anderson and McCormack, 2014; Magrath, 2017b).
From this process, the elite female athletes verify the findings of general inclusivity with the same trends that were reported by the men: volleyball and water polo being very inclusive, lacrosse being generally inclusive, while basketball was the least inclusive team. These findings are, however, missing key details about the men's American football team. This is due to the fact that there is no women's American football team at Northern
University, therefore there was no female counter-team to accurately report on the American football boys, leaving all accounts of this team strictly anecdotal and informed only by a single encounter or an overgeneralization of the sport in general.