In pro sports the thing thats been talked about the most here lately is homosexuality. Homosxuality isn’t just in the pro leagues anymore it has spread to colleges and even in high schools. The people that tend to have an issue with people being gay and playing sports is the older generations. The older generations grew up in a time where homosexuality was seen as wrong. Recent trends suggest that society is becoming more accepting of homosexuality in a variety of settings, especially in sports.
In Edmuson article he talks about how playing sports helps people build their character or damage it, how being gay and playing sports is hard. Another thing Edmuson article talks about is how most athletes are taught that homosexuality is wrong so they think they have to play the role in being anti-homosexual. WNBA star and former Baylor player Brittney Griner is a good example of having a hard time with building character and being able to express herself in college. While playing for Baylor she wasn’t allowed to come out to the public and say that she is gay. Griner’s college coach told her that for recruiting purposes she should not express her sexuality to the public. Another reason why Griner wasn’t allowed to come out was because Baylor was afraid that if she did people wouldn’t let their kids come and play at Baylor.
Griner being as tall as she is has changed the game of basketball a lot but if she was allowed to express herself for who she really is she just might have changed the game a whole lot more. In Baylor Student Policies handbook there is a statement about human sexuallity.
It basically says that being homosexual is wrong and if you have any doubts about your sexuality you should go see the Baylors concealer.
With th...
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...t play in the pro league keep supporting it maybe and coming out about their sexualiy will help change the worlds view on gays. With Griner, Sam, and Collins openly gay soon enough you will see more and more people come out and say they are gay or they support their teammates sexuality.
Works Cited
brittney griner bullied (2013, july 18). cyd zeigler, C. Z. (n.d.). The eagle has landed Retrieved from http://www.outsports.com/2014/2/9/5396036/michael-sam-gay-football-player-missouri-nfl-draft Edmundson, M. (2012). DO SPORTS Build Character or Damage It?. ChronicleOf Higher Education, 58(20), B6-B9. http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2013/05/20/why-brittney-griner-kept-her-sexuality-quiet/ Kwaku alston , K. A. (n.d.). Nba player jason collins is coming out now. Retrieved
fromhttp://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/news/20130429/jason-collins-gay-nba-player/
Sports have served as a platform on which the subject of race has been highlighted. Sports have unfailingly been considered the microcosm of society. This is because the playing fields have revealed the dominant culture’s attitudes and beliefs that people held about race relations throughout history in the United States. Many racial barriers were broken in the world of sports long before they were crossed in the realm of mainstream society as a whole. From Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball during the year of 1947 to Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists clad in black gloves during the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics, sports have started conversations about race in the United States that have undeniably changed the course of race relations in the United States.
Homophobia causes parents to steer their daughters away from sports that the believe attract lesbians and away from teams in which lesbians are beleive to play or coach, public expressions of homophobic discourse influence and often limit the sports participation choices available to women. (Coaxley, pike 2009, p.277)
In 1970 only 1 in 27 girls participated in high school sports, today that ratio is 1 in 3. Sports are a very important part of the American society. Within sports heroes are made, goals are set and dreams are lived. The media makes all these things possible by creating publicity for the rising stars of today. Within society today, the media has downplayed the role of the woman within sports. When the American people think of women in sports, they think of ice skating, field hockey and diving. People don’t recognize that women have the potential to play any sport that a Man can play, with equal skill, if not better.
One is able to witness the biased attitude directed toward the individual who attempts to participate in a sport that is non-traditional to his/her gender. Figure skating, for example, has been dominated for many years by women. Often if a person refers to figure skating, it is natural to automatically think of a female athlete because of the many more women who have participated in the sport than men. However, if a man chooses to figure skate he is generally referred to, by others, as a homosexual. Most likely this accusation of being gay has developed because figure skating is viewed as a popular wome...
Jensen, Mark, et al. "The Athlete Stigma in Higher Education." College Student Journal 41.2 (2007): 251-273. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Nov. 2011.
The game’s various stereotypes make it hard for a man in the league to have a different sexual preference than the “normal,” heterosexual. Most people view football as the manliest sport, due to its constant physical contact of tackling one another. Many believe that this is a “man’s game,” and that there should not be homosexuals in the league, which causes a great controversy. Our nation’s view on homosexuality has gradually changed, so why shouldn’t football, an all American sport, also be able to progress and drop the stigma around having openly homosexual players in the league still be considered exceptional athletes? Another reason why the NFL might not be interested in drafting a homosexual player is because of the money. The league is interested in making hundreds of thousands of dollars and by selecting a homosexual player like Michael Sam, the NFL runs the risk of a large loss of money and a negative hit to the fan base, which is not something the league is willing to sacrifice. There also have been various speculations that the NFL is not ready to have an openly gay player in the
When a man enters the world of cheerleading he is immediately labeled as being effeminate. These males are faced with the task of overcoming society's stereotypes of a male Barbie figure. Ken, Barbie's male counterpart is a muscular, preppy, and all American boy. These qualities often lead society to label those males that have these characteristics as gay. Many generalizations are made that gay men are not athletic and therefore would turn to cheerleading as their sport of interest. To many homophobic people cheerleading is therefore deemed as a sport for sissies. They claim that cheerleaders are there solely for looks and entertainment purposes out...
The false accusations of many male cheerleaders being gay serve no purpose but to bring the cheerleader down. They love to do what they do and when someone labels them differently, it undermines what the cheerleader actually does. Male cheerleaders exhibit qualities that women do not, which gives men an advantage in certain cases. The misleading information of men joining the cheerleading squad to impress a girl also shows that people do not understand that everybody has different interests and how they chose to express that interest. The fact that a cheerleader is male should not affect how a person’s intelligence is measured, but their work ethic should reflect the grades of the person. Just because of the way society has placed genders on certain sports should not be the reason to judge someone as dumb, gay, or having interest for something fueled by someone other than themselves. So in the words of Megan Barlly, male cheerleaders are the “powerhouses [that] bring a whole new element to the sport”
My discussion about males being on the team is in fact addressing the larger matter of the students of our high school making the assumption that males that are on a cheer team are homosexual. In Laura Grindstaff’s article, “Cheerleading and the Gendered Politics of Sports,” she says that male cheerleaders don’t want to be perceived as homosexual, so they don’t participate in the feminine parts of cheerleading. In my opinion, this quote upsets me because it seems as if Grindstaff believes that male cheerleaders that would dance or cheer along with the girls would be homosexual. This example could be tied into the issue that there was with a male who wanted to try out for our cheerleading team. He did end up making the team because he was a good cheerleader and he had great assets that would make our team better, but he had to quit because he was being harassed and bullied by other students in our high school who told him and others that “he must be gay if he is going to be on the cheer team.” I think that Grindstaff and the students in my high school are completely wrong with associating male cheerleading and being homosexual together. It takes great strength and athletic ability to be both a female and a male cheerleader. This example of the stereotype can also be applied to my thesis statement because this crisis is important to me and has
But according to Dilley-Knoles in “Making the Grade: Academic Success in Today’s Athlete,” he seems to believe the total opposite. He points out “attention has not always been solely about games and competitions” apparently the “spotlight” has recently been “redirected to academics (Dilley-Knoles). Today, athletes wanting to participate in athletics have to meet specific criteria before being on a team of some sort in high-school (Dilley-Knoles). Knoles explains how over the last few years, the National Collegiate Athletic (NCAA) has created certain standards for academic performance for those students who are in sports (Dilley-Knoles). Certain programs have been created to reward sport teams that do well academically, and penalizing those that don’t (Dilley-Knoles). Although Gabby Douglass was the first women of color “of any nationality and the first African-American gymnast in Olympic history” to become the “Individual All-Around Champion,” I believe the photo shows that athletics was more important than academics (Mike). The young girl below her suggests that she’s more focused on school because she might have not had the same opportunity as Gabby did. Athletes, similar to Gabby, find the pursuit of athletics to be “lucrative” which is something that society values through money (Kannan). In “Which is more important, sports or academics, and how can the choice are
It has taken many years for women to gain a semblance of equality in sports. Throughout history, women have been both excluded from playing sports and discriminated against in sports. Men’s sports have always dominated the college athletic field, but women were finally given a fighting chance after Title IX was passed. Title IX, among other things, requires scholarships to be equally proportioned between men and women’s sports. Although this was a huge gain for women, gender inequality still exists in sports today. An example of this persisting inequality can be seen when looking at men’s baseball and women’s softball. In college, baseball and softball are both major NCAA sports. It is widely accepted throughout today’s society that baseball is a man’s sport, and softball is a woman’s sport. Very few people question why the two sexes are separated into two different sports, or wonder why women play softball instead of baseball. Fewer people know that women have been essentially excluded from playing baseball for a long time. This paper will focus on why softball has not changed the way women’s basketball has, why women continue to play softball, the possibilities and dynamics of women playing baseball with and without men, and the most discriminating aspect of women being banned from playing professional baseball.
In the sports world, homosexual athletes are often forced to hide their sexual orientation and to keep it as a private matter. This is mainly due to the hegemonic masculinity associated with playing sports. Homosexuality is considered the direct opposite of this and therefore is not associated with sports. Also the way athletes talk to each other in the locker room makes it more difficult for gay athletes to come out. Guys jokingly call each other homophobic slurs or pump their chest by talking about women to express their masculinity. Female athletes, unlike their male counterparts, are considered to be more free to talk about their sexual orientation. But, there still exists the misconception that women who participate in sports are assumed to be gay. In college and professional men’s sports it is beginning to become more common for athletes to be more open to talking publically about their sexual orientation. This brings up the question as to whether or not things are changing in our society so that the acceptance of gay athletes will be more common. More acceptance by our overall society as a whole will lead to more gay athletes – both male and female – feeling free to step forward and be open about their sexual orientation.
People do not seem to raise as much attention to transgender males playing sports because the transgender males are the ones with the disadvantage. They might have lower testosterone levels than the other males competing. Transgender women competing in sports is a completely different story. Transgender women might have higher testosterone levels than the other women competing. There is medication for transgenders to take which makes their testosterone levels match the average level for the
Gender in sports has been a controversial issue ever since sports were invented. In the early years, sports were played only by the men, and the women were to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was another area of life exemplifying the sexism of people in which women were not allowed to do something that men could. However, over the last century in particular, things have begun to change.
If a girl has an experiment with her roommate in college, some people who say that that automatically makes her a lesbian, but that may not be what she identifies as. The same concept applies for males. For instance, many members of male sports teams have traditionally been pushed into partaking in hyper-masculine activities and behaviors, pushing the ideas of homosexuality to the category of taboo. However, as times continue to change, so do the behaviors and ideas towards homophobia. A soccer team of sixty men were interviewed to disclose their opi...