race gender and sport

response 1 Laticia

In female sports, any woman that has a muscular build, and does not wear her hair in a “girly way” is typically considered too masculine. In the documentary about the Penn State female basketball player’s women who were considered to look “masculine” were pulled aside by coach Portland and asked if they were homosexual or not, or threatened if she felt that they may be lesbians. These girls were threatened to have their scholarships revoked if they were to engage in any homosexual behaviors. If a girl had cornrows, rather than a long flowing ponytail, she was considered to look masculine. They wanted girls to play the sports like the boys, but stay cute.

I think that the professional athletes coming out as gay really does play a huge role and has helped the younger athletes feel more comfortable within themselves. Many athletes can feel that they are not singled out because of their sexuality. Another reason is that many of the early athletes that came out also helped fight for the rights of other LGBTQ athletes so that they would not be discriminated against because of their sexuality.

RESPONSE 2 Tooson

The coming out of the athletes mentioned above didn’t necessarily open doors for heir fellow athletes to express their sexuality and gender openly. However, that’s more prevelant among the male athletes than women. In one of the articles that are in the readings for the week, it was mentioned that when female basketball stars like Brittney Griner and Cheryl Swoops express their same-sex sexual preferences, there it isn’t really any push back from the media or community because its somewhat expected. The reason being is because there is a perception among the world that women involved in athletics particularly basketball are lesbians anyway, which couldn’t be further from the truth. There are prominent female WNBA stars who are married or dating a man like Candace Parker and Skylar Diggins. Homosexuality is still more so of a hot button topic in male dominated sports like basketball, football, baseball, etc. When Michael Sam announced to the world that he was gay back when he was entering the NFL draft, it caught the sports world by surprise and even caused discussion around the notion that there could possibly be more gay male athletes out there but they won’t disclose themselves due to the fear of losing their careers.