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These
Aren't the Gay Games The
Closet Rules for Jocks at the Winter Olympics
By Jim Buzinski
Outsports.com
A reporter for the Wall Street Journal had a great story idea: why does the media mention straight romances in the figure skating world but not all the out gay ones?
The query was posed to Lorrie
Kim, a longtime activist and skating fan who publishes a terrific Web site,
Rainbow
Ice, dedicated to coverage of gays and lesbians in the sport.
``I had to break it to [the reporter] that the hordes of out gay skaters he was imagining don't exist,'' Kim said. ``He ended up writing about something entirely different instead.''
As the world converges on Salt Lake City for the Winter Olympics, there are all sorts of stories to be
unearthed, with one exception: gay and lesbian athletes. It's not easy to tell a tale when you have no
willing subjects.
The fact remains that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no openly gay athletes in Salt Lake City.
My criteria for this are simple: they have to have made a public statement at some point or discussed their orientation in public.
There are gay athletes at these Games, but they may only be out to some people
and not the public at large. For example, Laura Milliken Gray, a
Salt Lake City attorney and activist told the Gay
and Lesbian Times of San Diego `` that there have been inquiries from gay athletes about the possibility
of their partners being able to stay with hosts from the gay
community while they are in Utah, and members of the community have already begun to see Olympic
participants out and about at restaurants and bars in the community.''
Of course, I might not be aware of a Latvian luger or Swiss snowboarder who is out and proud, but it's likely someone would have had
that story.
Contrast this with the Sydney Summer Olympics, where there were at least seven openly gay jocks (more, if I had time to question all the equestrians). The Summer Games do have four times the number of participants, but it's still a bit of a surprise that we have zero in Salt Lake. Many people assume, correctly, that a number of male figure skaters are gay. Plus, there are strong, high-profile teams from the Netherlands and Scandinavia, places where same-sex marriages are legal and one would expect homophobia to be
less severe.
The reasons jocks stay closeted are pretty universal--fear of ridicule, of not fitting in, of losing a competitive edge or of losing endorsements. Each sport, though, has its unique dynamics (think of the locker room issue in team sports) and Kim has great insight as to why male figure skaters stay closeted.
An Oppressive Atmosphere
``I would say all male skaters, in this country at least, get gay-baited or gay-bashed regardless of their orientation,'' Kim said. ``The daily atmosphere is entirely different from, say, the tyrannical presumed heterosexuality of the football locker room.
``Competitive skaters begin training at a very young age. So you have these pre-teen boys, already on the defensive, being picked on by their non-skating classmates, saying `I am NOT a faggot!' and trying not to get beaten up. Figure skaters share rinks and locker rooms with hockey players, and that's a set-up that automatically builds in the potential
for conflict.
``At the same time, the young boys have coaches and older skaters they look up to, whom they know to be gay, so they realize it's not a bad thing--but it is something that the outside world doesn't understand. This can create a strong belief from childhood that it's OK to be yourself when among friends, but the world at large isn't trustworthy.''
Through her Web site, Kim has come up with a list of 20 elite skaters
who have come out, all but three after their competitive careers were over. Olympic gold medallist John Curry, who later died of AIDS, told a German tabloid he was gay at the 1976 Games, but
he went pro immediately afterward and didn't speak much about it
again until he gave interviews about being gay and HIV positive in
1994, Kim said.
In her discussions with gay skaters over the years, Kim understands their reasons for being circumspect.
``With one, for example, he's a private person in general and he was also working hard with his mother to get her to come to terms with his being gay--he didn't think being out in public was going to help that process, and his mother was more important to him than serving my agenda of wanting skaters to be out.
``I also think that many skaters who aren't at the very top of their sport don't feel like it's right, athletically speaking, to be getting attention for something personal--that is, anything not a competitive achievement, completely aside from closet/out
politics--unless they have first earned the public attention through their skating. The sense of competitive honor is extremely strong that way.''
Who Can They Trust?
Normal athletic pressures and wariness about outsiders also influence gay skaters, Kim said.
`` Some of them live gay lives in everything except the press. Skaters always have to evaluate whom they're speaking to, and calibrate what they're saying to the audience.
``For example, to one person they might say, `I've been working on getting a clean edge on my lutz takeoff. I can hold the outside edge
until just before the pick, but then it rolls over and it's worse when I approach it from a long edge.' To another, they'd say, `I'm working on my jumps.'
``There's also the gossip factor. To some people they can confide that they are having arguments with their coach, or they're injured; but there are people who will be vicious and want to spread gossip, so they don't confide in those people. It's the same with information about whether they're gay or not. If the person seems possibly untrustworthy, skaters just won't confide in them.''
Strangely, the perception that figure skating is a haven for gay males does not translate to the women's sport and lesbianism.
``Except for a very few butch adult skaters and coaches I've seen, the super-femminess of the sport makes the lesbians and bisexual women truly invisible to the outside world,'' Kim said. ``I haven't encountered any particular attitude that the sport as a whole holds about lesbian/bi female skaters. There's nothing creating an atmosphere of defensiveness there.''
Kim doesn't expect gay skaters to be on the forefront of social change, and expects improvements only as general homophobia is lessened.
I fantasize that in a future Olympics we'll have a two-man bobsled team where the participants share a bed in addition to their sled.
Feb.
14, 2002
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