Sorry if this topic has come up before and I missed it. I'm somewhat of a newbie to Outsports.

So anyway, hazing...
It runs rampid in sports. Often with huge homosexual / homosocial / homophobic subtexts. Have any of you ever been hazed or done it to someone else? What happened? Does it ever happened on 'gay' teams, or is it just a 'str8' thing? If it dosn't, why not? What does that then mean about the difference in 'gay' sports and 'straight' sports? Do you think it is benfical to team commradery & spirit? Has fear of it ever prevented you from becoming involved with team sports?

This is somewhat of an interesting topic to me becuase not only does it touch upon the overt oppresion of gay people in sports, but it also gets into stuff that is subject matter for gay porn (and does anyone wanna take a shot at explaining why that is??). A bizzar love/hate relationship, to say the least.

anyway...your thoughts?

-chr|st0pher

The only hazing I've been through was to get into my Fraternity in College. It was only psychological, and there really wasn't any gay or homo type of macho crap at all, except the wife beaters that we had to wear anytime we were in the house, and that was more Homo-erotic for me, and just cold for the others. As for sports teams, I don't think that it would keep me from going for a team, and I have a feeling that (depending on what was done) it could add to the team spirit. I know in my fraternity it did. I felt one of those "Shared experiences" type of connections, even to the guys that I didn't particularly like in the house, there was a respect factor for having been through it.

[quote]Originally posted by chr1st0pher:
... So anyway, hazing...
It runs rampid in sports. Often with huge homosexual / homosocial / homophobic subtexts. ...

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Geee....that's an awful lot of homos running around on that team...

I know at Duke, the track team had the annual naked 4x400. I managed to join after this little event, and I quit before it came around the following year. It was supposed to be for the freshman, but all of the "questionably str8" ones would participate year after year. Damned middle-distance closet queens.

Wasn't there a posting a while back with links to some college sports team hazing event where the new team members had to go on stage nude in front of a bunch of women who had paid for the privilege of being there? Or was I just fantasizing (except for the part about the women)?

Hazing definitely kept me out of frats, but it was the general homophobic atmosphere that turned me off to most sports.

I think the subject of hazing has come up before (with respect to frats, sports people have played, etc.) but I don't remember a thread specifically addressing hazing. Surprising if true.

I'd be interested in reading what people say.

I think the best one that I ever heard of as for homoerotica was the University of Vermont hockey team's freshman initiation rites, which created a big scandal up there when it became public. The initiates were required to shave their pubes beforehand, and a team member checked them for this at the door. After being required, among other things, to drink nasty concoctions, they had to do push-ups in the nude over strategically placed jars of warm beer. Then they had to do the "elephant walk", each team member holding the unit of the one in front of him.
When I was in high school I opted out of the Beta Club & at least one varsity team because of my unwillingness to undergo the initiation rites, but this one actually sounds kind of fun. Of course, when the story broke, it led to an attorney general's investigation, minor criminal charges against the team captain, and the cancellation of the team's season.

[quote]Originally posted by Billy:
....Of course, when the story broke, it led to an attorney general's investigation, minor criminal charges against the team captain, and the cancellation of the team's season.

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AWWWWWW

Every party has a pooper...and that's why we invited the AG.....

Some people just have no sense of good old fashion homoerotic fun in them....you know

Most teams at Navy have some sort of initiation, not really hazing, just a tradition. Wrestling initiation can get rough if you put up a fight. Rugby too.

Shoot, a lot of Plebe year at the Naval Academy feels like hazing, not as bad as days of yore, culminating in Herndon Climb. 1000 sweaty guys
trying to climb a grease-covered 21-ft black obelisk. Looks gay-friendly to outsiders but it's not really. I know some guys secretly enjoyed being looked at by the crowd and filmed for tv.
Is that why there's supposedly a shirts-required rule now? I know they had to edit pictures in the newspapers. Censorship is evil!

http://www.nadn.navy.mil/PAO/facts/Herndon.html

http://www.usna.edu/LibExhibits/Archives/I...Images/3808.jpg

http://www.mediacen.navy.mil/pubs/allhands.../aug99/pg28.htm

[quote]Originally posted by beetarmee:
Wrestling initiation can get rough ...

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I loved Joey's initiation scene in PINS.

http://outsports.com/entertainment/booksf.htm

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He felt every extra pound when all the guys at practice, on some invisible cue he never saw, swooped around him in a circle.

Two of them grabbed him by the ankles. He nearly bit his tongue while being dragged to the center of the mat before he found himself suspended upside down like a newborn. Passed around from one guy to the next, hand over hand, one leg at a time, his crew of doctors seemed unsure what to do with such a big baby, until somebody dropped him. Dink fell on him, four more guys on top of them, then everybody else piled up on them, amid a flood of growls, roars, giggles, snorts.

Under it all, in the reddish darkness of the boy mound, Joey felt Dink being smashed atop him, but pressing up, pushing them back protectively, his chin stubble chafing Joey's neck.

His hands flattened by some other body, his arms pressed down by someone's fuzzy legs, he felt Dink hovering over him, humping him in a playful way. Joey let him. Dink was doing him a favor, taking more of the weight, after all. He opened his hips in the tiny crevice of space under the dogpile and let Dink cop a feel.

He grabbed for his shorts as someone else yanked. He wanted to thrash out, but remembered why they had all piled up on Dink a few weeks before.

He was the best in his weight class. He was in.

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Edited cause I can't type...

[ April 30, 2002: Message edited by: Roy ]