MANifestations: Conceptualizing Homophobia in Men's Sport

Purpose

Much of the research on homophobia in sport focuses on women athletes as targets under mainstream heteronormativity. While most of this research focuses on individual perceptions around sexual orientation, the purpose of this study was to compare specific team climates around sexual orientation. The results were consistent with previous research findings in that men tended to be rated as more homophobic than women. From the results, four concrete manifestations of homophobia in men's sport were unveiled.

Methods

The Index of Attitudes Toward Homosexuals (IAH) (Hudson & Ricketts, 1980) was administered to male and female student-athletes (N = 34) from two teams of the same sport at an urban, NCAA division one institution in the Southwestern region of the United States. The IAH includes 25 statements using five-point likert scale responses ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. With total scores ranging from zero to 100, the lower the score, the less likely the team is to be considered homophobic. Employing the t-test and a significance level of p < .05, the results suggested that as a group, the men's team (x = 54.22, SD = 15.73, p = .05) showed greater homophobia than the women's team (x = 41.31, SD = 14.46, p = .05).

Analysis/Results

These results can be understood in terms of the different strategies used by male and female athletes to manage gender identity under heteronormativity. Male athletes' expressions of homophobia may act to recuperate the potential threat to masculinity that bonding on the terrain of sport generates. Since female bonding through sport does not generate the same type of threat to femininity as male bonding does for masculinity, female athletes may not express the same level of homophobia as male athletes. In this presentation, the researcher unveils a conceptualization of four mechanisms through which homophobia is perpetuated in men's sport. They are: (1) mocking femininity, (2) threatening violence against gay men, (3) the expression of personal discomfort around gay men, and (4) anti-gay insults.

Conclusions

Since female bonding through sport does not generate the same threat to femininity that male bonding generates with regard to masculinity, females in sport do not express homophobia in the same way as men. These manifestations are conceptualized from a thorough review of scholarly publications and mainstream media. This is new work in that it features the first known conceptualization of how homophobia is manifested men's sport.