{"id":672,"date":"2015-09-16T17:07:59","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T17:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=672"},"modified":"2015-09-17T10:51:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T10:51:38","slug":"guinness-and-gareth-thomas-rugby-tackle-homophobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=672","title":{"rendered":"Guinness and Gareth Thomas rugby tackle homophobia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><strong>By Helen Owton<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">With the Men\u2019s Rugby World Cup about to start, the sport of rugby appears to be making strides to tackle homophobia in sport. The most recent TV advert from Guinness stars Gareth Thomas telling his story about coming out in rugby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/rBOTKSQ89M8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">The Out on the Field (2015) survey found that 60% of gay men and 50% of lesbians have been subjected to homophobia in sport which means that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people in sport must regulate conversations, behaviour and identities on a daily basis because of the implications of \u2018coming out\u2019. The assumption in rugby that as well as being aggressive and competitive, all \u2018real men\u2019 must be heterosexual means that \u2018gay\u2019 becomes a derogatory identity label and an abnormal lifestyle. The Guinness advert challenges this stance and perhaps shows that attitudes are starting to shift.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">Researchers who have studied issues of gays in sports largely agree that organised sports are highly homophobic (Anderson, 2002) although there is some more recent debate about whether men\u2019s heterosexual \u2018gay\u2019 behaviours (e.g. kissing each other on the mouth) indicates more openness and acceptance (Anderson, 2005). This TV advert is a step towards even more openness and acceptance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">Gareth talks about how he hid his sexual identity and his feelings, however when an individual feels unaccepted and alienated from society problems can occur. Whilst in this advert he refers to his sexuality as being \u2018so minor\u2019, in his autobiography, Gareth discloses how he felt during an all-time low:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt 36pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">\u201cThe more I thought, the more self-loathing I generated, the more attractive suicide seemed [\u2026] The sea was grey and merged with the horizon. Standing there, on the edge of the cliff, it all seemed so easy. A single step and I\u2019d walk off, into the sky. No more pain. No more loneliness. No more lies. No more causing chaos for people that I loved&#8221; (Thomas, 2014, p.155-156)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">Evidently, it\u2019s not easy for sportspeople to \u2018come out\u2019 because of the homophobia they feel they might experience from fans and from their team mates that they share changing rooms with. Homophobia is deeply embedded in the hidden codes of narrow forms of heterosexual masculinity which rests on the belief that to be a \u2018real man\u2019 you\u2019re not gay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">Like Gareth Thomas, gay men come out because many report feelings of \u2018living a lie\u2019 and feel isolated and alienated from society when they are hiding a part of themselves. He was fortunate enough to receive a positive and assuring response from his\u00a0friends, family, rugby\u00a0coaches and teammates which will hopefully mean that more sportspeople will feel more comfortable about coming out to their teammates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">For Gareth Thomas to \u2018come out\u2019 not only challenges heteronormative assumptions about sexuality in sport and promotes diverse sexualities, it enables athletes to feel open and proud of themselves for who they are. It helped to affirm his sense of self that his sexuality was respected and accepted\u00a0by others as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">However, you don\u2019t have to be gay to challenge these assumptions; James Haskell and Ben Foden have both posed for <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/attitude.co.uk\/sporting-heroes-month-james-haskell\/\" ><span style=\"color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">Attitude<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\"> (gay magazine) and Ben Cohen works to eliminate homophobia\u00a0through his <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.standupfoundation.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" ><span style=\"font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\"><span style=\"color: #0563c1;\">StandUp Foundation<\/span><\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">The sub culture of rugby seems to be raising awareness of <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.standard.co.uk\/news\/london\/good-tackle-rugby-players-strip-off-to-raise-awareness-of-homophobia-in-sport-10111114.html\" ><span style=\"color: #0563c1; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">gay issues<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\"> and seems to be making a big effort to challenge homophobia which also could enable a much less narrow definition of masculinity to be accepted in rugby. Furthermore, Guinness appear to be using their brand to tell stories of adversity and \u2018double lives\u2019 in rugby, for example, Ashwin Willemse\u2019s story of becoming a Springbok:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/RxrvtKXt6lg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; line-height: 13.5pt;\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif';\">This topic will be covered in a new OU Sport and Fitness module coming soon. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Helen Owton With the Men\u2019s Rugby World Cup about to start, the sport of rugby appears to be making strides to tackle homophobia in sport. The most recent TV advert from Guinness stars Gareth Thomas telling his story about coming out in rugby. The Out on the Field (2015) survey found that 60% of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,31,29,63,8],"tags":[62,61,60],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equality","category-gender","category-helen-owton","category-rugby-world-cup-2015","category-sport-psychology","tag-gareth-thomas","tag-guinness","tag-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":701,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}