Understanding the Jason Collins story

When National Basketball Association player Jason Collins announced in a Sports Illustrated article this week that he is gay, media and social media around the world took notice.

Twitter exploded with supportive comments from a wide range of celebrities, including former United States President Bill Clinton and current NBA stars Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant. Tennis great Martina Navratilova praised the 34-year-old centre, who becomes a free agent July 1. And U.S. President Barack Obama told a White House press conference: "He seems like a terrific young man and I told him I couldn't be prouder of him... for I think a lot of young people out there who are gay or lesbian, who are struggling, to see a role model like that who's unafraid, I think it's a great thing."

U of T News asked Associate Professor Caroline Fusco of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education about the significance of the Collins story. A former elite athlete, Fusco is an expert on the socio-cultural aspects of sport, theories of the body and sexuality, and ethics and social justice issues in sport.

Why has the decision by Jason Collins to go public with his sexual orientation garnered so much attention?
In much of male professional sport (and maybe even amateur sport) hyper-masculinity is pervasive. This means that sports, historically, have been spaces where heternormativity, homophobia and sexism have flourished. In such contexts it is not easy to be a sexually minoritized person.

Professional athletes who make their living through salaries, bonuses and endorsements live in constant fear of losing their income and livelihood, and that is probably why so many male pro-athletes wait until their careers have ended before they 'come out'. Without constant research, it would be difficult to know which corporations and companies, those that pour huge sums of money into sports, have political, social and religious beliefs that support and encourage anti-gay rhetoric and practices.These kinds of corporations might withdraw their support or worse (i.e., engage in anti-gay campaigns) to keep the myth of normalcy in sports alive.

This particular story is newsworthy because Collins is still a pro-athlete, he plays for the NBA, and he's a black man. Some of my colleagues in sports sociology who have studied black masculinities in sport have suggested that there is untold pressure on racialized men to be even more hyper-masculine in sports spaces that have historically been dominated in all areas by white men. So this  'coming out' also challenges the myth of black hyper-masculine heteronormativity.

Moreover, there have been many professional women athletes who have come out before Collins (in many sports, including the WNBA) but it seems to matter more when a male athlete comes out or at least it is given more press and attention. This may be due to the fact that women's professional sport has always seemed to matter less to the media and to corporate sponsors and, more importantly, culturally, the mythological status of male hyper-heterosexuality dominates the social, political and psychic spaces of sport.

How might it affect his career?
Collins said that he still wants to play in the NBA. I hope that he gets another contract and then we will see whether all the support from the NBA and many of its players is actually genuine. At the end of the day, it's not necessarily the NBA or fellow players that will exclude or exorcise him (although that does not mean that homophobia is vanquished in NBA) but it may be the pressure from potential corporate sponsors that may determine whether he continues to play or not.

How might it affect the careers of others?
I am sure many will herald this as a change in sports, but individuals have come out before and it has not really made a difference to sports' normalcy – hence the attention to Collins' story. Some young LGTBQ youth (and perhaps those young men who have survived the extreme homophobia and sexism of high school sports and in their early careers in the minor and junior leagues) will find Collins' story inspiring, as many 'coming out' stories have inspired over the years. Whether this makes life easier for LGBTQ youth and adults in professional or amateur sport remains to be seen.

There have been many initiatives by organizations and individuals to combat homophobia, heterosexism and sexism in sports over the years, nationally and internationally. I believe that it will be these grassroots organizations and policies, which focus on social justice and human rights, that will continue to make more of a difference to individuals' lives in sport than Collins' 'coming out'. Nevertheless, Collins' 'coming out' will be celebrated by many who have worked tirelessly to make the cultural spaces of sport more diverse, equitable and inclusive.

What can we learn from the media coverage and social media coverage so far?
The media coverage and social media discourse has been positive for the most part, although I read  that there have been thousands of tweets that have included anti-gay slurs. However, there seems to be much social pressure to say 'the-right-thing.'

For example, the non-supportive tweet by an NFL footballer was retracted a few hours after it was posted - perhaps a sense of 'shamefulness' after seeing the support Collins' 'coming out' garnered (e.g., from fellow NBA players, from NBA commissioner and coaches, from international celebrities and even from the U.S. President, Barack Obama).

The prolific dissemination of this story through the mainstream media and social media brings the existence of sexually minoritized men in sports into the homes of national and international audiences, which is a good thing, I think. Will this kind of cultural event (i.e., the knowledge and 'acceptance' of a gay player in the NBA) dramatically change the systemic heteronormativity that pervades the media's coverage of sports and practically the entire programming of every media franchise? I doubt it!

What did you think of the article itself?
I thought is was honest and thoughtful. He obviously found it unbearable at times to live in normative ways but like many LGBTQ individuals, who live in fear of losing their livelihoods or have real fears about the kinds of violence that may be enacted on their bodies if they are discovered to be LGTBQ, he chose to perform his life in ways that conformed to the pervasive normalcy around him. He now has decided to act out his life differently and I hope that he is allowed to do so peacefully and through the basketball that he so obviously loves.