Football and femininity: explaining homophobia in sport

Callum Maddox interrogates the toxic masculinity present in football.

Western Sydney Wanderers supporters' group the Red and Black Bloc (RBB) has refused to apologise after deleting a homophobic Instagram post last week. The post, uploaded on Wednesday, suggested that victory in the A-League Sydney Derby against Sydney FC was more likely because the Sydney FC fans would be preoccupied with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. 

The post was condemned officially in a statement by the club, and RBB administrators deleted the post on Thursday morning following advice from the club. The RBB, however, refused to apologise for their post, subsequently posting later on Thursday morning saying that they believed an apology would be “misplaced”.

I’m not here to debate the intent of the post or to assert that it was or wasn’t homophobic. The post was an attempt to rally support and undermine the opposition as is the case with any good sports rivalry. Some fans have suggested that the Eastern Sydney fan base of Sydney FC are more interested in “partying” than supporting their club and that was the reason behind the criticism. And taken out of context, that’s a plausible explanation. 

However, when you consider the context of the long history of homophobia in football, you can understand why journalists have suggested the post was homophobic, and indeed why the club was so swift in condemning it. The post was undoubtedly a criticism of Sydney FC fans attending the queer pride events as opposed to supporting their team. Was this a criticism of being gay? A condemnation of partying? Or chastisement of allyship? I doubt we’ll ever be able to say definitively. 

The post divided the football community both within the club’s fan base and outside of it. There’s a consensus that there is a longstanding homophobia problem within football fan culture. And whilst it certainly seems that way, I think the problem is more nuanced than that. I've been involved in football for most of my life, and I firmly believe that footballing culture doesn't have a colossal homophobia problem. The problem is toxic masculinity.

This tweet was really interesting to me and I wholeheartedly agree that the post has terrible optics for members of the LGBTQ+ community. But I think what has mostly been ignored in the discourse around this incident is that at least ten or so people are likely to be involved with, or at least thinking about, the Mardi Gras events; the openly gay members of the Wanderers Women’s first team and their allied teammates. 

The Red and Black Bloc might be forgiven for not knowing this because of the 65 accounts they follow on Instagram; only one is a female Wanderers player. 

In fact, there are plenty of openly gay women across the W-League and in the Matildas (the Australian Women's National Football Team).This begs the question; why are there so many openly gay female players and so few openly gay male players at the highest level? An account of history makes it pretty clear to understand why.

In 1998 Justin Fashnau, the first openly gay player in English football, took his own life after years of homophobic abuse from fans and his managers alike. One manager even asked him why he was always in those “bloody poof clubs”. 

In 1999, then Chelsea player Graeme Le Saux was a victim of homophobic abuse, despite being straight, from current A-League manager Robbie Fowler. 

In 2002 Luiz Felipe Scolari, then manager of the Brazilian team, said that he would kick a player out of his squad if he found out they were gay. Surely this kind of explicit intention to discriminate would leave him condemned by the footballing community, not least of which because it’s terrible PR. Surely a homophobe like Scolari would never be hired in English football following the tragedy of Justin Fashnau. 

Nope. In 2008 Scolari was appointed manager of one of England’s biggest clubs and most successful clubs at the time; Chelsea. The very same club that Le Saux played for when he was a victim of homophobic abuse. 

In 2010 the English FA even had plans to produce an anti-homophobia video, presumably to clean up their act. The project was scrapped, however, reportedly because they couldn't find a single player in the English top-flight willing to be in it. 

By stark contrast, in my friends WNPL team, the gay members of her team make fun of the straight girls, affectionately joking that the straight girls are softer in tackles. 

So then why is homophobia far more prevalent in men’s football than women’s? The administrators are primarily the same people, and the managers up until recently were the same old fashioned men who played in an era where calling someone a poof wouldn’t even get you a yellow card. 

The answer, to me, is that the discrimination is not homophobic, it’s gendered.

Former manager, Alan Smith, has said it would be incredibly difficult for a (male) footballer to come out as gay suggesting that society says footballers  “can get drunk and beat up [their wives] and that’s quite acceptable” but that fans wouldn’t support a gay player. 

In a 2013 paper published by Amy M. Denissen and Abigail C. Saguy, they suggested that lesbian tradeswomen are not fully perceived as women and that they may “derive benefits” because of their “perceived masculinity”. In contrast, gay men are “devalued…because they are perceived as feminine”. 

Le Saux reportedly received homophobic abuse because of his “bohemian” lifestyle and “unladdish” interests such as art. In men’s football, if you aren’t masculine, you’re labelled "gay", and ridiculed for it. 

There seems to be an undeniable link in the culture of men’s football that homosexuality equals femininity and that femininity means you’re unathletic. Dennissen and Saguy suggest the same thing happens on worksites. 

So what does all this mean? While I condemn the post for being offensive, I don’t think it’s insulting for the reasons most people think it is. The post didn’t really criticise homosexuality: taken in the context of football's homophobic history, it can be read as a criticism of feminine men for being anti-athletic. And it implies that masculine men and the LGBTQ+ community/their allies are mutually exclusive.

Footballing culture doesn’t have a problem with homophobia as much as it does with toxic masculinity. As a society, we need to work harder to prevent the conflation of athleticism with masculinity. In my time as a player and a coach, I've learnt that masculinity and femininity have almost nothing to do with athletic ability. I can also say with a degree of confidence that the characters we don on the pitch can differ immensely to the ones we present off the pitch. 

And given that attendance at women’s games is a mere fraction of those at men’s games and society generally disregards female sport, we also need to make strides to lift the profile of the women’s game and spread the idea that sport is for everyone. Activists have said for a while that we need more famous athletes, especially footballers, to come out. I might argue, however, that we need to elevate the platform of the already out female footballers. The LGBTQ+ heroes in sport are already there, we just need to see them. 

Pulp Editors