The Olympic Games has everyone’s attention, but if there were more openly out gay athletes, would the world still be watching?
I was wondering about gay athletes in Beijing and found two main online articles on the topic. According to OutSports.com, 10 athletes in the Beijing Olympics are openly out and include one gay man and one bisexual – the list in this article grew from next to none to 10.
Another article on The New England Blade, has a head count of far less than that, and a blog on AfterEllen.com keeps an ongoing tally of out athletes – the number is gloriously growing.
According to the article in Blade, more than two dozen Olympic athletes have come out after their retirement.
Reasons for athletes staying closeted mainly relate to sponsorships and endorsement, media perception and they way they would be treated by fans and even team or sports mates. I am sure most gays and lesbians can relate to the latter fears, but really, it seems like media and corporations should not be a reason why someone stays closeted. That’s what we LGBT marketers and communications professionals are trying to accomplish. We are trying to establish a unified interaction where companies can feel proud to sponsor our community, and our community can feel safe enough to come out.
The media, to my knowledge, has not reported negatively on any of the gay athletes, and really it may be more of a cultural thing – a country of origin issue – where athletes don’t yet feel safe to come out. The fact that the Olympics allows openly out athletes to compete (as they should) and even supports post-op transsexuals, is a good indicator of where the world as a whole is headed. Hopefully the interactions closeted individuals have with the non-closeted will give them a ray of hope and enough courage so they can do the same thing. That is brewing already, in its own way, as, German lesbian fencer, Imke Duplitzer, has been speaking out about China’s equality policies, putting a lot on the line. She is one of nine German athletes who are speaking their minds on that topic. More on that here.
In the meantime, we will take it one post at a time, one GLAAD issue at a time, and enlighten and work with corporations one communications plan at a time.
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