Two athlet recently g out has highlighted the arth of openly gay players the world of U.S. men's profsnal sports, often dubbed "the last closet" for s lack of LGBTQ reprentatn.
Contents:
- FORMER CROSSF EMPLOYEE TALKS BEG GAY AND CROSSF’S INNATE ABILY TO UNE
- WHY THERE ARE FEW OPENLY GAY ATHLET IN MEN'S PROFSNAL SPORTS
FORMER CROSSF EMPLOYEE TALKS BEG GAY AND CROSSF’S INNATE ABILY TO UNE
When Tim Chan first walked to CrossF SoCal San Diego 2006, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Beg a gay, Che-Amerin male, he had grown ed to… * why crossfit is gay *
Homophobia at a CrossF is a good time to remember that gym culture wouldn’t exist whout queer people. #IndyPri activists and their alli were ultimately affirmed both by swift rporate actn om above—CEO and founr Greg Glassman told Berger to “shut the fuck up, ” addg that he is “crazy proud of the gay muny CrossF” —and om the grass roots: After days of staed prott, the affiliate permanently shuttered. But 2018, LGBTQ people’s achievement of a basic level of regnn at the gym is tged wh more than a ltle irony: Amerin fns culture has always been bound up wh gay inty, and today’s gyms, om CrossF to Curv, would be unregnizable whout .
Still, mors of homosexual “perversn” swirled around the (mostly) men so attentive to their bodi, a preoccupatn nsired effete. In a historil moment when homosexualy and pedophilia were nsired practilly terchangeable, a 1958 statutory rape sndal led lol nservativ to shut down the outdoor gym, nouncg as “an attractn for perverts” and “followers of all three sex” who equented this “favore haven of the sexual athlet and queers of Southern California.
WHY THERE ARE FEW OPENLY GAY ATHLET IN MEN'S PROFSNAL SPORTS
While gyms were hardly the homosexual huntg grounds alarmists portrayed, is te that the pre–Stonewall Era, sex-segregated fns clubs uld be spac of sexual and social disvery for LGBTQ people prohibed om openly socializg elsewhere. Johnson wr how the gym uld operate abstractly through “physique magaz, ” that enabled midcentury gay men livg far om ci to participate a natnal gay nsumer culture that tractors rid as “the homo tra” gradg “clean physil culture by peddlg pornography. Gay liberatn and the fns craze simultaneoly seized 1970s Ameri, strippg gyms of their seeds and stigmatizg unfaiar gay subcultur.