Sexuality and Sports

In the post-Apartheid era sport has been consistently celebrated as an avenue for fostering social change, curing various social ills, and uniting South Africans across the divides of race, class, gender and geography. The argument for using sport to foster social cohesion in South Africa rests on two main assumptions: firstly, that direct participation in sport and physical activity promotes sustained communication, collaboration and understanding across social divides; and secondly, that the success of national teams and athletes promotes national pride and unity. In this article we raise the question of whether sport can indeed foster social cohesion in a context where women’s sports participation and symbolic embodiment of the nation give rise to regulatory schemas that enforce compulsory heterosexuality and mainstream constructs of ‘feminisation’. We explore these issues by drawing on media reports of cases in which South African elite women athletes have had their gender or sexual identities questioned, challenged or regulated according to heteronormative gender regimes. By so doing we argue that efforts to increase women’s sports participation or the promotion of women athletes as embodiments of the nation can contribute to facilitating social cohesion. To realise the potential of sport as a tool for building social cohesion, a conscious and dedicated effort must be made, we argue, to deal more directly with narrow heteronormative gender regimes and the homophobic attitudes and prejudices that these foster.

Football is not only one of the major cultural manifestations of Brazilian society; it is also the pinnacle of the country’s hegemonic masculinity, a bastion into which women should not be allowed. Despite some progress and several international sporting successes achieved over the last few decades, Brazilian female footballers still endure extreme gender prejudice when playing football in Brazil. Gender discrimination blocks their access to minimal conditions of
football training and playing at recreational and competitive levels. This paper aims to discuss gender issues that pervade Brazilian football. The paper applies a multifaceted theoretical
background, combining a psychoanalytical view of gender issues with a sociological framework, to data collected through an ethnographic approach employing participant observation and interviews. The research uncovers acts of gender resistance and compliance by Brazilian female
football players. Some women use football to resist the hegemonic gender order in the sport; they
love the nation’s cultural icon and they will fight for their right to play. Others argue for the importance of complying with a normative femininity in order to be acceptable to sport
managers, agents, the press and the general public. Still others refuse a normative femininity and fight for the ‘naturalness’ of women in football. In the face of the hurdles faced by Brazilian
women who want to enjoy the major sport in the country, this paper claims that only urgent federal legislation will lead women to gender equality in Brazilian football.

Am Wochenende vom 13. bis 14. Oktober 2018 kamen die queeren Sportvereine aus Deutschland in Berlin zur ersten Bundes-NetzwerkTagung (BuNT) zusammen, um sich gemeinsam mit weiteren Gästen aus Wissenschaft, Politik, Gesellschaft und dem organisierten Sport auszutauschen, neue Projekte zu entwickeln und die Zusammenarbeit im Kampf insbesondere gegen Homo- und Trans*feindlichkeit im Sport zu intensivieren.
Bundesministerin Dr. Franziska Giffey bezog Stellung in ihrer Videobotschaft: „Ich bin sehr gern Schirmfrau dieser Veranstaltung; denn es ist gut, dass Vereine die Inklusion von LSBTIQ* im Freizeit-, Breiten- und Wettkampfsport vorantreiben.
Nutzen Sie die Möglichkeit der Vernetzung mit Wissenschaft, Politik und dem organisierten Sport, damit alle Menschen frei von Vorurteilen und Diskriminierung Sport treiben können.“
Im Rahmen der Tagung diskutierten erstmals viele Personen aus Sportorganisationen, Wissenschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft gemeinsam über queere Belange im Sport. Spannende Fachvorträge und zahlreiche Workshops boten Raum für Austausch und
Ideen, wie eine tolerante und respektvolle Sportlandschaft in Deutschland vorangetrieben werden kann.
Vorspiel - Sportverein für Schwule und Lesben Berlin e.V. organisierte die BundesNetzwerkTagung 2018 in Kooperation mit Seitenwechsel - Sportverein für FrauenLesbenTrans*Inter* und Mädchen e. V., dem Deutschen Olympischen Sportbund (DOSB) sowie dem Landessportbund Berlin. Die Tagung wurde gefördert von der Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld, der Hannchen-Mehrzweck-Stiftung (hms) und diese Dokumentation vom Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend. Schirmpersonen der Veranstaltung waren die Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, Dr. Franziska Giffey und DOSB-Vizepräsidentin Dr. Petra Tzschoppe.
Die Beiträge der Tagung sind im Folgenden thematisch gegliedert dokumentiert, gefolgt von einem zusammenfassenden Kapitel zu übergreifenden Ergebnissen, offenen Fragen und Ausblicken. Am Ende der Broschüre finden Sie eine Sammlung
von Links zu Organisationen und Stellen, die Sie zu Fragen des queeren Sports und LGBTI* im Sport beraten und unterstützen können.

The small number of openly gay or lesbian people in top-flight sport raises the question about whether sporting or social contexts makes it easy or difficult for these sportspeople to come out. There are studies conducted in the UK and USA using the theory of homohysteria but the scarcity of studies in Spain on this subject, added to the lack of a tool with which to measure tolerance towards sexual diversity in sport, has led us to write this paper in which we analyze the suitability of a new tool for classifying the metacognitive profiles of two samples from different cultures, relative to the concept of homohysteria. This correlational study involved 879 men and women aged 16-78 (M = 28.45 years; SD = 13.08) living in either Spain or the United Kingdom, who were actively participating in or following sport of some kind.  Results show that the new instrument has adequate construct validity and high reliability (Alpha = .95), facilitating the measurement of two dimensions of tolerance towards non-heteronormative sexualities in sport: non-rejection and acceptance. Results point to three metacognitive profiles in terms of fit of the level of tolerance in these two dimensions: low, high, and partial. Findings show high levels of both dimensions of tolerance in the UK, and higher percentages of partial tolerance in Spain, underlining the importance of cultural contexts and policies which may affect people's levels of tolerance. We conclude that a pseudo-inclusive climate exists in Spanish society today.

Introduction Mushetsvennaia, zhestkaia sportivnaia bor'ba (2) [(Football) is a hard, manly sporting struggle] The early defeat of the Brazilian women's football team in the 2012 London Olympics had a profound negative impact on women's football in the country. First, it interrupted the team's run of Olympic successes. Since Atlanta 1996, when women's football had been first included in the Olympic program, the Brazilian women's team had always qualified amongst the semi-finalists and had taken the silver medal in 2004 and 2008. The 2012 defeat generated a number of critical comments in the national press as well as from fans, who accused the players of a "lack of commitment" during the competition. Kleiton Lima, the head coach of the Brazilian women's team for three and a half years before being sacked from his position just a few months before the London games, went public to defend the players as "heroines, superwomen who play a 'phan...

The majority of ‘Sport in Development’ (SiD) research imparts a heteronormative framework that serves to prevent nuanced understandings of how sexuality and gender matter in programming that aspires to achieve development through/with sport. The authors review existing SiD academic literature and draw on personal work and research experiences within the SiD field to evidence this claim. Three reasons for this heteronormative frame are identified: (1) limited engagement with themes of sexuality within research on international development; (2) few examinations of queer desire and sport in areas of the Global South; and (3) the emphasis on quantitative monitoring and evaluation tools within SiD programming. The authors conclude by offering suggestions on how to challenge the existing heteronormative framework within SiD research.