So John Amechi came out. Emphasis on ’so.’ My guess is that, mathematically speaking, there’s a strong likelihood that there are gay dudes in every field of endeavor one can imagine. Like I said once before, I bet that there’s a couple gay cats in the FOI, so there’s not too much else that would surprise me. A gay basketball player? Naw, I’m not shocked. What I think would shock me would be if a gay name-brand athlete came out. Like if Michael Strahan came out after his wife’s allegations. That’s when I would be shocked. A borderline scrub announcing that he’s gay after the fact? Meh. The part of the story that’s really interesting to me is the way it’s being handled in the media.
I could probably use this for the question of the week in my class, but the ‘E’ in ESPN is for entertainment. Which is all that these ‘tell-all’ books are about, anyway. I look at it like this: if the point is that we’re not supposed to care whether a basketball player is gay, then what’s the point of pointing out that he’s gay? If the only scoring that really matters is the kind that takes place during the 48 minutes on the court, why detail the off-the-court goings on? For entertainment. I mean, yeah, there’s the whole ‘being-gay-is-normal’ social engineering component too, but essentially, it’s inculcation by entertainment. Meaning that it probably wouldn’t go over quite as well without the entertainment element. Cuz look at it like this: when you see the autobiography/memoirs of some athlete, there are two things you can count on — it’s gonna follow the triumphant underdog archetype, and he’s gonna be very, very good at his sport. Or at least, he will have achieved some level of notoriety. My guess is that the former point holds true, but that second one…is suspect. Which means that the only reason we’re getting this story is for the novelty of having a gay man say that he was a professional athlete.
The other thing I’ve noticed is the tendency to make it seem that an NBA player is somehow more difficult because of the high level of ‘homophobia’ among Black folks in general, and athletes in particular. ESPN Page 2 writer Jeff Pearlman writes,
In many ways, it’d be overly simplistic to merely blame the athletes without searching a bit deeper. For many African-Americans, a disapproval of homosexuality comes with the racial territory. Being gay is looked upon as something … weird. Something … just not right. It stems from grandpa. And grandpa’s grandpa. As rapper Kanye West noted last year, it’s hypocritical for African-Americans to complain about bigotry when they apply their own form to others. From a young age, West noted, you’re taught that gays aren’t normal. Aren’t righteous. It’s not an easy cycle to snap.
As if non-Black grandpas and great-grandpas haven’t been saying the same thing…or as if there are that many people saying anything different even today. Come on, now.
Most interesting of all to me, of course, is the linguistic aspect of it all. In the same way that I question whether every usage of the n-word is racist, or whether every usage of the b-word is sexist, I don’t know that every usage of the f-word is ‘homophobic.’ I think that, if anything, the casual usage of ‘faggot’ would have to show up on the sexism chart, since it’s usually not a suggestion that the dude in question is actually engaging in homosexual behavior — that is, the definitively homosexual behavior of engaging in some type of sexual activity with a man. What is’ really saying is that the dude in question is less of a man for whatever reason. So when Pearlman writes,
I have witnessed the scene time and time again. Basketball player wears a yellow jacket with matching shoes – he’s a “fa—-.” Baseball player jogs into the dugout and trips over a bat — “fa—-.” Wide receiver avoids crossing the middle of the field – “What the hell are you, a f—— fa—-?” Why, just a few months back Steelers linebacker Joey Porter dipped into his linguistic catalogue and pulled out “Oreo fa—-” to describe Kellen Winslow of the Browns.
Now, pardon me for being blunt, but I don’t think any of those instances constitutes a suggestion that the dude takes it up the butt. What’s really being said is that the so-called faggot is less than a man. See, the real test is determining what words could be functional substitutes. My guess is that any of the female-as-pejorative words would fit very well. So, just to check it out, look at the 3rd example — Wide receiver avoids crossing the middle of the field (see: Pinkston, Todd.) “What the hell are you, a bitch?” Yup. And actually, this is a case when the adjective-ass(ed) noun construction would come into play, where both b- and f- could play either role. In neither case is the player’s sexual orientation or gender being called into question. Only his manhood. Depending on your social orientation, that could be bad enough, but what it’s clearly not, linguistically at least, is homophobia.
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