Outside the Sports Closet

News Discourses of Professional Gay Male Athletes in the Mainstream

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11372000
AutoresLeigh Moscowitz (University of South Carolina, autor correspondente), Leigh M Moscowitz (University of South Carolina), Andrew C Billings (0000-0003-4818-5799, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA), Khadija Ejaz (0000-0002-6699-7128, University of South Carolina), Jane O’boyle (0000-0002-2352-4160, Elon University)
Ano2019
Volume43
Fascículo3
Páginas249-271
Data de publicação2019-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Communication Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0196-8599 • E-ISSN: 1552-4612
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0196859918808333
OpenAlexW2902506886
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas36

Contributing to a growing yet underresearched area of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues in sport, this study interrogates news discourses of the most prominent American athletes coming-out stories to date: the National Basketball Association’s Jason Collins and the National Football League’s Michael Sam. Mainstream media narratives invoked an overall congratulatory tone, hailing these announcements as watershed moments while at the same time emphasizing athletes’ physicality and athleticism in ways that reinforced the hypermasculine. Journalists and opinion leaders celebrated these announcements while simultaneously relying on coded and overt homophobic labels and language. Media storytellers subsequently relied upon dualistic, self-contradictory binaries, highlighting the paradoxes implicit in celebrating increased gay visibility within the confines of a commercialized sports/media complex with heterosexuality and hypermasculinity at its core

Art · Basketball · Closet · Football · League · Lesbian · Literature · Mainstream · Masculinity · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Queer · Sociology · Transgender · Gender Studies · History · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society