Gay Games Or Gay Olympics? Ications For
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Gay Games or Gay Olympics? ications for BY HELEN JEFFERSON LENSKYJ Depuis 1982 les Jeuxgais ont iti organisis par des lesbiennes represented a reaction to homophobia in mainstream et desgais comme unfestivalsportifet lbccasion de se donner sport, significant numbers of participants with little prior dupouvoir. La tendance ricente uers le mod2le de 15ndustrie sporting involvement were attracted by the principle of olympique auec son emphase sur la compitition d2lite et sa inclusion and the promise of community that the Games d+endance aupr2s des sponsors corporatzy, menace leprin- offered. cipe d'inclusion pour les lesbiennes et les minoritks. Gay Games organizing and the principle of inclu- When the first Gay Games, at that time called the "Gay sion Olympic. Games", were held in San Francisco in 1982, they were hailed as an empowering sporting and cultural The first two Gay Games were organized by San Francisco celebration organized by and for lesbians, gays and their Arts and Athletics, a group founded by former Olympic allies on the principles of inclusion and participation.' decathlete Tom Waddell in 1981. By 1989, this organiza- From their inception, discrimination based on "sexual tion had become the Federation of Gay Games (hereafter orientation, gender, race, religion, nationality, ethnic the Federation) and included board members from a origin, political belief(s), athleticlartistic ability, physical number ofparticipating countries outside North America. challenge, or HIV status" was prohibited; the Purpose of Gender parity in committee structures was a key principle the Gay Games Sport and Cultural Festival was "to foster from the outset. The year 1990 marked the first Gay and augment the self-respect of lesbians and gay men ... Games held outside the USA, with the Metropolitan and to engender respect and understanding from the non- VancouverAthletic/Arts Association (MVAAA), Canada, gay world" (Federation of Gay Games). Since their mod- hosting the event with 29 sports and over 7,000 athletes. est beginnings- - in a San Francisco football stadium, the It is noteworthy that the words lesbian and gay were not Gay Games have grown into an international sporting part of the names of these first organizing groups, an spectacle and business enterprise, with more than 20 core omission that at least one critic viewed as an attempt to sporting events, a high level of competition between blend into the mainstream (Syms). biddingcities, budgets exceeding$US7m, corporatespon- The 1994 Gay Games in New York, with 1 1,000 sors, and more participants than most Olympic Games athletes from 45 countries, marked the first time that there have attracted. had been competition between two bid cities; for the 1998 Games, therewere three bids, and for 2002, five. The total Organizing for social change cost of all five bids for the 2002 Gay Games exceeded the budgets for the first two Gay Games themselves (Boson, For many Canadian and American 1998), an indication of the growing trend towards emu- Gay Games lesbian and gay activists in the early lating the Olympic model. 1980s, an interprise such as the In the early 1980s when Waddell and others first began f ou n-derSwere - - .. Gay Games represented a radical organizing the Gay Games, the principle of inclusion had less interested departure from their usual political different connotations-different for Waddell, a closeted ref 0 rm in a the wdrk, in that it was primarily a gay man for much of his athletic career, and for most 4 proactive initiative-a sport and lesbian and gay athletes. Billy Jean King's experience of mainstream than cultural festival designed to cel- homophobic backlash and her loss of commercial en- in creating an ebrate lesbian and gay existence. dorsements amply illustrated the safety of the closet for alternative, Unlike activists lobbying for legis- competitive athletes, particularly women. Similarly, jobs lative or policy change, Gay Games in coaching, sport administration and physical education nclusive model founders were less interested in re- were in jeopardy if sport leaders' lesbian or gay identities of sporting forming the mainstream than in became public knowledge, while athletes at every level creating an alternative, inclusive risked harassment and ostracism ifthey came out (Lenskyj pet ition' model of sporting- competition. 1991). Twenty years later, with sport still representing the Although, for many, the Games last bastion of sexism and homophobia, legislative and 24 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME Lesbian In policy changes are addressing some-but certainly not And, in the 1990 photojournal of Gay Games 111, the all-of the problems of discrimination facing lesbian and editors stated that the Games: gay athletes. Gay Games founders sought to provide an opportu- symbolized for thousands ofgay men and women one nity to participate in an openly lesbian and gay sport more step along the road of self-discovery. And for festival. As Waddell explained, "the message- of these one astounding week in time it was a road they could games goes beyond validating our culture. They were travel without ever having to apologize for their conceived as a new idea in the meaning of sport based on existence, or even having to suffer the strain of inclusion rather than exclusion" (cited in Coe 7). He maintaining an appearance alien to their very nature. envisioned the Gay Games as a way of raising conscious- (Forzley and Hughes 1 10) ness and enlightening people both outside and inside lesbian and gay communities (Messner). Participation in Although the emphasis on empowerment is valid, to the Games would challenge homophobia in the hetero- reduce the idea to simply "being oneself' and publicly sexual world, and sexism, ageism, racism and national- showing "love for each other" is to overlook the sociocul- ism among lesbian and gay people. He hoped that his tural diversity of lesbian and gay communities. The choice dream of an "exemplary community" would be achieved whether to "be oneself' or to "pass" as a member of the through inclusive policies and practices: age-group com- dominant group is not available to lesbians and gays who petition, recruitment and outreach to ethnic minority are Black, or to those who have disabilities, for example. athletes and those from the developing countries, and Liberal individualistic notions of self-discovery and self- social and cultural events to break down the barriers of expression are insufficient for authentic, universal em- gender, class, ethnicity and dislability among gays and powerment, because they overlook the double or triple lesbians. Two decades later, there are continuing debates oppressions suffered by minority members of lesbian and about the realization of these goals. gay communities. Furthermore, simply bringing together diverse groups of lesbians and gay men in sport does not Media representations of the Gay Games in itself parantee "love for each other," and it is naive to hope that sexism, racism, ableism and other entrenched In most written accounts of the Gay Games, lesbian and forms of discrimination that divide communities will gay commentators seemed just as eager as their non-gay simply evaporate during Gay Games. On a more grandi- allies to normalize this sporting spectacle and its partici- ose scale, Olympic industry rhetoric pants. There was a consistent emphasis on similarity calls for peace and harmony, and rather than difference: "we" (lesbian and gay athletes) can presents Olympic competition as a "The message break "their" (heterosexual) records; we can produce one transcendent human experience, at of these games of the biggest international sporting spectacles in the the same time ignoring the labour world; we can organize events that are officially approved practices and human rights abuses goes beyond by their international federations. of its multinational sponsors, its im- validating our In the extensive lesbian and gay media coverage, there pact on low-income and homeless culture. They is a clear emphasis on using conventional sporting prac- people in host cities, and countless tices to counter homophobic stereotypes and to achieve other negative social and environ- were conceived lesbian and gay visibility and empowerment. In The Story mental impacts (Lenskyj 2000). as a new idea in of Gay Games 11, Roy Coe described them as: Although lesbian and gay commu- nity newspapers are an obvious fo- the meaning of an important demonstration of our love for each rum for Gay Games debate, they face sport based on other and our presence in the world community. Our competing pressures. On one hand, ~nclusionrather statement as a minority group was clearly made they are expected to generate support through the wonderful spirit of camaraderie and for upcoming bids and games, to than exclusion-" friendly competition. (7) congratulate organizers and partici- VOLUME 21, NUMBER 3 25 pants, and to celebrate izers are at pains to the event as a success keep "politics" out of story in a homophobic the Games ... [They] world. On the other kept public debate hand, since they are the on the Games' short- most accessible source comings to a mini- of analysis and critique mum (Shannon 13). of the Gay Games movement, they will fail One might argue in that role ifthey avoid that, in the face of the controversy and self- rightwing backlash, a criticism. public united front was A brief review of se- crucial to the success of lected newspaper cov- the Games. However, erage of Gay Games I11 the naive aim of keep- in Vancouver shows ing "politics" out of few differences be- sport-also popular tween mainstream and notion among Olym- lesbian/gay media. Ki- pic boosters-is espe- nesis, a Vancouver cially inappropriate in feminist newspaper, relation to a sporting published a supportive event that is by its very information article in nature political. July and a five-page, Rites, a Toronto les- mainly favorable report bian and gay newspa- in September; in To- per, published some of ronto, the coverage in the few critical com- Xwa, the major gay and mentaries.