A Scoping Review and Introduction of a Scholarly Exchange on LGBTQ+ Experiences in Sport Management Sally Shaw a and George B
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SPORT MANAGEMENT REVIEW 2021, VOL. 24, NO. 3, 365–388 https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2021.1880746 The rainbow connection: a scoping review and introduction of a scholarly exchange on LGBTQ+ experiences in sport management Sally Shaw a and George B. Cunningham b aSchool of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; bCenter for Sport Management Research and Education, Department of Health and Kinesiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY In this scholarly exchange edition, we present a selection of invited Accepted 11 November 2020 articles that focus on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, KEYWORDS transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons in sport management. LGBTQ+; inclusion; policy; In this introduction, we outline a brief history of how and why marketing; governance; sexuality activism evolved over the last 50 years. We also outline management why, despite the societal gains in many countries, research into the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in sport management is fundamen- tal to improving those experiences and engendering change. We achieve this by summarizing past research in the area, which lays the foundation for the articles in this scholarly exchange. We pro- vide an overview of the scholarly exchange articles, summarizing how the papers further the understanding of the management, marketing, and governance of sport within the context of LGBTQ+ people’s experiences. 1. Introduction June 2020 marked 51 years since members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community began a three-day resistance against a series of invasions by police at the Stonewall Inn, New York. From this event in 1969, the nascent LGBTQ+ movement gained momentum, resulting in the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in the United States of America (USA) and, shortly after, similar organizations in the United Kingdom (UK) and other countries, including New Zealand (NZ) and Australia (Fairbanks & Willett, n.d.; Lorenzo, 2019; Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2014). One of the many outcomes from these events is a wider acknowledgement and conversation about diverse sexualities in some, but certainly not all, societies. In sport, pride movements have led to the creation of LGBTQ+ inclusive sport organizations from local to international levels (for some examples, see Buzuvis, 2011; Mock et al., in press; Trussell, 2020). These organizations have been developed within a historical and current context of widespread homophobia in sport (Gri!n, 2012; Shaw, 2019), as discussions about sexuality have been underway for as long as organized sport has existed. Women, for example, were dissuaded from participating in cycling during the late 19th century. CONTACT Sally Shaw [email protected] © 2021 Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand 366 S. SHAW AND G. B. CUNNINGHAM They were threatened, even by the medical profession, that they could damage their reproductive organs and run the risk of developing a “masculine” red-face as they exerted themselves and embraced this new form of freedom (Manners, 2016). Homophobia was, of course, closely aligned with these threats of masculinity and, as Hall (1996) argued, the connections between homophobia and sport were born (see also Sartore & Cunningham, 2014). In 1996, re"ecting on her own work from 1981, Hall noted, “I also suggested, as did others, that in reality, femininity was a thinly disguised code word for heterosexuality. The real issue behind so much attention to an athlete’s femininity was the fear that she might be a lesbian” (Hall, 1996, p. 19). Similarly, she argued in her 1989 and 1990 research with colleagues Dallas Cullen and Trevor Slack on Canadian NSOs, that female coaches were excluded because “known or assumed lesbians are not hired in coaching or administrative positions, whereas men with a history of sexual harassment of . female athletes often are” (Hall, 1996, p. 82). Men were also the subject of explicit and implicit homophobia of the Victorian era. The spread of the religious and philosophical vision of Muscular Christianity as a means to developing leaders was also a way to enforce the heterosexuality in a repressive manner (MacAloon, 2006). Interestingly, this view, in particular of colonial adaptation of Muscular Christianity has been balanced by the research of Brickell (2008), who has commented on the homo-erotic nature of photography, both in and outside sport, of the time. Overall, however, sport’s development for men was delineated by heterosexuality. Casual homophobic lan- guage was, and continues to be, used to describe men who are not considered to be “good” at sport (Kian, Clavio, Vincent, Shaw et al., 2011) and as a way of advancing traditional forms of masculinity (Rosenberg et al., 2017). Given the negative psychological and behavioural out- comes associated with discriminatory language (Symons, O’Sullivan, Polman et al., 2017), it is little wonder that sport remains a space where few boys or men feel able to be frank about their sexuality (Baiocco et al., 2018; Devís-Devís et al., 2020; Pistella et al., 2020). Hall’s (1996) re"ective book is now over 20 years old, and it would be easy to think that such occurrences are a thing of the past, particularly as sport organizations increasingly publicize and market their support for LGBTQ+ athletes, supporters, o!cials. And yet, sport continues to o#er plenty of examples of homophobia in which athletes, coaches, and o!cials are directly targeted because of individuals’ negative responses to their sexuality and/or fears about sponsorship deals being lost if athletes are gay (Cunningham, 2019; Sartore & Cunningham, 2010). The global “Out on the Fields” report (Denison & Kitchen, 2015) found that there was little acceptance for gay and lesbian people in youth sport and adult sport and that sport was not identi$ed as a safe space for people to come out. Despite this bleak history, there are strong signs of elements of change. Gay sport organizations, such as the NZ Falcons and the Christchurch Football Club Heroes rugby teams in NZ and the Sydney Convicts in Australia, provide competitive, social, and supportive places for men’s rugby and play in their local leagues (Auckland President’s League; Christchurch’s Senior Men’s League Division 4; and Sydney Suburban Rugby Union Championship, respectively). In 2019, Rugby Australia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Australia’s four gay men’s rugby teams and the International Gay Rugby (IGR) organization to develop and strengthen gay rugby in that country (Rugby Australia, 2019). An argument could be made to suggest that by creating and supporting separate gay and inclusive teams, sport organizations, funders, and stakeholders could in fact undermine sport’s attempts at inclusivity. This suggestion weakens, however, when we SPORT MANAGEMENT REVIEW 367 consider the hidden and invisible nature of many LGBTQ+ participants’ sport experiences (Lawley, 2018), the level of homophobic abuse faced by many gay males in sport, and the potential for drop-out and mental health problems as a result of that abuse (Baiocco et al., 2018). These studies provide evidence that supporting gay and inclusive organizations provides safe and inclusive places for some gay men that they would otherwise not be able to access in sport. Gay and inclusive organizations provide visibility, safety, and community, which may well be more supportive to a young person coming out than the limelight of professional sport – a process that, for some, is seen as a starting point for visibility in sport but for others adds pressure to an already over-hyped and scrutinized existence and the potential for dropout and mental health problems (De Santos, 2019). Interestingly, fewer separate gay and inclusive organizations have been created by and for lesbians (Waldron, 2016). Some have argued that this is because some women’s sport is more open than are men’s sports to people with diverse sexualities. In the grey literature, some lesbian survey respondents have simply said that their sexuality was “not an issue ‘because about half the women in the team were gay or bisexual’” (Sport Wales, 2012, p. 17). Waldron (2016), for example, argued that sport can provide a space where lesbians and straight women can provide community and support and “the lesbian presence in sport remained protected and silent” (p. 337). Others have suggested that the challenges of being a woman in sport are hard enough without the perceived stigma of being a lesbian (Krane & Barber, 2003), or working in a lesbian organization. Given these multiple histories and social and cultural contexts, it is fair to say that sport, sport organizations, and sexualities have a diverse and complex relationship. For every example of hope, such as the MoU between the IGR, Rugby Australia, and that country’s gay rugby clubs, there is a counter. For example, Rugby Australia’s drawn-out handling of homophobic tweets posted during 2018-2019 by one of its star players, Israel Folau, was demoralizing and perplexing for many, not least those who had believed in Rugby Australia’s commitment to anti-homophobia expressed in 2014 as one of $ve founding signatories of the Anti-homophobia and Inclusion Framework. What to many seemed to be a clear contravention of the player’s responsibilities as a rugby star employed by the NSO became a protracted public debate about freedom of speech, marketing, employ- ment law, and the power of corporate sport (Litch$eld & Osborne, in press; Madalin, 2017–2018; Sarre & Babie, 2020). We also recognize that gay and inclusive sport organizations have been criticized for their exclusionary practices. Litch$eld and Osborne (in press) have examined the $nancial implications of participating in the Gay Games, a four-yearly sport event. While on many levels inclusive, this event is criticized for having punitively expensive registration, which puts it out of reach of many young people, and also those from marginalized cultural, ethnic, and disability groups who historically have low levels of disposable income.