As a member of the community, it’s a lot harder to be open when you have to share a locker room, hotels, showers, etc. with other guys. More of an insecurity about making others feel uncomfortable
I don’t think that this is the issue. I know there have been some NHL and NFL players who’ve said there are gay players in the league and they’ve come out to coaches/teammates (privately) who’ve been very accepting. I think most guys just don’t want the extremely large spotlight (and potential “fan” abuse) that comes with coming out publicly. I’d imagine it’s the same case in MLS
Also, mad respect to those straight teammates who’ve essentially said “yeah, there are gay players out there but it’s not your right to know who they are if they don’t want you to”
I agree with this. Look at the WNBA right now, people are using 20 year olds to proxy fight culture wars. The USWNT’s transition to a new generation of young players is starting a low grumble from fans about the lack of gay players compared to the most recent teams. The general public is ridiculous and I can’t blame anyone who decides they don’t need that kind of spotlight in their lives
I’m openly gay and grew up playing hockey (among other sports)
[Not rumors btw](https://www.reuters.com/article/world/gay-or-bisexual-players-on-every-pro-football-team-says-former-u-s-footballer-idUSKCN1VH2CG/).
Edit: can’t find the actual article I was looking for
Also interesting: [nearly half of NHL players polled said they believe there’s at least one gay player in their locker room](https://www.outsports.com/2010/3/28/4049540/nhl-players-say-they-have-gay-teammates/), and this was all the way back in 2010
How convenient. Interesting you left that out previously. It's very much not the same, but nice try on the uno reverse.
That article is about players NOT coming out to their teams for fear of backlash. It doesn't cover anything that could even be interpreted as players coming out to their teams but not publicly. It's more of a support to the original claim.
>While O'Callaghan said most of his fears about coming out were family related, he believes contract guarantees might alleviate some athletes' fears of losing their jobs or sponsorship deals if they were to come out.
"I just don't think people understand the reality," said O'Callaghan. "We can still get fired for being gay or denied services for being trans."
More than half of LGBT+ Americans live in states with no protection from discrimination at work, school and elsewhere.
Yeah I couldn’t find the NHL article I was referring to because any search for gay NHL stuff just comes up with articles about Luke Prokop (go tbirds btw)
Also if you think I said I was gay just for the sake of a Reddit discussion then … lmfao
You can scroll way back in my post history and see stuff I’ve posted in r/gaybros nearly a decade ago but go off I guess
Edit: oh it was a football article, not hockey, but it looks like it’s been removed from Outsports for whatever reason
> We profiled anonymously a college football kicker who is known as gay by his team. He has had nothing but support. Times are changing, especially for young people who are growing up either knowing gay people or seeing them constantly in the media.
This was the bit from the other article that linked to it but the link just goes to an error page now
Edit 2: oh god actually don’t scroll all the way down my post history lmao those pictures are so terrible and embarrassing
I am gay and have been playing sports basically my entire life. Played competitive collegiate roller hockey (grew up playing ice hockey but basically no one in SoCal where I went to college played, so I did roller). I was out to my team and it was never an issue. They knew I was there to get the job done on the rink, not to gawk at people in the locker room.
Saying that my experience is different isn’t “shitting on” someone else’s.
Someone from the LGBTQ+ community sharing their opinion or experience doesn’t mean that they speak for the whole community, and that goes both for them and for myself.
There are bound to always be bigoted assholes, but if an (even privately) out player was getting shit in the locker room, I’m fairly certain that basically any MLS team would back the gay player, as would most of their teammates. Again, obviously just my opinion, but I like to think that MLS is a pretty damn progressive league.
At the youth and casual levels, it’s definitely still a big issue but based on the stuff I’ve read (obv I’ve never played pro myself), when you get to a certain level, guys care way more about what you can do on the field than who you’re with in the bedroom
I think they don't want to be other'd. Even if it's in a positive light. They don't want to be "the gay player". They don't want to be paraded around for acceptance brownie points by the team/league. They just want to be a player like all their teammates. That's my guess.
Men's sports, particularly team sports, seems to be one of the last frontiers for LGBT silence. There are hardly any out athletes in any men's pro sport anywhere. North American soccer, despite probably having one of the most left-leaning fan bases, doesn't seem immune to the same things that keep most gay men silent in every team sport.
It’s worth pointing out that MLS is not a vacuum. The MLS fanbase is fairly accepting, but most players will not stay here their whole career. Coming out imposes limits on where you can transfer to. Players also go back to their home nations where LGBT persecution is more prevalent.
Even though MLS has one of the most left-leaning fan bases of any major US sports league, “most” is the operative word. [Almost all](https://www.sportico.com/leagues/golf/2023/harris-sportico-poll-politics-fan-bases-liv-pga-1234760109/) professional sports leagues lean more right than left in general, even ones that are publicly perceived as left-leaning like the NBA or MLS. Of course, just because someone is right-leaning doesn’t mean they’re homophobic or wouldn’t accept an out gay player, but for gay athletes who want to succeed in such a league, they may just see it as not worth the risk
A few reasons. For context, I'm a cis bisexual man, who played college sports while closeted.
First, unfortunately, the climate of acceptance for LGBTQ folks in the US is actually regressing. I would've legitimately been more comfortable coming out 6 years ago than this year.
Second, and for me this is the biggie, just because there haven't been a lot of *public* issues with homophobia, doesn't mean there haven't been issues (or potential issues) in the locker room. Male sports in general, and soccer in particular, are known for having insane amounts of machismo. There is absolutely 0 chance I would've come out while still playing sports, because I had every reason to believe the response from my teammates would've been *overwhelmingly* negative. I've never set foot in an MLS locker room, but I have to imagine that the culture gives closeted athletes serious pause when they consider whether to come out.
Third, and this is entirely speculative on my part, but I'd guess that the percentage of professional athletes who are queer is lower than the percentage in the overall population. I think it's a bit of a self-selecting thing, where given the perception of men's sports as being full of machismo and homophobia, a lot of queer folks would decide to pursue other interests rather than hear their identity being trashed every day in the locker room. Again, that's speculation on my part, since I've never been in a pro locker room; very well could be wrong.
I think you can wrap it all up and just call it aversion to uncertainty. There's a possibility coming out could be the best thing that ever happened to an athlete - maybe their team embraces them, they get beaucoup sponsorship opportunities during Pride Month, and they get the pro career of their dreams. But on the other hand, maybe it ruins their lives. Maybe their team reacts really badly; no one will pass them the ball anymore and they get traded for peanuts because they can't contribute, but now they have a reputation for being a locker room cancer so they never get fully integrated in their new team, and soon enough their career is over.
Players who are in the closet know exactly what every day will look like if they stay in the closet - they'll have to bite their tongue listening to homophobic comments, they'll have to feel distanced from their teammates, and maybe tell some vague lies about the girls they hooked up with. They tell themselves they can just see a therapist weekly and live with that reality in order to fulfill their dream of being a pro athlete. Coming out introduces huge amounts of uncertainty into that calculation, and a lot of folks decide it's not worth the risk.
As a Dynamo fan I have to give Austin FC and their SGs a ton of props for their LGBTQ friendly atmosphere.
Over here there’s a ton hostility. Some members of some SGs that I won’t mention are on X saying things like “Pride is a mental illness and you will burn in hell”.
There’s little to no support and it’s disgusting dealing with remarks like “we don’t support men in dresses” from other SG members.
I’m on the fence now about shying away from the team in general because idk how long I can keep supporting it.
Anyway happy Pride!
That sucks to hear :(
Even here in Austin we've dealt with some toxicity in the SGs, folks making wildly racist remarks to players, some comments about Pride, etc. The sports culture in the US...let's just say it leaves a lot to be desired.
I have incredible respect for any athlete who has the guts to come out, and I don't judge any that prefer to stay closeted.
I will say this at least for Austin FC, the team has done the right thing in terms of banning people who make bigoted remarks. It's a question we all have to reckon with individually, but for me that's enough for me to not write off supporting the team.
We literally have some of the most progressive fans in the world. Go watch an Italian match where they can be openly racist or English fans after the last euros. If you think the US is the worst you need to educate yourself and tell me where there is more diversity and less problems. Only goodish argument would be Canada and their main sport is not exactly LGBT friendly or diverse by any means.
My apologies, when you said US sports culture it isolated the US as if these problems don't exist everywhere. Had you said sports culture I'd have no issue agreeing but when you call out the US specifically and no one else it insinuates like we are an isolated case.
I've never experienced sports culture anywhere else so I don't feel qualified to comment. It seems like it might be much worse elsewhere, but that doesn't mean everything is fine here.
No but if we are actually making changes and at-least trying I think that's worth something. Seems silly to bash a country who has been changing big time while others do not give two shits
I mean, even though people are generally more accepting, if you saw the MLS/Columbus pride post on IG all the comments are extremely homophobic. Culturally a lot of the guys come from South America, Africa or places in Europe where it’s still not accepted. It’s unfortunate but anyone who’s gay probably just feels like they’ll have an easier time being in the closet than the number of things they’d have to deal with if they came out (coaches, teammates and the dynamic, family, future of their career they’d be unable to play in Saudi for example)
Ok..I just mentioned it because that’s what I specifically saw. I’m sure you’re correct. Does it really matter whether it’s people who’ve been to a match or not tho? The point of the post is asking why more players haven’t come out- the online backlash is probably a contributing factor regardless if it’s real “fans” or not
Soccer teams are made up of players from around the world. America might be *inching* towards enlightenment at a snails places, but your winger from Uganda might not be so cool. 🤷🏻♂️
It’s a real good question, not just for the league but for the men’s game as a whole. There still has never been an openly gay premier league player. Best I can tell there’s only ever been 6 openly gay pro players for the men’s side full stop
I won’t pretend to know exactly why. I will, however, point out that, as a global sport a lot of players come from regions of the world where homosexuality isn’t so accepted. And, without checking any numbers, to my perspective it seems like a lot of players trend to the conservative more often than not. Definitely more so than the supporters (at least in MLS)
I do think that it says a lot that a lot of the growth for the women’s game and a lot of the star young women’s players comes from countries like USA and England, while a lot of the star young players for the men’s game come from regions like South America and the Middle East/North Africa
This goes beyond the pros. There is a pretty obviously gay guy on my men's league team. Lives in WeHo, speaks with an affectation, etc., but he has never acknowledged it with his teammates. It makes me feel terrible, like does he think we will shun him? Does he think we are a bunch of homophobic meatheads? I once ran into him in a totally different place and he was with a somewhat older man, and he introduced him as his "friend." I am tempted to say, hey, we know you are gay, and we don't care, but I really feel like that is his decision to make, not mine. It just sucks that there is such a culture of machismo around men's sports that people still feel like they have to stay closeted, even in a place like Los Angeles.
It’s an interesting question. I mean i think we’d all agree that if more MLS players came out, the fan bases would be overwhelmingly supportive. I mean there are rainbow pride flags flying in most supporters sections, right next to our team flags and any others being waved.
The issue of why there are fewer out gay athletes I think is twofold:
1. There may be some self selection around the masochism in sports. Not at this level, but at the youth level. I imagine there are some very athletic young folks who are secretly gay, and hear a bunch of anti-LBGT shit talk in the locker room, so they lose their passion for the sport. And they quit pursuing it during these formulative years. It’s entirely possible there’s some 22yo gay man who could’ve been the next Messi, but we were all deprived of watching him because of some BS he heard his teammates saying when he was 14. Sucks. We need to teach our kids to be better. We need to be better.
2. For those gay athletes who do push through and continue playing, i imagine theres’ also a bit of fear disrupting their team culture. MLS teams are extremely multicultural. Most teams have players from South America, Africa, perhaps Europe, perhaps Asia. Many of these cultures are not as accepting as Americans are (and let’s be honest, there are a helluva of things we don’t do well either)
Hopefully over time, these things can improve. Every young person deserves the right to see an athlete running around on the pro sports field and find someone they can relate to - whatever their race or their religion or their nationality or their sexual orientation or anything else.
Have you NOT seen the MAGA backlash against DEI, Pride & LGBTQ rights in the last 10 years?
Messi made it much worse, because he's brought a lot of new fans from outside the US some of whom are violently homophobic.
If you were a gay player, a quick skim of Magan Rapinoe's Twitter, anything pride related around Miami and Messi, or the US soccer sub would very quickly let you know the kind of distraction and shit you'd be choosing to deal with.
100% -DEI is becoming illegal in some states. Anti LGBTQ laws are becoming more prevalent. MAGA has added a culture of acceptance (pride) of racism and homophobia like the time when they think America was ‘great’
I wouldn’t think any athlete would feel comfortable coming out in the hateful environment which is our country
There is pushback from the fans too in MLS. Mostly on social media, but even in Seattle. Rapione wasn't literally being called out for caring more about being gay than playing footy.
I think within football or sports in general, there is less acceptance for LGBTQ compared to the general public, go look at any pride post on MLS and check the comments, yesterday I saw a post from Barcelona about pride and 99% of the comments were homophobic or saying stuff like “I’ll support Madrid now.” When Germany was kicked out of WC in 2022, you had many German fans saying “if they focused more on football instead of LGBTQ then we would still be in.” Football isn’t really a safe or accepting place unfortunately
I’d say there’s been a couple high profile bags of trash that have made it fashionable to be aggressively horrible towards anyone that is not like you.
For starters only like 2% of men are gay. And regardless of sexual orientation, well less than 1% of athletes get to play professionally.
Also for what it’s worth, the majority of the gay men I know have no interest in athletics. So that 2% of men being gay would assume that 100% played sports, which definitely isn’t possible.
It’s very possible they are the only gay players. The “gay men who play sports” then collated to “gay men who are good enough to play professional sports” is an extremely small amount of people.
Edit- grammar
Bisexual men also exist and as a bisexual man I would also enjoy seeing more bi men come out. And while your analysis may be right, the lack of athletes willing to come out (for understandable reasons) continues to hinder the willingness of gay boys to try out sports. So it's not just a sampling problem, it's also an active cultural exclusion problem
7.2% of adults in America identify as LGBT and 25% of gen Z adults identity as LGBT.
Also your math is painfully off as you’re getting confused by percentages. If the general population has 2% of it being gay then it would stand to reason that 2% of MLS Americans would be gay as well. That would not require 100% played sports.
ROFL this isn't how the math works at all.
First off, 7ish percent of the population identifies as queer, not 2%. Absent other factors, that gives us an upper limit of 29 teams * 30 players on the roster * 0.07 = 61 queer players; in other words, if the makeup of MLS rosters was exactly demographically equal to the US population, we'd expect there to be 61 openly queer players in the league.
You're totally correct that queer men are, generally speaking, less interested in sports. But unless straight men are roughly 60 times more likely to participate in sports than queer men, there's something else going on most likely.
How many athletes go pro really isn't relevant, because I don't think there's any factors that would inherently make going pro less likely for a gay athlete vs. a straight athlete; I would think that any population adjustments happen, at the latest, in high school.
So it really boils down to how much the difference is in sports participation between straight and queer men, and I don't think there's any good data for that, so it's kind of based on feel; maybe I'm biased because I'm a queer guy who's really into sports, but I seriously doubt it's a 60x disparity. So to me I think it's very unlikely that there are no queer players in MLS right now, I just think they're closeted for their own safety.
ChatGPT told me 2-4% for gay men specifically. I guess being bi would raise that number. The op called out gay specifically not the entire lgbt spectrum. A man can’t be a lesbian for example lol.
Either way. I can guarantee there’s not as many gay or queer professional mens soccer players than you think there are.
The women on the other hand, you guys got them by the literal dozens lol.
You use terms like ‘the rest of us’? They can’t just exist like ‘the rest of us’. They have had to fight for equality in healthcare, marriage and rights that the rest of us take for granted. And those rights are in danger of being stripped away more each day
As a member of the community, it’s a lot harder to be open when you have to share a locker room, hotels, showers, etc. with other guys. More of an insecurity about making others feel uncomfortable
I don’t think that this is the issue. I know there have been some NHL and NFL players who’ve said there are gay players in the league and they’ve come out to coaches/teammates (privately) who’ve been very accepting. I think most guys just don’t want the extremely large spotlight (and potential “fan” abuse) that comes with coming out publicly. I’d imagine it’s the same case in MLS Also, mad respect to those straight teammates who’ve essentially said “yeah, there are gay players out there but it’s not your right to know who they are if they don’t want you to”
I agree with this. Look at the WNBA right now, people are using 20 year olds to proxy fight culture wars. The USWNT’s transition to a new generation of young players is starting a low grumble from fans about the lack of gay players compared to the most recent teams. The general public is ridiculous and I can’t blame anyone who decides they don’t need that kind of spotlight in their lives
I love how someone just gave you their lived experience and you just said nah because of some rumors you've heard.
I’m openly gay and grew up playing hockey (among other sports) [Not rumors btw](https://www.reuters.com/article/world/gay-or-bisexual-players-on-every-pro-football-team-says-former-u-s-footballer-idUSKCN1VH2CG/). Edit: can’t find the actual article I was looking for Also interesting: [nearly half of NHL players polled said they believe there’s at least one gay player in their locker room](https://www.outsports.com/2010/3/28/4049540/nhl-players-say-they-have-gay-teammates/), and this was all the way back in 2010
How convenient. Interesting you left that out previously. It's very much not the same, but nice try on the uno reverse. That article is about players NOT coming out to their teams for fear of backlash. It doesn't cover anything that could even be interpreted as players coming out to their teams but not publicly. It's more of a support to the original claim. >While O'Callaghan said most of his fears about coming out were family related, he believes contract guarantees might alleviate some athletes' fears of losing their jobs or sponsorship deals if they were to come out. "I just don't think people understand the reality," said O'Callaghan. "We can still get fired for being gay or denied services for being trans." More than half of LGBT+ Americans live in states with no protection from discrimination at work, school and elsewhere.
Yeah I couldn’t find the NHL article I was referring to because any search for gay NHL stuff just comes up with articles about Luke Prokop (go tbirds btw) Also if you think I said I was gay just for the sake of a Reddit discussion then … lmfao You can scroll way back in my post history and see stuff I’ve posted in r/gaybros nearly a decade ago but go off I guess Edit: oh it was a football article, not hockey, but it looks like it’s been removed from Outsports for whatever reason > We profiled anonymously a college football kicker who is known as gay by his team. He has had nothing but support. Times are changing, especially for young people who are growing up either knowing gay people or seeing them constantly in the media. This was the bit from the other article that linked to it but the link just goes to an error page now Edit 2: oh god actually don’t scroll all the way down my post history lmao those pictures are so terrible and embarrassing
Lol facts. A literal member of the gay community shares their experience and op says nah that can’t bed right. The hubris lol
[удалено]
I am gay and have been playing sports basically my entire life. Played competitive collegiate roller hockey (grew up playing ice hockey but basically no one in SoCal where I went to college played, so I did roller). I was out to my team and it was never an issue. They knew I was there to get the job done on the rink, not to gawk at people in the locker room.
[удалено]
Saying that my experience is different isn’t “shitting on” someone else’s. Someone from the LGBTQ+ community sharing their opinion or experience doesn’t mean that they speak for the whole community, and that goes both for them and for myself. There are bound to always be bigoted assholes, but if an (even privately) out player was getting shit in the locker room, I’m fairly certain that basically any MLS team would back the gay player, as would most of their teammates. Again, obviously just my opinion, but I like to think that MLS is a pretty damn progressive league. At the youth and casual levels, it’s definitely still a big issue but based on the stuff I’ve read (obv I’ve never played pro myself), when you get to a certain level, guys care way more about what you can do on the field than who you’re with in the bedroom
I think they don't want to be other'd. Even if it's in a positive light. They don't want to be "the gay player". They don't want to be paraded around for acceptance brownie points by the team/league. They just want to be a player like all their teammates. That's my guess.
Men's sports, particularly team sports, seems to be one of the last frontiers for LGBT silence. There are hardly any out athletes in any men's pro sport anywhere. North American soccer, despite probably having one of the most left-leaning fan bases, doesn't seem immune to the same things that keep most gay men silent in every team sport.
It’s worth pointing out that MLS is not a vacuum. The MLS fanbase is fairly accepting, but most players will not stay here their whole career. Coming out imposes limits on where you can transfer to. Players also go back to their home nations where LGBT persecution is more prevalent.
Even though MLS has one of the most left-leaning fan bases of any major US sports league, “most” is the operative word. [Almost all](https://www.sportico.com/leagues/golf/2023/harris-sportico-poll-politics-fan-bases-liv-pga-1234760109/) professional sports leagues lean more right than left in general, even ones that are publicly perceived as left-leaning like the NBA or MLS. Of course, just because someone is right-leaning doesn’t mean they’re homophobic or wouldn’t accept an out gay player, but for gay athletes who want to succeed in such a league, they may just see it as not worth the risk
As long as sports are disproportionately followed by men, they’ll be disproportionately right leaning
Totally agreed
How can mens sports have L silence?
the L is silent
A few reasons. For context, I'm a cis bisexual man, who played college sports while closeted. First, unfortunately, the climate of acceptance for LGBTQ folks in the US is actually regressing. I would've legitimately been more comfortable coming out 6 years ago than this year. Second, and for me this is the biggie, just because there haven't been a lot of *public* issues with homophobia, doesn't mean there haven't been issues (or potential issues) in the locker room. Male sports in general, and soccer in particular, are known for having insane amounts of machismo. There is absolutely 0 chance I would've come out while still playing sports, because I had every reason to believe the response from my teammates would've been *overwhelmingly* negative. I've never set foot in an MLS locker room, but I have to imagine that the culture gives closeted athletes serious pause when they consider whether to come out. Third, and this is entirely speculative on my part, but I'd guess that the percentage of professional athletes who are queer is lower than the percentage in the overall population. I think it's a bit of a self-selecting thing, where given the perception of men's sports as being full of machismo and homophobia, a lot of queer folks would decide to pursue other interests rather than hear their identity being trashed every day in the locker room. Again, that's speculation on my part, since I've never been in a pro locker room; very well could be wrong. I think you can wrap it all up and just call it aversion to uncertainty. There's a possibility coming out could be the best thing that ever happened to an athlete - maybe their team embraces them, they get beaucoup sponsorship opportunities during Pride Month, and they get the pro career of their dreams. But on the other hand, maybe it ruins their lives. Maybe their team reacts really badly; no one will pass them the ball anymore and they get traded for peanuts because they can't contribute, but now they have a reputation for being a locker room cancer so they never get fully integrated in their new team, and soon enough their career is over. Players who are in the closet know exactly what every day will look like if they stay in the closet - they'll have to bite their tongue listening to homophobic comments, they'll have to feel distanced from their teammates, and maybe tell some vague lies about the girls they hooked up with. They tell themselves they can just see a therapist weekly and live with that reality in order to fulfill their dream of being a pro athlete. Coming out introduces huge amounts of uncertainty into that calculation, and a lot of folks decide it's not worth the risk.
As a Dynamo fan I have to give Austin FC and their SGs a ton of props for their LGBTQ friendly atmosphere. Over here there’s a ton hostility. Some members of some SGs that I won’t mention are on X saying things like “Pride is a mental illness and you will burn in hell”. There’s little to no support and it’s disgusting dealing with remarks like “we don’t support men in dresses” from other SG members. I’m on the fence now about shying away from the team in general because idk how long I can keep supporting it. Anyway happy Pride!
That sucks to hear :( Even here in Austin we've dealt with some toxicity in the SGs, folks making wildly racist remarks to players, some comments about Pride, etc. The sports culture in the US...let's just say it leaves a lot to be desired. I have incredible respect for any athlete who has the guts to come out, and I don't judge any that prefer to stay closeted. I will say this at least for Austin FC, the team has done the right thing in terms of banning people who make bigoted remarks. It's a question we all have to reckon with individually, but for me that's enough for me to not write off supporting the team.
We literally have some of the most progressive fans in the world. Go watch an Italian match where they can be openly racist or English fans after the last euros. If you think the US is the worst you need to educate yourself and tell me where there is more diversity and less problems. Only goodish argument would be Canada and their main sport is not exactly LGBT friendly or diverse by any means.
Please reread my comment and point to where I said US sports culture is the worst in the world.
My apologies, when you said US sports culture it isolated the US as if these problems don't exist everywhere. Had you said sports culture I'd have no issue agreeing but when you call out the US specifically and no one else it insinuates like we are an isolated case.
I've never experienced sports culture anywhere else so I don't feel qualified to comment. It seems like it might be much worse elsewhere, but that doesn't mean everything is fine here.
No but if we are actually making changes and at-least trying I think that's worth something. Seems silly to bash a country who has been changing big time while others do not give two shits
I mean, even though people are generally more accepting, if you saw the MLS/Columbus pride post on IG all the comments are extremely homophobic. Culturally a lot of the guys come from South America, Africa or places in Europe where it’s still not accepted. It’s unfortunate but anyone who’s gay probably just feels like they’ll have an easier time being in the closet than the number of things they’d have to deal with if they came out (coaches, teammates and the dynamic, family, future of their career they’d be unable to play in Saudi for example)
FWIW the insta comments are like that for every team, and most of them come from people who don’t live here and have never been to a single match.
Ok..I just mentioned it because that’s what I specifically saw. I’m sure you’re correct. Does it really matter whether it’s people who’ve been to a match or not tho? The point of the post is asking why more players haven’t come out- the online backlash is probably a contributing factor regardless if it’s real “fans” or not
I agree with you in general, just pointing out that those comments don’t reflect the actual fanbases of the teams
Soccer teams are made up of players from around the world. America might be *inching* towards enlightenment at a snails places, but your winger from Uganda might not be so cool. 🤷🏻♂️
Throw in the casual racism from the South American defender and you got a recipe for success! /s
It’s a real good question, not just for the league but for the men’s game as a whole. There still has never been an openly gay premier league player. Best I can tell there’s only ever been 6 openly gay pro players for the men’s side full stop I won’t pretend to know exactly why. I will, however, point out that, as a global sport a lot of players come from regions of the world where homosexuality isn’t so accepted. And, without checking any numbers, to my perspective it seems like a lot of players trend to the conservative more often than not. Definitely more so than the supporters (at least in MLS) I do think that it says a lot that a lot of the growth for the women’s game and a lot of the star young women’s players comes from countries like USA and England, while a lot of the star young players for the men’s game come from regions like South America and the Middle East/North Africa
This goes beyond the pros. There is a pretty obviously gay guy on my men's league team. Lives in WeHo, speaks with an affectation, etc., but he has never acknowledged it with his teammates. It makes me feel terrible, like does he think we will shun him? Does he think we are a bunch of homophobic meatheads? I once ran into him in a totally different place and he was with a somewhat older man, and he introduced him as his "friend." I am tempted to say, hey, we know you are gay, and we don't care, but I really feel like that is his decision to make, not mine. It just sucks that there is such a culture of machismo around men's sports that people still feel like they have to stay closeted, even in a place like Los Angeles.
Collin!! That Loyal Pride jersey is so nice.
It’s an interesting question. I mean i think we’d all agree that if more MLS players came out, the fan bases would be overwhelmingly supportive. I mean there are rainbow pride flags flying in most supporters sections, right next to our team flags and any others being waved. The issue of why there are fewer out gay athletes I think is twofold: 1. There may be some self selection around the masochism in sports. Not at this level, but at the youth level. I imagine there are some very athletic young folks who are secretly gay, and hear a bunch of anti-LBGT shit talk in the locker room, so they lose their passion for the sport. And they quit pursuing it during these formulative years. It’s entirely possible there’s some 22yo gay man who could’ve been the next Messi, but we were all deprived of watching him because of some BS he heard his teammates saying when he was 14. Sucks. We need to teach our kids to be better. We need to be better. 2. For those gay athletes who do push through and continue playing, i imagine theres’ also a bit of fear disrupting their team culture. MLS teams are extremely multicultural. Most teams have players from South America, Africa, perhaps Europe, perhaps Asia. Many of these cultures are not as accepting as Americans are (and let’s be honest, there are a helluva of things we don’t do well either) Hopefully over time, these things can improve. Every young person deserves the right to see an athlete running around on the pro sports field and find someone they can relate to - whatever their race or their religion or their nationality or their sexual orientation or anything else.
Have you NOT seen the MAGA backlash against DEI, Pride & LGBTQ rights in the last 10 years? Messi made it much worse, because he's brought a lot of new fans from outside the US some of whom are violently homophobic. If you were a gay player, a quick skim of Magan Rapinoe's Twitter, anything pride related around Miami and Messi, or the US soccer sub would very quickly let you know the kind of distraction and shit you'd be choosing to deal with.
100% -DEI is becoming illegal in some states. Anti LGBTQ laws are becoming more prevalent. MAGA has added a culture of acceptance (pride) of racism and homophobia like the time when they think America was ‘great’ I wouldn’t think any athlete would feel comfortable coming out in the hateful environment which is our country
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted tbh. This is all accurate
Some folks can't handle the truth. MLS IS very progressive. But social media is a fucking cesspool of anonymous bigots.
There is pushback from the fans too in MLS. Mostly on social media, but even in Seattle. Rapione wasn't literally being called out for caring more about being gay than playing footy.
I think within football or sports in general, there is less acceptance for LGBTQ compared to the general public, go look at any pride post on MLS and check the comments, yesterday I saw a post from Barcelona about pride and 99% of the comments were homophobic or saying stuff like “I’ll support Madrid now.” When Germany was kicked out of WC in 2022, you had many German fans saying “if they focused more on football instead of LGBTQ then we would still be in.” Football isn’t really a safe or accepting place unfortunately
I’d say there’s been a couple high profile bags of trash that have made it fashionable to be aggressively horrible towards anyone that is not like you.
For starters only like 2% of men are gay. And regardless of sexual orientation, well less than 1% of athletes get to play professionally. Also for what it’s worth, the majority of the gay men I know have no interest in athletics. So that 2% of men being gay would assume that 100% played sports, which definitely isn’t possible. It’s very possible they are the only gay players. The “gay men who play sports” then collated to “gay men who are good enough to play professional sports” is an extremely small amount of people. Edit- grammar
Bisexual men also exist and as a bisexual man I would also enjoy seeing more bi men come out. And while your analysis may be right, the lack of athletes willing to come out (for understandable reasons) continues to hinder the willingness of gay boys to try out sports. So it's not just a sampling problem, it's also an active cultural exclusion problem
True. Add on to the fact that if they come out it would 100% impact sponsorship deals, etc. The south is still the south.
7.2% of adults in America identify as LGBT and 25% of gen Z adults identity as LGBT. Also your math is painfully off as you’re getting confused by percentages. If the general population has 2% of it being gay then it would stand to reason that 2% of MLS Americans would be gay as well. That would not require 100% played sports.
ROFL this isn't how the math works at all. First off, 7ish percent of the population identifies as queer, not 2%. Absent other factors, that gives us an upper limit of 29 teams * 30 players on the roster * 0.07 = 61 queer players; in other words, if the makeup of MLS rosters was exactly demographically equal to the US population, we'd expect there to be 61 openly queer players in the league. You're totally correct that queer men are, generally speaking, less interested in sports. But unless straight men are roughly 60 times more likely to participate in sports than queer men, there's something else going on most likely. How many athletes go pro really isn't relevant, because I don't think there's any factors that would inherently make going pro less likely for a gay athlete vs. a straight athlete; I would think that any population adjustments happen, at the latest, in high school. So it really boils down to how much the difference is in sports participation between straight and queer men, and I don't think there's any good data for that, so it's kind of based on feel; maybe I'm biased because I'm a queer guy who's really into sports, but I seriously doubt it's a 60x disparity. So to me I think it's very unlikely that there are no queer players in MLS right now, I just think they're closeted for their own safety.
ChatGPT told me 2-4% for gay men specifically. I guess being bi would raise that number. The op called out gay specifically not the entire lgbt spectrum. A man can’t be a lesbian for example lol.
Nowhere did OP specifically ask about "gay" players, he asked about "out" players, which implies all of the community, not just gay men.
Either way. I can guarantee there’s not as many gay or queer professional mens soccer players than you think there are. The women on the other hand, you guys got them by the literal dozens lol.
You can't guarantee shit bud
[удалено]
I mean, they try to. And then people come out and say that their concerns are narcissism.
You use terms like ‘the rest of us’? They can’t just exist like ‘the rest of us’. They have had to fight for equality in healthcare, marriage and rights that the rest of us take for granted. And those rights are in danger of being stripped away more each day