Cyd Zeigler’s new book, “Fair Play: How LGBT Athletes are Claiming their Rightful Place in Sports,” delves into the intersection between sports and LGBT issues.
In an interview with The News, Zeigler discussed “Fair Play,” and the social issues involved with being an LGBT athlete.
Zeigler, along with LA Times freelance editor Jim Buzinski, also runs a popular SB Nation blog called Outsports, with a slogan that reads: “A voice for LGBT athletes.”
With that, here is our Q&A with Zeigler.
Why is this kind of intersectional sports journalism important?
I didn’t think it was important necessarily until I got an email from Andrew McIntosh; he was a lacrosse player at Oneonta State University and he was talking about how he was thinking about killing himself and that he stumbled across a story that we had on Andrew Goldstein, who was a lacrosse player at Dartmouth. He got drafted by Major League Lacrosse and seeing that story and identifying with this other gay athlete helped save his life.
What’s the difference between female LGBT athletes and male LGBT athletes? You say neither has it easy, but the support system for the athlete is different. Why?
There are just more LGBT athletes and coaches in women’s sports than there are in men’s sports. I have talked to Division I women’s basketball coaches; I have talked to professional women’s soccer players; I have talked to WNBA players, they all tell me the same exact thing: That anywhere from one-third, to three-quarters of the women in the elite level sports, Division I and the pros, are LGBT. I don’t think anybody would put the same percentage of men who are LGBT and play sports at that level. In the WNBA, there are numerous head coaches, assistant coaches and athletes who are out. In all of the big five men’s pro sports: one athlete, zero coaches. That’s a stark contrast in sports structure.
Why did you choose to mainly focus on male gay athletes in your book?
I decided to focus on men because that’s just what I know and that’s who has been coming out on Outsports. I mean, that’s who has been coming out period. Female coaches and athletes just haven’t been coming out. [Recently]more men have come out publicly than women in the United States.
How does jock culture in sports suppress LGBT athletes?
People focus on the homophobic language in the locker room, but I don’t think that is the most powerful part of jock culture that is suppressing LGBT athletes. Particularly on the men’s side, I think it’s actually the overt heterosexism in the locker room and the constant talk about women and women’s bodies. These are conversations that are constant in the locker rooms in a lot of high schools, colleges and professional sports teams, not just on a daily basis, not just on an hourly basis, but on a minute-by-minute basis. When you are surrounded by that your entire life in the locker room that tells you, you don’t belong.
In “Fair Play” you say there will never be a gay athlete like Jackie Robinson but, at the same time, you say we have already seen one. It’s an interesting point of view; could you tell the readers what you mean by that?
Well, Jackie Robinson was brought into Major League Baseball in 1947 at the time when black people couldn’t use certain water fountains and were killed when they tried to vote. They had hurdles to overcome that LGBT people today simply don’t have. That’s not to say we don’t have problems. That’s not to say people aren’t being killed for who they are as evidenced in Orlando, but the overall state for LGBT people is literally decades ahead of where black people were in 1947. So, there can never be this seminal sports figure who will come along and help kick start conversations about sexual orientation the way Jackie Robinson did with race. Instead, we have a long series of athletes like Dave Kopay in the NFL to Corey Johnson, the HS football player, Brian Sims, a college football player, Derrick Gordon, a college basketball player. We have a long series of people, each further the conversation little by little as we gained our equality as well.
In an interview on the “Edge of Sports Podcast” you said, “The sports world has come a long way but there is still a discomfort, a lack of understanding of how important it is to say these words,” these words being gay, lesbian, bi, trans, etc. So, in your mind, why are saying those words so important?
People talk about diversity and inclusion, and when they say those buzzwords, first of all, they are so vague that they could mean anything in the United States, but what people generally jump to are race first, and gender second, that’s what diversity and inclusion mean. LGBT does not specifically say transgender or sexual orientation, they get completely lost in meaningless buzzwords, so you have to say the words of the people, so they know that you mean them. Flying the rainbow flag is certainly a nice symbol of the community, but people just don’t want to say the word gay. The other piece is people don’t want to say to themselves, “I am gay.” Gay is still a bad word, particularly if you’re in the closet. So the more people say gay, the less of a bad word it is for the people to whom that means so much.
What is the final frontier in sports and LGBT issues and how far away are we from reaching that point?
What’s left are two things. After the shootings of two black men and the shootings of some cops a couple weeks ago, Carmelo Anthony said that athletes need to start being more proactive and take a bigger role in social change. But again, he is talking about race issues. After the Orlando shooting, 49 mostly LGBT people were murdered. Virtually no athlete said a word. One of the things that needs to change is for straight athletes not just to give a five-sentence interview on how they would support a gay athlete, but actually do something about it! I’m going to be so curious to see if the NBA leaves that All-Star Game in Charlotte [Editor’s note: This interview took place before the NBA decided to pull the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte]. I assume Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James won’t go right? Because they need to be proactive in social justice now, so they can’t possibly go play a game in North Carolina.
The second piece is that the power brokers in sports need to identify LGBT people in their leagues and help them to come out. That is what will change sports. You need the big time athletes to come out.
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EXTENDED EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview was recorded on Wednesday, one day before the NBA decided to pull their All-Star Game out of Charlotte, N.C. due to the state’s controversial HB2 law which discriminates against the LGBT community. On the league’s decision, Zeigler told The News via e-mail, “The NBA has just demonstrated an immense commitment to equality. When the NFL had the opportunity to move is owners meetings from Charlotte in May, they chose not to. The NBA has taken a very different direction, to the tune of what will surely be millions of dollars in broken contracts. The league has made it clear they value LGBT lives.”
