[ad_1]
The plague of homophobic language in New Zealand sports keeps athletes in the closet while sports bodies sleep behind the wheel, according to two major international academic studies published to Things.
In a sobering assessment of what sports participation actually looks like in this country, a measly 13% of LGBTQ Kiwis aged 15-21 have reached out to their teammates, behind Ireland (15%), Canada (15 %), Australia (15 percent), United States (22 percent) and United Kingdom (28 percent).
Anthony Au-Yeung / Getty Images
Individuals like TJ Perenara have championed diversity, but homophobic jokes abound in rugby and other sports.
A third of kiwis that come out of the closet face homophobic abuse, and the problem is most common in men’s team sports, where the use of derogatory terms like “f …. t” and “p..f” are common. , creating ‘toxic’ cultures, harming LGBQT youth, depressing overall participation rates, and contributing to a global phenomenon where ‘gay’ rugby teams are changing their name as ‘inclusive’ teams to accommodate disgruntled heterosexual players.
“This is just more evidence that this language is common and harmful, and more evidence that it is actually being driven, like not being driven by attitudes, it is driven by thoughtlessness of people,” said Erik Denison, lead author of Monash’s Behavioral Sciences Research. Laboratory.
READ MORE:
* How a gay rugby team taught a Kiwi coach the true values of the game
* Israel Folau Settlement ‘Will Save LGBT Youth Lives’, Expert Says
* How David Pocock changed rugby after speaking out on homophobic slurs
* Use All Blacks to End Rugby’s Gay Name-calling Culture, Urge Experts
* Wallabies star David Pocock’s anti-gay social media fears following Israel Folau’s posts
“And really, this is not a very complex problem. But we need the sport to really do something about it. “
Denison said that despite New Zealand being seen as a socially progressive country with widely supported political parties, LGBTQ male athletes were virtually invisible (especially in team sports) and the recent ‘departure’ of the former mainstay from the Wallabies Dan Palmer (now the Brumbies scrum coach) seemed to be a bit far off.
New Zealand’s sporting bodies have given ‘inclusion’ wide approval in recent years, but Denison says their efforts have been partial or almost symbolic, leaving the heavy lifting to the likes of TJ Perenara, Brad Weber and Tawera Kerr- Barlow, whose work with the Waikato-based Waterboy organization tackled the problem head-on.
In fact, Denison says that sports organization platitudes like “ending homophobia” don’t make sense because research has shown that players using homophobic slurs, and data from Australia suggest that more than 50 percent of players use homophobic slurs. Young rugby players admit that they do, they don’t even see it as harmful unless it is specifically targeted at an LGBTQ player.
Supplied
Erik Denison from Monash University in Australia says that gay male athletes in New Zealand are almost invisible.
Instead, Denison says that real progress depends on having “pride events” or “awkward conversations” at the community and sports club level, where North Harbor board member Ngarimu Blair separately identified one ” culture of macho alcoholism “as a topic in a column for Things– and training club captains to end the use of derogatory language in the dressing room.
“We also see that when they decide as a group to be inclusive, to be welcoming, all those toxic characters that lurk on the corners of sports clubs, they suddenly realize that they are not just a minority, they are unwanted. Denison said.
“In the end, it will help with this big problem that we have, which is the homophobic and sexist jokes that it seems that most people in rugby and all sports do not want to continue.
Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Former Wallabies mainstay Dan Palmer, who is now the Brumbies scrum coach, came out this year after years of quiet suffering.
“So this all seems like a no-brainer. And when we systematically reviewed the whole world to see what sports have done on these issues, we saw that New Zealand had started the race very well, they are riding a pretty good thoroughbred.
“And then it seems like after about 100 meters.”
The peer-reviewed research is supported by the on-grass expertise of Kiwi Mitch Canning, who trained in Auckland before taking on a role at the Melbourne Rugby Club and subsequently the Melbourne Chargers, the inclusive gay side who led out of thin air to win. . the Bingham Cup (world championships) in 2016.
Hannah Peters / Getty Images
Former All Black Tawera Kerr-Barlow grappled with the issue of homophobic language before leaving New Zealand to play in France.
Canning, an investment banker and leadership consultant by profession who has worked with Ben Smith and Tamati Ellison on lessons for the corporate sector, now has a heterosexual son of boundless talent in rugby who has chosen to play for the Chargers because he prefers the environment. where they are. Have created.
And he thinks he knows why young people follow that path.
“There is a new prioritization of what is important,” Canning said. Things.
“In a traditional rugby environment, competitiveness and camaraderie are really important.
But at the Chargers and other gay and inclusive teams, camaraderie comes before competition.
“If I play on a traditional rugby team and lose a tackle or drop a ball, what I will hear from my teammates is something like ‘awwww come on.’
“If I were to do that at the Chargers, what I would get is some empathy from my teammates, like ‘next job, don’t worry, we have this,’ because a driving error is what happens in the game and the relationship between players is more important than that. “
The other factor at play in New Zealand is the lack of a David Pocock-type persona, whose long-term advocacy on behalf of LGBTQ communities in Australia was so profound that academics coined the term ‘the Pocock effect’.
Pocock, and other Brumbies players, even criticized homophobic slurs from Waratahs player Jacques Potgieter at a Super Rugby game in 2015.
“I think he did it within Australian rugby, is it normalized, pro LGBTQ rights, ideas, discussions and actions?” Denison said.
RICKY WILSON
Former Rugby Australia boss Raelene Castle was appointed CEO of Sport NZ in November.
And then the Pocock effect is that you don’t have to do much, but you normalize it. People in sports are generally very conformity oriented. They will just do what the team is doing. And if the team decides to do X, they will just do X. “
Still, Denison is hopeful that incoming Sport NZ director Raelene Castle can bring a fresh perspective to the issue.
As the CEO of Rugby Australia, Castle fired Israel Folau for inflammatory posts on Instagram and also funded an investigation into why rugby players continued to use homophobic language.
