FloTrack's Facebook page was immediately flooded with comments to the effect of "who cares if he's gay," "why does this matter," and my personal favorite, "61:47 is a slow half-marathon; you're only featuring him because he's gay." Most of these comments have been deleted.
I defended Matt Llano and I was personally attacked for it:
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| At least he apologized? |
Before my running days, I was a competitive swimmer. I remember one travel meet in Buffalo. All of the boys tried so hard to prove they weren't gay that some of them slept on the floor. I was supposed to share a bed with another female athlete, and she refused without telling me why. So we ordered a cot for the hotel room. She made me sleep on the cot. The cot was hard and I didn't get much sleep. Outside of the hotel room, I heard one of my teammates tell her "at least she's only half lesbian."
That stuck with me so much that I never discussed my bisexual identity with my swimming teammates after that, or with my running teammates in college. In fact, when I moved to Seattle, I went back into the de facto closet.
Let me explain the de facto closet. Many who are not explicitly homophobic, who are accepting and tolerant, seem to think that sexual orientation is a private matter that should not be discussed unless it is prompted for. Sometimes that's protective instinct. This post might influence my career potential in the future. Someone might find it and decide that I am an apt target for a hate crime. That's life, I guess; I'm OK with it. Identity is only a vulnerability if it is something you are ashamed of.
But sometimes, it's the view that identity is fundamentally a private issue. After all, they don't run around telling people they're straight, so why should Flotrack announce that Matt Llano's gay? Why should I be open about being bisexual?
The reality of the situation is that unless you come out, people assume you're straight. So if you're not out of the closet, you're in the de facto closet. And that's OK; if it's not safe to come out, you don't have to come out. That's fine. But it's really uncomfortable. It's living a lie. Imagine living in a world wherein everyone assumes you're gay, where that's the norm; wouldn't it get uncomfortable after a while? Wouldn't you want to say "by the way guys, I'm not gay"?
In sport this is even more true for men because sport is perceived as masculine, but gay and bisexual males are perceived as feminine, so they are even less visible.
Visibility is important. High-profile LGBT athletes open up dialogue. They have influence. They inspire. And they provide a gauge. You can see your friends' reactions before you open up. Do they post about how disgusting it is that Matt Llano is interested in other men? Do they say it's against God's will? Do they say that they think it's fine that he's gay but that he shouldn't tell anyone? Do they refrain from commenting? Or do they support him whole-heartedly and defend his decision to go public?
It wasn't long after Matt Llano's post that I got fed up with living a lie and came out again myself. I was met with overwhelming support by my Club Northwest teammates. I am a lucky gal.
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| It doesn't get much better than this. |
Actually, it's alarmingly refreshing to see non-LGBT athletes accept Bruce's identity. My guess is that these people are tolerant and open-minded, they just have a lot to learn.
Bruce's story is going to open the dialogue for trans-folk. This dialogue is decades behind the gay, lesbian, and even the bisexual dialogue. For starters, most people don't even understand what it means. The key is first to understand the difference between biological sex and gender identity.
Biological sex is a combination of your chromosomes and physical characteristics. For most people, these fall into clear categories and we are either male or female, but the same is not true for everyone. Caster Semenya is a great example of an intersex woman; that topic alone warrants its own post. (As an aside, this term is not totally PC anymore, and a lot of people prefer to talk about assigned gender or assigned sex at birth; my knowledge was out-of-date when I wrote this.)
Gender identity is, well, an identity. If you feel like you are male, then you have a male gender identity. If you feel like you are female, then you have a female gender identity. Again, for most of us, this is clear, but there are far more than two gender identities, and some refuse to identify at all.
A cisgender person has the same biological sex and gender identity. If you have never once thought about the difference between biological sex and gender identity, then you are probably cisgender.
But that doesn't mean that everyone is the same. A transgender person has a gender identity that is not in line with his or her biological sex. Some choose to operate to align the two; some don't. Some present themselves as the gender they identify with; some don't.
All of this is a spectrum just like anything else. And all of this is independent of sexual orientation completely. A transgender person can be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, asexual, whatever. They are independent variables. But for the sake of this post, I'll leave it at that.
Some states that legally protect lesbians, gays, and bisexuals from employment discrimination don't even protect trans-folk. Being openly transgender in today's society is probably a much more difficult experience than being openly queer.
So why does it matter that Bruce Jenner is transgender?
- This will open the dialogue in the sporting community as well as the community at large.
- Bruce Jenner has influence.
- The transgender community can draw strength and inspiration from Bruce's story.
