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Masculinity and its Place in Gay Sports: A Ethnography of the Brighton Lesbian

and Gay Sports Society (BLAGSS)

Michael Stickland #10436847

Email: michaelstickland1@gmail.com

Supervisor: Adnan Hossain 2nd reader: Nico Besnier 3rd reader: Daniel Guinness

Master's Thesis Cultural and Social Anthropology Date Submitted; 2nd

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Table of Contents Acknowledgement...pp 3

Abstract...pp 4 Chapter One...pp 5

1.1Aims of This Study... pp 7 1.2 Theoretical Framework... pp 7 1.3 Masculinity...pp 8

1.4 Hegemonic Masculinity... pp 9 1.5 Sports and Masculinity...pp 12 1.6 Queer Theory...pp 14

Chapter Two – Methods and Settings... pp 17 2.1 Introduction... pp 17

2.2 Brighton...pp 19 2.3 BLAGSS...pp 22

2.4 Arrival and Early Limitations...pp 22 2.5 The Main Body of Research...pp 24 2.6 Keeping A Critical Eye... pp 26

2.7 Talking To The Wider Community...pp 26 Chapter Three – Playing Against “Them”... pp 28 Chapter Four – A Change of Scene... pp 40

Chapter Five – Inclusive Masculinity: Preached and/or Practiced...pp 51 Chapter Six – Conclusion... pp 62

6.1 Conclusion...pp 62 6.2 Further Research...pp 65 Bibliography...pp 66

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Acknowledgement

Without the help of many people this thesis would not have been possible. Many people contributed in many different ways, they helped me find the energy, enthusiasm and motivation to complete this thesis and masters degree when I was struggling.

Firstly I would like to thank my two supervisors I had Adnan Hossain and Gerd Bauman. Without their feedback and support this would not have been possible. I would also like to thank all the members of BLAGSS and everyone I met while in Brighton whom without the acceptance of this research would be nothing. Lastly I would like to thank my parents, my partner Peter, siblings and numerous friends, without their love I would have struggled to find motivation on numerous hard days.

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Abstract

In the course of this work the role of masculinity is examined through the lens of homosexual men in the Brighton and Hove area. It aims to examine how homosexual men perceive their own masculinity in the sporting environment, as well as the challenges they face within sport from the wider pressures of homophobia.

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Chapter One

You could say my introduction to the field of anthropology and sports I suppose really began when I was very young; my first trip to the old stands of Layer Road and later the Weston Homes Community Stadium (home of Colchester United) came at age 5, when my brother was forced to take me along with a group of his friends by my parents as some sort of bonding exercise. Once he turned 16, a year after first taking me, the pressure from my parents dropped and he actually enjoyed taking me – if only because it meant him and his mates could get cheaper tickets in certain stands due to the presence of a child. Asides from the confusion of a lack of commentary within the stadium on my first visit, my obsession with sports took off. From this point on I went to nearly every home game (every two weeks) for the next ten years of my life, relishing in the atmosphere the old ramshackle terraces of the stadium. Close enough to the pitch to hurl abuse right into the ear of opposition players as they took their throw in's and corners, joining in with every chant with all my gusto.

It was at these games when I first heard homophobic abuse in a sports setting, standing in the front row of terraces of my beloved Colchester United. While at this age you do not understand the meaning of the world, you learn to attach the actions of the person being abused with what just happened in front of you (typically just performing badly). This understanding and meaning was further reinforced in me due to the people screaming the abuse were friend's parents and local adults, men (as it was typically still all-male crowds in the 1990s) who I saw about town in normal life that were respected. If they used these words when someone had performed badly, surely this was normal language for all men to use.

Still these words were ones I only ever heard at the football matches I attended every two weeks until at age 11 I went up to secondary school. Here for the first real time sports was played (before this I had played football a bit but never in formal settings) giving these words another space they could be used in. Here these words were thrown about by just about everyone; somebody missed the football, “faggot”, somebody let a goal in a “gay”. While some teachers picked up on it and tried to

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put a stop to it, most turned a blind eye, after all this was still the era of Section 281 and a ban on

“promoting homosexuality” in schools. You learned very quickly that homosexuality was something shameful and weak, that a gay man could never match up to a straight one in the world of sport.

As a young teenager discovering his homosexuality it was clear that I had to take myself out of this area and away from places that my sexuality would be seen as weakness. We were still made to do sports at school, but I moved more and more towards individual sports such as tennis to avoid conflict from team mates or a number of opponents. I learned that I had to minimize the risk of this abuse by removing myself from the situation.

Steadily sport became less part of my active life and just something I consumed from a distance. I still watch a number of sports, and in the past few years action has been taken by football associations around the world to fight homophobia on the stands, such as the English Football Association’s campaign ‘Football v. Homophobia’, making it more and more rare to hear the abuse I often heard in my childhood. Still with a lack of out homosexual people in sport, perceptions have not been completely challenged. The media still perpetuates these ideas from time to time as David Halperin points out in his 2012 book How To Be Gay:

Similarly, when a British tabloid wanted to dramatize the shocking case of a “typical, laddish, beer-swilling, sport-mad 20-something smitten with his fiancée” who became gay overnight as a result of an athletic injury, it recounted that the first warning signs took the form not of homosexual desire on the boy's part but a sudden lack of interest in rugby scores, an inability to converse with his loutish mates, and a new tendency to be sarcastic. Only later

1 Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 prohibited local authorities in England and Wales from “promoting” homosexuality. The existence of Section 28 caused confusion and harm. Teachers were confused about what they could and could not say and do, and whether they could help pupils dealing with homophobic bullying and abuse. Local authorities were unclear as to what legitimate services they could provide for lesbian, gay and bisexual members of their communities. On the 18th

September 2003 the Local Government Bill received Royal Assent and Section 28 was taken off the statute books. (“Section 28,” 2014)

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did he start sleeping with men, quit his banking job, and become a hairdresser. This is the stuff of popular stereotype. (p. 9)

These experiences in my early life led me to question why homosexuality and masculinity seemed to be divided across most of society, and especially in sport. This question eventually led me to furthering my time in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam to try and gain more insight and answers to the dilemma.

1.1Aims of This Study

The aim of this thesis is to examine the construction and concepts of masculinity among gay sports participants in the Brighton and Hove area and as to whether they reject or reinterpret the concept for their own use and purposes. It will also examine in part what the use of homosexual sports is and why they feel the need to take part in a segregated sports group and what the reasons are for partaking in sports is.

In tackling this subject, I attempt to ask the question “does the sporting environment within BLAGSS still produce hegemonic masculinity?” Inside this central question topics such as how important it is for these men to appear masculine within sports, and whether or not they feel able to express themselves, their sexuality, their understanding and performance of their gender within this particular sporting environment or if this club environment drives towards hegemonic masculinity.

It will also explore the concept of whether sports changes the ideas and concepts of what masculinity means within BLAGSS, and if their participation within sports has at all altered how they perceive what it means to be masculine and a gay man.

1.2Theoretical Framework

It is important at this early stage of the thesis to give some extra definition to certain concepts that will come up often in the analysis, so as in part not to become repetitive but also to make it clear what I mean when I use certain phrases and the debate surrounding these concepts.

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1.3Masculinity

I feel it is pertinent to start out with the background on anthropological thoughts on what masculinity is defined as traditionally, and where these definitions sit within my research. Since the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s, there has been a rising interesting in assigning what masculinity means in relations to women (Howson, R. 2006) and how such power structures in the world that continue to subjugate women. A lot of this research focused on power relations, rather than on actually defining what masculinity meant – as if it was too natural to define.

However, in Matthew Gutmann's annual review Trafficking in Men (1999) he proposes that anthropology presents four distinct definitions (although he admits the boundaries on these definitions are not strict, with many authors blurring the lines). The first definition of masculinity is the very broad concept that masculinity is found in anything men think or do. Herdt's (1994) work amongst the Sambia of Papua New Guinea is a classic example of this theory in practice, with men naturally being masculine by the very fact of being born male. The second definition of masculinity comes in a more performance driven way, in that masculinity is anything men do or think to be men as opposed to the just being born a man. This definition of men coming from performance can be found in Herzfeld's (1985) field work on the men of Crete. The third theory of masculinity is the idea that some men are born, or ascribed, to be more manly than others as if a birth right for certain males. The final way in which masculinity has classically been defined in anthropology is that masculinity is purely whatever femininity and women are not. Brandes (1980) and Gutmann (1996) are the foremost theorists in this area, both finding empirical evidence to suggest that men assume what masculine behaviour is in comparison to female behaviour.

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1.4Hegemonic Masculinity

Building on this definition of masculinity theorists in anthropology and sociology have worked on explaining how masculinity has taken control of society in the patriarchy. One of the ways of understanding how the patriarchy was formed, and continues to hold power, has come from the theory of hegemonic masculinity.

Hegemonic masculinity was first formulated in the works of Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell. Her starting point was using Gramsci's (1971) theory of hegemony, a major contribution to Marxist thinking. It describes how the ruling class establishes and maintains its domination, which Donaldson, while describing Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity, states as:

“The ability to impose a definition of the situation, to set the terms in which events are

understood and issues discussed, to formulate ideals and define morality is an essential part of this process. Hegemony involves persuasion of the greater part of the population, particularly through the media, and the organization of social institutions in ways that appear " natural," "ordinary:' "normal." The state, through punishment for non-conformity, is

crucially involved in this negotiation and enforcement. (Donaldson, M. 1993, p. 644)”

The early stages of development of hegemonic masculinity are to be found in the article “Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity” by Carrigan, Connell and Lee (1985), which was the first to propose a model of multiple masculinities as well as providing a large critique on the concept of the “male sex role”.

Connell took this model further in her 1987 book Gender and Power, a study on gender relations in high schools in her native Australia. The book is now the most cited source for the concept of hegemonic masculinity and generally held as the “birth place” of the concept.

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allowed men's dominance over women to continue” (Connell, R. Messerschmidt, J. 2005, p832), while this does not have to mean violence, although it can do; it simply means ascendancy and control through culture, institutions and persuasion (ibid). While being a distinct form of masculinity, in comparison to other, subordinated forms of masculinity, hegemonic masculinity is not to be assumed to be normal and only very few men might enact it (ibid). It is however still seen as the standard, and is seen as the most “honoured way of being a man, it required all other men to position themselves in relation to it (ibid)”.

While this practice of hegemonic masculinity allows currently for the continued domination of men over women, it also subjugates and threatens other forms of masculinity seen as less than itself. This is especially the case with homosexual men as these men have been historically, even if far from the individual cases, have been linked with the feminine (Fingerhut & Paplau 2006; Kite & Deaux, 1987). This linking can be traced back to Freud’s ‘Gender Inversion Theory” (cf. Kite & Deaux, 1987), according to which homosexual males are more closely linked to heterosexual females than

heterosexual males.

“Stereotypes themselves serve as a way of simplifying the world; objects that are alike in one way are assumed to be alike in other ways…This tendency to view objects or people who are alike in one way, as being alike in others, may also lead to an assumption that gay individuals are gender atypical. That is, because gay men have the same sexual attractions as heterosexual women, they must be like heterosexual women in other ways; because lesbians have the same sexual attractions as heterosexual men, they must be like heterosexual men in other ways. (Blashill, A. Powlishta, K. 2009, p. 784)”

According to Messner “boys learn early that to be gay, to be suspected of being gay, or even to be unable to prove one's heterosexual status is not acceptable (1992, p.34). This concept of distancing homosexual men from ones heterosexual masculine self has come into anthropological thought via

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social psychology:

“Homosexual men objectively share the same sex category as heterosexual men but at the same time they blatantly violate the definition of masculinity. Consequently, homosexuality represents a threat to the gender identity that is likely to motivate heterosexual men to reject gay men, and at the same time, to reaffirm their own masculine identity. Distancing themselves from the threatening outgroup allows heterosexual men to fulfill their need to affirm their masculinity so as to gain and maintain a positive group identity. From this perspective, sexual prejudice becomes psychological device that accomplishes this need. Indeed, homophobia may be thought of as a psychological reaction that allows heterosexual men to affirm their status as insiders by distancing themselves from the homosexual subgroup of “atypical men. (Carnaghi, A et al. 2011, p. 1656)”

Due to this linking of homosexuality with femininity, it forms up one of the subgroups of masculinity outside of hegemonic masculinity; that of the subordinated masculinity. This is a masculine group formed out of those who due to gender relations are associated along with femininity and are disadvantaged in the patriarchy controlled by those enacting hegemonic masculinity. Along with subordinated masculinity and hegemonic masculinity, there is a third group – complicit masculinity. This is a group, while not enacting hegemonic masculinity, take advantage of the system in which masculinity is placed above all others. They are not seen as people performing masculinity in a manner that is seen as the most time honoured way, like those showing hegemonic masculinity. But crucially they are not seen as transgressing the gender lines like homosexual men in the subordinated

masculinity category.

It is clear therefore that hegemonic masculinity's definition of what it means to be a man, has no place for the transgressive, homosexual men. How then do gay men reconcile their own understandings with masculinity and their sexuality? That will be key throughout this thesis.

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Hegemonic masculinity has been critiqued in this past for its ambiguity – sometimes it refers to a fixed type of masculinity, and on other occasions it refers to whatever type is dominant and

hegemonic in that time and place (Martin, P. 1998). Masculinity however is constituted in social process:

“At a society-wide level (which we will call “regional” in the framework below), there is a circulation of models of admired masculine conduct, which may be exalted by church, narrated by mass media, or celebrated by the state. Such models refer to, but also in various ways distort, the everyday realities of social practice. (Connell, R. Messerschmidt, J. 2005, p. 838)

Therefore it becomes clear that many forms of hegemonic masculinity can exist within society on a regional basis, varying as they need to, to stay in control of the patriarchy and subordination of the subaltern groups of masculinities. In the next section of this I will examine how a certain type of masculinity has been instituted within the sporting world, how it has been reproduced and how it remains in control.

1.5Sports and Masculinity

Sports, sexuality and gender has for a long time fallen under the analytical area of gender issues because sports is, in representational form and lived practice, a cultural area that most explicitly creates, reproduces, and publicly displays gender identities and differences, and justifies the existing hierarchical gender order. (Jarvis, N. 2003; Connell, R. 1995, 2005, 2008; Green et al., 2005; Griffin, P. 1998; McKay et al., 2000; Theberge, N. 2000). Masculinity and sport have long been joined together, firmly so in the nineteenth century.

“Using gymnastics and calisthenics, the Continental European tradition (the German Turner movement was most influential worldwide) linked physical education to national strength and racial purity. The British tradition showcased ball games and racing and was imbued with

the doctrine of muscular Christianity. Proponents of this doctrine saw the cultivation of the

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rectitude; racial purity; masculinity (Besnier, N. Brownell, S. 2012, p. 446-7)”

This muscular Christianity came about due to a fear of the “feminization” of children caused by the domination of female school teachers in Britain in the late nineteenth early twentieth century (Mangan, S. 1980). This historical basis of a preference for masculinity in sport can still be seen clearly today, with sports, particularly contact sports, being the place in which hegemonic masculinity is both defined and reproduced (Anderson, E. 2002). Hekma (1998) stated that “gay men who are seen as queer and effeminate are granted no space whatsoever in what is generally considered to be a masculine preserve and a macho enterprise (p. 2)”, something which Pronger concurs with “orthodox masculinity is usually an important subtext if not the leitmotif (1990, p. 26)” of sports.

In fact sports holds such a strong position in the world of masculinity it is now seen as the leading definer of masculinity (Anderson, E. 2002, R. Connell 1995, Messner, M. 1992). Burgess, Edwards and Skinner (2003) state that sports is a space where masculinity is tested and proven and that participants can gain authenticity through “legitimate tests of manhood which have been the catalyst for idolization (p. 202)'.

Young boys are first taught to reproduce hegemonic masculinity in sports by turning away from behaviours and qualities associated with homosexuality or femininity (Anderson, E. 2002, Adams, M. 1993, Crosset, T. 1990, Kidd 1987). This is done by “learning to suffer, submission to training and male solidarity (Mennesson and Clement 2003:312). Wellard (2002) states that the judgments made on the ability of sports participants, starting in youth, are linked inseparably from the capacity of

willingness to perform the appropriate forms of masculinity, drawing upon the orthodoxy of hegemonic masculinity. Gay men, women and some heterosexual men are also seen as incapable of being of meeting the levels of toughness and competitiveness defined by this masculinity in its 'culturally idealised form' (Connell, 1990, cited in Burgess, Edwards and Skinner 2003, p. 200).

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the fact that prowess in sport is seen as a way of highlighting ones masculinity, and of confirming ones position within the current hegemony of what it means to be a man. This hegemonic masculine man is seen as powerful, physically fit and imposing, potentially violent yet controlled, heterosexual,

unemotional except for enjoyment of victory, competitive and driven to win above all else.

In this thesis I will be considering the way people understand masculinity to be fluid and for it to understood in various ways in particular settings as set out by Andrea Cornwall and Nancy

Lindisfarne in the introduction to Dislocating Masculinity (1994). The setting for thesis being sport, therefore means the framing of masculinity will be understood the hegemonic one described throughout this section. While this version of masculinity (aggressive, powerful, lacking emotion etc.) may not be found as hegemonic in all settings in society it has been shown by many of the authors above to be hegemonic in the sports world.

What then is the space left for homosexual sports people, if their position within sports is always deemed to be too weak, too lacking, too feminine to be able to match up to the demands of sports. Will gay sports men completely reject this hegemonic, orthodox masculinity in favour of something new and accepting?

1.6Queer Theory

For this research I feel it is also important to have an understanding of queer theory as it allows for a framework in which to look at the performance of gender and masculinity in this research. Queer theory is a broad theoretical position found within the post-structuralist critical theory that came out of a number of thinkers books and articles in the early 1990s. It was a development based on::

”Poststructural theorists such as Foucault argue that there is no objective and universal truths, but that particular forms of knowledge, and the ways of being that they engender, become ‘naturalised,’ in culturally and historically specific ways (Sullivan, N. 2003, p. 39)”

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Queer theorists, most famously Judith Butler in her seminal 1990 work Gender Trouble: Feminism and

the Subversion of Identity, take Michel Foucault's idea further stating that gender and sexuality are

socially created (Abes, E & Kasch, D 2007). While there are many uses of queer theory I wish to focus my study down to three major areas of queer theory; performativity, heternormativity, and liminality.

Heteronormativity is the idea that heterosexuality is used as the standard for understanding gender and sexuality (Warner, M. 1991). This use of heterosexuality as a norm creates a binary between itself and nonheterosexual groups, in which nonheterosexual people are viewed as abnormal (Abes, E & Kasch, D 2007). By privileging heterosexuality, society ceases to acknowledge gender and sexuality as reflections of social power structure (Foucault 1978). This hegemony of heterosexuality defines what is seen as acceptable -queer studies provide a framework for resisting this.

Performativity is a theory of Judith Butler's (1990) and describes how one creates gender and sexual identities. For Butler, an individual's gender and sexuality do not exist before s/he performs them; “actions do not represent identity; instead, actions create identity (Abes, E & Kasch, D 2007, p. 621).” Due to the fact that individuals enact genders and sexualities that do not exist prior to the enactment, performativity offers a challenge to the dominant social constructs of gender and sexuality (ibid). Due to this the “process depends on creating an identity through repeating actions; however, an individual never repeats actions precisely the same way. Thus, identity is always changing (ibid)”.

The final area of queer theory my study shall be focusing on is the idea of liminality. The theory of liminality was first proposed by French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, and talks of a transitional period. It is a state of flux set between two distinct and stable stages of being, typically seen as the middle stage of a rite of passage. The idea of liminality joins the theories of heteronormativity and performativity. This is due to the fact that heteronormativity sets up a binary of two sexualities: heterosexuality and nonheterosexuality. Liminality here acts as a resistance strategy that allows people to incorporate elements of both sexualities into one person. This incorporation of identities is done via the act of performing the different sexualities or genders in different circumstances (Abes, E & Kasch,

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D 2007).

Queer theory in anthropology was highlighted in the annual review Lesbian/Gay Studies in the House of Anthropology by Kath Weston (1993). In this article she demanded an end to the hidden history of sexuality within anthropology and represented “an institutionalizing move” for an “emergent domain of inquiry” (Weston, K. 1993, p. 340). Still within anthropology sexuality still occupies a marginal place when compared to other topics of anthropological interests (Boellstorff, T. 2007).

Queer theory, including the three areas described here, has played a large part in my understanding of this research. This has mainly come about due to the fact that it gave me a lens

through which to understand the concepts of gender, sexuality and the performance of it. Without queer theory the performance element of masculinity would be impossible to view, instead gender would be just a biological fact that is unchanging and unchangeable. For me this is clearly not the case, as one cannot have a multitude of masculinities (and indeed a hegemonic idea of masculinity) without the idea of performances in gender. Heteronormativity and liminality also allows a deeper understanding as to how hegemonic masculinity comes about and how gay men challenge and take on elements of

hegemonic masculinity. For instance heteronormativity shows how all expressions of gender outside of a heterosexual framework go instantly against what is societally deemed normal. This therefore is instantly challenged amongst gay men who in some ways practice orthodox masculinity. Liminality however gives us the chance to rectify this situation by offering these gay men the opportunity to perform different interpretations of gender in different locations, and aiding my use and understanding of Bourdieu’s theory of bodily hexis in Chapter Three.

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Chapter Two – Methods and Settings

2.1Introduction

Sitting on the coach leaving Amstel Station, heading back to the United Kingdom for the first time in months, I started to contemplate what was ahead of me during the fieldwork period. While I was excited about the prospect of getting down to actual work after months of theoretical work and research proposing I was also nervous about heading into the unknown. My undergraduate years had been spent learning more about biological anthropology rather than cultural, leaving me with scant knowledge of what life “in the field” would be like. Still it was probably easier to start in a city only a few hours (in some cases minutes) away from loved ones who would be always open to seeing me. It was more nervous excitement than that of nervous fear.

Brighton had long held a place in my mind, a place of fascination and intrigue. Growing up you hear a lot about the wild gay party scene in the city, something radically different to my upbringing in a village and small town in the north of Essex that as far as I could tell had no other gay people in it. While I had done a lot of reading about the city and area of the research, and a number of friends had made the city home I knew virtually nothing of what it was actually like to live and be there.

The coach and train journey took over twelve hours, so when I arrived in Brighton I was zombie like. In this strange state I took my first walk into the city that would be home for the next four months. Not knowing where to go, I just headed straight down the road the station is situated on and found myself heading rapidly downhill towards the sea. With the buildings looming large around me on the road the beach and the sea felt like it sprung out on me, spreading out across the horizon and only interrupted by the site of the old burnt down pier and its newer replacement to the left. The sea's openness felt like a metaphor for my freedom and desire to explore the city and lives of its inhabitants.

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theoretical debate that masculinity, sports and homosexuality, as well as the works of other

ethnographers, this work was also driven by a need to answer questions about myself and frustrations I had with things I had experienced. My life had driven me to this point. Therefore at points in the research my own subjectivity, past and vulnerabilities may play a part in my understandings of the things that happened over the period I was living and participating in sports in Brighton. Sometimes this placing of self is important as Behar puts it:

“The exposure of the self who is also a spectator has to take us somewhere we couldn’t otherwise get to. It has to be essential to the argument, not a decorative flourish, not exposure for its own sake” (Behar, R. 1996, p. 14).”

In a lot of way this research was more for myself than anything else. I wanted to understand how to view my own masculinity and learn from fellow gay men around me what it meant, and decide how that view is placed on them, and myself, and how it can be challenged.

The next day after my arrival I got beginning on the road to research. While my topic was to change as time went on, it was always to be based with BLAGSS (Brighton Lesbian and Gay Sports Society) and I decided to throw myself in the deep end and take on something I took no pleasure in – running. For me running has always seemed rather futile, I never understood why people got into it. I always felt I would rather play another sport, that while it involved running, the aim was not just to run up and down. Still if I was to get into the spirit of research I felt I should go along.

Being truthful, it had been an awful long time since I had exercised with any real enthusiasm (unless riding my bike in Amsterdam counts) and the thought of dragging myself up in the morning and heading to a park to run about filled me with a lot of fear and trepidation. I had contacted Tommy the evening before to tell him I was going to be there and my intentions, which as I had been given permission to do research by the chairman Gene was no problem, and was told to be there at 10:30.

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Come the morning I had to drag myself out of bed at my friends Dave's house and head over to the park. Not realizing the distance to the park where the club meet, I was running late forcing me

ironically to run to the running group. Several jokes were made by my state when I arrived a tad out of breath, nothing mean and if anything I felt a good camaraderie with the group by the jokes at my expense.

We soon got started with a series of sprint exercises that exhausted me out before we even got onto longer runs. Running clearly was going to have to become part of my life for the next few months and I tried to let go of any negative thoughts I had as I completed the sprints. I joined with the “nice” group, a group for beginners and felt at ease with my ability in the group. Also the group on the whole resonated a good feeling, everyone was comfortable with their ability and wanted to improve for themselves, not to beat anyone. Soon we were plodding off on a longer run covering a few miles (between 1.5 and 3 depending on the group), due to my lack of training I suffered a lot during this. But thanks to my fellow runners I never felt bad about it and was encouraged at all times to go at my own pace, still the competitive person I am, was driving me on to push harder all the time even if it did make it worse. This need to compete was levelled off over the course of this session and many more, with the groups I was mostly involved in never really promoting it, an interesting factor that would play a big part to come in the research I carried out.

2.2Fieldwork Setting – Brighton

Brighton is a town found on the south coast of England in the county of East Sussex (see Map One below). It is about an hour and a half drive or train from the centre of London (Charing Cross). Brighton has for a long time been considered the gay capital of Briton, comparable to San Francisco’s position in America. In the 2001 census it was shown that Brighton had the highest number of same sex couples cohabiting (BBC News, 2004) highlighting its place in LGBT lifestyle in the United Kingdom.

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Map One – Brighton's location in Briton

Brighton's LGBT history is recorded as dating back to the 1800s and its rise as a pleasure resort for people on holiday from London turning the small fishing village into a city. With the coming of the railway between London and Brighton in 1841 the conditions were set for the practice of

“unmentionable crimes” (Brighton Ourstory, 2014 - web post). While this remained fairly underground for a number of years, it was firmly established on the queer social map by the 1920s and 30s with a number of bars and pubs catering for the crowd in the town. Again this part of the towns history was only truly known by the queer community and kept relatively hidden from most locals' knowledge. This changed in the 1960s with the legalisation of homosexuality with the 1967 Sexual Offences Act2

building on the earlier 1957 Wolfenden Report3. With this change in the law came a rise in the number

of social spaces available to the lesbian and gay community and the rise of a number of LGBT rights and support groups such as the Sussex Gay Liberation Front (SGLF) (1971), Brighton Gay

2 The 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalised homosexuality for men over the age of 21 in England and Wales.

3 A report stating that homosexual behaviour was a private matter and demanding the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdoms and Northern Ireland

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Switchboard (1975), and the Brighton Lesbian Group (1976). The Women's Liberation Movement also had a strong foothold in the town with a number of campaigns against abortion and for lesbian rights taking place in the 1970s (Brighton Ourstory, 2014). In 1973 the first Brighton Pride was held, while not all of the towns LGBT community failed to come out in full force it was the start of change, with SGLF starting the first openly gay dances in the UK in the city (Brighton Ourstory, 2014).

The 1980s led to a backlash against the LGBT community nationally, worked up by the rise of AIDS and small grants being given in London to LGBT groups the Conservative government created Section 28 in 1988. This bill banned local communities from promoting homosexuality as a way of life, or as a way of raising a family. This led to groups such BAAAS28 (Brighton Area Action Against Section 28) deciding to resurrect the Brighton Pride march and firmly put the Brighton area on the map as the gay capital of the UK. Brighton Pride has steadily grown over the years and is now a massive event for the city, with as many as half a million people coming to ticketed event and many more people in the city to enjoy the march and the after parties found across the city in its many bars.

With a change in government from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party in 1997 and the removal of Section 28 in 2003 the local council became much more openly supportive of the LGBT community and its groups by offering out many grants and funding ushering in a new era of openness and community for the city (Brighton Ourstory, 2014).

On top of the city's long LGBT history the town is also known for its liberalness generally. The city is fairly typical of places in the South East of England, in that it has a large middle class,

professional population who enjoy the closeness to London and the cities wide range of amenities and leisure on offer around the city in the shape of its many bars, art gallerias, restaurants and theatres gaining the town the nickname “London-on-the-sea”. On top of this group the city is also populated by a large student population due to the two universities in the city; University of Sussex and the

University of Brighton. The University of Sussex especially adds to the liberal nature of the city with the university seen as one of the hot beds of radical student politics with a recent wave of occupations

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of university property against privatisation. The city also put its more liberal nature on the national map when in 2010 it elected the first Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas. On top of this the city is home to a number of squats and social centres (such as the Crowley Club) making the city have a strong left wing feel to the city giving it an edge not found in many other cities.

2.3BLAGSS

In 1997 BLAGSS (Brighton Lesbian and Gay Sports Society) was set up by Gideon Mead to give the city's LGBT community an inclusive and supportive sports group that was not found in the area at that time. The group has steadily grown to become one of the largest groups of its kind in the UK and was voted the 2008 Pink Paper's best sports group in the country (BLAGSS.org 2014).

Currently the group runs 16 different sports groups (badminton, cycling, football, golf, horse riding, pentanque-boules, running, softball, table tennis, tennis, tenpin bowling, walking, squash, sailing, rock climbing, skiing) and has 480 active members taking part in these. These events typically take part in the evenings across the week days to allow working people to take part in these, a few, such as football, running and walking operate on the weekends.

The club is run more as a federation of sports with each group having its own sports

coordinator/s who run and plan each group. Whilst the club has a chairman, elected yearly at the AGM, they, as far as I could tell, had no real power over the sports teams on the ground level. Instead the chairman mainly planned the social events that happen monthly, as well as a special Christmas and New Year social events, and choosing things such as which charities to support.

2.4Arrival and Early Limitations

During the early stages of this research, and during the entire proposal period, the focus was rather different. Instead of researching among gay men on their concepts and understandings it was intended to be a study on transgender (female-to-male or FTM) and the role sports played in their continuing transition from being seen as feminine to masculine. It was this way I first got in contact

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with then chairman of BLAGSS, Gene Johnson, to ask about the demographic of the group and the potential for this research to be carried out there. He helped me a great deal and informed me they did indeed have a number of trans members, although not all FTM. With this confirmation, I pushed ahead making contact with other support groups in the area that helped the trans community, and specifically the FTM community. Being filled with the supportive news I pushed ahead with the research proposal and went away to Brighton.

However, upon actually arriving in Brighton this radically changed. I had intended in the early part of the fieldwork to get to know people through a number of support groups, with whom I would be able to sit in meetings with them and meet everyone (although field notes inside such a meeting would be banned). This would be used as a way though to get my face and research known in among the community and hopefully gain me a number of interlocutors. Once I arrived I emailed the heads of both the groups to check that my attendance would not be a problem still, and to ask for more details about locations. In one case I was suddenly told outright that no researchers would be allowed in the group at all, and in the other that I would have to send my research proposal to them again so the group could decide on me. After about a week of waiting I heard back from the group and was told that although my proposal sounded fine to them, they felt it was not acceptable to have someone only carrying out a master’s degree, due to their belief that the study might not reflect well on them and my expected lack of research ability.

In some respects this outcome was reasonable lucky, in my later interactions with members of the group (the LGBT community in Brighton, while large, overlaps a lot and most active people know each other) I always found them to be hostile towards me taking notes or mentioning my research. This in part comes from the less than positive research carried out on transgender people in the past, and could have led to a great deal of difficulty in actually being able to complete a decent ethnography on the community.

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BLAGSS and its gay male members. While it took some altering of ideas and concepts from my proposal, it was a group that I had already started to make personal connections within while dealing with the rejection emails from the transgender groups. It was also a group that I felt easy moving around in, as I had a lot in common with the members and felt that I taken in as a member quickly, rather than being viewed as an outsider and a researcher. Here my own experiences as a homosexual man allowed for fairly easy bonding with the group, as well offering me chances to go out socially with some members as they wanted to introduce me to the gay scene of Brighton as a new comer to the city.

In these early days most of the research carried out was via informal conversation and participant observation. While everyone was aware of my research, I felt going straight to recorded conversation would be too much and I wanted to use the early conversations as a way to create bonds between myself and my informants (Green & Thorogood, 2009, p. 94). This normally happened at one of the many groups I attended, or the monthly socials. At these events I never really had to force the conversation too much, as most people wanted to interact with me about the area due to their own interest in the topic. On a number of occasions, members would tell me things, almost out of the blue, of something they had just thought about or remembered in the area of homosexuality and sport because it was a topic that did not come up that often in their daily lives, but was of interest to them. By not having a recording device out and recording they gave me the opportunity to hear interlocutors talk more freely than perhaps they would in a formal interview (Shrimshaw & Hurtado, 1987).

As time went on I managed to gain close bonds with several members of BLAGSS, as well as becoming on good terms with a great number of people involved. This allowed me to build on these early informal conversations and move deeper into the questions of masculinity of these men. 2.5The Main Body of Research

After about a period of a month integrating myself with the group and its members I started the process of asking people out for drinks in the knowledge that I would record the meetings. These typically took place at one of the bars or cafés in the centre of the city, allowing for easy access as well

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as a comfortable setting for both me and the interviewee.

By this stage of the process I was comfortable talking with these people about most topics and they were generally at ease around me and allowed for me to lead the discussion more than normally would be the case. In essence these meetings were semi structured and I would tend to have a few questions I wished to get through, but as is the case with talking to friends these sometimes were swept aside for more general conversation. Still even in these more personal conversations anthropological understanding of the topic is gained.

My age played an unusual role, for me at least, in the process at this point. While I feel fairly knowledgeable on gay rights and the history of it in the UK, nearly all the of the members were a number of years older (most members were in the mid-30s and older) than me and everybody I interviewed felt they had to teach me how much it changed. In a lot of ways this helped me as it gave me an idea into how the concepts at a larger level had changed, as well as in the daily lives of the people I was interviewing. Allowing them to take the power to “teach me,” also meant I never felt myself talking too much during these interviews while still doing enough to lead the conversation when I had to.

The issue of my age also played a part in how many of the members treated me during these interviews in other ways as well. While I was comfortable paying for drinks for myself and my guest, something that should really be done by anthropologists as these people are giving their time up to you, I was always rebuffed and told it was there treat. A lot of the time they felt I was a poor student living as a guest at a friend’s house and that they should look after me. At first this really bothered me as I felt it removed my authority as a researcher and was questionable ethically, however, one can only put up arguments against this, and truth be told, I always find it hard to turn down a free drink.

The use of a phone as my recording device allowed for these interviews to move along without any problem. This is due to it becoming more and more common for people to have their phone out on the table when sat in a restaurant, café or bar. It meant as soon as I turned on the recording application I

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was using, something I did as soon as I met up with the person. Most people had no difficulty with the situation, and most people seemed to actively enjoy the fact they were being recorded for something and wanted to talk more due to that. For instance with the Ju-Jitsu club meeting I had originally intended to interview just a few members. At the bar we went to after the training session, it became obvious that instead of interviewing one or two members for longer, they all wanted and took great enjoyment in being interviewed on a separate table from larger group by me. While this broke down many barriers as they were enjoying the process and thinking about it before they came to me, it did not allow me to get as in depth with all of the members as I would have liked on that day.

2.6Keeping A Critical Eye

One major reflection I had to keep having while taking on this fieldwork was to make sure I did not become “blind” to the behaviors of my informants as they had become normal to me. This is quite often referred to as “going native” (Bryman, A. 2004 p. 32), for me however, it was more a case of being a native to it all, as a gay English who had at this point spent nearly all my life in the South East of England. I felt I had enough distance on participating in sports as it had been since school I had properly played them, although I always enjoyed watching them. I had to make conscious decision to always take a step back from the moment and remain an outsider. Often I felt it was fairly important to spend some time away from people I was researching, so that I would never become blind to certain actions people took. However, these people were, and are, not just there for me to gawp and write notes about them; they’re my friends. This ability to build an emotional bond and rapport with these people, while retaining my critical eye, was a skill that had to be learnt via trial and error throughout my time in Brighton.

2.7Talking To The Wider Community

During the time in Brighton I made attempts to engage with the wider LGBT community of Brighton. I felt it was important to hear the views on sports and masculinity from other gay men who did not take part in any sports. This was mainly done through the two large Pride events; Trans and Gay

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Pride. For these events I volunteered to work on a stall for BLAGSS handing out leaflets promoting the group and trying to get people to sign up for membership of the group. This experience gave me the opportunity to naturally bring up sports with people and engage with why they did not wish to take part. While a lot of the time lack of interest was thrown around, I still managed to hear more views on the meaning of sports in the lives of ordinary gay men.

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Chapter Three – Playing Against “Them”

In this Chapter I shall examine how members of the sports clubs perceive themselves and the thoughts of playing alongside heterosexual people. In examining these fears and complaints we can learn a lot about how heterosexism has an actual effect on people’s lives and not just on the pages of academic journals.

As described in the first chapter my own sexuality had always had an influence on my

perceptions of sport, and how it turn it views me. Although unarticulated in academic terms that I can understand today, it was just a feeling. A feeling that I, as a gay man, was never fully accepted in sport. This feeling was permeated throughout my sporting experience in school whilst I was in the proverbial “closet,” it was felt in the language of my fellow pupils, in the language of my teachers, in the language of my fellow football supporters in the stand – being queer meant you could not play sport. Somehow your interpreted “femininity” made you a danger in this realm, and that your presence alone could make the team lose. Before the starting of this research I had never really questioned it and what it meant, I just assumed the people I went to school with were insecure or unenlightened and that it was not a problem in the wider world. This standpoint now seems very naïve, it was a problem in wider society.

Fast forward a number of years from those school days and I am standing in the bright midday sunlight of a summers day in Brighton's Preston Park playing and training in an organised session of football for the very first time in years. It must surely have been clear from my figure and level of comfort that I was not in the best of shapes these days and as a huge football fan even I can fully understand how poor my skill level is but the men and women around me, although strangers at this point but some soon t to become good friends, never jeer me or get frustrated as I was used to with my previous experience of playing football. Nor is the language anywhere near as coarse and rough as I

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had been around. No, this was friendly and open – more about improving and enjoying rather than competing and winning. So what was different about this group? Well it was my first training session with the BLAGSS football group meaning for the first time I was playing sports with peers, actual living breathing homosexual sports fans – something I truly never felt I would meet growing up! Away from the stresses of being “different” in mainstream, heterosexual leagues we were able to be ourselves and enjoy it. Over the next few months I found this to be the case amongst a number of sports, that without the question of sexuality hang over my fellow BLAGSS members they were able to enjoy taking part in sports.

However, while we may have been happy playing our games and sports many of the gay

community outside of the club did not see the freedom. My notes from days at both Trans and Gay Pride highlight this. At both these events I was put in charge of the promotions table for the group and was charged with getting people to sign up or at least taking a flyer with more information about the group in a recruitment drive. While neither of these events are exactly perfect for promoting a sports group, due to the fact, that everyone there is more looking to get drunk, high and have fun, not sign up for weekly sports classes, myself included. Still it provided me early on with good interaction with younger gay men, something the group lacked, and other older non-sports participant members of Brighton's large gay community. In nearly all the interactions while I had been thrusting leaflets into people’s hands or trying to convince them to give us their email addresses it became clear there was a generally held view that sports was not for them. Many responded that they liked to keep fit in a gym, but that sports was too straight, too other worldly for them to consider. I even had my own sexuality questioned by one or two people, as if I was an undercover straight athlete (me!) looking to recruit unsuspecting gay men into sports and then finally the great victory – changing their sexuality to the “winning side”. Of course this could never be my intention, nor remotely possible if for some mad reason it were, but that fact that the idea was put out there was at least a sign that it was a concept in the minds of some in the Brighton gay community.

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Throughout the research one major fear brought out in nearly every interview, and informally spoken about, was being an out gay man and playing against heterosexual counterparts. Once the freedom to take part in sports they enjoyed, they still worried about having to compete or play with heterosexual men. Whilst for some it was clear they did not want to play alongside heterosexual men at all; for others it was a case of modifying their own behaviours when competing against straight men.

This modifying of their behaviours when competing against heterosexual players or teams can certainly be seen as promoting the concept of heterosexual hegemony. This states that “any

proclamation of heterosexuality is “just” and right” and never scrutinized, but the mere mention of homosexuality is perceived as being “in your face” (Anderson, E. 2002, p. 871). This can clearly been seen in one interview with a tennis player, Nigel Jarvis, when he stated a number of times about playing his identity as a gay man down. When discussing coming out to a few team members he stated:

They were fine with it, they were my friends. They didn’t have a problem with it. But

obviously the mainstream league, I probably downplayed my sexual identity, certainly a little bit.

Again later on when discussing playing in the local tennis leagues with the BLAGSS team he stated:

I mean we don’t shove it in their face. But there are a couple of guys at my club that love screaming really out loud, men, which is always funny because I am not a screamer. But we have never faced hostility, as obviously there are other gays and lesbians playing for the other teams in the mainstream clubs.

Although he jokes about fellow members of his team being a bit more outrageous on a tennis court, its clear in his mind the behaviour modification around heterosexual counterparts is required because of the potential threat of “hostility”, which they have thus far avoided when playing. Having never

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actually faced this hostility from others, it is clear that this must come from what Judith Butler (1997) stated was the heterosexist framework creating an antigay discourse. Eric Anderson (2002, p. 875) added “that by creating a hostile environment toward the acceptance of homosexuality even before the team is made aware of the actual presence of a gay athlete on the team, such discourse helps protect the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity from the threat of athleticism. It sends a message that

homosexuality is not welcomed.”

This silencing was not just felt by Nigel, Alan Bannister also mentioned similar things. Despite his strong personality and ability in the sport he felt uncomfortable in being out in team sports:

M: The idea that you cannot be out in those sort of scenes, do you think team sports influence that?

A: Yeah, yeah. I think if you are playing a team then you are less likely to come out as gay. M: Any ideas why that could be?

A: Well it’s probably got something to do with the changing rooms. When we use to play football up north not only did we share the showers but we shared baths as well. Because we would at amateur football grounds.

(A refers to Alan, and M to me)

Typical to his huge competitive nature though, Alan's approach to playing down his sexuality was to always be better than anyone else. In response to me asking him about how he responded to the idea his masculinity would be viewed as lesser if his team mates knew he was gay he stated:

No, never. I would… I would counteract that by beating them! You know what I mean? That takes it all always then. If they want to question my masculinity, because of my gay, because of my gender… not my gender my sexual orientation then I will counteract it by whooping the pants off them [laughs].

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spent most of his adult life (from school age) playing in mainstream (i.e. non-gay) sports clubs and was much more confident in his attitude towards them. For me this attitude came out most strongly in his, and only one other in a similar position, interview due to the fact he had played sports in a heterosexual environment for most of his life, before later on joining a gay club. This would chime well with

Bourdieu (2001) argument that gay men are uniquely situated to understand and undermine masculine orthodoxy due to their unusual ability to gain access to masculine privilege before later coming out as homosexual. For Alan this made him want to compete even more against heterosexual athletes to prove he was not feminine. According to Pat Griffin (1998) this allows for the breakdown of the distinction between feminine and masculine.

For many of the others I spoke to it was the case that they stopped playing sports at school. This removal from the worlds of sports at school age until a later point may explain the difference in

attitudes to what Alan put forward. For him he had the experience of playing sports without those around him knowing or making comments on his sexual identity. For most of the people in the group this was not the case, with many reporting the fact they stopped playing sports because others started to make comments on either their sexuality or made disparaging remarks about others that played the sport with them. For Simon, the leader of the Jujitsu club, this was very apparent:

S: You know I love being part of a team, its what I am use to, at school I loved it and it takes a lot to strengthen that. But I was always very wary or slightly fearful in team environments that I would be found out. And also the difficulties of managing your emotions when you are training with people that you fancy. And I don't consider myself an effeminate archetypal gay person so, to other people might see that differently, but to me yeah it meant no one was ever picking on me saying oh you're the gay one and if I didn't want them to, I was use to sort of having that veil. At the same time it did get to me, I never identified with the more camp element

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M: Did you ever see any homophobia in these team sports?

S: Oh yeah, I mean of course. In my school.... you know it was part of the acceptable foundation that you were just defamatory about gay people, it was always there, it was always that under current.

For Conner, of BLAGSS running group, it was his lack of sporting participation that marked him out as different:

I suppose I did play at school, you know. The early years of school, I hated the rough and tumble of football and rugby. I was still frogmarched into playing these sports, you had to do them. There was probably issues to do with my sexuality at the time you know. Erm, I sort of felt sports weren't for me and I was not particularly good at it either. I mean I did play tennis sometimes, but rugby I hated with a vengeance and I opted out of that very early, in my second year of secondary school. But you know, that lead to me being marginalised and the association of you know “Conner doesn't play rugby, his probably queer” or whatever, (Coughs) which I was (laughs). But you know I always associated exercise with something unpleasant really.

Gene, the chairman of BLAGSS at the time, also had similar experiences:

Yeah, I will give you an example. When we first started the football group, erm, Elliot, who is the leader of it and the leader of the Brighton Bandits as well. He brought some of his players, some of them are gay, but some of them are straight. When you are playing against a straight guy and you know they are really good, you just have your apprehensions don't you. And it brings back memories of when you were in school and somebody called you a faggot or they didn't pick you a team, or you know. You know, it’s always, I suppose I am probably catastrophizing it. But either they will throw you the ball and you don't know what to do with it to make fun of you or they ignore you totally. So you are playing baseball and they send you out to outfield and erm, so I had those feelings again. And I had to remind

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myself those guys were on our side, whether they were straight or gay, and you know.

It is clear from these few people that an anti-gay discourse is produced at an early age, as stated by Judith Butler (1997), and still permeates through the people to this day in their fear or estrangement from participation with fellow men, albeit heterosexual ones. A few did say how though, as they have grown older these have worn off, and in the right environment being around straight people would no longer be a problem for them. In the case of Conner, a long-time member of the running group, he stated in an interview that he any tension that use to exist between heterosexual and homosexual men had been eroded. But he still stated that “But I mean its nice to have a little group where there is a

complete connection in terms of personal domestic lives. We have either got partners or we haven't, but we are all gay and you know there is an ease with how we communicate.

Still it was not unusual to hear some amount of reticence about taking part with straight people, is clearly demonstrated in the Gene interview:

We did a friendly match against Bear Patrol and I actually choose not to play. And the reason why was.... Everyone there was either gay or gay friendly, I think they were all gay. Actually there were some women who were probably not gay but... Other people had no

problem getting into, they are not great players, but I just have those same old fears. And this is actually with a group of people I should be able to trust. But that's what's brought out when you might be in an environment where you are the only gay person and the fear of not being good enough or being made fun of, or other straight men disparaging me.

All of these interviews appear to me to show that heterosexism is in place in some manner due to the fact that all have reported feeling that their sexuality in some way marks them out as different, and they were judged harshly as such. Whether this be Alan's decision that he had to be the best and beat a straight man whenever he played badminton; Gene's refusal to play in a charity match or the behaviour modification of himself as described by Nigel.

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The statements put forward by those who changed their behaviours when in more “mainstream” or non-gay groups can been seen to tie in nicely with Bourdieu's idea of habitus. He describes habitus as the application of body techniques, ways of perception, thinking and acting that are specific to the conditions within a certain field. Different 'fields' make up society, they overlap and contest over scarce resources. To be successful in a certain field one needs capital. Capital is/can be economic, social, symbolic, linguistic, and cultural. The body is carrier of capital and each field values capital differently. The knowledge that is transposed from a certain field is what he names a set of behavioural

dispositions. In short, is habitus a set of behavioural dispositions (ways of thinking and acting) specific to the conditions of a field (Bourdieu, P. 1970, Brubaker, R, 1985). In a sporting environment

masculinity and sexuality can be seen as part of a person's habitus. For someone to be successful in the sporting environment they must carry themselves in a way that holds the most capital in this field. This is currently seen through hegemonic masculinity, which currently states that to be seen as masculine one must be anything but feminine, emotionless, violent, and competitive – not being this is

transgressive of the rules of macho athleticism. This concept of habitus is shown through body hexis, the physical embodiment habitus

If all societies … set such store on the seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners, the reason is that, treating the body as a memory, they entrust to it in abbreviated and practical, i.e. mnemonic, form the fundamental principles of the

arbitrary content of culture. The principles embodied in this way are placed beyond the grasp

of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit; nothing seems more ineffable, more incommunicable, more intimable,. and therefore more precious, than the values given body, made body by the transubstantiation achieved by the hidden persuasion of an implicit pedagogy, capable of instilling a whole cosmology, an ethic, a metaphysic, a political philosophy, through injunctions as insignificant as ‘stand up straight’ or ‘don’t hold your knife in your left hand’ (Bourdieu, P. 1977, p.94)

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Through hexis we can understand how people change their behaviours in situations playing sports with heterosexual males. Through behaviour modification they match their body hexis to the habitus. This body hexis concept, and how people change their behaviours depending on habitus, came out in a joke made by Ian from the Jujitsu group: “they are not teaching us gay jujitsu. We might pirouette

everywhere and go ta-da at the end...Well we only do that in the context of our own club!” In my time

at the different sports, I found that the body movement of the members typically was no different than I had seen in the sporting environment outside of gay clubs. This was probably due to the fact certain sports require technique and skill to do things well and thus force the bodily hexis of sporting

participants to be the same. However, a lot of jokes were made at all the clubs on a near constant basis that teased out gay understandings of masculinity. It would be very common to hear a joke made about somebody else's campness or how someone was a queen after they did certain things (always in good humour). In the first day at the running group jokes were made at me for being flamboyant, when the actual case was I was being very nervous and uptight – anything but flamboyant.

We can understand the importance of creating a new habitus for themselves, away from the current everyday society stigmas of being a gay man in sports. Gene again articulated this want to be in his own environment:

Yeah yeah, I mean do I want a time when we can play with straight people? I suppose, but still I want a social network. I always thought about this if I were a black person I might want to see black movies, a black club. I want to be around people who are like me. You know for me as a psychologist, you are reinforced by being around similarity. That similarity re-affirms who you are. And I mean there is also the stuff on diversity studies, that say if people are interested in you that can be welcoming as well. But you know, this is why, we group together gay men and lesbian you still them levitating at a social or at a sport.

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“like-minded people,” which for him did not strictly mean homosexual people. He still however questioned their involvement

The reason because its a gay football team is because mainstream football doesn't accept gay people and is still fighting against homophobia. So what are straight people joining? But the fact they are joining shows they are fine with gay people being in any football club. I didn't get it. I needed to know more. Is it they just wanted a game of football and that was who they mixed with? Like minded teams, and that's great, that is how it should be. But I kind of thought, oh right OK there are a lot of straight guys in the gay football team

In an ideal world everyone would get on great, but it’s not. So yeah I think having gay groups is important. You know some people face the day to day norms of, I will say

normality, and society pressure – so to have a group you can have a group where you can be yourself than that is ideal.

Both these quotes show that in some ways Phil and Gene were seeking a habitus in which their actions, activities, perceptions would not be judged lesser than others due to their sexuality. For Phil it is all about finding people he considers like himself, or like-minded as his constantly said (more than ten times in a 40 minute interview). For Gene it is about affirming his own identity by being around other gay men, he is seeking re-affirmation of who he is. Non-gay sports settings cannot provide this as they are just another space in which he has to act in a certain way to be accepted instead of just being his real self. I feel all the quotes up to this point do truly drive home this point, that for these men they need to be away from heterosexual males to be allowed to feel free to act as they please.

This freedom I later found out was backed by unwritten rule in the group that I discovered about halfway through my research. After having spent the morning out by the sea as I was prone to doing in the early part of my research, I wandered along to Kemp Town, the city’s gay district, to find somewhere to grab a drink. I decided rather quickly that I needed nothing stronger than a coffee and

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