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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Homo That's One Reason to Come Out

Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 9:04 AM

A professional soccer player comes out of the closet—the first pro-soccer player ever to come out as gay—and a sympathetic teammate tells the Guardian...

"It's hard to have something inside you that's really big."

Indeed. (Thanks to Slog tipper George.)

Comments (21) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

The Guardian's opening sentence is great, too: "Anton Hysén looks every inch the modern footballer."

Makes me think he has a Bentley dangling from his penis.

Posted by gloomy gus on March 31, 2011 at 9:11 AM

Jut take some deep breaths and think about the drapes.

Posted by Vince on March 31, 2011 at 9:20 AM

The Guardian loads like hell on my phone so I can't read the article, but I'm pretty sure another top flight player came out in the 90s.

Posted by college dude from madison on March 31, 2011 at 9:21 AM

See if the printable page works, @3:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/…

Posted by rob!

on March 31, 2011 at 9:29 AM

@5 - yeah, Dan would've had to read all the way through the second par to work that out. Way too hard.

Posted by Bento on March 31, 2011 at 9:30 AM

Also, the mobile version of the site:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/

Posted by rob!

on March 31, 2011 at 9:31 AM

Be nice, @5. Sad that the first to come out killed himself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Fash…

Posted by gloomy gus on March 31, 2011 at 9:48 AM

I was going to mention Justin Fashanu, but y'all beat me to it.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 31, 2011 at 9:58 AM

There was a great BBC radio program on homophobia and soccer. It is the October 20, 2010 episode on this page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qy05…

Posted by rhino321 on March 31, 2011 at 10:19 AM

This is really one of the more embarrassing things of being a fan of the game. Granted, the vast majority of team and fan blogs I've read occasionally call out homophobia.

That said it isn't much better in other sports. I'm all for giving the opposition a little abuse but at least be clever and not hateful; the best I've heard was a fan politely and repeatedly informing a keeper that his mother was a terrible cook.

Posted by college dude from madison on March 31, 2011 at 10:23 AM

@ 10 - haha. That's great.

Also, did the bit about people assuming Hysen's dad was a homophone because "he threw a punch at a man who groped him in the toilets at Frankfurt airport in 2001" not make any sense to anyone else?

Posted by UnoriginalAndrew on March 31, 2011 at 10:49 AM

@11

yeah, a few articles have mentioned this incident, but most of the time the comments all agree that defending against unwanted sexual advances does not a homophobe make.

Posted by Frank Rizzo on March 31, 2011 at 10:54 AM

It's why God invented Crisco.

Posted by cxg on March 31, 2011 at 11:04 AM

"On his left arm, in particularly elaborate lettering, is: 'UNWA'. This is Hysén's tribute to Liverpool, his birthplace, and the terrace anthem of his favourite club – 'You'll Never Walk Alone.'"

That made this old football- and musical-loving queen smile.

Posted by Bub on March 31, 2011 at 11:34 AM

I love Liverpool and this guy has a great attitude. I feel that male-centric environments like sports assume that gay men are either 1) not manly enough to play or 2) so overly manly they'll attempt to have sex with anyone at anytime. Maybe if more people see professional and openly gay players succeeding, they'll come off it.

Posted by mixy on March 31, 2011 at 11:37 AM

@10 I agree, the homophobia in soccer drives me crazy. I doubt we'll see a British player come out in the next 5 years.

Posted by Canadian Nurse on March 31, 2011 at 11:40 AM

@11: Yeah, is groping/being groped by same-sex strangers seen as a totally-straight, totally-okay thing in Frankfurt, such that one would have to be a homophobe to react violently? Or was the thinking that getting groped would make him a homophobe? I assume one of the things of which homophobes are scared is being groped by strange men, and so it's reasonable - within that paradigm - for someone who IS a homophobe to assume that being groped by a strange man, i.e. actually experiencing one of his worst fears, would automatically make someone a homophobe, even if he hadn't been before. I certainly also find it confusing, and these are the only things I can figure.

Posted by John Horstman on March 31, 2011 at 1:09 PM

@17 I think the reasoning was that someone who wasn't homophobic would not have reacted as violently and instead would have opted for something like "Hey knock it the fuck off!" before punching someone.

Posted by college dude from madison on March 31, 2011 at 1:14 PM

@Bento: Sorry to be off-topic, but I love your icon.

Posted by Shini on March 31, 2011 at 5:50 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuali…

He's not the first openly gay footballer

Posted by asfd;lkj on April 1, 2011 at 8:29 PM

I hope that, like the Viking colonizations of yesteryear, footballers will now start coming out in Northeastern England, Scotland, and Ireland. (Interesting that Fashanu played for teams in Edinburgh and Norwich, both very close to the North Sea).

Posted by Winspur