Representation Matters
Representation Matters
It's not a big deal except for the fact it is.
In case you missed it, earlier today, Isaac Humphries, centre for Melbourne United in the NBL, posted this video across his social media channels.
In the three minute address to his Melbourne teammates, coaches and support staff, Humphries comes out as gay, becoming the only openly gay male professional basketball player in a top league around the world.
I attempted to take my life, and the main reason behind me becoming so low and being at that point is because I was very much struggling with my sexuality and coming to terms with the fact that I am gay.
Isaac Humphries
The cynical response to something like this is to brush it off as not noteworthy, that it shouldn’t be a big deal in the year 2022 that a notable public figure in sports has come out as gay.
That would be true, and in all honesty it should be true, but only in a perfect world, which obviously doesn’t exist. With every Isaac Humphries or Josh Cavallo*, society pushes a little closer to that becoming a norm.
*you may remember him as the Adelaide United soccer player who came out as gay in October last year, becoming the only openly gay active men’s footballer at the time.
The reality is though, that for every Humphries and Cavallo, for every Jason Collins or Ian Roberts, there’s another twenty athletes suppressed beneath the system, under the archaic bedrock of the “be a man” ethos that permeates elite level sport.
I thought I could not be that person within our environment, and within a basketball environment.
Isaac Humphries
According to the General Social Survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2020, approximately 4% of Australians identified as being gay, lesbian, bisexual or of another minority sexual identification. That’s just over 770,000 people in Australia’s total population (of people that responded anyway).
The gay community is already heavily marginalised in everyday life. From that same survey:
30% of people belonging to a sexual minority were more likely to report experiencing discrimination than those of a heterosexual orientation (13%)
51% of minority people said most people can be trusted, compared to 63% of hetero responders
56% of minority people said the police can be trusted compared to 82% from heterosexuals
It’s that inbuilt defence mechanism of distrust, scepticism, fear and apathy that has armed the gay community for generations, but when you extrapolate it into pro sports and consider Humphries’ words, then the numbers become even more brutal.
Isaac Humphries became only the second ever male professional basketball player to come out as gay while actively playing, after Jason Collins in 2013 (former NBA player John Amaechi came out in 2007 after his retirement). Division I player for the University of Massachusetts, Derrick Gordon, became the first gay active college basketballer in 2014, and later became the first gay active player to play in the March Madness tournament, before playing professionally in Germany and Cyprus.
That’s a grand total of…four people.
When you consider Isaac’s fear about not being able to be part of a basketball environment, it’s because, as the title of this newsletter suggests, representation matters.
For so long, male pro sports have quashed the idea of sexuality interlacing with elite sports for fear of distraction and a perception of weakness. Consider the episode earlier this year in the NRL, with the Manly Sea Eagles releasing a Pride jersey only for it to be boycotted on religious grounds by several of their players.
Or maybe you’ve heard of the story of Glenn Burke, a Major League baseballer in the 1970s who declined a bribe by the Dodgers GM to marry a woman, was subsequently shipped off to the Athletics, where he was introduced to his new team as “Oh, by the way, this is Glenn Burke and he’s a faggot” by the Oakland GM.
Or how about the tale of Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay footballer, who was accused of sexual assault while playing in the US. After fleeing back to England, he committed suicide, with his note maintaining the sex was consensual and he was convinced he would not get a fair trial due to his sexuality.
Amal Fashanu, niece of Justin, writing for the BBC in 2012, outlines her uncle’s experiences, including getting on the wrong side of then-Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough after a one million pound move, the first black player in England to command such a fee.
Forest's manager, the famous Brian Clough - or in my family the infamous - took a disliking to Justin.
In his autobiography, Clough recounts the confrontation he had with Justin over rumours about frequenting gay clubs in Nottingham:
"'Where do you go if you want a loaf of bread?' I asked him. 'A baker's, I suppose.' 'Where do you go if you want a leg of lamb?' 'A butcher's.' 'So why do you keep going to that bloody poofs' club?'"
Those were the typical attitudes Justin faced in his profession, and very little had changed by the time he took the momentous decision to come out publicly a decade later in 1990.
Amal Fashanu
In an environment where a slur like ‘faggot’ is still far too easily a slip of the tongue, people like Isaac Humphries and the trailblazers before him help scourge that past.
The reason you might not think it’s newsworthy is because you’ve never lived a life without representation. You’ve never felt like the outcast in your own comfort zone.
Imagine the place where you excelled was also your own personal mental hell, competing emotions of confusion, shame and fear, afraid of having your place taken for who you are.
Archaic though that might sound, in a society like sport, the attitudes are still decades in the rear view mirror. Blacklisting, deliberate or otherwise, still happens. You don’t want to be deemed a flight risk for something you have no control over.
So yes, it does matter.
There are so many people in other worlds that are struggling every single day and don’t know how to get up, don’t know how to exist. I know how that feels, and I want to represent those people.
You can still be a great basketball player, and be gay.
Isaac Humphries