Ninth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Sports teams are prevailing, defining elements of masculinity at university but represent a conflicted social continuum between acceptance and rejection. Despite the inimitable social value placed on sports by college-age men, there is significant evidence that associated social value is vapid and toxic. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, I investigated how male students conceptualised their relational experiences between mental health and sports. Regardless of their sexual identity, all of the participants described their experiences of masculine representation in negative terms. This included students who were part of fraternities and those who represented an institutional sports team. It was notable that the mainstream media representation of sports was cited as discordant with their beliefs. Instead, they recognised homogenous hyper-mediatised mainstream sports representation as highly problematic. Participants had a significant degree of insight into social spheres including the ‘coming out’ of several high-profile gay sportsmen. University-based sports teams have begun to recognise the negative impact a closed, exclusive community or team of hyper-masculinised men can have on team performance and wider relationships. While aspects of masculinity such as aggressive behaviour are salient in competitive sports, sports-based masculinity itself is an unstable conceptualisation that varies across situations and social context. Despite San Francisco hosting the world’s first gay-inclusive games in 1989, the US is still considered to be a hostile environment for LGBT sportspeople, with highly visible, overt homophobia. A 2015 international study of homophobia in sport, Out On The Fields, ranked the US as the most homophobic developed nation for competitive sports.