As football players and people go Jason Akermanis is a pretty interesting guy.
The fact that he was motivated to write his Herald Sun column today about gay AFL players, demonstrates a depth of thinking a step above the usual “why the boys will be sticking it to Carlton this week” kind of columns that most players usually muster.
But as far as Aker’s argument goes, that AFL players should stay firmly in the closet, I’m not sure that his logic adds up.
His basic argument seems to be that it would be too confronting for team mates and the player himself to cope with the pressure of being outed as gay, therefore it shouldn’t be done.
The problem with this is argument is that it just walks a well-trodden path that argues against people coming out in any workplace, family or social scene because basically it would freak out too many other people.
Akermanis argues that football teams are different to other types of workplaces, what with the showers and “homoerotic” horseplay, an environment that could make guys feel uncomfortable if they knew a teammate was gay.
“In an athletic environment the rules are different from the cultural rules for men.
Never in a mall will you see two straight men hugging, a—- slapping and jumping around like kids after an important goal.
Locker room nudity and homoerotic activities are normal inside footy clubs.”
But at the same time Akermanis draws on his experience playing with a gay teammate, who he felt was somewhat ostracised by other teammates when they became uncomfortable in the locker room.
“I know he wasn’t about to try and convert me to his way of thinking, but I was uncomfortable all the same.
What I should have done was to sit down and talk with him in an attempt to understand his life.”
Akermanis is admitting here that his fear, like a lot of fear, has its roots in his ignorance of what his teammate actually felt about being the only gay member in the team. But his solution seems to be just to prolong that ignorance because it would be too stressful for both the team and the gay player to address it.
Akermanis seems concerned that the amount of attention that would be heaped on any open player would place them under a degree of pressure that would be unwelcome for them and their club.
When former Manly and Australian rugby league prop forward Ian Roberts came out as gay it was a massive story. For one of the toughest men in the game to admit to being gay was a shock to rugby league supporters and many players.
But Roberts also turned notions of what it is to be gay in Australia on its head, and was able to sit around and chat about it with Fatty on the Footy Show panel.
Roberts had retired by the time he came out and his decision has tended to define him since, but rather than attracting unwelcome pressure he regularly talks about what a relief it was for him to come out.
Former Welsh rugby union captain and the seventh most capped rugby player of all time, Gareth Thomas, has recently admitted to being gay and has also spoken about what a relief it was.
In saying a player coming out “would be international news and could break the fabric of a club” Akermanis is overestimating the extent to which people care about somebody being gay today and whether the world’s media would even care about a gay AFL player.
None of this is to say that a player should be outing themselves if they don’t feel completely comfortable with the decision, but I’m pretty not sure they don’t need the wise counsel of Aker.
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