Are women reluctant to play sport for fear of being branded as gay?
The question is being posed after a 13-year-old girl was called a lesbian for playing football. She has been criticised recently for playing a “boy’s sport” and was even called a man.
Hannan Kirkwood, football player for the University of Portsmouth Women’s football, said: “I think football is perceived to be masculine because it’s a contact sport and there’s a high risk of being injured. It’s expected that girls can’t take that. There is a stigma. People assume because it is a masculine sport that you must be gay.”
The stigma around sexuality isn’t exclusive to just the players, either. A survey by Sports Media LGBT+ has revealed that almost 50% of people working in the sports media industry who consider themselves to be part of the LGBT+ community are not ‘out’ to their colleagues, or are only out to close friends.
Shockingly, on top of this, almost half of the people who took the survey also said they were witness or subjected to anti-LGBT language or behaviour in the past two years.
Find out what else the survey revealed here.
