Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Sheryl Swoopes' coming out was no big deal. That's a big deal. Plus: Barkley's first dunk.
Nov 2, 2005 | The unfortunate thing about WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes' coming out last week was also the best thing: It wasn't a very big story.
Most of the coverage focused on whether Swoopes' announcement would encourage or discourage gay male athletes in American team sports who may be contemplating going public. The consensus, in case you're keeping score, was that it would have little or no effect. Very different things, male and female sports, lesbians and gay men. Next subject, please. Thank you.
Part of that lack of big-headline coverage was good old-fashioned sexism: What happens among women is only important to the extent it affects men. I confess my first thought was to address that angle, since we've talked before around here about gay male athletes in the team sports coming out.
Another part, a bigger part, was that the WNBA is a minor sport, a niche enterprise, and Swoopes, for all her MVP awards, college and pro titles and Olympic gold medals, was not a particularly famous person beyond that niche.
Most casual sports fans had probably heard her name before last week, but wouldn't have been able to tell you what team she played for or what she looked like.
Part of that is sexism too, but not as much of it as die-hard fans would like to believe. The WNBA is an uncompelling product that's been marketed poorly. That's not to say women's basketball is necessarily uncompelling. The pro league, a subsidiary of the NBA, has failed to capitalize and expand on the excitement and growing popularity of college hoops.
But the WNBA is big enough, and Swoopes was well-enough known, that the reaction to her as-told-to story in ESPN the Magazine could have been a lot stronger, and a lot more negative. That's the best thing. This wasn't a big deal partly because the WNBA isn't a big deal, but partly because a star female athlete coming out really isn't that big a deal.
Why not? Well, because most of the people who would squawk the loudest at an NBA or NFL star coming out probably figure all female athletes are lesbians anyway and to hell with the whole butch bunch of 'em.
And also because the culture of female sports has always been more accepting of homosexuality than the culture of male sports, though that can be overstated. It took eight years for Swoopes to come out, there have only been two other publicly lesbian players in the league, neither of whom have talked much about it, and there's still thinly veiled hostility toward gay athletes in many college programs, veiled at all only because of anti-discrimination rules.
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