Doug PollardSex & Footy Conference, All Codes
Transcript - Dr Brent McDonald, Freshly Doug 23/9/2010
DOUG: The Grand Final is almost upon us so it’s kind of appropriate that Melbourne is about to host a conference on footy which will include talking about sexuality and football – and not just AFL but all kinds of codes, one of the organisers Dr. Brent McDonald is on the line with us, now. Good morning, Brent.
BRENT: Good morning, Doug. How you going?
DOUG: I’m going fine. You must be flat out getting this up to scratch because it’s not very long away now, is it?
BRENT: No. It’s certainly not and we’ve got some really interesting people coming from all around the world to talk about football – as you mentioned, all codes of football. So - - -
DOUG: But academically talk about football. That amuses me a little bit [laughs]
BRENT: Yeah – sometimes it struggles for credibility with the general public but actually, football just as any part of culture it is something that has a rich history. That deals with current issues, that is a reflection and a reproduction of and a challenge of the status quo so it’s just a valid a place to understand our society as anywhere else, I guess.
DOUG: Who have you coming for this conference?
BRENT: We’ve got a lot of scholars from within Australia but in particular, we’ve three keynotes and the first is Rob Hess who’s from Victoria University, who’ll be talking about the history of women’s football. We’ve also got Jayne Caudwell, coming from the University of Brighton and she’s doing a keynote on the Justin Campaign which is based on the Justin Fashanu Campaign – I won’t talk about Justin Fashanu too much but he was a professional soccer player in the UK in 1998, who came out. It’s a tragic story, Justin’s personal story - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
BRENT: - - - and she analyses the Justin Campaign which is serving to move the issues of homophobia into the limelight in the Football Federation – or the Football Association, in England. Then we’ve Eric Anderson from the University of Bath, who’s also giving a paper on – his title is: “The Declining Significance of Homophobia” and he’s using some qualitative and quantitative research that’s been done in the UK and also from around the – in terms of the Western world, not so much in Australia. But certainly, other parts of the States and Canada. Which suggests there are some very big changes happening within the general sporting population in terms of spectators and in terms of players in regard to their feelings toward sexuality, to identity and he sees an opening of space I think, potentially, coming up.
DOUG: I was reading an interesting article in the paper the other day about some of this and apparently, some football supporters in the UK were interviewed. They were very fond of doing all the homophobic chants – you know, ‘so-and-so takes it up the arse’ and ‘so-and-so’s a poofter’ and - - -
BRENT: Yes.
DOUG: - - - all that. But when they were challenged on that they said ‘no, that’s not homophobic that’s just giving the players stick’ – you know, we don’t mind gays and all that.
BRENT: Yeah. This seems to be one of the conflicting areas – I mean, I think this is probably a really important point that the conference will hopefully deal with; we’ve the panel session, also. Led by Caroline Symons from Victoria University, as well – who - - -
DOUG: We know Caroline well on this programme.
BRENT: She is the leader in terms of sport, homophobia and sexuality in Australia as far as I can see. In terms of the research she’s done – m’mm, I think this is the thing I find with my students who I teach here is that individually, people are probably a lot less homophobic than in the past. They’re more open to ideas and they really don’t care that much but the problem is I think a lot of people – younger people in sport – have difficulty identifying certain behaviours. So, there might be this notion of: I don’t care, be whatever you want to be - - -
DOUG: M’mm?
BRENT: - - - but then in practise we still see I suppose, behaviour that creates a culture of fear. That creates cultures of – you know - - -
DOUG: We saw exactly this thing with the Stephanie Rice thing, didn’t we?
BRENT: - - - absolutely.
DOUG: She popped up and said: suck on that faggots – and then came back and said ‘I didn’t mean anything antigay by it - - -’
BRENT: Yes.
DOUG: - - - exactly the same reasoning, isn’t it?
BRENT: Well, it is and if you changed “faggot” to say “nigger” or “Jew” or something like that it’d be quite clear what the issue was - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
BRENT: But for some reason, the notion of sexuality is much harder for people to get their head around, to actually understand their (own) behaviour. Most of my students for example, who go on to become PE teachers, who go on to become exercise scientists and experts in the field of anything to do with sport and the body would I think, be really keen to be better practitioners. But they just haven’t the skills because there’s been nothing in the system – embedded in the system – to allow for this understanding of issues of identity, in particular. To really be developed. So hopefully, we see change.
DOUG: Yeah - - -
BRENT: M’mm.
DOUG: - - - and I noticed, also – reading through some of the conference materials – that there’s this issue around masculinity and sport - - -
BRENT: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - that’s obviously a big one?
BRENT: Well, it looks like the football codes around the world become the exemplar sport for the reproduction of a particular form of masculinity; we might call it hegemonic masculinity. Or I think, in certain senses the hegemonic masculinity’s the dominant masculinity that’s celebrated in – say, football in Australia. Whether it be rugby league or AFL similarly has a tendency to produce a kind of hyper-masculinity that values violence, values extreme competition and power – domination – and with that, comes a whole raft of other behaviours and one of those is obviously, heterosexuality and heteronormativity – and in some regards, some form of aggressive heterosexuality. It’s not necessarily what players are but it’s the model that reproduces; I think, you’ve watched the Blue Carpet at the Brownlow - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
BRENT: - - - and you understand exactly the balance of power in the - - -
DOUG: Yes, exactly.
BRENT: In male sport – or in football codes.
DOUG: Yes and then you get the interesting phenomenon of people like Ian Roberts, who come out as gay but also portray this whole, hyper-masculine hyper-aggressive thing on the field.
BRENT: Yes.
DOUG: They seem to feel the need to be even more butch. Because they’re gay.
BRENT: Yeah – it’s really, I mean – I think Ian Roberts is a fascinating and an amazing man. To come out like he did in Rugby League must have been incredible and certainly, there is an over-compensation. I think the research would suggest that sometimes the people who are in the closet can behave in homophobic ways – or in hyper-masculine ways, in order to compensate for this feeling of – compensating; we see this gender problem with women in sport, in a lot of professional women’s sport where - - -
DOUG: Yeah?
BRENT: - - - they try to emphasis femininity where they’re concerned about the labels they might attain. In terms of ‘butch’ or something like that, in elite sport. So, the ponytail appears on every woman playing basketball - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
BRENT: - - - in the WNBA. The Florence Griffith-Joyner fingernails. The talking about ‘family’ and maternal concepts - - -
DOUG: I’m not sure how someone like Venus Williams fits into that [laughs]
BRENT: Exactly.
[laughs]
DOUG: I don’t think she cares.
BRENT: No, I don’t think she cares at all [laughs] no – true.
DOUG: Anyway, what do you hope to achieve by this conference?
BRENT: I suppose it’s threefold. The first thing is for people who do research football, to be able to come together in a forum where they can express and discuss their research. There’s that goal – m’mm, certainly the second goal would be and look, our organiser of the conference Matthew Klugman was quite strategic in placing it just after the Grand Final – I think he really wanted to get it in the right milieu of football – m’mm, but certainly – to expose some of that research, hopefully to the broader community as well. In particular, there is a focus of this community on sexuality – you know, two of the three keynotes are looking at homophobia. The other keynote is looking at women’s football so there’s a real focus on that. We have the panel session on the Tuesday afternoon also looking at sexuality in sport and Caroline’s even launching a book at the end of the conference on the Tuesday - - -
DOUG: Yeah?
BRENT: - - - launching her history of the Gay Games which is out through Routledge which is a really good read so that’s really what we’re trying to do.
DOUG: Let’s hope it all goes very well for you Brent and thank you very much for joining us this morning.
BRENT: Thanks, Doug. Have a good day.
DOUG: You too - - -
BRENT: Okay.
DOUG: - - - that was Dr. Brent McDonald there, from Victoria University’s Football Studies Unit – amongst other things, as I say – it surprised me slightly, that there is such a thing as a football studies unit. But I guess, everything is study-able(sic) if you want to.
