Why it matters if a curler is LGBT
An open letter to all the straight white men with car selfie avatars
Needless to say, Ratio Man had to enter the chat:
I’ll start with the man himself:
And from John Epping’s vice:
(4/4, on both replies.)
So why does it matter?
Openly gay men are rare in active sports; rarer in team sports, and virtually nonexistent in major team sports. Billy Bean and John Amaechi and Jason Collins and Esera Tuaolo countless others came out after they were done playing. Epping is certainly one who is currently dominating his sport right now. And Smith’s team went 2-6 but he had the shot of the week on TSN’s SportsCentre, and it beat out several hockey plays in fan voting as well as a Lionel Messi goal. So you could say Greg Smith is a more popular athlete than Lionel Messi.
But more importantly, Epping and Smith are universally accepted by his peers, and were so even before they knew this piece of information about themselves.
Again, why does it matter?
Because for several years, masculinity in sports had a strict definition. You had to act and behave one way. It was bedding actresses and supermodels. It was playing hard, and playing classy, then after the game have a smoke and a drink, say some pleasantries for the sportswriters, then going home to your beautiful wife or mistress. Indiscretions? Well, that’s just how boys are, and they win games.
So imagine a homosexual athlete growing up and seeing nothing but stars like Derek Jeter, Tom Brady, and Tony Parker and realizing that is how you have to act if you want to be a professional athlete. It’s part of their personal background, and perhaps not part of the on-the-field action, but it’s a detail that’s unmistakably tethered to their identity. If you can’t get past that, then you’re likely to fall out of love with the sport and turn to a different hobby.
Hell, I’m a straight white male and I don’t fit into the jock archetype. And it’s not just because I was big and slow and couldn’t jump high or throw hard or catch well. (I was, and I couldn’t.) But I sure as heck didn’t enjoy the machismo to play hard, drink hard, and be rude to women. However, I found a place of comfort and inclusion in a curling club, of all places, even as the son of an alcoholic, and pay that inclusion forward as new feet entered my club and fell in love with the same sport as I did.
But honestly, why does it matter?
Because curling — even at the Brier — isn’t all about wins and losses. The best stories at the Canadian national bonspiel are irrespective of their win-loss record. Wayne Middaugh has stolen the show, yes, similar to how Laurie St-Georges did in the Scotties, due to their performances. But so were Rachel Homan and Beth Peterson, two skips who played while pregnant. Or Emma Logan of Nova Scotia, who is hearing impaired, showing little girls and boys you can play a sport at a high level no matter what. Or when Kerri Einarson talked about video chatting with her kids right after her games, because they didn’t enter the bubble with her. Or for Laura Walker, holding her infant son after her games, because he did.
All that stuff matters and it’s part of the game.
Athletes are not simply automatons of performance that spit out wins, losses and statistics. They are human beings with stories. Their stories may be different from ours, and if we’re doing anything right in this sport they will be different. We’ll get stories like Kevin Koe, who is part of the Indigenous community of the Northwest Territories and whose father Fred was actually sent to one of the residential schools for a year. I don’t remember anybody being salty about learning about this fact during the Olympics and asking why it mattered.
So what does any of that have to do with being gay?
Women’s sports has plenty of LGBT star athletes such as Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird, to name one power couple. It’s more accepted in women’s sports because for whatever reason they are generally more accepted. But being gay in a men’s sport is perceived to be a less masculine trait. It isn’t. And it shouldn’t be perceived as such. Which is why when two LGBT male skips play each other in Canada’s highest profile men’s bonspiel, it matters for the next generation, or even for LGBT adult men who want to be part of something.
Because in the end, that’s what curling is about. It’s not just rocks and brooms. It’s about people. It’s about individuals. The rocks and brooms tie us all together, along with our humanity. The sport cannot be separated from the athletes who play it, otherwise all you really have are rocks and brooms and not enough people to move them, and talk about them afterward.
Curling will always unequivocally be an inclusive sport. That’s your answer. To all who are asking why it matters: understand that everyone’s story is part of the woven fabric of the sport, and this just happens to be their story, which is different from yours, but they can all be lovely stories.
And it’s slightly unrelated, and yet at the same time extremely related, but here’s the venerable Colin Hodgson with a similar thought:
