Ask an Academic: On Football, Cheerleading, and Masculinity
An interview with masculinity studies scholar Eric Anderson
Welcome to My So-Called Feminist Life. This month I’m exploring masculinity as it relates to feminism. I think traditional media doesn’t often find enough opportunities to dig into academic research that scholars are devoting their lives to and can be really illuminating! So I’m introducing this series Ask an Academic to my newsletter, where I’ll introduce someone in the field and have a little chat with them. Speaking with experts in their own field is one of my favorite parts of being a journalist, so I’m excited about this one!
As always: I do encourage you to feel free to share your own thoughts on the texts or topics in the comments. Conversation (that remains respectful) is encouraged. Thanks for joining me on this journey.
Love,
Maggie
My first book will be published this June. When people ask what it’s about, I say, it’s about women and running. What it’s really about is how we define gender through physical capability. But the way it ended up, in this form, as a book about running, was a long process. Someday maybe I will make some kind of beautiful piece of visual art or a brilliant form-breaking essay that tracks how I ended up writing this particular book.
No, to answer your first question. I’m not a running fanatic. Do I run? Yes. Sometimes. Off and on. It’s complicated.
Am I a sports fanatic? No, not really. I love sports, I do. My friends will tell you I love sports. But I also hate them, in a way? I love and hate them?
I’m a gender fanatic? That sounds weird.
The story is, I just kept getting little prickles in my skin, like an acupuncture needle that went too deep, for years and years every time I heard a crack on a sitcom about the WNBA. (That’s the joke, the WNBA!) Or when I got a response from a magazine editor who told me one story about women’s soccer a year was their limit. Or every time I heard some excuse made about professional female athlete salaries being closer to those of Burger King employees than any men who do the same thing simply because of “biology.”
I started digging into this idea, about gender and physical capability, and how to remove these needles from my skin, because I want to know why sports and bodies have been categorized this way and how much harm it has done. That men can and women cannot. That sports are masculine, and so women’s sports will simply never be real. I just felt like there was much more underneath this veneer that needed to be excavated.
One of the breakthrough moments I had, while writing my book proposal (which took a total of four years, btw), happened when I came across a study by Eric Anderson, a sociologist and psychologist who studies masculinity, sport, and sexuality.
The study was about high school football players who hadn’t made their college football teams, and instead joined the cheerleading teams. What Anderson found was that these young men, just after seeing what the women cheerleaders were capable of physically, by engaging in this physical activity together, changed many of their ideas about women — drastically.
“I used to think women were weak, but now I know that’s not true,” one young man said.
“I didn’t appreciate women as athletes before,” another said. “Now I see that women can handle a lot and they aren’t as fragile as I thought they were.”
Further, the study showed, nearly all the men changed their previous desire to socially exclude women from traditionally male spheres of power. Just by seeing their real physical power.
This study blew open for me the connection between how we define gender physically and how we assign power societally. And it confirmed an inkling I had that when we allow sport or physical prowess to cross gender lines — instead of guard those gendered separations like they’re always always necessary, we can start to break down gender stereotypes that really hurt all of us.
I was thinking about this whole idea again while watching the Steph vs Sabrina 3-Point Contest during the NBA All-Star Game weekend (yes, this was the only reason I turned it on). And I actually thought it was a net-positive thing to do — yes, I totally agree the NBA was profiting off the rising star status of the WNBA — and no, women’s sports don’t need the typical male audience base that makes up the big three leagues to be considered “successful,” (read more from
on that here.) BUT at the same time, society is really losing out when we don’t EVER get the opportunity to see men and women compete, or even perform the same physical athletic feats at the same time, like in this 3-point contest, because we just continue this narrative that we’re from two different planets and could never keep up and women would get hurt and etc etc etc. Sabrina putting up enough points to have won the NBA 3-point contest, and shooting from the NBA line, showed that these stark lines we think about as separating men and women athletes all the time are really malleable. Maybe the performance wasn’t enough to change minds wholly, like Anderson’s study showed actually playing on a team with women can, but you never know.Anywho, I spoke to Dr. Anderson last week about this study of his (from 2008, btw) and more about masculinity and sport and homophobia and a bit about transphobia in sport and you can read more on that, below. Our conversation is condensed and edited for clarity.
As always feel free to weigh in in the comments if you have thoughts or questions or feelings. I know I did! How do you feel about hearing things like that men are also being discriminated against? And that no one is standing up for men? Or that there’s truth to some of the stereotypes about lesbian women being more into team sports and gay men being less into team sports?
Maggie Mertens: Could you start by telling me a little bit about your personal story. I know you started as a high school track coach, and I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about how you went from there to studying masculinity.
Eric Anderson: So I was a closeted kid. From the time I was probably eight, I knew I was gay. Growing up as a teenager in the mid 1980s, was the most homophobic period in Western culture history. It was an apex of HIV, fundamentalist Christianity meddling with the far right. So it was Ronald Reagan and in other countries, people like Margaret Thatcher. It was just an incredibly homophobic period of time. And so I stay closeted, because I didn't know anybody who liked gay people. And I didn't know any gay people whatsoever. And of course, there was no internet. So I couldn't make my way. And then in 1993, I was 25 years of age. And I just was sick of hiding and lying. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. So I came out of the closet, unbeknownst to me, as America's first openly gay high school coach. It didn't go so well. Although the athletes on the team accepted me. Two things began to happen. One, new athletes ceased to join the team. And there was a progression of symbolic violence that the school's administration allowed to go unchecked, and it it ended up culminating in one of my heterosexual athletes being absolutely physically brutally beaten. This made the Associated Press, and made international news. And so it thrust me into the limelight as the spokesman for the issues of gays in sport. Of course, the problem was, I didn't really know anything about gays in sport. And so, after serving as an openly gay high school coach for four years, I decided to pursue a PhD, studying the topic itself and studying masculinity as well.
MM: And what were some of your early research findings?
EA: So in 1999-2000, I conducted the first ever research on the experience of openly gay men in sport and I found that they were having conditionally good experiences. And that was not what people thought would happen. They were being accepted onto their teams. But one of the caveats was the sample I could find, they were all very good. So they were mitigating the stigma by being outstanding athletes. So it was quite obvious that only good athletes were coming out the closet because sport above all wants to win, right. So they were conditionally accepted, and that highlighted to me that the matrix of what masculinity was, was changing. All of the previous research said that masculinity was a combination of variables but homophobia was paramount to masculinity. And if homophobia wasn't part of that masculine matrix anymore, it meant that young, straight men's masculinities must be changing.
And so I started to examine both the experience gay men in sport but also the experience of straight men in sport. And I really charted over a decade, a dramatic shift in young men's masculinity, going from a disposition of stoicism and, you know, hyper masculinity (today, what people would call toxic masculinity) to a loving, more caring form of masculinity in which violence and homophobia wasn't accepted anymore. So I engaged in all of these projects to show young men kissing, cuddling and loving other straight young men, which completely and totally flew into the face of what people thought masculinity was now. In study after study, country after country, I documented a shift. And then, I also documented how gay men were, throughout this time, increasingly accepted.
And I did a seven year long longitudinal study on incoming athletes to a university and their perceptions of homosexuality. And things weren't changing. They were just gay-friendly.
“And I really charted over a decade, a dramatic shift in young men's masculinity, going from a disposition of stoicism and, you know, hyper masculinity (today, what people would call toxic masculinity) to a loving, more caring form of masculinity in which violence and homophobia wasn't accepted anymore.” — Eric Anderson
MM: And what are you working on now?
My latest derivation of what I do, over here in England, (Anderson is now a professor at the University of Winchester) 75% of boys in this country exist within the secondary school system that compels them to play tackle rugby against their will in PE. So boys are forced to bash brains into each other, with no accounting for how big they are. And, you know, my argument is that this is a war against boys' brains. If we were compelling girls to play tackle rugby and not boys, there would be absolute outrage. So my argument today is, you know, we need to look for the ways that men and women are discriminated against, and not discount either and address both. And so that's led me to be this sort of advocate for men, because not many people stick up for them.
MM: Can we talk a little about this about the cheerleading study? And could you give a quick overview of how you did it, and what you found?
EA: This was part of my PhD research was to explore straight men in feminized terrain, and to see how they navigate that. The old research on cheerleading said that they were hyper-macho in those terrains. And so I examined male cheerleaders and male nurses. And what I found was that they weren't acting like their predecessors in those fields. It used to be that male nurses, they were all "I was in Vietnam in the military, and I needed a job when I came out." And they would talk about how men were needed as nurses to do all these sort of heroic, masculine things, like lifting patients. And I found with these younger nurses, they were just like, "Oh, I care about people, and it's a good job." And they didn't make these gestures of like, "Oh, I'm saving patients." So they had completely totally different attitudes.
And [in cheerleading] I found, these men just really enjoying competing with women, that they said that it prorated their view on women's athleticism. They learned to see women as competent leaders. These were all men who were ex-football players, and then these guys ended up making genuine friendships with women in ways they've never done before. And it was truly marvelous. Then, of course, the kind of men who were in cheerleading in high school were gay men. So they end up having gay men on their teams, and making gay friends, and so forth. And it was quite a nice, inclusive environment that respected the abilities of different sexes. It really was like this breath of fresh air.
The other argument that I have is, as a sports scholar, we say that we play sports because it teaches kids teammwork. Why do you need to learn teamwork? People say, well, because you have to go to the workplace someday. Well, how many workplaces are gender segregated? My argument is that we truly believe that sports are good for children because they teach teamwork and yet your early learning is boys only learn to work with boys and girls only ever play with girls? They need that interplay. And the research explicitly showed that it did improve gender relationships. For me, that's a model of the way sports should be.
And people say to me, but if you combine men and women, well, then women are going to be more likely to be hurt. I argue that you're playing the wrong fucking sports. Nobody should be hurt! We don't need men to bash their heads into each other in American football. And we don't need women to bash their heads into each other in American football. Like, if a man is gonna hurt a woman on the field, I mean, you're playing the wrong sport, stop that change the sport. And so I'm a huge advocate of gender-integrating PE. Of creating new sports, you know, why do we have to stick to these sports that have been around for 150 years? And getting rid of the old, which is what I'm trying to do with rugby in this country and football in America. Do things that combine gender so that people can have the experience of learning teamwork across the full breadth of humanity and not just the lads or the girls.
“And people say to me, but if you combine men and women, well, then women are going to be more likely to be hurt. I argue that you're playing the wrong fucking sports. Nobody should be hurt!” — Eric Anderson
MM: I wonder why in the men's professional sports world, there are very, very few out gay players still. And at the same time, women's sports has become this very accepting, and very out place for lesbian athletes and even in some cases, trans and non-binary athletes, and I'm wondering if that openness on the women's side is in your mind potentially impactful toward shifting men's professional sports to be a more accepting place in terms of homosexuality?
EA: So my argument on this is that people are prejudiced against professional male team sport athletes. We are literally prejudiced -- we prejudge them. We think that because there's no out gay men in the NFL, that must mean that the NFL is highly homophobic, and the teammates are highly homophobic. My recent research shows that of the 1,000-plus athletes I surveyed, they argue that their team sports even the gay men, argue that the team sports are more hospitable than their school culture or their university culture more fully. So, for me, there is no evidence that professional team sport athletes display higher homophobia than just men of their own age cohort. And because all professional athletes in America have gone to the university systems, the likelihood of them maintaining highly homophobic attitudes is highly, highly unlikely because homophobia is no longer a socially acceptable attitude.
There is a reason that gay men don't play in the NFL. Because we fucking hate it. It's just not us. Gay men are over-represented in sports. Just in certain sports. We’re highly over-represented in cheerleading, we’re highly over-represented in all forms of dance, highly over-represented in diving, figure-skating, anything that has to do with artistic expression. I'm not saying that no gay men like to watch American football. But I am saying that I only know one.
Now, I’ve studied lesbian team sport culture, and it's fantastic. So inclusive, straight women and gay women getting on. I mean, it's amazing. It’s really really really good. But the stereotype that more lesbians like competitive, aggressive or invasion team sports. That’s not just a stereotype, that's true. And every gay man I know loves RuPaul, and if we’re watching the Superbowl, it’s for the half-time show. So I think this is very much so a biological reality of what we're attracted to, and I think that's great. Why the hell should gay men be attracted to the same sports as straight men?
There are about half a million retired professional football players in the world. There's only been like 10 that have come out of the closet even after playing, even 20 years after playing, even 30 years after playing. And my argument is that gay boys might join the sport when they're young because that's what everybody does, but they drop out way before they make it to the elite levels.
MM: That’s really surprising to me. Have you seen any changes in that as you've looked through like the college population? Like the college population or the high school sport population of gay boys and young men who are participating in team sports? Has it become more common?
EA: The answer is no. I've not looked at it. But if you look at the number of kids coming out in high school and college, there are more than they used to be. But if you look at the professional level. Like in 2014, they called it the year of the gay athlete because a guy named [Michael] Sam, came out in football and, and Jason Collins came out in basketball. And, well, we haven't had anything since. So my argument is we need to stop asking the question, where are all the gay men in football? And start celebrating the fact that gay men are dominating other areas.
MM: That goes back to this idea that these most stereotypically “masculine” sports are the ones we celebrate the most, culturally.
EA: Yeah, and I have no desire to celebrate American football. I mean we need to reverse how we think about that sport. And see it as men's and boy’s brains being used as cannon fodder for the multibillion dollar corporation called the NFL, that is consuming these boys destroying their brains and spitting them out the other end. And when we start to see it as literally a war on boys, hopefully we'll start to lose some of this fandom for it because you know, those gladiators on the field at the Superbowl? They're going to pay. And their families are going to pay. That price is huge. Estimates suggest that at the conservative end 60% of NFL players will get chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). I mean, that's the conservative end. They're literally paying for the glory days with their lives. And it's horrific. So we all need to stop patronizing the NFL and we all need to start vilifying the horrific practice that we would never accept if it was women.
“And when we start to see it as literally a war on boys, hopefully we'll start to lose some of this fandom for it because you know, those gladiators on the field at the Superbowl? They're going to pay. And their families are going to pay. That price is huge.” — Eric Anderson
MM: You have charted so much of this kind of like positive sociological movement toward acceptance of homosexuality and shifting in the way we define masculinity and I'm wondering how you do put the sort of transgender hysteria we're seeing, especially in the US, but elsewhere too, how do you see that as part of this whole conversation? Is it a backlash to the movement that you’ve charted? Or a re-entrenchment of these very essentialist gender ideals?
EA: I see this is very much so much of a throwback to the 1980s in which we were throwing gay men under the bus as being a threat to the American family, threat to society, a threat of communism! I mean, they came up with every possible threat that we could be. It started with McCarthy really. I mean George Bush in his first round of elections wasn't against gay marriage. And then second round it was: they're tearing up the fabric of America. So we became the whipping boy. And that's exactly what transgender folks have become in the political spectrum today. And my personal big fear here is it’s going to get Donald Trump a lot of votes.
I teach classes full of athletes. And I ask every year how many of you have ever in your life played with a transgender athlete? So far, none ever have. But, you know, my students (in the UK) have heard of Lia Thomas, and yet they have no idea what the NCAA is. These few sensationalist cases make absolute fireworks for issues that are really, really, really small.
I find it funny that all of a sudden men who parody women's sports and have no desire to watch them, never pay for it, all of a sudden, they're very concerned about women's sports. Really! I ask my students about transgender women in sport and they’re like, “Oh, it's wrong.” And I’m like, “Have you ever in your life turned on women's swimming?” So my argument is that it's not about sport, it's about something else. It's becoming this type of hysteria that we had with gay men in the 80s and 90s.
We just had a big issue over here with Parkrun. There were three Parkruns that were won by transgender women, and some people were pissed off about it and others were supportive. And so they just decided to kill all of the results. And my argument is, it's sport, who gives a fuck? Seriously, is it really that important? But it's the political aim of it. That's what worries me.
MM: Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up or any research that you were excited to talk about?
EA: My recent research on the LGBT athletes, I did show a bit more discrimination towards the transgender athletes. Not statistically much, but I could only find I think it was 13 [transgender] athletes out of 1,000. So, again, kind of a storm in a teacup. I do think most youth today are pretty much just like “Dude, you do you and we’re all good.” I really think it's the politicians, and particularly the right wing politicians who are creating the trouble here.
Thanks for reading! My So-Called Feminist Life is a weekly newsletter wrestling with feminism in today’s world. I encourage conversation in the comments if you wish to share your own thoughts, feelings, memories, opinions. If you’d like to support this project financially, you can become a paid subscriber.
You can find me on Instagram: @maggiejmertens
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When I was growing up I was a competitive cheerleader, both on elite all-star teams and for my high school. My junior year, three football players lost a bet and had to join the competition cheerleading team as a result. Not only did they all say it was harder than football, all three enjoyed in so much that they cheered again the next year.
Thanks for this language around American football! In the high school where I teach, Black boys are significantly overrepresented on the football team. I think about the calculations they and their families make as they decide whether to carry on traditions (set by family, etc) or pursue a different (possibly safer) sport.