Oberlin Battles Stereotypes of Male Athletes in Sports
BY BLAKE REHBERG

Fact: stereotypes exist even at Oberlin — stereotypes that gay men are effeminate or that football players are the epitome of manliness. The combination of these athletic stereotypes make the world of sports an extremely unfriendly place for gay male athletes.
“Being gay is perceived as a weakness, much more so on the men’s side than the women’s side. A man being gay is seen as feminine,” Athletic Director Michael Muska said. “I think women have more of the opposite approach that sometimes they have to defend their feminine side as opposed to their masculine side.”
Society has begun to be more accepting of images of gays in the media. Shows such as Will & Grace have enjoyed tremendous success, but the world of sports continues to be a predominantly heterosexual one.
Very few professional athletes come out during their careers. There are several out women golfers and tennis players who are still active, but in sports like football or baseball that represent the macho ideal, the numbers remain virtually non-existent. Athletes like Billy Bean, who played baseball, or David Kopay, who played football, didn’t come out until after their professional careers were over.
“I’d like to think you’d see a more significant number of gay athletes come out after their pro career but even in later life a lot of people don’t come out,” Muska said.
Oberlin has worked for a long time to break down such cultural stereotypes of homosexuality but often overlooks stereotypes such as the qualities of a ‘good’ athlete. Yet the two are very connected for athletes who are gay.
“A person’s sexuality doesn’t make him a bad football player, and who says that gays are effeminate?” football Head Coach Jeff Ramsey said. “Yes, that’s the stereotype, but it’s not always true.”
Muska is the first openly gay athletic director in the country. 
“[Athletics] are something that’s been a part of me for a long time. It’s not an issue in terms of discomfort,” Muska said. “If there’s an issue, it’s not my discomfort, it’s other people’s discomfort.” 
Last January the National Collegiate Athletics Association added sexual orientation to the nondiscrimination clause of their charter, but as Muska pointed out in an article in the October issue of the Chronicle for Higher Education, even though the proposed addition was unopposed, the sports world might not be ready to tackle the real-life changes that go along with the idea. Muska’s article is currently nominated for best magazine article of the year by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. 
Incidents continue to occur at Oberlin and on a national level. Last year Oberlin’s baseball team was heckled with calls of “fag” and “homo” at an away game in Pennsylvania. The University of Hawaii at Manoa wanted to change their name from The Rainbows because it was associated with being gay.
“What does that say if I am on the football team at Hawaii and I am gay?” Muska said. “They’re changing their name from The Rainbows because they perceive that as something that’s wrong. I have a real issue with that.” 
Oberlin has made more progress than other schools and this is easy to see with the presence of Muska or out athlete students like senior Evan Cobb.
Cobb came to Oberlin after swimming in high school and came out during fall break of his first year.
“Not only did it not matter both before and after I realized my teammate was gay, but it made no difference when changing in the locker rooms,” an anonymous swimmer said. 
Cobb would sometimes return home to swim with his high school team after he had come out at Oberlin.
“I didn’t want them to know, because I could remember how the locker room was the previous six years I had been on that squad,” Cobb said. “I was terrified.”
Cobb had helped to try to start a subgroup of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Union for gay athletes but the group dissipated because of lack of support. Once Muska arrived, Muska, Cobb, Elizabeth Breakstone, OC ’00, and Sean Davis, OC ’00, presented a panel discussion to the Lambda alumni. Cobb also participated in an interview with ESPN.
“I’m in a sport at a school that is pretty gay-friendly which is probably why I am able to be out and talk to ESPN,” said Cobb.
The nature of Cobb’s sport does play into the equation. During his time at Oberlin, as much as one third of the men’s team has been gay and out.
“Swimming is not an extremely macho sport. There’s no physical contact. That really helps, I think,” Cobb said.
Swimming is for the most part an individual sport, whereas sports such as football rely heavily on team cooperation. In team sports, the idea of a weak link makes gay athletes more open for discrimination.
“I think inevitably it gets down to that question, how do we deal with football and the homosexuality for which Oberlin is so well known? It’s kind of an unfortunate question,” Cobb said.
“I think it’s a whole issue of a culture of athletics particularly in team sports that makes it very uncomfortable of the whole concept of: are we comfortable with a gay athlete in our locker room?” Muska said.
There is an image of a typical football player as chauvinist homophobic macho type that is just as stereotypical as the gay athletes as the weak link.
“It’s an image that’s pervasive throughout every college. It’s not just at Oberlin. As head coach of our football program, it’s something I fight against,” Ramsey said.
Yet this most extreme of the jock stereotypes is beginning to fall. Several television shows like Dawson’s Creek and Boston Public have had episodes where football teams rally around a gay football player. 
These are nowhere near as triumphant as the story of Corey Johnson, the real life Massachusetts high school football player who came out to his team last April and continued to have a successful football season. Muska assured Johnson that if he were to come to Oberlin there would be a football program where he would feel comfortable.
“I would hope [a gay football player] would feel comfortable coming to me,” Ramsey said.
The football team at Oberlin has several advantages that other schools don’t, mainly the support network that has developed at Oberlin. The Sexual Assault Support Team has held dorm raps at Zeke focused on football players. Muska and Ramsey have talked about doing intensive workshops with the team dealing with gay athletes. These, along with the general liberal attitude that permeates Oberlin gives the Yeomen an advantage that a lot of larger schools don’t have.
“People in bigger programs [than Oberlin] probably feel that they have to uphold some strained social moré of conservatism,” Ramsey said.
There has been lots of controversy surrounding the large number of football recruits who came to campus this year.
“[Football players] need to understand just as they hope some gay kid on campus would accept them as a football player that they would accept that gay as a kid on campus too,” Muska said. “I think it’s important that the kinds of kids that we bring to this campus have to understand what this campus is all about.” 
Many of the football recruits this year encountered negative recruiting from other schools that slander Oberlin with homophobic comments about the amount of gays on campus and about Muska himself. 
“There are several football players that encountered this negative recruiting and who still chose to come to Oberlin,” Muska said.
“It’s always been my philosophy not to have the campus fit around the football team, but to have the football fit in with the campus,” Ramsey said.
Despite the fact that football is probably the place with the most stringent stereotypes, they occur in all sports.
“Even in a swimming locker room just hearing the sorts of things that are said can be horrible,” Cobb said. “Being gay is just a good insult to toss around to imply weakness.”

Two years ago there was an incident with the Denison swimming team making homophobic slurs at a meet. There were several out swimmers on the Oberlin team, which made the situation even more intense.
“It is possible to be a gay athlete and for some odd reason both sides seem to have a problem with that idea,” Cobb said. “It’s not a typically gay thing to do. Its not entirely welcome it seems.”

Oberlin may be in the forefront of breaking down stereotypes of gay athletes, but they still have room to improve.
Harvard, Stanford and Duke have all recently held public forums about homosexuality and athletes. Muska is a leading spokesperson for the subject. Two weeks ago he went to St. Joseph College to give a speech.
There have been presentations for Lambda alumni and workshops for athletes but so far, Oberlin, the supposed leader in the acceptance of homosexuality, has not held any kind of public forum on dealing with the stereotypes of gay athletes and sports.
“When people can get over the idea that gay doesn’t equate to weak it’s a very different way of looking at it,” Muska said.