Three waves of gay male athlete coming out narratives

ABSTRACT

Recent announcements by Michael Sam, Jason Collins, Robbie Rogers, and others belong to a longer tradition that I label the gay male athlete coming out narrative. I chart this rhetorical genre in three waves, corresponding to the historical moment in which each narrative was published and the rhetorical tactics that each set of authors use to reconcile their identities as gay athletes and argue for the existence and suitability of gay men in professional sports. Of particular note are contemporary third-wave narratives which introduce the actively out, visible, gay male body becoming aware of his place in history as a rhetorical opportunity for social intervention. Even as I recognize the limits of athletes’ ability to represent the diversity of interests, values, and politics of the broader LGBTQ movement, I argue that these narratives should become part of what Charles E. Morris III calls “the diverse domain of the usable past.” These narratives indicate the importance of understanding genre evolution alongside individual biography, historical context, and shifting values within broader attempts at social transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication and sport
• rhetorical genre
• social movement
• Michael Sam

Acknowledgements

Early versions of this article were presented at Penn State’s Camp Rhetoric and the 100th National Communication Association Conference, both in 2014. Thanks to Kendall Phillips and Lester C. Olson for feedback on the former occasion, and Amber Johnson on the latter. Recent versions of this article have benefitted from the feedback of Debra Hawhee, Cheryl Glenn, members of the Center for Democratic Deliberation and Hawhee advisees writing groups, and the two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. Robbie Rogers with Eric Marcus, Coming Out to Play (New York: Penguin, 2014), xii.

2. L. Jon Wertheim, 2013, “The Story Behind Jason Collins’ Story: The Interview,” Sports Illustrated, April 29, www.si.com/nba/2013/04/29/jason-collins-reveals-gay-nba-interview.

3. Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 6.

4. James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), xi.

5. This point is inspired by Erin J. Rand, Reclaiming Queer (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014).

6. Bonnie J. Dow, “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18, no. 2 (2001): 137.

7. Charles E. Morris III, “Archival Queer,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9, no. 1 (2006): 146.

8. See Heather Love, Feeling Backward (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

9. See Charles E. Morris III and K. J. Rawson, “Queer Archives/Archival Queers,” in Theorizing Histories of Rhetoric, ed. Michelle Ballif (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), 74–89. Morris and K. J. Rawson have written of the need to contest what Morris elsewhere calls “mnemonicide,” writing that “archival queers must be relentless not only in the operation but also the discourse of preservation and proliferation, a mobilizing discourse that inculcates a functional and committed relationship to the past.” “Queer Archives,” 84.

10. Kathleen M. Hall Jamieson, “Generic Constraints and the Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 6, no. 3 (Summer 1973): 168–9.

11. Carolyn R. Miller, “Genre as Social Action,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70, no. 2 (1984): 159.

12. Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 47.

13. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Rhetorical Hybrids: Fusions of Generic Elements,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 68, no. 2 (1982): 146.

14. Laurie Gries, Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetoric (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2015), 228.

15. Miller, “Genre as Social Action,” 155 and 165.

16. For the inauguration of this tradition, see Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism: An Introduction,” in Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action, ed. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Falls Church, VA: Speech Communication Association, 1978), 9–32; and Bruce Gronbeck, “Celluloid Rhetoric: On Genres of Documentary,” in Form and Genre, ed. Campbell and Jamieson, 140.

17. Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (1931; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 31.

18. Joshua Gunn, “Maranatha,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 4 (Nov. 2012): 378.

19. Erin J. Rand, “An Inflammatory Fag and a Queer Form: Larry Kramer, Polemics, and Rhetorical Agency,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 3 (2008): 297–319.

20. Amy J. Devitt, “Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept,” College Composition and Communication 44, no. 4 (Dec. 1993): 580.

21. Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), vii. Also quoted in Heather Love, “What Does Lauren Berlant Teach Us About X?,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 9, no. 4 (2012): 321.

22. Nancy A. Hewitt, “Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor,” Feminist Studies 38, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 658–80.

23. For instance, the “waves” metaphor can reduce 80 years of first-wave feminist activism to the single issue of white women’s suffrage, ignore transnational activism that falls outside of its nation-oriented schema, and imply that a non-human force dictates upsurges of intensified political activity. See Kathleen A. Laughlin, Julie Gallagher, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Eileen Boris, Premilla Nadasen, Stephanie Gilmore, and Leandra Zarnow, “Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor,” Feminist Formations 22, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 76–135.

24. Hewitt also mobilizes both the oceanic wave and radio wave implications of the metaphor, depending on need.

25. I use the team name here reluctantly and strictly for identification purposes. For more on the issue of American Indian team names in sport and how teams draw on American Indian “permission” to justify such naming practices, see Danielle Endres, “American Indian Permission for Mascots: Resistance or Complicity within Rhetorical Colonialism?,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 18, no. 4 (2015): 649–90.

26. “Jerry Smith,” A Football Life, NFL Network (January 21, 2014). http://www.nfl.com/videos/a-football-life/0ap2000000316200/A-Football-Life-Jerry-Smith-Living-a-double-life.

27. Frank Deford, Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy (1975; Toronto: Sport Classic Books, 2004).

28. David Kopay and Perry Deane Young, The David Kopay Story: An Extraordinary Self-Revelation (1977; New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988), 23 and 150–2.

29. James Darsey, “From ‘Gay is Good’ to the Scourge of AIDS: The Evolution of Gay Liberation Rhetoric, 1977–1990,” Communication Studies 42, no. 1 (1991): 43–66. Reprinted in Charles E. Morris III and Stephen Howard Browne, eds, Readings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest, 2nd ed. (State College, PA: Strata, 2006), 486–508.

30. Patricia Nell Warren, The Front Runner, 20th anniversary ed. (1974; Beverly Hills, CA: Wildcat Press, 1996), 33–5.

31. Warren, The Front Runner, 130.

32. Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, 4.

33. Lawrence Linderman, 2013, “Playboy’s Candid Conversation with the Superswinger QB, Joe Namath,” republished on Deadspin, Sept. 5, http://thestacks.deadspin.com/playboys-candid-conversation-with-the-superswinger-qb-1229873187.

34. Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, n.p.

35. Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, 191–9.

36. Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, 266.

37. Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, 228.

38. Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, n.p.

39. Eric Anderson, “Updating the Outcome: Gay Athletes, Straight Teams, and Coming Out in Educationally Based Sport Teams,” Gender and Society 25, no. 2 (April 2011): 253.

40. In Kopay and Young, David Kopay Story, 8.

41. The Announcement, directed by Nelson George (ESPN Films, 2012).

42. Darsey, “From ‘Gay is Good’,” 495–6.

43. Dave Pallone with Alan Steinberg, Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball (New York: Signet, 1990); Greg Louganis with Eric Marcus, Breaking the Surface (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2005); Esera Tuaolo with John Rosengren, Alone in the Trenches: My Life as a Gay Man in the NFL (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2006); Roy Simmons with Damon DiMarco, Out of Bounds: Coming Out of Sexual Abuse, Addiction, and My Life of Lies in the NFL Closet (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004); Glenn Burke with Erik Sherman, Out at Home: The Glenn Burke Story (New York: Excel Publishing, 1995); Billy Bean with Chris Bull, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life In and Out of Major League Baseball (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2003); and John Amaechi with Chris Bull, Man in the Middle (New York: ESPN Books, 2007).

44. Bean with Bull, Going the Other Way, 167–73.

45. Bean with Bull, Going the Other Way, 97 and 43.

46. Bean with Bull, Going the Other Way, 230–41 and 251–3.

47. For more on the invocation of Jackie Robinson and the rhetoric of respectability as “queer sexuality’s map through politics,” at least in the world of sports, see Abraham Iqbal Khan, “Michael Sam, Jackie Robinson, and the Politics of Respectability,” Communication and Sport 5, no. 3 (2017): 331–51.

48. Bean with Bull, Going the Other Way, 233–5.

49. Amaechi with Bull, Man in the Middle, 267.

50. Amaechi with Bull, Man in the Middle, 282.

51. Amaechi with Bull, Man in the Middle, 286.

52. Amaechi with Bull, Man in the Middle, 53 (original emphasis).

53. Amaechi with Bull, Man in the Middle, 268.

54. Michael Jacobs, “The High Five,” ESPN 30 for 30 Shorts (July 23, 2014). http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=11253247.

55. Burke with Sherman, Out at Home, 88–9.

56. See Nick Trujillo, “Hegemonic Masculinity on the Mound: Media Representations of Nolan Ryan and American Sports Culture,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8, no. 3 (1991): 290–308.

57. See Michael L. Butterworth, “Pitchers and Catchers: Mike Piazza and the Discourse of Gay Identity in the National Pastime,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 30, no. 2 (May 2006): 143–4.

58. Tuaolo with Rosengren, Alone in the Trenches, 1–4 and 113.

59. John Amaechi, “More Chance of Being Hit by a Meteor: What to Do When Your Dreams Defy Probability and Exceed Other People’s Imagination,” Lecture, April 24, 2015, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, State College, PA.

60. Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 5–7.

61. Jason Collins with Franz Lidz, 2013, “Why NBA Center Jason Collins Is Coming Out Now,” Sports Illustrated, April 29, http://www.si.com/more-sports/2013/04/29/jason-collins-gay-nba-player.

62. Collins with Lidz, “Why NBA Center.”

63. Khan, “Michael Sam,” 340.

64. See David Coad, The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014).

65. Amaechi with Bull, Man in the Middle, 113.

66. Rogers with Marcus, Coming Out to Play, 137.

67. Rogers with Marcus, Coming Out to Play, 57.

68. Collins with Lidz, “Why NBA Center.”

69. Rogers with Marcus, Coming Out to Play, 220.

70. See Barry Petchesky, 2014, “How One Gay Athlete’s Coming Out Led to an Activists’ War,” Deadspin, May 20, http://deadspin.com/how-one-gay-athletes-coming-out-led-to-an-activists-war-1579093298.

71. As Sam said in an initial interview, “I’m coming out because I want to own my own truth. I’m comfortable with who I am, and I didn’t want anyone to break a story without me telling it the way I want to tell it.” See Michael Branch, 2014, “N.F.L. Prospect Michael Sam Proudly Says What Teammates Knew: He’s Gay,” New York Times, Feb. 9, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/sports/michael-sam-college-football-star-says-he-isgay-ahead-of-nfl-draft.html.

72. Branch, “N.F.L. Prospect Michael Sam”; Chris Connelly, 2014, “Mizzou’s Michael Sam Says He’s Gay,” ESPN.com, Feb. 10, http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10429030/michael-sam-missouri-tigers-says-gay; and Cyd Zygler, 2014, “The Eagle Has Landed,” Outsports, Feb. 9, http://www.outsports.com/2014/2/9/5396036/michael-sam-gay-football-player-missouri-nfl-draft.

73. ESPN writer Jason Whitlock distinguished between “Sam” the football player, whose professional success Whitlock claimed to advocate, and “$am” the brand, whom Whitlock believed used football only to become a celebrity. See Jason Whitlock, 2014, “The Right Message,” ESPN, May 15, http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/10937109/michael-sam-needs-send-message-making-roster-nfl/. For more on neoliberal discourses about the economic value of gay male athletes, see Khan, “Michael Sam.”

74. Tom Pelissero, 2015, “Michael Sam Leaves Alouettes Training Camp for Personal Reasons,” USA Today, June 15, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2015/06/12/michael-sam-montreal-alouettes-cfl-leaves/71145724/.

75. Charles E. Morris III and John M. Sloop, “‘What Lips These Lips Have Kissed’: Refiguring the Politics of Queer Public Kissing,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3, no. 1 (March 2006): 2.

76. Morris and Sloop, “‘What Lips These Lips Have Kissed’,” 13.

77. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 8.

78. John Frow, “‘Reproducibles, Rubrics, and Everything You Need’: Genre Theory Today,” PMLA 122, no. 5 (Oct. 2007): 1633.

79. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 113.

80. Dave Tell, Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2012).

81. Laurie Abraham, 2013, “How Slam-Dunking, Gender-Bending WNBA Rookie Brittney Griner is Changing the World of Sports,” Elle.com, Nov. 4, http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/interviews/a12606/brittney-griner-profile/; Jerry Portwood, 2012, “Fever Pitch,” Out Magazine, July 2, http://www.out.com/travel-nightlife/london/2012/07/02/fever-pitch; and Kate Fagan, 2014, “After the Storm,” ESPN.com, Oct. 8, http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11655083/us-women-soccer-star-abby-wambach-lives-extreme.

82. Consider, for instance, the case of Roy Simmons, whose 2006 memoir Out of Bounds: Coming Out of Sexual Abuse, Addiction, and My Life of Lies in the NFL Closet follows from a shame- and shock-filled coming out performance on The Phil Donahue show in 1992. The narrative perpetuates some of the worst tropes of the tabloid talk show, reinforcing early 1990s’ stereotypes of black men as rapaciously sexual, drug-addicted, and criminal, in addition to the mistaken belief that childhood sexual abuse results in homosexuality. This memoir, which is a significant outlier from other second-wave athlete coming out narratives, seems to have retained generic conventions of degradation from its initial medium despite the translation into a monograph-length memoir. Simmons with DiMarco, Out of Bounds.

83. Dustin Bradley Goltz, “It Gets Better: Queer Futures, Critical Frustrations, and Radical Potentials,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 30, no. 2 (June 2013): 137.

84. Thomas R. Dunn, “Remembering Matthew Shepard: Violence, Identity, and Queer Counterpublic Memories,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 13, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 611–51; and Brian L. Ott and Eric Aoki, “The Politics of Negotiating Public Tragedy: Media Framing of the Matthew Shepard Murder,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 483–505.

85. Love, Feeling Backward, 2.

86. This section is indebted to the provocations and insights of a 2014 Rhetoric Society of America panel, “Intersectionality, Jason Collins, and Coming Out: A Critique of Borderlines,” featuring Abraham Iqbal Khan, Anna M. Young, Barry Brummett, and Michael Butterworth.

87. S. L. Price, 2013, “So Here We Are, At Last … ,” Sports Illustrated, May 6, http://www.si.com/vault/2013/05/06/106319494/so-here-we-are-at-last.