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Original Articles

Negotiating sexuality and masculinity in school sport: an autoethnography

Pages 607-625 | Received 02 Sep 2010, Accepted 15 Nov 2010, Published online: 08 Jun 2011
 

Abstract

This autoethnography explores challenging and ethically sensitive issues around sexual orientation, sexual identity and masculinity in the context of school sport. Through storytelling, I aim to show how sometimes ambiguous encounters with heterosexism, homophobia and hegemonic masculinity through sport problematise identity development for young same-sex attracted males. By foregrounding personal embodied experience, I respond to an absence of stories of gay and bisexual experiences among males in physical education and school sport, in an effort to reduce a continuing sense of Otherness and difference regarding same-sex attracted males. I rely on the story itself to express the embodied forms of knowing that inhabit the experiences I describe, and resist a finalising interpretation of the story. Instead, I offer personal reflections on particular theoretical and methodological issues which relate to both the form and content of the story.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tony Adams and Phil Jones for their informed, perceptive and encouraging responses to earlier versions of this piece. I also extend my thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions. Finally, I reserve special thanks for my friend and colleague Kitrina Douglas for freely offering storytelling tutorage alongside unending support and encouragement.

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