ABC reporter Louise Milligan, who was behind the 4Corners report that looked into why men’s AFL has no players at the elite level who are openly out as gay or queer, has shared how concerning and outdated the attitudes she encountered from some officials were.
During her investigation, Milligan was met with a pervasive “culture of silence”. A part of it was because of the AFL’s broader culture, which we’ll get to in a sec, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
While she said she was told there *are* players who are gay and whose teammates are loving and supportive, these players were not comfortable speaking to her or being open about their sexuality to the public. This is absolutely their choice, and no one should feel like they *have* to come out, but it certainly begs questions about what can be done to make AFL players feel like coming out isn’t going to ruin their careers.
Milligan tried to speak to managers of clubs or teams, who she thought queer players might trust and confide in, but one manager she spoke to said he’d never had a player come out to him in the 20 years he’d been on the job, out of the 700 to 800 that have come through the door.
He also revealed that out of those 850-odd players, probably less than five were gay. In fact, at some point he said maybe only one player was known to be gay.
On the other hand, AFLW has plenty of out-and-proud lesbian players, as well as multiple non-binary players. It’s a pretty huge difference, and at first kind of shocking — until you see the attitudes Milligan was up against in her interviews with some well-meaning AFL heads.
The manager mentioned above insisted to Milligan that he would be supportive of a gay AFL player coming out to the public.
“Don’t get me wrong, Louise, I’d love one of my guys to come out,” he told her.
“They’d make a fortune.”
Hmm. Not quite the direction you’d want that sentence to go in.
In April, AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan told reporters in Perth that he knew of gay players but said “the pressure and the weight of being that person … of being the first AFL player who comes out and plays as an out, gay man” was too much to expect any of them to come out.
“I, frankly, understand why they would choose not to have to carry that burden around, forever,” he said.
While it’s true that coming out in AFL will probably result in some abuse from homophobic fans, Jason Ball, an amateur player who came out publicly in 2012, slammed the use of the word “burden” to describe coming out or being openly gay.
“A burden is having to hide who you are every single day,” Ball told the ABC.
“A burden is not being able to talk about your relationships, about what you’re doing on the weekend, because people might figure out your sexuality.
“Being a role model, being open about who you are, being proud of who you are — it’s not a burden, it’s a privilege.”
He said that if that kind of language was thought to be normal and unproblematic, then clearly there was a problem with the wider culture.
It certainly looks that way, because even AFL’s head of Inclusion and Social Policy, Tanya Hosch, defended the use of the term “burden”.
“I can understand why Gill used that word,” she told Milligan.
“I can see how that would feel like a burden to people.”
While the 4Corners report and Milligan’s interviews don’t suggest the AFL is fundamentally homophobic or hostile to gay people — in fact, it’s quite nice how much the people she spoke to insist they are supportive — it’s not lost upon her or us that a lot of the comments by people in leadership positions in the AFL are quite bumbling and awkward in how they discuss gay players.
Sure, a huge part of the reason players might not feel comfortable coming out is because of homophobia from those outside the sport. But, as the report suggests, maybe it’s also got something to do with the AFL in terms of the culture it maintains.
Does it protect, encourage and nurture a culture of sport that not only tolerates queer players, but actually holds them up and embraces their identity as something to be loud and proud about? Or does it support them from an angle where it frames queerness as a difficult or unfortunate burden?
While the league certainly means well, let’s hope we see it get to the level of the AFLW in terms of its support for pride and love.
Image: Getty Images / Scott Barbour
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