Gay locker room

I had a secret crush on one of the defensive lineman; a receiver and I still call each other “Betty,” for some reason.

So I built my own closet of sorts and played along with the Southern-fried, anti-gay homoeroticism. 

I kept to myself when, during summer training camp at a military academy, the redneck, grab-ass roughhousing started up in the dorms in the evening. If they caught a boy screwing around, he’d get pulled aside as a coach whipped out a cheap 70s label-maker.

A California native, Williams is a graduate of the University Of Richmond and a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. I kept my mouth shut when my teammates started throwing around gay slurs. After an offseason workout, a teammate looked me up and down and told me I’d gotten buff. I’m still working on it.”

Age, acquired wisdom, and evolving definitions of masculinity have weathered away the more toxic elements of the matrix that I’d absorbed during my football career.

Five of my freshman teammates were arrested or kicked out of school for gang-raping a teenage girl. It was an everyday thing, after practice and after games. That includes the powerful, anti-gay norms and celebrated, hyper-macho ethos I learned back in the day.

My socialization in football culture started early.

Surviving the Homophobic/Homoerotic Matrix of Locker Room Culture  

On the Vandenberg 12-and-under team, our tough-guy coaches had an easy way to make sure we hustled, paid attention and kept the whining to a minimum.

He’d click out a word in blue-and-white plastic — PUSSY — and slap it to the back of the kid’s helmet. 

Later, at my Tennessee high school, the locker room was home to what I’ll call the homophobic/homoerotic matrix: alpha-male jocks loudly displaying their machismo, but also playing with homosexuality, albeit in a whistling-past-the-disco kind of way. 

I was sexually attracted to girls, but I was kind of a nerd, so I tried to avoid the matrix whenever possible; it made me uncomfortable.

He later married political strategist Jordan C. Brown in May 2023, and the couple is now expecting their first child. But I always shrank a little when one receiver, a loud, street-smart brother with blazing speed and an attitude, would yell out the same rape joke in the shower line on the rare, joyous occasion of a win on Saturday. 

“Don’t drop the soap!” he’d shout.

To Mom and Dad — who were born during the Great Depression under Jim Crow — my impending queerness was obvious. If, as Alfred Kinsey famously declared, one in 10 men are gay, odds are there are more than a few gays among the 1,600 men who play in the National Football League, the 8,100 students on college teams and the 1.2 million boys who suit up in high school.

Last season, Byron Perkins, who played at Hampton University, became the first out gay player in HBCU football history. 

Honestly, though, that progress has been limited at best. 

Sam, a college star, was cut from 2 NFL teams and never played in the league. But it better be admiration, not attraction. 

Sociologists and researchers have written about hegemonic masculinity, defined as the presumption of heterosexuality among athletes who play football and other “high-status” team sports, coupled with the expectation they have unfettered access to desirable women.