Sport, Sexuality, and Culture Conference
March 18 - 20, 2009 Ithaca, NY

CAAWS Executive Director Karin Lofstrom and Jennifer Birch Jones – CAAWS Addressing Homophobia workshop facilitator were recently invited to present at the Sport Sexuality, and Culture Conference on the Canadian Experience In Working to Address Homophobia in Sport. Karin and Jennifer presented as part of a panel, which also included Pat Griffin, It Takes A Team - US Women’s Sport Foundation and Helen Carroll, Sports Project Director, National Centre for Lesbian Rights, Dr. Ketra Armstrong, National Association for Girls and Women in Sport and Jonatan Porseger World Outgames 2009 Copenhagen, Denmark.

http://www.ithaca.edu/gps/gradprograms/sportmgmt/sportsexualitycultureintr/
Below is an article that provides you with the highlights of the conference.

Conference shines light on sexuality in sports
Former athlete, journalist speak about slowly changing culture

By Stacey Shackford • Correspondent • March 20, 2009

ITHACA - Hundreds of people convened at Ithaca College this week for some frank discussions about sex and sports, but it wasn't of the typical locker room banter variety.

In fact, as they would learn, it wasn't the type of discussion that would ever be held in most locker rooms, where "don't ask, don't tell" is often the unspoken rule - at the Sport, Sexuality and Culture Conference, academics were out in the open in their explorations of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and masochism.
More than 120 registrants and hundreds of students and college community members were expected to attend 56 sessions by 110 presenters from around the world who flew in for the three-day conference, which began Wednesday.

Held in the run-up to NCAA Division I men's and women's basketball tournaments and just days after President Barack Obama's NBA picks made national headlines, it seemed the perfect time for a conference highlighting sports in the media, as was the intention of organizer Ellen Staurowsky.

The professor from the college's Department of Sport Management and Media said she also wanted to take advantage of recent cultural dialogue about sexuality through films such as "Milk" and California's controversial Proposition 8, and that the timing was right within the industry, with many key organizations such as the International Olympic Committee developing policies addressing transgender athletes.

"We have an industry that's trying to change but still has many barriers in place," Staurowsky said. "We wanted to bring academics together with our students so that they would be much more prepared to deal with these issues and become agents of change themselves."

Wednesday's event included a keynote address by John Amaechi, the first British person to have a career in the NBA, who famously turned down a $17 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers in order to honor a prior commitment. Since his retirement from the sport, he has become the official spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign's Coming Out Project and a regular sports and current affairs pundit for British TV networks.

At a session earlier in the day, he joined famed author, radio commentator and USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan for a panel discussion on sport, media, sexuality and culture.

Ted Rybka, director of sports media for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), also spoke about his own experience as a sports journalist. He said it was a masochistic, homophobic and racist environment in which he was advised never to come out as gay.

"It was just a horrendous experience. That's why I didn't stay in sports journalism, and that's why I have a job now trying to change this," Rybka said.
Brennan said she believed things had changed considerably since Rybka's experience but admitted much more needed to be done.

"The old ways are dying," she said. "That old attitude and squeamishness may have been acceptable in the '70s and '80s, but in our day it's ridiculous. It's 2009; we've got to wake up."

Responding to a question about whether the epicenter of homophobic activity in sports was in the locker room, Amaechi said he believed it was not.

"Instead, it's the Larry Millers (now deceased owner of the NBA's Utah Jazz), who came into my locker room and said 'I'm not going to let Brokeback Mountain play in my theaters.' He was the one with the deep pockets, he was the one who paid my salary," Amaechi said.

Likewise, he said the problem with sexuality being misrepresented in the media often did not lie with young, forward-thinking reporters but rather with owners stuck in an old mindset who held the real power.

"The old ways are dying, but my problem is that we are not allowed to kill them," he added, to applause from the audience. "The age at which these old people are dying is extending, and I'm growing impatient."

Amaechi said Americans seemed to want to maintain an aura of asexuality around their gay athletes in order to keep them safe and that this eagerness within the sports industry and the media to portray a "hormonormality" could be just as dangerous as overt homophobia.

Yet the conference also heard that assumptions were made about the sexuality of athletes in some sports. Female basketball and golf players are often presumed to be lesbians, while male figure skaters are cast as gay, and this can have its own negative impact, academics argued.

Other sessions included "Women's Sexuality and Surfing: From Gidget to Curl Girls" and "Red Sox Nation, Homophobia and Gay Vague in Good Will Hunting and Fever Pitch," as well as discussions about sexual orientation for student athletes and among athletic trainers and other sports professionals.

Amaechi said he was eager to participate in talks about the intersection of race and homosexuality, as he believes the artificial disconnect between communities of color and the LGBT is often seized upon politically to pit minority communities against each other.

He said his hope is to one day harness the power of sport to help fight discrimination across the spectrum.

"Sportspeople - athletes, coaches, broadcasters - are axes in a world of wood," Amaechi said. "I believe we can educate them at an early age to free themselves from discrimination, and we can create powerful advocates."