From the New York Times:
Football’s Loving Culture
By NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF FEB. 14, 2014
... The very nature of football, focused as it is on strength, virility, grace and manly bonding, has an obvious homoerotic component for those who play and for those who watch.
As I pointed out in 1994 in "
Why Lesbians Aren't Gay," the existence of popular gay sex fantasies about manly men who are actually secretly gay — "How could they resist each other? I couldn't!" — isn't actually evidence that they are gay.
Tragically, we have a lot of real data about male homosexuality by profession from AIDS deaths in the 1980s and 1990s. There was at least one among former NFL players (and there are rumors about at least one more who died young), but there are a lot of former NFL players. In contrast, there aren't many famous male figure skaters but a high proportion
died of AIDS, such as both the 1972 and 1976 Olympic gold medalists. (See the 11/17/92 article in the
New York Times: "
AIDS deaths tear at figure-skating world.")
A lot of gay males might fantasize about being effeminate skaters like Jason Brown or Johnny Weir, but not about being with them. It's more fun for them to fantasize about all the homoerotic energy there must be in the team shower with
Antonio Cromartie.
