Trap Jesus
Registered User
- Feb 13, 2012
- 28,686
- 13,456
As much as there's an element of homophobia that is ingrained into hockey or sports culture in general (that I think has been cracked down on considerably over the last handful of years, although still present), I think there is a lot of truth to that distraction angle. It seems like such a cliche thing to say, but the media often makes things exponentially worse, regardless of their intentions.
If you had a player come out today and wanted to embrace that aspect of his life publicly that's one thing, but knowing most hockey players, that would probably be someone that's in the vast minority. On the other hand, if you had a player that was perfectly comfortable being out with family/friends and in "public" as much as any other relationship but did not want any kind of spotlight from the media (like 99% of NHLers are with their personal lives regardless of sexuality), in this day and age the media would still get a hold of that for anyone that works in a setting where they're in the public eye. Not that it would be like TMZ paparazzi taking pictures of the Kardashians, but something like that would travel around the hockey and sports world when it's a major professional sport. I know a lot of people view "coming out" as a point of shame or would fear public perception, but others maybe just don't want their personal life broadcast all over with people associating them just as "the gay NHL player" or something. It can be anything from news stories on a major TV network to a Buzzfeed article about "10 gay athletes you didn't know were gay" or something like that. Hell, I just did a search online and found a handy Wikipedia page where I can sort every "reliably sourced" LGBT athlete in the world by sexual orientation/gender identity. And that's not to say that awareness is a bad thing, but I think the media can go way overboard with it in cases where they shouldn't be.
And in this day and age, that's just the tip of the iceberg for the media's coverage of LGBT issues. It's not just a difference in ideologies or over-exposure of certain things, but it's rather the items that get covered are almost always controversial in nature or are at different extremes in opinion, and when that's all that people are seeing, they start to identify the two "sides" in broad strokes as simply those two extremes. It's actually a pretty f***ed up dynamic; you have a huge portion of people that are or would be happily somewhere in the middle, not really caring either way, but when you see the extremes being covered, it influences people that are generally unaware to start identifying entire communities or groups of people with the same broad strokes. That's when you hear stuff like, "Look at them showing Michael Sam making out with his boyfriend. I don't care if he's gay but I wish the gay community would stop trying to shove it down our throats."
I wouldn't consider myself an LGBT advocate, but I became much more aware of the transgender community and transgender-related issues (which is its own unique shit-show altogether in the media) through my ex, and looking at the coverage it gets through the lens I have now, it's honestly just sad to see most of the stuff that gets covered and how it influences public perception. Everything is always controversial talking points and just creates more of a divide.
Bit of a tangent I know, but yeah, long story short I get the "distraction" angle lol. I think a ton of people are in the "do what you want" camp, but that's not the way it is or would be portrayed in the media, which has a substantial amount of influence.
If you had a player come out today and wanted to embrace that aspect of his life publicly that's one thing, but knowing most hockey players, that would probably be someone that's in the vast minority. On the other hand, if you had a player that was perfectly comfortable being out with family/friends and in "public" as much as any other relationship but did not want any kind of spotlight from the media (like 99% of NHLers are with their personal lives regardless of sexuality), in this day and age the media would still get a hold of that for anyone that works in a setting where they're in the public eye. Not that it would be like TMZ paparazzi taking pictures of the Kardashians, but something like that would travel around the hockey and sports world when it's a major professional sport. I know a lot of people view "coming out" as a point of shame or would fear public perception, but others maybe just don't want their personal life broadcast all over with people associating them just as "the gay NHL player" or something. It can be anything from news stories on a major TV network to a Buzzfeed article about "10 gay athletes you didn't know were gay" or something like that. Hell, I just did a search online and found a handy Wikipedia page where I can sort every "reliably sourced" LGBT athlete in the world by sexual orientation/gender identity. And that's not to say that awareness is a bad thing, but I think the media can go way overboard with it in cases where they shouldn't be.
And in this day and age, that's just the tip of the iceberg for the media's coverage of LGBT issues. It's not just a difference in ideologies or over-exposure of certain things, but it's rather the items that get covered are almost always controversial in nature or are at different extremes in opinion, and when that's all that people are seeing, they start to identify the two "sides" in broad strokes as simply those two extremes. It's actually a pretty f***ed up dynamic; you have a huge portion of people that are or would be happily somewhere in the middle, not really caring either way, but when you see the extremes being covered, it influences people that are generally unaware to start identifying entire communities or groups of people with the same broad strokes. That's when you hear stuff like, "Look at them showing Michael Sam making out with his boyfriend. I don't care if he's gay but I wish the gay community would stop trying to shove it down our throats."
I wouldn't consider myself an LGBT advocate, but I became much more aware of the transgender community and transgender-related issues (which is its own unique shit-show altogether in the media) through my ex, and looking at the coverage it gets through the lens I have now, it's honestly just sad to see most of the stuff that gets covered and how it influences public perception. Everything is always controversial talking points and just creates more of a divide.
Bit of a tangent I know, but yeah, long story short I get the "distraction" angle lol. I think a ton of people are in the "do what you want" camp, but that's not the way it is or would be portrayed in the media, which has a substantial amount of influence.
