Unit 1 Assignment Draft

Throughout this unit, we have dived into the specifics of diversity and inclusion in the workplace using numerous readings. While it really opened my eyes, I have still yet to really see how the LGBT community faces these challenges, particularly in sports where not many individuals within that community fit the norm. The article I picked is titled “Between Homohysteria and Inclusivity: Tolerance Towards Sexual Diversity in Sport,” which does a great job at explaining what is currently happening in the industry of sports with this community as well as giving evidence from the study they did. The researchers are Joaquin Piedra, Rafael Garcia-Parez and Alexander G. Channon and the article was published in April of 2017. These researchers are experts in the field and have done numerous studies about homophobia and Homohysteria in all facets. The goal of this particular article is to broaden the knowledge of Individuals who might not know much about it and create a new way of thinking for ones who often neglect people just because of their sexual orientation.

The article begins by stating how there are a small number of openly gay and lesbian people in top flight sports which raises the question about wether sporting or social context makes it easy or difficult for these people to come out. There have been studied about tolerance to towards sexual diversity in sport which is why the researches wanted to write this article in which h they analyze metacognitive profiles of two different cultures, relative to the concept of homohysteria. Ever since sports were created, it has always been very male dominant, but even more specifically a site of hegemonic masculinity. Gender and sexual diversity has always been ignored and the sexual minorities have been stigmatized for quite some time now. In order to understand the complexity of changes in the sport, you must know the broader theory of inclusive masculinity the authors state. This can be defined. as “the fear of being socially perceived as gay.” The fact that in todays society people are still not accepting of this is an issue. From this statement alone, we learn a lot and why this is a great example of diversity and inclsuion. Not only in sports, but in a lot of areas in America, the LGBT community is discriminated against and while it has gotten much better over the years, there are still areas of improvements. One of them is in sports which is why I found an article in the are and I think it would be a great addition to expand the canon. Furthermore, In this article, the authors go on to state a bunch of statics showing how these individuals have been discriminated against and then actually proving how openness on a team is actually very beneficial for not only the individual, but the team as a whole. The authors do a really great job at defining terms that may be new to a lot of people which makes this a really informative article for any type of affiance to read. Whether you know a lot about the topic or know nothing at all and just want to learn about it, it will be very beneficial to everyone.  Attached I have a video that explains even in further detail about LGBT inclusion in sports.