No Gays in Croatian Football??

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jcR8mRFiGF6BRfWxnCA77eu5BBGg?docId=3c491f28fbc24f7889f8b18b909bbf4f

I’m so lucky to have stumbled across this article, not only because our dear Professor D. hails from Croatia, but also because it touches on the issues of homosexuality and masculinity that have featured so prominently in the texts we have read. Armed with the information and critical eye I have acquired in class, I am ready to tackle this article. But before I launch into my analysis, I’ll share some background.

The AP reports that this week the head of the Croatian Football Federation, Vlatko Markovic, stated that, for the duration of this tenure, there will “certainly” be no gays on the Croatian Football team. When questioned if he had ever met a gay football player, Markovic responded "No. Fortunately, only healthy people play football." He has since apologized for what he calls “a clumsy interpretation.”

This article opened two trains of thought for me. The first regarded Markovic’s statement that “only healthy people play football.” As we have read in class, the “health” of homosexuals is not a new topic. Prominent figures such Freud, Hirschfield, Kraft-Ebings and others have studied the psychological, medical, and biological nature of homosexuality. Doctors and scientists have cast homosexuals as perverts and inverts since the coining of the term “homosexual” in the late 19th century. While mainstream psychology no longer considers homosexuality a mental illness (the APA removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses in 1973), Markovic’s statement proves that some like Markovic still see homosexuals as diseased and mentally unstable. Perhaps Markovic is afraid (a la Stalinist Russia 1933) that homosexual players will “infect” the other “healthy” players (except Stalin was more concerned with his soldiers and not so much for his football players).

My second train of thought concerned concepts of masculinity. Although my knowledge of football (soccer in America) is limited, I have always associated it (as well other contact-sports) with images of masculinity. I am sure football players want to maintain this masculine image to keep a competitive edge. Perhaps Markovic fears that homosexual football players will tarnish the masculine image of football teams. However, as we read in Halperin’s "How to Do the History of Male Homosexuality," in antiquity (especially ancient Greece and Rome), “pederasty/sodomy and friendship/love (were) constant with masculine gender norms.” In fact, ancient Greeks and Romans considered same-sex sexual acts (at least for those doing the penetrating) and friendship as “masculinizing” because they epitomized a “rejection of everything that is feminine (102).”

Markovic should read up on his history of sexuality. Players who engage in same-sex sexual acts would actually fall more in line with classical ideals of masculinity than players who partake of the “party scene” and use their fame and status to “hook-up” with women all the time. If fact, according to Halperin, this type of womanizer which society now considers as “masculine” would have been considered “effeminate” in antiquity. How times have changed!