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 EDITED BY

Rory Magrath

LGBT
ATHLETES
IN THE
SPORTS
MEDIA
LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media
 Rory Magrath
Editor

LGBT Athletes in the

Sports Media
Editor
Rory Magrath
Solent University
Southampton, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-00803-1    ISBN 978-3-030-00804-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00804-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960280

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover design Tom Howey

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to two colleagues, Richard Elliott and Tracey Bourne,
for their guidance, support, and friendship over the years.
 Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the help of numerous
people. First, my thanks to Amelia Derkatsch, Palgrave’s Commissioning
Editor for Gender and Sexuality. From our early correspondence right
through to the final submission of this book, she has offered unfaltering
guidance and support.
Special thanks also go to Mark McCormack, Liam Wignall, and M. F.
Ogilvie for their great advice in the early development of this book.
Similarly, I am also grateful to Pete Millward and Stacey Pope for their
superb specialist feedback and recommendations during the proposal
stage of the book.
It is also worth noting that editing books often receives negative press
in the academic world; the frequent need to chase authors for unsubmit-
ted chapters, for example, is an experience that many scholars—and
many of my friends—know only too well. However, my experience was
far different; I had no need to chase, demand, or even offer any ultima-
tums! For this I am truly grateful to each of the contributors for their
hard work in producing marvelous chapters.
There are also numerous others who have helped me in various ways
during the production of this collection. In no particular order, I must
thank Eric Anderson at the University of Winchester; Jon Holmes at Sky
Sports; Richard Elliott at Solent University; Tom Howey, on behalf of
Palgrave, for his wonderful cover design; Larry Wenner at Loyola
vii
viii Acknowledgments

Marymount University; Jamie Cleland at the University of South

Australia; Ryan Scoats at Birmingham City University; and Christopher
Danks, Steven Hill, Dave Jennings, and Adie Brown for their unrivaled
knowledge, which proved invaluable for some of the examples in the
opening chapter.
Finally, special thanks to my partner, Jessica, for her love throughout a
particularly challenging period, and my family for their unwavering
support.
 Contents

1 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the

‘Sports Media’  1
Rory Magrath

2 Perception Versus Reality: Gay Male American Athletes

and Coming-out Stories from Outsports.com 27
Luis Morales and Adam J. White

3 Lesbian Athletes in the Sports Media: Ambivalence,

Scrutiny and Invisibility 51
Rachael Bullingham and Verity Postlethwaite

4 Traditional and Contemporary Methods of Coming Out

in Sport 75
Peter Stott

5 Out of the Frame: How Sports Media Shapes Trans

Narratives 99
Cathryn B. Lucas and Kristine E. Newhall

ix
x Contents

6 Britain’s First Openly Gay Football Referee: The Story of

Ryan Atkin125
Jamie Cleland

7 Gender and Sexual Relations in British Sports

Broadcasting: Beyond Clare Balding147
Philippa Velija

8 England Women’s 2015 FIFA World Cup Campaign:

Online Media Perspectives169
Tracey Bourne and Charlie Pitkin

9 Conner Mertens and the Muted Media Coverage of the

First Openly Bisexual NCAA American Football Player189
M. F. Ogilvie and Mark McCormack

10 Media Framing of Transgender Athletes: Contradictions

and Paradoxes in Coverage of MMA Fighter Fallon Fox207
Adam Love

11 Sports Journalism and LGBT Issues: Defining Events and

Evolving Coverage227
William P. Cassidy

12 The Success of LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media253

Edward (Ted) M. Kian

13 Lingering Questions: Postulating the Future of the Out

LGBT Athlete in Modern Media277
Andrew C. Billings, Leigh M. Moscowitz, and Zachary W. Arth

Index293
 Notes on Contributors

Zachary W. Arth is a doctoral candidate in the College of Communication and

Information Sciences at the University of Alabama (USA). His research typically
features the intersection of sport, media, identity, and information processing.
Andrew C. Billings (Ph.D., Indiana University [USA], 1999) is the Ronald
Reagan Chair of Broadcasting in the Department of Journalism & Creative
Media at the University of Alabama (USA). His research typically lies in the
intersection of media, sport, and identity issues, with his latest book (co-­
authored with Leigh M. Moscowitz) being Media and the Coming Out of Gay
Male Athletes in American Team Sports (2018).
Tracey Bourne is a Senior Lecturer and course leader for BA (Hons) Football
Studies in the School of Sport, Health and Social Sciences at Solent University,
Southampton, UK. Her primary expertise lies in football coaching and football
development, and she oversees the UEFA-recognized Football Leadership
Programme at Solent University.
Rachael Bullingham is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Worcester,
UK. She previously taught physical education at a secondary school, as well as
performing various pastoral roles. Her PhD analyzed the experiences of openly
lesbian athletes participating in team sports, and she has also published widely
in this area. She recently co-authored Out in Sport (2016), which offers the most
up-to-date examination of homophobia in sport.

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

William P. Cassidy is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Northern Illinois

University and author of Sports Journalism and Coming Out Stories: Jason Collins
and Michael Sam (Palgrave, 2017). His scholarship has been featured in journals
such as Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Communication and
Sport, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and Journal of Sports
Media. He holds a PhD from the School of Journalism and Communication at
the University of Oregon.
Jamie Cleland is a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Management at the University
of South Australia. He has authored and co-authored four books: Screen Society
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Collective Action and Football Fandom: A Relational
Sociological Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); A Sociology of Football in a
Global Context (2015); and Football’s Dark Side: Corruption, Homophobia,
Violence and Racism in the Beautiful Game (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) as well as
publishing over 30 articles and chapters on contemporary social issues in sport
and society.
Edward (Ted) M. Kian is Professor and the Welch-Bridgewater Chair of Sports
Media at Oklahoma State University. A former professional sports journalist,
Dr. Kian’s research focuses primarily on sport communication, specifically the
framing of gender, sex, and LGBT people in media content, social media, and
Web 2.0, and attitudes and experiences of sport journalists. He has authored or
co-authored two books, and more than 90 journal articles, conference papers,
and invited book chapters. Dr. Kian’s research, journalism, and expertise have
been cited by outlets such as 60 Minutes and The New York Times.
Adam Love is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology,
Recreation, and Sport Studies at the University of Tennessee. His research inter-
ests include the production and reproduction of gender ideology in the context
of sport and physical activity.
Cathryn B. Lucas is a doctoral candidate in Health and Sport Studies at the
University of Iowa. Their dissertation examines the intertwined histories of
sport, gender identity, and transsexuality. More broadly, their research addresses
gender, race, and queerness in sport and physical activity. They practice critical
pedagogy through their teaching in the classroom and community fitness spaces.
Rory Magrath is the author of Inclusive Masculinities in Contemporary Football:
Men in the Beautiful Game (2017) and co-author of Out in Sport: The Experiences
of Openly Gay and Lesbian Athletes in Competitive Sport (2016). He is currently
Senior Lecturer in the School of Sport, Health, and Social Sciences at Solent
 Notes on Contributors xiii

University, Southampton, UK. His research focuses on decreasing homophobia

and the changing nature of contemporary masculinities, with a specific focus on
professional football.
Mark McCormack is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Roehampton,
London, UK. His research examines how social trends related to gender and
sexuality map onto the everyday experiences and social identities of young peo-
ple. He is author of The Declining Significance of Homophobia (2012) and The
Changing Dynamics of Bisexual Men’s Lives (Springer, 2016). He is lead author of
Discovering Sociology, a new introductory sociology textbook (Palgrave, 2018).
Mark has published in leading journals, including Sociology, British Journal of
Sociology, Archives of Sexual Behavior, and Sociology of Education.
Luis Morales graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis
Obispo with a degree in sociology and a concentration in economics and public
policy. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Winchester, special-
izing in sociological research relating to masculinities, race, religion, and sport.
Luis is also pursuing a degree in pedagogy.
Leigh M. Moscowitz (Ph.D., Indiana University [USA], 2008) is an Associate
Professor and Head of the Public Relations Sequence in the School of Journalism
and Mass Communication at the University of South Carolina. Her research
examines the cultural production of news and the politics of media representa-
tion. She is the author of The Battle over Marriage: Gay Rights Activism through
the Media (2013), Snatched: News Coverage of Child Abductions in U.S. Media
(with Spring Duvall, 2015), and Media and the Coming Out of Gay Male Athletes
in American Team Sports (with Andrew C. Billings, 2018).
Kristine E. Newhall is an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at SUNY Cortland
where she teaches courses on ethical issues in sports and fitness cultures, as well
as research ethics. Her current research interests include transgender inclusion in
sports, the narratives and experiences of LGBT athletes and coaches, intersec-
tions of feminisms and women’s sports in late twentieth-century America, and
empowerment discourses in self-defense practices. She is the co-founder of and
a co-contributor to the Title IX Blog.
M. F. Ogilvie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Durham
University, UK. An elite volleyball player, his research examines the develop-
ment of homosocial and homoerotic cultures among athletes from the UK and
the USA, further adding to studies of masculinities in team sports. His research
also explores the dynamics of these intercultural contexts, and examines the
xiv Notes on Contributors

gender dynamics between men and women on these elite teams. He has also
conducted research on the experiences of transgender athletes, published in the
edited book, Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport (2017).
Charlie Pitkin graduated from Solent University, Southampton, UK, with a
First Class Honors in BA (Hons) Football Studies. She is currently studying for
a PGCE with a specialism in Special Needs at the University of Winchester.
Verity Postlethwaite is a doctoral candidate at the University of Worcester.
Her thesis considers the nexus between the London 2012 Olympic and
Paralympic Games’ legacy to “Inspire a Generation” and the English education
sector. This is also part of Verity’s previous and ongoing work around sport,
policy, and political issues.
Peter Stott is an MA Youth Sport and Physical Education student at Solent
University, Southampton, UK. His work has focused on homophobia among
male and female football fans.
Philippa Velija is Head of Sport Education and Development and Senior
Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at Solent University, Southampton, UK. She
is author of Women’s Cricket and Global Processes (2015) and co-author of
Figurational Research in Sport, Leisure and Health (2018). Her research, published
in Sociology of Sport Journal, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and
Leisure Studies, focuses on a sociological analysis of women’s experiences of flat
and jump jockeys, and women in martial arts, and she has co-authored papers
on gender and sport policy and women, and leadership in sports governance.
Adam J. White is an interdisciplinary researcher in sport, exercise, health, and
education and a teaching fellow at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has
authored a number of peer-reviewed journal papers on gender, sexuality, and
contract sport, and also co-authored Sport, Theory and Social Problems (2018).
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Notable moments of public lesbian coverage in the media 54

Table 3.2 Stoney and Rapinoe articles 61
Table 4.1 Notable gay male athletes 79
Table 4.2 Notable lesbian athletes 84
Table 4.3 Notable bisexual athletes 87
Table 4.4 Notable trans athletes 89
Table 8.1 Phases of data 177
Table 8.2 List of themes 177
Table 9.1 Use of “Bisexual” 194
Table 9.2 Interviews with Mertens 196

xv
 1
LGBT Athletes, Changing Social
Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’
Rory Magrath

The ‘Sports Media’

Globally, millions—if not, billions—of people consume sport on a daily
basis. Whether watching a live event on television (either in the home or
a shared space), following dedicated channels breaking news on the latest
player transfer, or the more traditional method of reading a newspaper,
sport plays a significant role in people’s lives. At the time of writing, the
two most recent global sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games and
(men’s) FIFA World Cup, are testament to just how engrained in Western
culture (at the very least) sports are.
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, for example, received
more television coverage than any other Games: The International
Olympic Committee (IOC) estimated, perhaps not unrealistically, that
half of the world’s population watched at least some coverage of the
Games (see also Tomlinson 2017). Similar viewing figures were evident at
the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia, with estimates of 3.4bn w ­ atching

R. Magrath (*)
Solent University, Southampton, UK
e-mail: rorymagrathphd@gmail.com

© The Author(s) 2019 1

R. Magrath (ed.), LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00804-8_1
2 R. Magrath

at least one World Cup match. Interestingly, this included significant

interest from China—despite the nation not participating in the tourna-
ment. This also includes record-breaking statistics in the UK, where
England reached the semi-finals for the first time in nearly 30 years, and
more than 2bn watching the final match between France and Croatia.
Naturally, such figures would not be possible without the increased
ubiquity of the media. Such is the prominence of sport in today’s world,
it is hard not to imagine it appearing daily on television or social media.
Prior to the 1930s, however, sports coverage was largely restricted to the
radio or newspapers, and it was not until the end of the 1930s that it
began appearing on television. Indeed, this so-called decade of experimen-
tation saw football, baseball, tennis, American football, and rugby all
broadcast on television, either live or in highlight forms (Deninger 2012).
What followed in this decade of experimentation was a period of
uncertainty. Many sports organizations—most famously, the Football
Association (FA)1—were concerned that broadcasts of matches would
severely affect attendances at sporting events (Boyle and Haynes 2000).
Although there was no evidence to support this disposition, it was a fear
which never fully disappeared. Ultimately, despite these frequent con-
cerns, sport and television were, eventually, ‘two cultural forms which
simply proved irresistible to each other’ (Boyle and Haynes 2000, p. 45).
Indeed, Goldlust (1987, p. 78) described sport and television as a ‘match
made in heaven’ and Real (2011, p. 19) described it as a ‘dream
marriage.’
The new, cozy relationship between sport and the media is particularly
evident with the English Premier League (EPL). Since its formation in
1992, the rights to broadcast EPL football have increased exponentially.
The initial TV deal was worth around £305m among 22 teams; it has
since increased to in excess of £8bn among 20 teams. In turn, such figures
have allowed EPL clubs to spend vast amounts of money on transfers and
wages, improving the quality of football. Indeed, the EPL has since trans-
formed into the most-watched football league in the world (Millward

1
The Football Association (FA) is English football’s governing body. Formed in 1863, they are
recognized as the oldest football association in the world.
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 3

2011). Primarily underpinned by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, almost every

major media organization wants a piece of the action: BT Sport, Setanta
(now defunct), NTL, ESPN, BBC, Amazon, Netflix, and Google are all
companies that, at some stage, have bid, both successfully and unsuccess-
fully, for the right to broadcast.
And it is the influence and centrality of the ‘sports media’ which forms
the basis for this book. The dynamic relationship between sport and the
media has commanded significant academic scrutiny (e.g. Billings and
Moscowitz 2018; Boyle and Haynes 2009; Kennedy and Hills 2015;
Raney and Bryant 2009; Wenner and Billings 2017). This body of work
has been framed using Wenner’s (1998) ‘mediasport,’ and by numerous
others as the ‘sport-media complex’ (e.g. Jhally 1989; Maguire 1991,
1999).
Curiously, however, despite the ubiquity of the sports media, there
exists no unified or accepted definition of ‘sports media’ (Rowe 2011)—
or indeed any variant of this phrase (Pedersen et al. 2007). Thus, in this
collection, ‘sports media’ broadly incorporates any mediatized (print or
online, but also including social) form of sports, sporting events, or sport-
ing individuals or teams. Regardless of the definitional struggles with
‘sports media,’ it is accepted on a basic level that they have a collective
responsibility to ‘make things larger than life’ (Wenner and Billings 2017,
p. 2).
But with the infiltration of media influences on sport also comes risk.
The media have been responsible for covering and exposing some of the
biggest sporting scandals in recent years, such as the 2002 Salt Lake City
Winter Olympics corruption; British football’s sex abuse and subsequent
concealment; numerous doping scandals (including Lance Armstrong,
and several Russian athletes, leading to a lifelong ban for the former Head
of the Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnichev); the alleged
2022 Qatar World Cup construction scandal; and the Australian cricket
team’s ball-tampering scandal. Accordingly, sport’s reliance on the media
also comes with a warning; one which denotes the desire to expose any
form of deviant behavior which flouts sport’s fair-play ethos.
Numerous developments in technological advancements over the last
decades, such as the growth of the Internet and thus social media, have
further contributed to this process. As a consequence, news is shared
4 R. Magrath

instantaneously across the world simply with the click of a button (Rowe
2011). The emergence of these mediums has, as Pegoraro (2010, p. 503)
puts it, ‘transformed the interaction between sport fans and their sport
heroes.’ Indeed, athletes command significant interest on social media,
with the world’s most successful professional athletes having tens of mil-
lions of followers on their accounts.
Further evidencing the ubiquity of sport and the sports media, even
sports writers and journalists command significant interest on social
media. In the UK, for example, Henry Winter, a prominent football
journalist for The Times, has 1.25m followers on Twitter—more than
twice that of Prime Minister Theresa May. The same is also true in the
US: ESPN sports commentator Michael Wilbon has over 5m followers,
while Stephen A. Smith has almost 4m. The significance of these figures
relates to the sheer volume of sports fans—however we might define fan-
dom—who desire to keep abreast with the latest sports news, gossip, or
simply engage with the lives of their favorite athletes or clubs (Pegoraro
2010).
The media’s relationship with sport has intensified so much in recent
years that professional athletes—facilitated no doubt by the influence of
social media—have become some of the most prominent celebrities in
contemporary Western culture. Of course, the proliferation of athletes
into celebrities is nothing new: Some of sport’s most dynamic personali-
ties, Muhammad Ali and George Best, for example (Whannel 2005),
were idolized and celebrated by millions long before the media’s current
stranglehold on the sports industry. In spite of these examples, however,
there is little doubt that twenty-first-century sport and its athletes are
unrecognizable from their roots. And, most importantly, none of this
would be possible were it not for the influence of the sports media.
This book, however, does not set out with the intention of examining
the historical changes in this relationship; nor is it my intention to out-
line the theoretical apparatus which scholars have used to underpin these
changes—this has been expertly achieved in existing academic work
(Boyle and Haynes 2009; Kennedy and Hills 2015; Raney and Bryant
2009; Wenner 1998; Wenner and Billings 2017). Instead, the intention
of this collection of work is to unite these themes with the changing cul-
tural context for minority athletes.
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 5

Importantly, as the next sections outline, while there has been a pleth-
ora of evidence focusing on gay male and lesbian athletes (e.g. Anderson
et al. 2016), only limited research has focused on bisexual and transgen-
der athletes. This, while I use ‘LGBT’ in this chapter, I also note that
‘LGBT’ is not a homogenous group—and there are differences in their
experiences.
I begin the ‘journey’ of LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media by outlining
how Western society has evolved from an historically hostile environ-
ment for sexual minorities into one of inclusivity.

 port, LGBT Athletes, and Changing Cultural

S
Contexts
In 1967, the publication of the Wolfenden Report, which recom-
mended decriminalization of same-sex sexual acts between two men
over the age of 21,2 was a significant moment for gay men in England
and Wales. While public support for the Report was initially less than
half the population, it eventually acted as a precursor to the liberalizing
of cultural attitudes toward homosexuality in the UK (Clements and
Field 2014). A similarly important moment arrived six years later in
the US, when homosexuality was removed from the list of mental dis-
orders (DSM) by the American Psychiatric Association (APA)
(Silverstein 2009).
Despite these improvements in cultural attitudes, however, the advent
and spread of AIDS in the 1980s throughout the Western world impeded
the initial social and legal gains of members of the LGBT community.
The uber-conservative response from influential world leaders—particu-
larly Margaret Thatcher (UK) and Ronald Reagan (US)—did little to
ease this growing hostility. Government legislation even exacerbated the
anti-LGBT dogma; most notoriously, the passing of Section 28—widely
understood as a ban of ‘the promotion of homosexuality in British

2
The recommendations of the Wolfenden Report were implemented only in England and Wales.
The law did not apply in Scotland until 1980, and Northern Ireland until 1982.
6 R. Magrath

schools’—effectively silenced any discussion whatsoever of ­homosexuality

(Nixon and Givens 2007). Put simply, Peterson (2011) argues that gay
men in particular were pathologized as the ‘viral assassins’ of heterosexu-
ality and the nuclear family. By the end of the decade, 75% of the British
population and 78% of the American population believed same-sex sex
to be either ‘always wrong’ or ‘mostly wrong’ (Clements and Field 2014;
Keleher and Smith 2012).
These intolerant attitudes had significant consequences for the gen-
dered expression of boys and men across the West. Irrespective of sexual
orientation, men went to extraordinary lengths to distance themselves
from homosexual stigma, or, as McCormack and Anderson (2014,
p. 114) write, men began to ‘align their gendered behaviors with idealized
and narrow definitions of masculinity.’ This is what Anderson (2009)
calls homohysteria. Perhaps the most extreme example of the time was the
excessive steroid use to bolster one’s frame (Halkitis et al. 2004)—thus
appearing more masculine, and less susceptible to sexual ambiguity.
The sporting world was no exception to these overwhelming levels of
intolerance. Barret (1993, p. 161), for example, argued that, ‘Most gay
professional athletes keep their gay lives carefully hidden out of a fear that
coming out will destroy their ability to maintain their careers.’ Academic
research investigating the relationship between sport and sexuality around
this time supported this disposition, documenting high levels of
homophobia.
In the Netherlands, for example, Hekma’s (1998) research led her to
argue that ‘Gay men…are granted no space whatsoever in what is gener-
ally considered to be a masculine preserve and macho enterprise’ (p. 2).
In the US, Pronger’s (1990) research with closeted gay male athletes doc-
umented extreme levels of homophobia. Gay men were frequently
referred to as ‘half a man,’ while homophobic language was routinely
employed. Similar levels of homophobia were evident in women’s sport:
Lenskyj (1986) summarized these central issues concerning women’s par-
ticipation by writing that ‘femininity and heterosexuality [were] seen as
incompatible with sporting excellence: either sport made women mascu-
line or sportswomen were masculine from the outset’ (p. 95). Moreover,
the homophobia suffered by lesbian athletes documented in Griffin’s
(1998) research was so extreme that she separated it into six categories,
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 7

including denial, apology, and attacks (see also Blinde and Taub 1992;
Krane 2001).
Interestingly, in the UK, we have little academic or empirical evidence
of sport’s homophobia in men’s sport. However, given the experiences of
openly gay professional athletes of the time—such as footballer Justin
Fashanu (Gaston et al. 2018)—we can argue with almost complete cer-
tainty that these same arguments apply (Magrath et al. 2015). Even as
late as 1999, homophobia in British sport was commonplace, as former
professional footballer Graeme Le Saux, ostensibly heterosexual, received
frequent homophobic abuse from fellow players, fans, and even managers
(Magrath 2017a).
Thus, at the end of the twentieth century, despite embryonic changes
in cultural attitudes toward homosexuality (e.g. Keleher and Smith
2012), sport lagged behind societal acceptance. Indeed, Wolf-Wendel,
Toma and Morphew (2001, p. 470) wrote:

We found hostility to gay men and lesbians on nearly all teams and at all
the case study sites. Clearly those in inter-collegiate athletics are generally
unwilling to confront and accept homosexuality…as progressive and suc-
cessful as people in athletics are in building community from diverse
groups…they lagged considerably in creating a supportive environment for
gay men and lesbians on their teams.

Thus, as we approached the millennium, sports across the world contin-

ued to act as what Wellard (2002) described as ‘exclusive masculinity’—
an adverse, dangerous, and inhospitable cultural milieu for LGBT
athletes.

New Millennium, New Perspectives

Over the past two decades, cultural attitudes toward sexual minorities in
the West have improved dramatically (Clements and Field 2014; Keleher
and Smith 2012; Twenge et al. 2016). Since the turn of the millennium,
members of the LGBT community—for the most part, at least—have
been afforded greater social and legal rights than ever before, so much so
that Keleher and Smith (2012, p. 1324) argued: ‘We are witnessing a
8 R. Magrath

sweeping change in attitudes toward lesbians and gay men.’ In the US,
Gallup (2018) show that numbers of openly LGBT people has increased
for six straight years. This has come perhaps most ubiquitously in the
legalization of same-sex marriage in the US, Australia, Canada, most of
the UK, much of South America, and numerous major European nations.
Highlighting the winds of change, no fewer than 20 countries across the
world have legalized same-sex marriage since 20103 (Pew 2017).
Moreover, statistics in the most high-profile social attitude surveys—
notably Gallup and Pew in the US and the British Social Attitudes Survey
in the UK—consistently reveal increasingly liberal overall attitudes
toward sexual minorities (Swales and Taylor 2017).
Social attitudes toward transgender people, however, tend to be less
liberal (Flores 2015). In a national probability sample of heterosexual
Americans, Norton and Herek (2013) show that ‘attitudes toward trans-
gender people were significantly more negative than attitudes toward
sexual minorities’ (p. 749). While similar data is unavailable in the UK, a
2015 Sky News poll found that 48% of Britons are supportive of those
who desire to change gender (Hirsch 2015)—perhaps indicating that
attitudes are beginning to soften.
In sport, despite frequent claims in both academia and the media that
its culture remains resistant to broader social change, lesbian, gay, and
bisexual athletes are now more welcomed, embraced, and celebrated than
ever before (Anderson et al. 2016). This has been evident in numerous
academic studies across the West—covering a multitude of sports—
which have documented sport’s growing inclusivity of the LGB commu-
nity (Adams and Kavanagh 2018; Anderson 2011; Anderson and Adams
2011; Anderson and Bullingham 2015; Fink et al. 2012; MacDonald
2017; Stoelting 2011; Vilanova et al. 2018). I argue that it is British
men’s football where these changing attitudes are most profound, with a
multitude of studies on elite young players (Adams and Kavanagh 2018;
Magrath et al. 2015; Magrath 2017a, b; Roberts et al. 2017), as well as
fans (Cashmore and Cleland 2012; Cleland 2015; Cleland et al. 2018;

3
At the time of writing, same-sex marriage is legal in 27 countries across the world, with the Czech
Republic being the most recent addition to this list in the summer of 2018.
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 9

Magrath 2017c; Magrath and Stott 2018), documenting greater accep-

tance and inclusion of homosexuality in football.
In elite sport, growing numbers of predominantly gay and lesbian (but
some bisexual, too) athletes have come out at an accelerated rate in recent
years. Indeed, the Rio 2016 Olympics saw a record 56 out LGBT athletes
compete at the Games4 (in comparison to 23 at the 2012, and 10 at the
2008 Games). Elsewhere, some of the list of ‘out’ athletes include: Anton
Hysén (Cleland 2014), Orlando Cruz, Keegan Hirst, Michael Sam
(Cassidy 2017a), Robbie Rogers, Collin Martin, Victor Gutiérrez
(Vilanova et al. 2018), Casey Stoney, Kate and Helen Richardson-Walsh,
Brittney Griner, Tom Daley (Magrath et al. 2017), and Nicola Adams
(Dashper 2017). Interestingly, the response to these athletes’ coming out
from individuals both inside and outside of sport has been almost univer-
sally positive and supportive (Anderson et al. 2016).
Elsewhere, research in the US has documented the potentially ‘radi-
cally transinclusive’ space of select North American lesbian softball
leagues (Travers and Deri 2011). In these spaces, the prominence of
transgender athletes has challenged the previously rigid women-only
guidelines, and is also evidence of a cultural shift toward one of inclusiv-
ity for transgender athletes’ participation in sport—at least in minority
sports leagues. In more recent research, Cunningham and Pickett (2018)
broadly support this argument, showing that, despite the need for addi-
tional interventions, prejudice against transgender individuals has signifi-
cantly reduced. Anderson and Travers’ (2017) recent edited collection
dedicated to the experience of transgender athletes also illustrates the
progress being made in sport across the West (see also Travers 2018).
Nevertheless, despite the widespread cultural change in the sporting
world, there still remain some issues. Most strikingly, there are no openly
gay athletes in any of the ‘big four’ US men’s sports leagues, or in any of
Europe’s most dominant football leagues. While myself and others have
vociferously argued that this is not evidence of homophobia (e.g. Magrath
and Anderson 2017; Magrath 2018), this remains a damning stat; one

4
The complete list of athletes can be found at: https://www.outsports.com/2016/7/11/12133594/
rio-olympics-teams-2016-gay-lgbt-athletes-record
10 R. Magrath

that Buzinski (2017) argues offers almost a complete lack of role models
and zero visibility to the LGBT community. Similarly, the existence of
trash talk, homosexually themed, or even homophobic language and chant-
ing among both fans and athletes (e.g. Magrath 2017c)—particularly in
football—can also have a damaging effect on LGBT people. And, like-
wise, sports organizations’ continued commitment to LGBT equality is
frequently called into question, while mega-sporting events are awarded
to countries where attitudes toward sexual minorities are far from
liberal.
In recent years, intolerance and abuse has particularly increased
through the presence of online abuse—better known as trolling. In British
sport, Bennett and Jönsson (2017) show that Kick It Out5 estimate that
approximately 16,000 discriminatory posts are directed at Premier
League clubs and footballers every month. This has also extended to jour-
nalists, too; in November 2017, Daily Mail journalist Adam Crafton was
subjected to several racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic tweets after
writing an article about an Arsenal versus Tottenham Hotspur match.
Online trolling has, subsequently, presented a new challenge for profes-
sional sport—and those which govern it. In their analysis of racist troll-
ing, Kilvington and Price (2017) highlight the systematic failure of
football’s major governing bodies, as well as the clubs themselves, in
addressing this issue.
Finally, and perhaps of most relevance to this book, the (normally) tab-
loid media’s treatment of LGBT issues in sport is often problematic—best
evidenced by its occasional yet often damaging gossip-like presentation of
gay athletes. In October 2017, for example, the UK’s Daily Star fronted its
newspaper with the sensationalist and heterosexist headline: ‘Secret of
Two Gay Prem Footie Aces (Not Rooney obviously!).’ More recently, The
Sun led with a headline sensationalizing a story about bisexual Premier
League footballers. I have previously referred to this as a ‘media fascina-
tion’ of uncovering which highest-profile athletes are LGBT—paradoxi-
cally acting as a barrier to their coming out (Magrath 2017a).

5
Kick It Out is widely recognized as English football’s most influential equality and diversity
organization.
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 11

LGBT Athletes and the Sports Media

Earlier in this chapter I outlined how professional sports—and the ath-
letes who participate in them—receive global popularity, especially at
mega-events such as the Olympic Games or World Cup. One of the most
significant side effects of this mediatized dominance is the scrutiny of
professional athletes who are ‘expected to serve as role models and to
behave in socially approved ways’ (Kennedy and Hills 2015, p. 3). When
athletes fall short of these high expectations, stories dominate both sports
news and mainstream news alike (Boyle and Haynes 2004). Consider, for
example, the attention given to athletes in recent times, such as England
cricketers’ alleged drunken misbehavior during the 2017 Ashes series;
English rugby union players’ now infamous ‘dwarf-tossing’ incident dur-
ing the 2011 rugby union World Cup; or the range of NFL players guilty
of alleged sexual assault over the last decades (see Cavender 2017).
Numerous media channels and, over the last decade, social media,
have permitted these stories and, oftentimes, scandals, to be posted and
shared instantaneously. Moreover, through this medium, the media have
become instrumental in establishing dominant sporting values—includ-
ing that of sexuality. Indeed, the media, particularly the sports media, has
traditionally been focused on the presentation of historically masculine
traits, thus avoiding explicit discussions surrounding homosexuality in
male athletes (Vincent and Crossman 2008). This is largely because the
sports media has traditionally been a male-dominated institution. Indeed,
in the US, Lapchick (2018) shows that men comprised: 90% of sports
reporters, 70% of assistant sport editors, 85% of columnists, 89% of
reporters, and 80% of copy editors. While similar statistics are unavail-
able in the UK, a report in The Guardian estimates that women write
only 1.8% of sports articles (Martinson 2016).
Accordingly, Hardin, Kuehn, Jones, Genovese and Balaji (2009,
p. 184) argue that heterosexuality is ‘key to the construction of an ideal-
ized masculine identity and homophobia has become central in that
­construction.’ Accordingly, Bailey (2011, p. 16) has argued that the out-
ing of high-profile figures, particularly those in the sporting world, has
frequently been positioned as a ‘confession [and] apology.’ Tabloid news-
12 R. Magrath

papers’ role in exposing footballer Justin Fashanu’s sexuality in 1990

involved the largely negative presentation of homosexuality—including
damning interviews with members of his own family (Gaston et al. 2018).
However, as numerous scholars have shown in recent work, progres-
sive attitudes toward sexual minorities are now seemingly commonplace
within members of the sports media. Most notably, Kian, Anderson,
Vincent and Murray (2015) show how US sports journalists are increas-
ingly inclusive of homosexuality—indicating their willingness to work
with a gay journalist. My forthcoming research also shows that openly
gay male sports journalists in the UK and US are also acknowledging
increasingly positive working environments.
Further evidencing this, Kian and Anderson (2009) and Kian,
Anderson, and Shipka (2015) show how the American sports media posi-
tively discussed the presence of homosexuality in the NBA—following
the coming out of former athletes John Amaechi (2007) and Jason Collins
(2013) (see also Billings et al. 2015; c.f. Hardin et al. 2009). Luisi, Luisi
and Geana (2016) found broadly similar positivity in their analysis of
NFL athlete Michael Sam’s coming out in 2014 (see also Cassidy 2017b).
In July 2018, the coming out of MLS player, Collin Martin, saw him
positively represented in the sports media, too. He even received a stand-
ing ovation in his first playing appearance after coming out.
In British sport, similar acceptance of openly gay male athletes is also
evident. Indeed, Cleland (2014) shows that, in the period immediately after
Anton Hysén’s coming out in 2011, several media articles were published in
the print media praising his decision to come out—and which challenged
the perception of continued homophobia in sport. Schallhorn and Hempel
(2017) document similar findings in their analysis of the German print
media after their native Thomas Hitzlsperger came out in 2014.
Magrath, Cleland and Anderson (2017) document almost unanimous
media support for British diver Tom Daley after he revealed he was dat-
ing a man. However, their analysis also revealed a process they termed as
bisexual erasure; that is, a failure by the media to acknowledge the broad,
bisexual tendencies evident in Daley’s coming out announcement.6 This

6
I note here that Tom Daley may now identify as a gay man. However, Daley’s refusal to identify
under the LGBT acronym when he first made his announcement cast uncertainty as to his sexual
orientation.
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 13

is also consistent with the broader notion of bisexual burden, a concept

which represents the myriad of problems that bisexuals face beyond those
experienced by gay men and lesbians (see Anderson and McCormack
2016). However, this hypothesis cannot yet be tested further, as Magrath,
Cleland and Anderson’s (2017) work remains the only media analysis of
a bisexual athlete—male or female—though I note Ogilvie and
McCormack’s important contribution to this knowledge base in this
edited collection (see Chap. 9).
In comparison to gay male athletes, however, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgender athletes have received limited academic attention. The sport
media’s attention of female athletes, for example, has frequently consisted
of their ‘heterosexual credentials…including dating practices, marital sta-
tus, or managing their sport and their children’ (Krane and Barber 2003,
p. 328). In specific discussions on lesbian athletes, Plymire and Forman
(2000, p. 147) document ways in which there is a ‘code of silence’—
something addressed by Bullingham and Postlethwaite in Chap. 3 of this
collection. Other research outlines the suspicion of lesbianism which fre-
quently besets women’s sports (e.g. Chawansky and Francombe 2011;
Plymire and Forman 2001). Interestingly, however, despite the high
number of openly lesbian professional athletes, there is no published
research which focuses, directly, on media responses to a lesbian coming
out of the closet.
Similarly, research on transgender involvement in sport is also
restricted; seminal work has focused primarily on improvements of trans-
gender inclusion and policy implications (see Anderson and Travers
2017). Only Magrath’s (2017d) analysis of the first transgender person to
work in the English Premier League—AFC Bournemouth’s photogra-
pher Sophie Cook—and Pieper’s (2015) overview of Christine Daniels, a
transgender sportswriter, has provided insight into the sport media’s
framing of transgender issues.
Finally, as the above examples illustrate, the attention of LGBT ath-
letes by the sports media has been far from equal. But as LGBT stories
increase in their frequency, so too does the readership. For instance, when
Southampton FC’s former Player Liaison Officer Hugo Schekter
announced he was gay in a story with The Times, it was the ‘most read’
14 R. Magrath

story on the newspaper’s sport’s website during that week. Similarly, when
English football referee Ryan Atkin came out in 2017, his was the ‘most
read’ story on Sky Sports’ website, as well as both the Daily Mail’s and
Daily Mirror’s. This was particularly interesting given his announcement
was at a time when sports news is normally dominated by transfers and
the start of the new winter sports season.
Thus, in contrast to frequent claims querying the importance of sex-
ual minorities, this is clear evidence that LGBT athletes’ stories are
important and do matter. This book therefore fills the relative academic
void of LGBT athletes’ experiences in the sports media—and is the first
to do so.

About the Book

As the earlier section of this chapter acknowledges, academic study of the
sports media has a long and distinguished history (Boyle and Haynes
2009; Kennedy and Hills 2015; Raney and Bryant 2009; Wenner and
Billings 2017). This work has examined how relations between sport and
media have evolved from one of deep-rooted cynicism to one of almost
absolute dependence (Bernstein and Blain 2003).
But this book—and the chapters within it—offers a new way of think-
ing about the sports media. While the experiences of LGBT athletes in
the sports media have received academic attention, this remains fairly
limited and the field is in its infancy. Billings and Moscowitz’s (2018)
recent text, Media and the Coming Out of Gay Male Athletes in American
Team Sports, has provided an excellent starting point for research on sexu-
ality and the media. However, never before has there been a text dedi-
cated to the experiences of the LGBT community in the sports media.
This book thus builds upon existing academic work on sports media,
tying together several themes and issues related to sport, sexuality, and
the sports media.
In doing so, the target audience of this book has a deliberately wide
focus. The recent explosion of UK and US higher education courses
related to sports journalism and sports media, in addition to already well-­
 LGBT Athletes, Changing Social Contexts, and the ‘Sports Media’ 15

established subjects like sociology, media and communication studies

(and any sport-specific variants, like football), and even criminology,
means that the book should be recognized as offering an interdisciplinary
focus to the experiences of LGBT athletes in the sports media.
While the book is primarily aimed at an academic audience, the argu-
ments within it are generally presented in an accessible manner. Like
many other scholars, I eschew inaccessible and unintelligible jargon, dis-
guised as academic work. Instead, as evidenced in my previous works
(Anderson et al. 2016; Magrath 2017a), I am an advocate of public soci-
ology (Burawoy 2005). The contributors of chapters in this book also
reflect this approach.
It is also important to acknowledge at this point that this work is
restricted to investigating LGBT athletes in the sports media—in the
West. Earlier in this chapter, I outlined how sport and society have
become increasingly acceptant and inclusive of sexual minorities. But
declining cultural homophobia is an uneven social process (Smith et al.
2014), and can vary according to numerous factors—such as ethnicity,
social class, religion, nationality, and geographical location (Magrath
2017a). Indeed, improved cultural attitudes are not a global trend. The
recent spike of homophobia and hate crimes against LGBT people in
South Africa is a recent example of this, and homosexuality remains ille-
gal in 37 (of 53) Commonwealth countries (something which Tom
Daley’s comments following the conclusion of the 2018 Commonwealth
Games resulted in some political discussions).
Elsewhere, research documented the negative influence of Islam on the
acceptance of LGBT people in Tunisia (Hamdi et al. 2017). Thus, while
matters have improved (and continue to do so) for the LGBT commu-
nity in the West, such examples illustrate the persistent intolerance of
homosexuality—and LGBT rights—in many non-Western states across
the world (see also Smith et al. 2014; ILGA-Europe 2018). This is par-
ticularly evident in the sporting world.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, for example, saw an attack on
gay fans, while the Mexico Football Federation were fined and threatened
with expulsion for their fans’ continued use of the word ‘Puto’ (see
Rodriguez 2017). The previous year saw Russian politicians’ claims that
football game, FIFA 17, should be banned in the country due to its illegal
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 This manner of asceticism is not particularly common nowadays,
and we need not fear that it will be too generally practiced. I am
calling attention to it in order to show that selfishness may take on
the mask of purity or of respectability, a selfishness that springs from
pure moral motives and a longing for the elevation of character.
But there is another type of respectable selfishness that is far
more common, possibly more common in America than in any other
country. It is not usually recognised as selfishness, but regarded as
one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—of the virtues. It is seen
chiefly among earnest and ambitious young men, who assume that
life is not a holiday, but a serious affair, a struggle, a strictly
competitive race, where if you stop a moment, even for reflexion, you
are left behind.
We are bound to respect these men. They have at all events
found out half the secret of life. They have set before themselves
some goal, in politics, in business, in literature, and they are
determined to reach it. They are equally determined to gain the prize
by no dishonourable means. Their minds are full of the lessons
learned from their predecessors, men who by the sacrifice of
temporary pleasures, by the refusal to indulge in recreation or
relaxation, have surpassed their competitors and reached the top.
We are constantly told that it is only by intense concentration, by
terrific efforts day and night, and by keeping the end constantly in
view that one can attain success. Surely these young men are to be
admired, surely they are models, examples worthy of emulation?
Well, they are better than criminals, they are better than
parasites, they are better than drones. But their driving motive is
selfishness. Tennyson wrote The Palace of Art, Browning wrote
Paracelsus, because each of these poets knew that his individual
danger was not what is usually known as “temptation.” They knew
that they would never go to hell by the crowded highway of
dissipation, for they were above the mere call of the blood. Their
danger lay in a high and noble ambition, which has wrecked many
first-rate minds.
 Modern life tends to encourage this respectable selfishness. The
central law of the so-called science of Economics is selfishness. A
whole science is built on one foundation—that every man in the
world will get all he can for himself. The subject is naturally studied
not from an ethical, but from a scientific standpoint. Life is a race.
Now I believe that Efficiency—mere practical success in the
world—is as false an ideal as asceticism. If the morality of
withdrawal is not good enough, neither is the morality of success.
Those deserve the highest admiration and the most profound
respect who have actually aided their human brethren, who have left
the world better than they found it.
This is by no means a hopeless ideal of character. It is not
necessary to crush a tyrant or to organise a revolution or to
reconstruct society or to be a professional reformer. There are plenty
of professional reformers who have tremendous enthusiasm for
humanity and who have never helped an individual. Those who by
unselfish lives and consideration for others elevate the tone of the
community in which they live and who by their presence make others
happier, these are the salt of the earth. Their daily existence is more
eloquent than a sermon.
American young men and women in our High Schools and
universities are not often face to face with the mystery of life. They
have no conception of the amount of suffering in the world. Their
own lives are comparatively free from it, in many cases free even
from anxiety. These boys and girls are for the most part sensible,
alert, quick-witted, and practical; what I should like to see would be a
change in their ideals from mere Success to something nobler. I
should like to see them devoting their intelligence and energy to the
alleviation of suffering and to the elevation of human thought and life.
If one still believes that the highest happiness and satisfaction
come from the attainment of any selfish ambition, no matter how
worthy in itself, it is well to remember the significance of the fact that
Goethe, acknowledged to be one of the wisest of men, made Faust
happy only when he was unselfishly interested in the welfare of
others; and to remember that Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the
shrewdest of all shrewd Americans, found the greatest pleasure of
his long life in two things—public service and individual acts of
kindness.
 XX
BIRDS AND STATESMEN

When, in the Spring of 1910, Theodore Roosevelt was on his

way to England from his African explorations, he wrote a strange
letter to the British Foreign Office in London. I call it a strange letter,
because it is the kind of epistle one would not expect to be sent by
an ex-executive of one country to the Foreign Office of another. He
wrote that during his stay in England he would like to make an
excursion into the woods, hear the English songbirds and learn their
names; in order that he might do this satisfactorily and intelligently,
would the Foreign Office please select some naturalist who knew the
note of every bird in England and request him to accompany Mr.
Roosevelt on this expedition?
Well, the head of the British Foreign Office was Sir Edward Grey
and he himself knew the note of every singing bird in England—a
remarkable accomplishment for one of the busiest statesmen in the
world. He therefore appointed himself as bird-guide for the ex-
President of the United States.
The two distinguished men stood on a railway platform one day
in May and were surrounded by reporters, who supposed that a new
world-problem of the first magnitude was on the carpet. But the two
men told the reporters that they were going away into the country for
two days, did not wish to be disturbed, and asked the journalists to
leave them alone. Accordingly, it was generally believed that
Roosevelt and Grey were absorbed in the discussion of international
affairs, and as the great war broke out a few years later, some went
so far as to believe then that it had its origin in this sinister interview.
 Now, as a matter of fact, the two men did not mention either war
or politics; they went a-walking in the New Forest and every time
they heard the voice of a bird, Grey told Roosevelt the singer’s
name. They both agreed (and so do I) that the English blackbird is
the best soloist in Great Britain.
It is a curious fact that the four most famous birds in English
literature are none of them native in America. The Big Four are the
Nightingale, the Skylark, the Blackbird and the Cuckoo. From
Chaucer to Kipling the British poets have chanted the praise of the
Nightingale. And of all the verses in his honour, it is perhaps the
tribute by Keats that is most worthy of the theme.

Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oftimes hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

We never had nightingales in the United States until Edward W.

Bok imported them into his Bird Paradise in Florida. Previous
attempts to bring them over had failed; the birds invariably died.
Some investigators declared that this tragedy was owing to the
change of diet; but of course the real reason for their death was
American poetry. After the nightingales had listened for centuries to
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, etc., the change
to the level of American verse was too much for them, and they died
of shock.
The English skylark leaves the grass and soars aloft, singing his
heart out, so that after he has disappeared in the sky, we hear his
voice coming down out of the blue, like a revelation. One of the
poets calls it a “sightless song.”
Shakespeare sends the skylark to the gate of heaven.
And Shelley’s poem on the skylark expresses the ethereal nature
of the soaring voice of this bird:

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and
Soaring ever singest.

American blackbirds do not sing well; the so-called crow-

blackbird, so common in flocks in autumn, makes a noise like
tonsillitis, or as if he had a boy’s voice in process of changing, or as
if he were a hinge that needed oiling. Our redwing blackbird, with his
scarlet epaulets, has a good-natured and perky wheeze, which can
hardly be called singing. But the English and Continental blackbird
pours out of his throat the most heavenly melody. One Winter day in
Munich, in the midst of a snowstorm, I saw a blackbird perched on a
tree directly in front of the University building. He was “hove to,” that
is, he had his beak turned directly into the wind, and as the
snowflakes beat against his little face, he sent straight into the gale
the loveliest music. Tennyson has observed how the voice of the
blackbird loses its beauty in the hot Summer days.

A golden bill! the silver tongue,

Cold February loved, is dry:
Plenty corrupts the melody
That made thee famous once, when young;
 And in the sultry garden-squares,
Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse,
I hear thee not at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares.

The nearest we Americans can get to the English cuckoo is the

abominable cuckoo clock. The voice of the English cuckoo sounds
exactly like the clock, only of course you can’t train him to strike
right. In addition to his regular accomplishment, he is a ventriloquist
and can throw his voice a tremendous distance. One day, crossing a
field in Sussex, I heard the loud double note of the cuckoo,
apparently directly behind me. He was in reality a furlong away.
Wordsworth says:

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Concerning the all too common crimes of shooting, snaring, and

eating little singing birds, the English poet, Ralph Hodgson, has
expressed himself in words that ought to be everywhere read:

I saw with open eyes

Singing birds sweet
Sold in the shops
For the people to eat,
Sold in the shops of
Stupidity Street.

I saw in a vision
The worm in the wheat
And in the shops nothing
For people to eat:
Nothing for sale in
Stupidity Street.
 XXI
RUSSIA BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

The best way to invade Russia is by sea; and I advise those who
plan to visit the Soviet Republic to go via Stockholm. Copenhagen,
Christiania, Stockholm are three interesting cities and should be
seen in that order. Stockholm, the “Venice of the North,” is one of the
most beautiful, most picturesque, and most attractive places in the
world.
It is surprising that the short sea voyage from Stockholm to Saint
Petersburg (now Leningrad) is not better known; it is enchantingly
beautiful. We left Stockholm at six o’clock in the evening of a fine
September day, and as our tiny steamer drew away, the sunset light
over the fair city hung a new picture on the walls of my mind. It took
some five hours to reach the Baltic, five hours of constantly changing
scenery, one view melting into another like a succession of
dissolving panoramas. Hundreds of miniature islands dotted with
châteaux and country houses; winking lighthouse towers; “the grey
sea and the long black land.”
An impossible half-moon lent the last touch of glory to the scene.
We stood on the top deck and beheld the spacious firmament on
high, thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; while the long level light
of the crazy moon fell across the darkening water and the myriad
islands.
In the middle of the night we crossed the Baltic, and in the
whitening dawn entered the gulf of Finland. The air was nipping and
eager, but the sun rose in a cloudless sky. All day long the steamer
nosed her way through the blue sea, twisting and turning among the
countless points of the earth’s surface that were just able to keep
their heads above water. A few of these were covered with green
grass, and supported white farm buildings where laughing children
accompanied by dignified dogs ran out to see our transit; but for the
most part these elevations were bald, with a tall lighthouse as sole
decoration.
At five in the afternoon we reached Helsingfors (still my farthest
north) and stepped ashore to spend six hours in seeing the town, the
boat not proceeding toward Russia until late in the night. The
clouded sky was low and harsh the next morning, and the sea was
surly. Toward noon it cleared, and early in the afternoon we saw the
gilded domes and spires of Holy Russia. After a long delay with
passports, we drove across one of the bridges over the Neva to our
hotel at a corner of the Nevski Prospekt. Although it was only
September, the temperature was under fifty, and seemed colder.
I had a severe cold, which had its origin in a chill I had caught in
rashly touching a piece of toast that a waiter brought me in a London
hotel. But I was right in style. Accustomed as I was to see on the
streets of any American city the healthy, cheerful, well-clad and well-
shod men and women, I was appalled by the faces and the clothes
of the Russians. What they look like today I know not, but a more
unhappy looking crowd than I saw every day on the streets of
Russian cities I have never seen outside of pictures of Hell. Many of
the people had their ears and mouths bandaged and on their feet
were (if they could afford it) enormous knee-boots. All seemed to be
suffering from the foot and mouth disease.
Never shall I forget the boots and overcoats and uniforms on the
Nevski Prospekt. The question of leg-clothes would have interested
the author of Sartor Resartus. In Edinburgh all the men and some of
the women wore knickers, with stockings that seemed an inch thick.
Compared with Europeans, Americans are tropically clad. In order to
avoid the glare of publicity, I bought in Scotland a homespun golf
suit.
I tried these abbreviated trousers just once on the Nevski
Prospekt. Everybody stopped to stare. Had I worn a flowing purple
robe, I should not have attracted such attention. Military officers
gazed at me in cold amazement, as though I had leprosy; while the
more naïve passers made audible comment, which fortunately I
could not translate. Then I tried the experiment of conventional
clothing, but wore low shoes. Everyone gazed at my feet, some in
wonder, some in admiration, some in terror. I felt as I did many years
ago when I wore a striped cap in Brussels. A stranger looked at me
earnestly and then said in an almost reverent tone, and he said it
three times: Nom de Dieu!
In America our citizens show much the same interest in strange
clothing. Professor E. B. Wilson, a distinguished mathematician,
bought a suit of clothes in Paris. He wore it only once in America. A
citizen gazed at him steadfastly, and said “J——!”
The faces of the common people in Russian cities were sad to
behold, whether one saw them on the street or in church. Not only
was there no hilarity, such as one sees everywhere in American
towns; those faces indicated a total lack of illuminating intelligence.
They were blank, dull, apathetic, helpless. Gorki said that the people
in Russia had so little to look forward to that they were glad when
their own houses burned down, as it made a break in the dull routine
of life.
One afternoon I walked the entire length of the Nevski Prospekt,
no mean achievement in a heavy overcoat. I began at the banks of
the restless, blustering Neva, passed the extraordinary statue of
Peter the Great, came through the garden by the statue of Gogol,
and with the thin gold spire of the Admiralty at my back, entered the
long avenue.
I followed the immense extension of the Nevski, clear to the
cemetery, and stood reverently before the tomb of Dostoevski. Here
in January, 1881, the body of the great novelist was laid in the grave,
in the presence of forty thousand mourners.
In a corner of the enclosure I found the tomb of the composer
Chaikovski; I gazed on the last resting-place of Glinka, father of
Russian music. On account of the marshy soil, the graves are built
above instead of below the surface of the ground, exactly as they are
in New Orleans. It is in reality a city of the dead, the only place
where a Russian finds peace. I passed out on the other side of the
cemetery, walked through the grounds of the convent, and found
myself abruptly clear from the city, on the edge of a vast plain.
 XXII
THE DEVIL

It is rather a pity that the Devil has vanished with Santa Claus
and other delectable myths; the universe is more theatrical with a
“personal devil” roaming at large, seeking whom he may devour. In
the book of Job the Devil played the part of the return of the native,
coming along in the best society in the cosmos to appear before the
Presence. And when he was asked where he came from, he replied
in a devilishly debonair manner, “From going to and fro in the earth,
and from walking up and down in it.”
There are so many things in this world that seem to be the
Devil’s handiwork, and there are so many people who look like the
devil, that it seems as if he could not be extinct. His chief service to
the universal scene was to keep virtue from becoming monotonous;
to warn even saints that they must mind their step; to prove that
eternal vigilance is the price of safety. The Enemy of Mankind never
took a holiday. Homer might nod, but not he. In fact, on human
holidays he was, if possible, unusually efficient. The idleness of man
was the opportunity of Satan.
The principle of evil is so active, so tireless, so penetrating that
the simplest way to account for it is to suppose that men and things
receive constantly the personal attention of the Devil. Weeds, and
not vegetables, grow naturally; illness, not health, is contagious;
children and day-labourers are not instinctively industrious;
champagne tastes better than cocoa.
Throughout the Middle Ages, although every one believed
steadfastly in the reality of the Devil and that he was the most
unscrupulous of all foes, there was a certain friendliness with him,
born, I suppose, of daily intimacy. It was like the way in which hostile
sentries will hobnob with one another, swap tobacco, etc., in the less
tense moments of war. The Devil was always just around the corner
and would be glad of an invitation to drop in.
Thus in the mediæval mystery plays, the forerunners of our
modern theatres, the Devil was always the Clown. He supplied
“comic relief” and was usually the most popular personage in the
performance. He appeared in the conventional makeup, a horrible
mask, horns, cloven hoofs and prehensile tail, with smoke issuing
from mouth, ears and posterior. He did all kinds of acrobatic feats,
and his appearance was greeted with shouts of joy. In front of that
part of the stage representing Hellmouth he was sometimes
accompanied with “damned souls,” persons wearing black tights with
yellow stripes. On an examination at Yale I set the question,
“Describe the costume of the characters in the mystery plays.” One
of the students wrote: “The damned souls wore Princeton colours.”
The modern circus clown comes straight from the Devil. When
you see him stumble and fall all over himself, whirl his cap aloft and
catch it on his head, distract the attention of the spectators away
from the gymnasts to his own antics, he is doing exactly what his
ancestor the Devil did in the mediæval plays.
It is at first thought singular that those audiences, who believed
implicitly in a literal hell of burning flame, should have taken the Devil
as the chief comic character. I suppose the only way to account for
this is to remember how essential a feature of romantic art is the
element of the grotesque, which is a mingling of horror and humour,
like our modern spook plays. If you pretend that you are a hobgoblin
and chase a child, the child will flee in real terror, but the moment
you stop, the child will say, “Do that again.”
There are many legends of compacts with the Devil, where some
individual has sold his soul to gain the whole world. The most
famous of these stories is, of course, Faust, but there are
innumerable others. Here is a story I read in an American magazine
some fifty years ago.
 A man, threatened with financial ruin, was sitting in his library
when the maid brought in a visiting card and announced that a
gentleman would like to be admitted. On the card was engraved
Mr. Apollo Lyon.
As the man looked at it his eyes blurred, the two words ran
together, so they seemed to form the one word
Apollyon.
The gentleman was shown in; he was exquisitely dressed and
was evidently a suave man of the world. He proposed that the one
receiving him should have prosperity and happiness for twenty
years. Then Mr. Lyon would call again and be asked three questions.
If he failed to answer any of the three the man should keep his
wealth and prosperity. If all three were correctly answered the man
must accompany Mr. Lyon.
The terms were accepted; all went well for twenty years. At the
appointed time appeared Mr. Lyon, who had not aged in the least; he
was the same smiling, polished gentleman. He was asked a question
that had floored all the theologians. Mr. Lyon answered it without
hesitation. The second question had stumped all the philosophers,
but it had no difficulties for Mr. Lyon.
Then there was a pause, and the sweat stood out on the
questioner’s face. At that moment his wife came in from shopping.
She was rosy and cheerful. After being introduced to Mr. Lyon she
noticed her husband was nervous. He denied this, but said that he
and Mr. Lyon were playing a little game of three questions and he did
not want to lose. She asked permission to put the third question and
in desperation her husband consented. She held out her new hat
and asked: “Mr. Lyon, which is the front end of this hat?” Mr. Lyon
turned it around and around, and then with a strange exclamation
went straight through the ceiling, leaving behind him a strong smell
of sulphur.
 XXIII
THE FORSYTE SAGA

It is impossible to say what books of our time will be read at the

close of this century; it is probable that many of the poems and tales
of Kipling, the lyrics of Housman, dramatic narratives by Masefield,
some plays by Shaw and Barrie, will for a long time survive their
authors.
Among the novels, I do not know of any that has or ought to
have a better chance for the future than the books written about the
family of the Forsytes by John Galsworthy. They at present hold
about the same place in contemporary English literature as is held in
France by Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe. Both are works of
great length which reflect with remarkable accuracy the political,
social, commercial, artistic life and activity of the twentieth century,
the one in England, the other on the Continent.
Entirely apart from their appeal as good novels, that is to say,
apart from one’s natural interest in the plot and in the characters,
both are social documents of great value. If the future historian
wishes to know English and Continental society in the first quarter of
the twentieth century, he will do well to give attention and reflexion to
these two works of “fiction.”
John Galsworthy was just under forty when in 1906 he published
a novel called The Man of Property. He had produced very little
before this, but it took no especial critical penetration to discover that
the new book was a masterpiece. The family of the Forsytes bore a
striking resemblance to one another in basic traits and ways of
thinking, yet each was sharply individualised. A new group of
persons had been added to British fiction. The word “Property,” as in
Tennyson’s Northern Farmer, was the keynote, and before long it
began to appear that one of the most dramatic of contrasts was to be
used as the subject. This is the struggle between the idea of
Property and the idea of Beauty—between the commercial,
acquisitive temperament and the more detached, but equally
passionate artistic temperament.
Even in the pursuit of beauty Mr. Soames Forsyte never forgot
the idea of property. He was a first-class business man in the city,
but he was also an expert judge of paintings, which he added to his
collection. Oil and canvas do not completely satisfy any healthy
business man; so Soames added to his collection, as the
masterpiece in his gallery, an exquisitely beautiful woman whom he
made his wife.
The philosophy of love comes in here. What is love? Is it
exclusively the idea of possession, which often is no more dignified
than the predatory instinct or is it the unalloyed wish that the object
of one’s love should be as happy and secure as possible? No one
can truly and sincerely love Beauty either in the abstract or in the
concrete if one’s eyes are clouded by predatory desire. One must
look at beauty without the wish to possess it if one is really to
appreciate beauty. A first-class French chef would look into the big
front window of a confectioner’s shop and fully appreciate the art and
taste that created those delectable edibles; but a hungry boy who
looked at the same objects would not appreciate them critically at all.
The wife of Soames finds him odious, so odious that we cannot
altogether acquit her of guilt in marrying him; and Soames, who as a
Man of Property expected her to fulfill her contract, did not make
himself more physically attractive by insisting on his rights. She left
him for a man of exactly the opposite temperament.
When Mr. Galsworthy finished this fine novel, he had no intention
of going on with the history of the family. He wrote many other novels
and some remarkable plays, but nothing made the impression on
readers that had been produced by the Forsyte family. Nearly twenty
years later he returned to the theme, and at once his power as a
novelist seemed to rise; there is something in this family that calls
out his highest powers. When he discovered that he had written five
works of fiction on the Forsytes, three long novels and two short
stories, of which the brief interlude called Indian Summer of a
Forsyte is an impeccable and I hope imperishable work of art, he hit
upon the happy idea of assembling them into one prose epic, and
calling the whole thing by the ironical title of The Forsyte Saga. It is
my belief that for many years to come the name of John Galsworthy
will be associated with this work, in what I fervently hope will be its
expanded form.
For since the assembling of the five pieces Mr. Galsworthy has
published several other novels dealing with the family—The White
Monkey, The Silver Spoon and in 1928 he wrote FINIS with Swan
Song. Here he kills Soames, and while he probably does not feel
quite so sad as Thackeray felt when he killed Colonel Newcome, I
venture to say that he does not gaze on the corpse of Soames with
indifferent eyes. For to my mind the most interesting single feature of
this whole mighty epic is the development of the character of this
man.
Clyde Fitch used to say something that is no doubt true of many
works of the imagination; he said that he would carefully plan a play,
write his first act, and definitely decide what the leading characters
should say and do in the subsequent portions of the work. Then
these provokingly independent characters seemed to acquire, not
only an independent existence, but a power of will so strong that
they insisted on doing and saying all kinds of things which he tried in
vain to prevent.
In The Man of Property Soames Forsyte is a repulsive character;
he is hated by his wife, by the reader, and by the author. But in these
later books Soames becomes almost an admirable person, and we
may say of him at the end in reviewing his life, that nothing became
him like the leaving of it—for he died nobly. Long before this
catastrophe, however, we have learned to admire, respect, and
almost to love Soames. Is it possible that Mr. Galsworthy had any
notion of this spiritual progress when he wrote The Man of Property,
or is it that in living so long with Soames he began to see his good
points?
 Dickens was a master in this kind of development. When we first
meet Mr. Pickwick, he seems like the president of a service club as
conceived by Sinclair Lewis; he is the butt of the whole company.
Later Mr. Pickwick develops into a noble and magnanimous
gentleman, whom every right-minded person loves. Look at Dick
Swiveller—when we first see him, he is no more than a guttersnipe.
He develops into a true knight.
 XXIV
PROFESSION AND PRACTICE

Beautiful lines which show that the man who wrote them had a
clear conception of true religion are these:

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,

And even his failings leaned to virtue’s side;
But in his duty prompt at every call,
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

The man who wrote them is thus described by James Boswell:

“Those who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so
ridiculous an excess that the instances of it are hardly credible.
When accompanying two beautiful young ladies with their mother on
a tour of France, he was seriously angry that more attention was
paid to them than to him.” Goldsmith wrote of virtue, modesty, sweet
unselfishness in the most convincing manner; his words were more
convincing than his behaviour. He allured to brighter worlds, but did
not lead the way.
Schopenhauer, the great philosopher of pessimism, taught that
absolute asceticism was the only true religion and method of escape
from the ills of life; but he never practiced it, and told his disciples to
mind his precepts and not his example. Unfortunately, whenever any
one gives advice in the field of morality or religion, the first person on