Dan Palmer

[Braveheart81]

Boys and young men, particularly in sporting teams and private schools have been pretty macho and homophobic forever. It's no surprise that this is still a major issue for gay men trying to come to grips with their sexuality and worried that they won't be accepted for who they are.

Most of the people in these environments would say they don't care about someone's sexuality and are accepting of gay people but that is something that is a separate environment and not part of their team/group of friends so the concept of someone within that group being gay is foreign and understandable that a gay man doesn't feel like they could come out in that environment and still be accepted.

 

[Uh huh]

There were plenty of people in Sydney against both gay marriage and in support of IF, as examples.

But, yeah, as a general rule i think Sydney is pretty accepting.

Of the ten electorates with the highest 'no' vote in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, eight were in Greater Sydney.

 

[qwerty51]

Of the ten electorates with the highest 'no' vote in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, eight were in Greater Sydney.

Western Sydney.

 

[Adam84]

Possible, I just see the gay culture in Sydney and no one cares

I remember some of your comments from the Israel Folau controversy, and I suspect part of the reason you don’t see it is that you don’t actually relate what is offensive, negative or discriminatory towards the LGBTI community.

 

[Pass it to Dunning!]

I suspect there's a big gap in accepting something as okay in others, and accepting it as okay for yourself. A lot of people have no problem with gay people, but don't want to be gay themselves.

 

[fatprop]

I remember some of your comments from the Israel Folau controversy, and I suspect part of the reason you don’t see it is that you don’t actually relate what is offensive, negative or discriminatory towards the LGBTI community.

Possibly, but it is also quite possible that the gay people I deal with, and are good friends with, just don't feel discriminated against anymore and didn't know or care who IF was or says

 

[Adam84]

Possibly, but it is also quite possible that the gay people I deal with, and are good friends with, just don't feel discriminated against anymore and didn't know or care who IF was or says

If this is the case, surely you acknowledge that this very small sample size of your friends does not represent the rest of Sydney or Australia, and comments like “no one cares” about or discriminates against the LGBTI community any more are misleading given you’re basing that off a few gay friends you have.

There are enormous pressures on gay people coming out, because regardless of what people say about other not caring, discrimination exists and it is still represented as an exception to the norm in large parts of society. To say your’e amazed he felt pressure actually amazes me, how can you not grasp the enormity of someone coming out, even today where it is more widely accepted.

 

[Ignoto]

A lot comes from his own perceptions, as he says, which are created from the environment he grew up in. By that I don't mean his family but more the overall Australian culture. I wonder if it's going to be any easier with a kid growing up now, attitudes have changed a lot in the last twenty years. Sure, there will always be bigots, but I guess I'm talking about mainstream Australia. I mean, every rural electorate in NSW voted in favour of gay marriage, no way in the world would that have been the case in the 80's.

Social Media has actually made certain aspects of being a child worse than what it was like for kids growing up pre-smart phones. For young girls, Instagram is extremely detrimental to their mental health as they're impressionable, the 'snap shot' of one leading a 'glamorous' life combined with how easy it is to edit pictures leads to eating disorders and mental illness.

I can't speak for what it's like as a young LGBT growing up now or in the past, but social media creates a massive echo chamber. Twitter and Youtube/Twitch (which a lot of young kids watch) is full of hate and its easy to only see negative aspects of life.

So, while society has definitely become more accepting of those with different sexuality, the interconnectedness and anonymity of the world has made it worse for some growing up.

Roughly 3% of Men in Australia see themselves as homosexual. So simple statistics would say, in the 44 man squad, there is 1-2 players who may be gay. Expanding that out to our Super Teams of 34 man squads, there's at a minimum 170 players. That's roughly 5-6 blokes who may be gay. That doesn't include coaches or the extended playing squads.

So is the problem, the environment Dan grew up in, or the environment our society puts our players in? When you look at it from a distance with how 'few' blokes in Australian Rugby that have said they're gay, it's a long bow to draw that its just Dan's environment.

 

[TSR]

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...ne-discovering-i-was-gay-20201029-p569os.html

Thanks for sharing Slim

 

[Froggy]

Ignoto, I take your points about social media absolutely. When I spoke about the environment he grew up in, I was not talking about his specifically but the entire Australian culture anyone his age grew up in. My question was (and it was a question, not a statement) will it be easier for a gay kid born, say, post 2005 than it was for a kid Dan's age, born in the mid 80's. I just look at my friends and the people I work with, and I see a dramatic change in attitudes over the last 20 years.

I was born in 1955, and the attitude to homosexuality when I was growing up was horrific (and I was probably just as bad as any of them). Now I get quite angry if someone slags off at gays. Happily, we as a society and a lot of us individually have the capacity for change and growth.

 

[Tex]

I can only reflect on my experiences of male sports and schools and the homophobia in them, which Dan touches on in his article. He talks about the slurs and insults being homophobic; not in them being directed at a gay man, but words like 'fag' and 'gay' being used as pejoratives, interchangeably with 'idiot', 'fuckwit' and 'dick head'.

A friend of mine came out last year in his mid-30s. He went through a private school in Sydney, one of the rugby nurseries, and said the environment and language was the same as what I experienced (and participated in) in Melbourne. He often reflects on how he had internalised a type of homophobia, in-part due to his experiences at school where it was clear to him that being queer was clearly less valuable in the social hierarchy.

Rugby is in an interesting place when it comes to its social values. How it balances the views of its progressive leaders, its conservative commentators and adjacent stakeholders (e.g. Farr Jones, Alan Jones etc.) and those of the large cohort of Polynesian players and their communities, many of whom share a christian faith (and its less enlightened views on homosexuality) is a real tightrope act.

 

[Forcefield]

Really enjoyed reading some of the posts on this thread. Glad it is something we can chat about.

 

[The Honey Badger]

Good article, very well written. he is obviously very clever as well. Undertaking a PHD

Clearly a very tough thing for an individual or family to go through.

 

[wamberal]

Really enjoyed reading some of the posts on this thread. Glad it is something we can chat about.

We have come a long way in a relatively short period of time - although Dan's journey was very recent. So things are still not where they should be.

 

[Quick Hands]

Western Sydney.

In seats which ironically return hard left Labour members, with high non-anglo demographics in which most people have probably never even heard of rugby.

The seats which cover the rugby heartland in Sydney were overwhelmingly in favour; Wentworth, Warringah, North Sydney, etc.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-15/same-sex-marriage-results-ssm/9145636?nw=0