UWF Sexuality & Gender Resource Center

Intended to provide queer and ally athletes a space to have a voice and share the experiences that have been significant in their identity as an athletic member of the LGBT+ community. To that end, this book is a collection of autobiographical short stories of LGBT+ athletes and their experiences in sports and athletics, some who are publicly out and some who are not. Based on the narratives collected, the book is organized around themes that illustrate various perspectives and the power that sport can play in 1) finding one's true identity, 2) bridging communities, and 3) challenging gender norm stereotypes. The goal of this book is to help change the expectations of what it means to be a successful athlete and promote greater inclusivity of LGBT athletes. Providing the space for these voices to be heard will help to pave the way for a non-discriminating sporting environment, allow LGBT+ athletes to focus on their given sport without any distractions, and enable these athletes to live an authentic life without having to hide their true identity.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are likely to feature the first transgender athlete, a topic that will be highly contentious during the competition. But transgender and intersex athletes such as Laurel Hubbard, Tifanny Abreu, and Caster Semenya didn't just turn up overnight. Both intersex and transgender athletes have been newsworthy stories for decades. Sporting Gender gives the reader a perspective that is both broad in scope and yet detailed enough to grasp the nuances that are central in understanding the controversies over intersex and transgender athletes. Featuring personal investigations from the author, who has had first-person access to some of the most significant recent developments in this complex arena, this book provides fascinating insight into sex, gender, and sports.

Outsports co-founder Cyd Zeigler tells the story of how sport has been radically transformed for LGBT athletes in the past four years. When Cyd Zeigler started writing about LGBT sports issues in 1999, no one wanted to talk about them. Today, this is a central conversation in American society that reverberates throughout the sports world and beyond. As a key figure in the LGBT sports movement, Zeigler tells the story of how sports have transformed for LGBT athletes, diving into key moments and issues that have shaped sports for LGBT people today.

Mark Tewksbury is best known as a gold-medal-winning Olympic swimmer. His remarkable sixteen-year athletic career included three Olympic medals, numerous world records, and inductions into three major halls of fame: the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Although retired as an athlete, Tewksbury remains a highly respected public figure. He delivered prized swimming analysis for the CBC from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, hosts the Discovery Channel's popular How It's Made show, and is Co-President of the first World Outgames, Montreal 2006. Tewksbury has spoken to millions as part of his eighteen-year speaking career and remains much in demand as an inspirational speaker to companies and organizations around the world.

Using interviews with openly gay and closeted team-sport athletes, Eric Anderson examines how homophobia is reproduced in sport, how gay male athletes navigate this, and how American masculinity is changing. By detailing individual experiences, Anderson shows how these athletes are emerging from their athletic closets and contesting the dominant norms of masculinity. From the locker rooms of high school sports, where the atmosphere of "don't ask, don't tell" often exists, to the unique circumstances that gay athletes encounter in professional team sports, this book analyzes the agency that openly gay athletes possess to change their environments.

Brings together gender studies and sexuality studies to provide original and critical insights into processes of identity formation in a wide range of sport-related contexts. The authors draw on contemporary debates concerning gender and identity from a range of disciplines including sociology, social and cultural geography, media studies and management studies, to address key issues in masculinity, femininity and sexuality.

Former athlete and coach Pat Griffin makes a provocative and impassioned call for attention to a topic too long avoided by women's sports advocates. She provides a critical analysis of discrimination and prejudice against lesbians in sport. The book is the first to explore the lesbian sporting experience as well as examine homophobia and heterosexism in women's sport. The work is based on theoretical and historical foundations and is written in an academic yet engaging style. Griffin brings to light the experiences of lesbian coaches and athletes in their own words. It concludes with Griffin's assessment of the current state of lesbians' rights in athletics, set against the overall social picture in the United States. The author lists obstacles lesbian athletes face in transforming sports and details numerous personal and political strategies for leveling the playing field.