United States captain Megan Rapinoe says that gay male footballers don’t publicly reveal their sexuality ‘because they don’t feel safe.’
The 36-year-old, who has made 187 appearances for the American national team and won two World Cups since making her debut sixteen years ago, publicly came out as a lesbian in July 2012 and is currently engaged to basketball player Sue Bird.
Many female footballers publicly acknowledge their LGBTQ+ identity, but the only current top-flight male player in world football to publicly identify as gay is 22-year-old Josh Cavallo, the Adelaide United left-back whose story was widely shared when he came out in an emotional social media last October.
‘I hope that in sharing who I am, I can show others who identify as LGBTQ+ that they are welcome in the football community,’ Cavallo said at the time.
Now, Rapinoe says that women’s football fosters a much more welcoming and less hostile environment for gay players, and believes that everybody at all levels of the game has a responsibility to help LGBT+ footballers feel safe.
‘To everyone in the sporting culture, you have a responsibility to think about what you’re saying and ensure that you’re creating an environment that’s welcoming and open,’ shetold .
‘We get asked all the time — why aren’t there more out male athletes in elite sport? It’s because they don’t feel safe. They feel like they’re going to get abuse from fans, they’re going to be kicked off teams, have slurs thrown at them, whatever it is.
‘It’s safer on the women’s side — we have a lot of camaraderie between ourselves and people coming out, which makes it easier for everyone. But I would say from sporting directors to club owners, to fans and players, it’s your responsibility also.’
A 2017 survey from the BBC and Ipsos Mori found that 34 percent of people aged 16-22 in the United Kingdom did not define as exclusively heterosexual, while an alternative study by Kantar TNS in the same year found that seven percent of British men identified as homosexual, and five percent as bisexual.
No player in Premier League history has ever come out as gay while playing in the English top flight.
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