Thirty Years later: Title IX Still Controvertial
by Matt Sedensky

Equal Opportunity Coaching
by Allison Steele

The New Female Athlete
by Margarita Bertsos

Overtraining and Undereating
by Falasten Abdeljabbar

Playing Like A Girl
by Sasha Stumacher

Women's Tennis: The Marketing Model
by Daniel Mitha

Who Gets The Ball?
by Anne-Marie Harold

Sexualization of Female Athletes
by Sue Rozdeba

SlamJam and the Future
by Mike Gorman

Playing Out Identity
by Maya Jex

Part 2: How women athletes deal with homosexuality

In the past, both Billy Jean King and Martina Navratilova lost sponsorship and public support over the publicity surrounding the exposure of their personal lives. However, both have regained acceptance. King has gone on to help found Women's Sports Foundation and Navratilova is once again endorsing products, such as the Visa Rainbow Card, which has raised over $1 million for gay and lesbian causes and won sponsorship from British Airways and Subaru.

Among athletes, viewpoints vary on how important it is to be "out" in women's sports. Fae Gibson, NYU track team member and star shot putter, thinks that the athletic world is a haven for lesbian and bi-sexual women, and can play an important role in their social lives.

"For some reason, it seems that athletic women are more sexually inclined towards other women. It's just kind of where [lesbians] gather and find camaraderie. It's a way to express your sexuality," said Gibson, who has been "out" since 12th grade. Although her athletic involvement played no direct role in her coming out, she said, it can be a source of support.

"In many cases it's a safe place for lesbians who deal with discrimination every day, just like straight women have to survive a barrage of stereotypes in the sports world. Sometimes straight girls have to defend themselves from other men and women who make assumptions about their sexuality and equate their athleticism with masculine behavior," Gibson said. "Just by speaking with my straight friends I know they go out of their way to be overly feminine when they're not on the field.But I don't think that 'oh, I hope I look girly enough,' comes into their mind on the field."

Despite the potential support system, Gibson is well aware of the difficulties in being the outsider on a sports team. "I was the only lesbian on the basketball team, it was really hard," she said of her freshman year experience. "They would make comments, nothing derogatory, but it made me feel really uncomfortable."

A swimmer, "out" since the age of 14, remembers the hardships she endured in high school. "The locker room was always a messy situation because it was about girls getting naked," she said.

"Before swim team practice, I'd always have to get suited up in a separate section. Otherwise, the other girls would scream all kinds of bloody murder and 'dyke' and 'uh oh, she's looking at me.'"

"...I had a girlfriend and it was well-known who she was," she continued. "So it was straight-up homophobia run amok. It happens to everyone who comes out in an unsafe environment."

Gibson stresses the importance of a supportive coach and team for "out" athletes. Now it's important for her and her lesbian friends to scout out "new recruits," to help prevent other lesbian players from experiencing alienation.

"We're looking for a common bond," Gibson said. "It's like a little community and you want to find people like you who are comfortable around each other. It's nice for people to find a clique to hang out with, where they can be themselves. It's a conscious decision that woman make to get into athletics, meanwhile for boys it's a natural thing to do in their spare time. Women are up against more obstacles so the thrill of victory is all that more powerful."

At 21, Tania Vikki is a first-degree black belt in karate and a lesbian. Although her experience of the sport world has not been so nurturing to her sexual identity, she has overcome another aspect of the same stereotype -- one that deals with women's motivation for getting involved in sports.

"I don't think I would feel comfortable coming out to a dojo. Karate is very individualized. I would be worried that people would have biases that they would take out on me during sparing, or they wouldn't want to partner up with me because of me of it."

Because of the high-impact and solitary nature of karate, Vikki cites many reasons why coming out in a dojo could be more trouble than it is worth.

"I had my suspicions [about who was gay]," said Vikki, "but I never asked. With guys it's a macho sport. If you're a gay male coming out could have a lot more consequences during sparing. As women, we already have so much against us, why would you want to enhance that by coming out of the closet? Or even give men a reason to now see you as different from other women and think it's okay to be more aggressive with you. It's a place where guys act more macho than they would usually be and macho guys are intimidated by lesbians." What Vikki is most bothered by is that idea that while men get involved in karate to fight, women go to learn self-defense.

"Men are there to learn how to fight because they're supposed to know how to protect people. For women, it's all about being defensive and protecting yourself. I took karate because I wanted to learn how to fight. A lot of the women in my dojo were sturdy, strong women who were just there to kick ass."

Andra Douglas of the NY Sharks has found that this rings true among her fellow players. She said that there are three main motivating factors among her players, and that they overlap.

"Some women want to get out there and play, some want to make history and some people want to get out there and hit someone," Douglas said. "The uniting motivation is to get out there and do something we've been denied."

"People really need to open their minds and their hearts and give women a chance," she said. "America is so puritanical anyway, people should just put sex out of it and let us play a game that we are good at."