Homophobic speech in youth sports harms straight white boys most, study finds

A culture of masculinity marked by anti-LGBTQ and other harmful language pervades youth sports environments, according to a study led by Fordham University researchers – signaling a public health concern whose implications, experts say, are both wide-ranging and long-lasting.

While sports generally offer great benefits for youth, the study found those benefits are increasingly eroded the more that youth are exposed to such language ― even if they aren't the targets of it. Such environments hurt not only LGBTQ youth but all youth, the authors say ― with no group suffering more harm than straight white boys.

“It harms the wellbeing of everyone,” said Laura Wernick, one of the study’s lead authors and an associate professor of social service at Fordham's Graduate School of Social Service, located in Manhattan, New York.

Whether as joke or insult, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic language is often wielded in boys’ sports environments, used as motivation or one-upmanship to enforce ― or "police," as the researchers write ― traditional standards of masculinity. Such locker room vernacular includes phrases like "man up" or "don't be such a sissy," with boys pressured to meet expectations so as not to be thought of as gay or feminine.

The study found that youths exposed to higher levels of such language were less likely to reap the benefits of youth sports environments, particularly self-esteem. The decrease in self-esteem was significantly greater among straight white cisgender boys than any other subgroup, Wernick said.

“The irony of policing masculinity," they said, "… is that it's actually having the opposite effect. It's bringing these kids down.”

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It’s not that LGBTQ youth aren’t harmed by such language in youth sports environments. But the effects on those and other marginalized youth are less pronounced, the researchers say, because previous life experience has equipped them with coping mechanisms.

“They may be more adept at dealing with stressors, because they’ve had that experience,” said Derek Tice-Brown, an assistant professor of social service at Fordham and the study's co-lead author. “It gives them skills to address those issues as they come up. Whereas cisgender straight boys may not have had that experience to develop those skills.”

Such use of anti-LGBTQ language doesn’t hurt just queer and trans youth, Wernick said. "It hurts our community. It hurts all of us.”

Study rooted in high schoolers' project

The study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, examined data collected in 2014 as part of a project initiated by high school students in Michigan. The students were mentored through the process by Wernick, a doctoral student at the time.

The LGBTQ students had come together through Neutral Zone, a youth empowerment organization in Ann Arbor, bonding over their collective experiences of being bullied and marginalized.

“This was before a lot of media were starting to pay attention to the experiences of queer and trans youth,” Wernick said. “Their experiences weren’t being heard or believed.”

The youth wanted to show how pervasive the issue was and devised a survey to collect information from a mix of five urban, suburban and rural schools about students’ exposure to harmful language in various environments, including youth sports.

Wernick and their study co-authors were able to reach their conclusions by examining the answers to survey questions that asked students to rate to what degree they agreed or disagreed with statements about self-esteem and the frequency with which they were exposed to anti-LGBTQ language used by fellow students or coaches.

“I don’t think coaches think about the actual impact it has on boys,” Tice-Brown said. “They grew up playing sports the exact same way, and that’s how they were taught to compete, to live up to a certain idea of what manhood is.”

How phrases like 'man up' cause harm

Participation in sports can benefit youth development in many ways, promoting physical wellbeing and belonging, uplifting self-esteem and instilling ideals of sportsmanship and teamwork.

“Humans in general, but teens in particular, need to feel accepted and connected to other people,” said Jeffrey Montez de Oca, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. “That’s something that sports can do – make you feel connected to something larger than yourself.”

But youth sports environments can also perpetuate harmful norms, particularly for boys, when language disparaging LGBTQ people or girls is used to enforce certain masculine stereotypes. In addition to anti-LGBTQ slurs, such language include phrases linking femininity with weakness, such as “you throw like a girl.”

“It’s not ‘You throw poorly’ or ‘You don’t throw well,’” said Michael Kehler, a professor of education at the University of Calgary. “It’s connected to femininity. Boys go into those spaces knowing the ways to talk about sports, and it can add to anxiety and discomfort if you don’t ‘do boy’ as expected. You’re under that surveillance.”

Youth sports spaces such as gyms or locker rooms often create a pecking order of talent and physique, with such qualities linked to popularity and valor, Kehler said.

“It’s the golden Olympian who is revered,” he said. “That’s where they parade and show other boys their physical prowess.”

That culture of masculinity, he said, “routinely affirms particular ways of being boys and has damaging messaging about what happens to boys who don’t adhere to those rules.”

The long-term effects of harmful sports environments

The culture persists in adult professional sports, where, for example, few male athletes are willing to come out as gay. Some who have shown vulnerability or emotion have faced ridicule: Fox Sports commentator Skip Bayless in 2020 criticized Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott for speaking publicly about his mental health struggles; in 2018, Brazilian soccer star Neymar faced backlash for crying on his knees after his team’s World Cup win over Costa Rica.

“You see professional sports players who become very emotional and people get unsettled by that,” Kehler said. “But it’s also a window to think about addressing mental health issues and that, while some players might show emotional vulnerability in an unguarded manner, there are boys similarly struggling with those feelings.”

In the short term, Kehler said, some boys subjected to homophobic or misogynistic language by other boys will choose to avoid such threatening spaces altogether, dropping out of sports activities once school requirements are fulfilled and missing out on their potential benefits.

“Adults have told me that as youth, going into those locker rooms and being among those boys was one of the most frightening times of their lives,” he said.

Montez de Oca said such cultures of masculinity can damage the emotional development of boys who are at a stage at which they seek acceptance but whose feelings of vulnerability counter notions of manhood as being macho and impenetrable.

“Boys become emotionally withdrawn,” he said. “They become emotionally inarticulate because they don’t practice – because to talk about your emotions makes you vulnerable in a highly competitive environment. It makes straight boys in those spaces feel worse.”

In the long term, he said, the contradiction of wanting to be included but being unable to express it can lead to depression and antisocial behaviors such as drug use, binge drinking and video game addiction.

“Men have a shorter life expectancy than women,” Montez de Oca said. “We kill each other at an incredible rate. We’re less likely to seek medical help when we’re ill, and when we do we’re less likely to follow doctor’s orders. We’re more likely than women to live unhealthy lifestyles. So much of that has to do with our inability to recognize our own vulnerabilities, because vulnerability is a site of shame for so many men.”

Models of healthy masculinity

As the parent of a 12-year-old son who plans to take part in youth sports, Wernick said the findings present an opportunity to redefine masculinity.

“It would be great if we had role models out there to show what healthy masculinity can look like,” they said.

Some depictions already exist, Wernick said, citing the Netflix series “All American,” about a teen football player in South Los Angeles recruited to play for a school in Beverly Hills.

Both Wernick and Tice-Brown noted the well-publicized moment at last month’s Democratic National Convention in which Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, tearfully praised his father as he accepted the Democratic vice presidential nomination.

While the younger Walz’s show of emotion initially drew ridicule from some on the far right, Wernick said the moment shared by father and son was an example of positive masculinity – as is the fact that Tim Walz, while a high school football coach in rural Minnesota, served as faculty adviser for the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.

“That’s really beautiful that you can be doing both, that showing support for LGBTQ youth doesn’t negate the strength and masculinity of being on a football field,” Wernick said.