Gay men in locker room

The fear of being outed by former partners loomed over him during his time on The Bachelor, causing significant anxiety.

In 2021, Underwood made headlines by coming out as gay, becoming the first lead in The Bachelor franchise to do so. I’m pretty sure I blushed.

At the same time, textbook toxic masculinity was in full effect. 

Hazing, Gender Roles, and the Dark Side of Male Dominance

Guys took advantage of groupies, girls who exclusively slept with players.

He recalled feeling unlike the other boys as early as six years old but didn’t fully understand his attraction to men until high school. From another angle, it’s all kinds of homoerotic.”

What’s more, just a handful of Black NFL players have come out after hanging up their uniforms — even though the league is 53 percent Black.  

Given what’s at stake, from fan admiration to product endorsements, it shouldn’t be surprising that Sam, Nassib and Perkins haven’t led a Pride parade out of the football closet.

All of which hints that, while much has changed about football culture since I played in the 1980s — Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Wiliams, a top draft pick, is fond of pink lip gloss and fingernail polish, and Jacksonville Jaguars strength coach Kevin Maxen is out and proud — a lot seems to have stayed the same.

A seasoned journalist, political analyst and essayist, Williams has been published in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and US News & World Report. Five of my freshman teammates were arrested or kicked out of school for gang-raping a teenage girl. I laughed along with everyone else when two players, one Black and one white, pretended to make out in the middle of the locker room. 

By the time I got to college, I was more comfortable with the homophobic/homoerotic matrix, mostly because there was no choice.

If they caught a boy screwing around, he’d get pulled aside as a coach whipped out a cheap 70s label-maker. A kid like me. 

I quickly took to playing football, though, and managed to fit in by going along with the culture, even if parts of it were contradictory, confusing and sometimes disturbing. These no doubt made a lasting impression on me, and so when I think about jocks and teams now, my mind naturally goes to blue and white.

There are lots of images in this video, and I’ll be posting them in the coming days.

There are two versions of this video — one slightly longer and in square format, with the 9:16 version edited under a minute for Instagram.

That same year, he starred in his Netflix series, Coming Out Colton. Despite not being attracted to his teammates, he took extra precautions to prevent any misunderstandings or accidental outings.

Underwood’s public journey began on The Bachelorette’s 14th season, followed by leading the 23rd season of The Bachelor, where he was dubbed the “Virgin Bachelor.” He revealed to Cooper that he had his first encounter with a man on his 21st birthday but only engaged with men when he was single.

As the youngest of four children and the only boy, I was bookish and sensitive, a chubby Black kid in horn-rimmed glasses who sometimes combed Mom’s hair, was too eager to please and too quick to cry when my sisters teased me. 

“You need toughening up,” my dad, a career enlisted airman, told me in the car one summer afternoon.

Last season, Byron Perkins, who played at Hampton University, became the first out gay player in HBCU football history. 

Honestly, though, that progress has been limited at best. 

Sam, a college star, was cut from 2 NFL teams and never played in the league. The energy, the vigor, the masculine display of strength.

I did this because I want the videos to show up under regular videos on YouTube and not in the Shorts section. He later married political strategist Jordan C. Brown in May 2023, and the couple is now expecting their first child. I’m still working on it.”

Age, acquired wisdom, and evolving definitions of masculinity have weathered away the more toxic elements of the matrix that I’d absorbed during my football career.

So I built my own closet of sorts and played along with the Southern-fried, anti-gay homoeroticism. 

I kept to myself when, during summer training camp at a military academy, the redneck, grab-ass roughhousing started up in the dorms in the evening. That’s partially what I try to explore with these images.

Regarding the blue and white color theme, I blame my extended exposure to blue and white sports uniforms when I was in college.

I wouldn't trade the experience because I loved the sport and graduated college with zero student-loan debt. 

But it took me years, and a lot of therapy, to come to grips with the fact that my parents introduced me to football as preparation for life in America. From one angle, football is a hyper-macho sport where men are strong, women are cheerleaders and the weak are probably homosexual and must be shunned.

From another angle, it’s all kinds of homoerotic: tight pants, broad shoulder pads under clingy jerseys; muscle-bound bodies, bottom-patting, communal dressing and undressing.

My first year we were blindfolded and force-fed onion gum. To Mom and Dad — who were born during the Great Depression under Jim Crow — my impending queerness was obvious. Licensed soundtrack, remixed in Ableton Live Suite, After Effects animation.

Technical Details

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