The problems gone through by Professor Anderson in Trailblazing

The ignorance of some people is amazing, truly astonishing at times; and not just of people you don't know.

Your friends, your family, people you have known all your life can act in a way you never thought possible when confronted with something outside of their safety zone, something 'taboo', something that they've never actually sat down and thought about and was always silently taught was wrong; such as homosexuality.Someone you know all your life could pull a surprise turnaround when the topic of homosexuality comes up, especially when it's in relation to their children, which is exactly the problems gone through by Professor Anderson in Trailblazing. The story presented went almost exactly how it was expected to go, it followed all theories on the subject and most of the people responded to his coming out of the closet as stereotypically as possible; almost as if their responses had been scripted.It's no surprise that so many people acted they way they did when confronted with Professor Anderson coming out of the closet, he was seen as a challenge to an institution that had remained unchanged for many years. Professor Anderson's principal, who was initially very supportive, quickly turned on Anderson and seemed to be trying to get him fired at every possible opportunity.

He must have been receiving daily complains from parents who could possibly tolerate the fact that their students were being taught by someone who was gay, despite the fact that several members of the faculty were closeted.Even as early as preschool, boys and girls are treated differently, anything outside of those very specific gender boundaries is considered wrong and must be adjusted. Boys are expected to play outside, run around, make a lot of noise, and maybe get in a fight or two. Girls, on the other hand, are expected to play nicely with something sensible, like blocks or dolls, or perhaps even have a nice tea party with their friends and a few stuffed animals.When a girl goes outside to play tag with the boys, the teacher usually gets worried that she's going to get hurt, since the boys play so rough and simply because she's a girl, and thus presumably more delicate. However, if the girl continues to play with the boys the teacher will just peg her as a tomboy, and for the most part she'll be accepted so long as she follows certain feminine roles.

While tomboys tend not to be the most accepted among their fellow females, and to an extent they are mocked for not following their gender roles, they still find companionship among other tomboys and many males.Yet, if a male acts in ways that aren't stereotypically male, even if they're not necessarily all that female, he's ostracized, his parents will more than likely become very worried, and he'll have a harder time making other male friends. Kimmel talks about his experience teaching preschoolers on page 162 of The Gendered Society, especially about a boy who preferred painting rather than playing with the other boys. The parents begged Kimmel to talk the boy into playing with trucks outside instead of spending all day just painting and staring outside at the trees.Kimmel, of course, found no problem in the boy's practices, knowing that perhaps the boy had a gift and simply had to practice it.

However, at the parents request he did ask the child every once in a while if he wanted to play outside with him, to which the child always politely answered 'no'. Parents are so worried about their boys acting in masculine ways, they're prone to forcing them into sports as a way to prove that they're men. I myself am familiar with this, throughout middle school I didn't have very many male friends, and was tormented all the time.My parents told me to play a sport after school thinking that would help me make some friends, despite the fact that I am not nor have I ever been athletic and thus was much more likely to be mocked rather than accepted. However, I wasn't fitting the gender role I was supposed to, I was spending too much of my time reading outside or playing with the girls.

So I was forced to join the wrestling team for the three years before I got a job.This is a very common practice, parents forcing their sons into sport, or talking their sons away from sports that aren't masculine enough, like cross-country running. My school never experienced the stigma against cross-country runners that Professor Anderson wrote about. The so-called 'cool kids', the social elite, were the ones who played cross-country. However, these kids were just as cruel as any of the other jocks, they didn't possess the understanding that Professor Anderson's athletes did, perhaps because they weren't outcasts themselves.Professor Anderson wrote that he ran cross-country to get out of PE, so he wouldn't have to change in the locker room with the other guys.

Cross country is not exactly a hyper-masculinized sport, in many schools it's ostracized as being a sport for 'sissies'. However, simply playing a sport did net Professor Anderson some masculine 'currency' which he used to dispel queries into his sexuality. Many men use sport to hide their homosexuality, and as a socially acceptable arena to come into physical contact with other men.Anderson writes in the book In The Game about several gay athletes, closeted or out. Many try harder than any others on the team to be the best, just to prove how 'manly' they are and thus earn the respect of their teammates and quell any possible rumors about their sexuality. Thus, sometimes it ends up being that the best athletes, and the very symbols of what it is to be masculine, are in fact gay.

This, Andserson writes, is the most fertile position for a gay man to be in if he's going to come out of the closet.He'll have the most masculine currency, the most respect from his teammates and his loyal fans, and would be sorely missed by the team since he's such a good player. If they player was average, then as soon as he came out of the closet he would be ostracized and probably kicked off the team. The sheer heterosexual nature of sport helps and hinders gay men, as Anderson continues to write. While gay men find it easy to hide in sport, it's nearly impossible for them to come out of the closet while still playing any professional sport.

Such a strong sense of homophobia has been instilled into athletics that the player would be almost instantly shunned. This helps to explain the story in Trailblazing about the football player who beat one of the cross-country runners nearly to death. He perceived the runner as being gay (despite the fact that the runner wasn't) and thus felt his entire sport was being threatened. Anderson wrote how the football coach repeatedly used negative motivational remarks, like calling the players derogative homosexual names when they weren't keeping up to speed.Thus the coach perpetuated and helped feed the homophobic fires, so to speak, which led the football player to nearly kill the cross-country runner. The football player received no punishment from this, officially because there were no witnesses.

In one chapter Professor Anderson is asked why he's stirring up trouble by coming out of the closet, and dressing and acting in fashions that people consider to be homosexual. This is clearly representative of our two gendered society, like Anne Fausto-Sterling talks about in her book Sexing the Body.Our society has only two genders, male and female, each with its own rigor sets of demands and each fitting to the male and female sex respectively. When Professor Anderson acted in a way that was not absolutely male, his principal viewed this as rebelling against society, and acted as if Anderson had broken some long-standing rule. In reality, Anderson was in no way rebelling, and wasn't breaking any official rules.

However, since he wasn't acting stereotypically people got extremely offended, afraid that simply by proxy their children would become gay; which is of course preposterous.Fausto-Sterling makes it rather clear that people don't just learn a sexual preference by watching it in others, at least not at such a young age. She makes the argument that sexual preference and gender are a combination of genetics and the environment one is raised in. However, by high school your gender and preference are both more or less set in stone, and there is little that will change either. Homosexuality is a very touchy subject in his country; many homophobes use a veil of religion to explain their own homophobic beliefs. In reality, it's more likely a sort of hetro-sexism.

Much like sexism or racism, hetero-sexism consists of heterosexuals thinking their way of life is the only way. People like Professor Anderson helped to show the world that isn't true, that like Anne Fausto-Sterling repeatedly writes there are more than just two set genders for two sexes. There's an entire continuum of genders, ranging from gay to straight to asexist to any number of possibilities. The more people are exposed to gay culture, the more hetero-sexism will die down, and perhaps with that we'll see a decrease in the tie between masculinity and sport.