Queer Soccer Players: A Cross-Cultural Study of Soccer Cultures, Attitudes, Experiences, and Policies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines the cultural differences amongst and experiences of LGBTQ+ athletes in soccer and how exclusionary attitudes existing in the sport impact policy on LGBTQ+ athletes. The study compares and contrasts the cultural experiences of LGBTQ+ soccer players from a macro (global) and micro (local) lens, with a specific focus on soccer cultures in Italy, England, Canada, and the United States. The different levels of soccer (amateur, semiprofessional, and professional) in these four locales, and the impact that policies have on LGBTQ+ inclusion, are analyzed. Queer theory, intersectionality, Gramsci’s theory of ideology and cultural hegemony, and Butler’s concept of gender performativity provide the framework for the examination of the lived realities of queer athletes across different sporting environments. Through an in-depth analysis of literature on queer athleticism, the dissertation considers the associated relationships between masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, intersectionality, cultural, social, and political views, media representation of LGBTQ+ athletes, athlete voices, and social change. A mixed methods explanatory sequential design was employed to analyze 19 policy documents, conduct seven informal phone calls about anti-discrimination and trans eligibility policies, administer 40 surveys with athletes who have played soccer around the world, and conduct 11 semi-structured interviews with soccer players at the amateur or semiprofessional level in Ontario and the United States. A critical content analysis was then engaged to explore meaning and patterns that emerged from the different sets of data. Results suggest that education and policy reform are necessary to create an inclusive soccer environment. To uphold inclusive policy, sport governing bodies need to be held accountable and consider diverse and intersectional perspectives during the policy creation and development phase. Overall, this analysis is beneficial to soccer culture because it provides critically needed scholarly research that informs how soccer organizations, athletes, and leaders in the sport can remedy practices that hinder LGBTQ+ participation in soccer.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".