“I know there are men’s stadiums where I would think twice before holding my girlfriend’s hand. I also know that at a women’s match, in the exact same stadium, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.”
BY SOPHIE HURST, IMAGES PROVIDED
It is Pride Month, which means football clubs across the country will spend the next few weeks posting graphics about inclusivity and reminding us that football is “for everyone”. Yet if you actually spend time inside the world of football as a queer person – especially moving between the men’s and women’s game – it becomes impossible to ignore how differently queerness is treated depending on who is expressing it, and where. At a women’s match, queer visibility feels built in. Whether that’s the people in the stands or the players on the pitch, queerness isn’t treated as a political statement, but part of the culture. There is a sense, however imperfect, that queerness belongs there.
Then you step into the men’s game, and the atmosphere shifts entirely. Homophobic chanting is still dismissed as banter. “Gay” is still used as an insult. Masculinity feels rigid in a way that can be difficult to explain unless you have experienced it yourself. Men’s football still feels trapped inside this outdated idea that masculinity must constantly be proven and defended, and queerness threatens that performance simply by existing.
What unsettles me most about men’s football is that it’s a culture entirely built around men (idolising them, dedicating your weekends and identity to them) while simultaneously being terrified of anything associated with queerness. Football culture allows men to cry over other men, sing about other men and spend thousands following men around the country every weekend, but the second queerness enters the conversation, the atmosphere often becomes hostile.Â
Straight men who are terrified of being perceived as gay are often terrified because they know exactly how gay people are treated within those spaces. That fear doesn’t exist by itself either. For many younger men raised online among “alpha male” influencers and black-pill rhetoric, being perceived as gay is viewed as weakness or humiliation. Football has always been tied to this nostalgic idea of masculinity: toughness, aggression and emotional repression. The sport modernised commercially, but a lot of that emotional framework still remains underneath it. The panic around queerness in football often feels less about queer people themselves and more about fearing the collapse of the identity that has been built around masculinity.
This is a contradiction you can see everywhere. Governing bodies condemn homophobia through campaigns like Rainbow Laces, while still allowing homophobic chanting to remain normalised in stadiums every weekend. FIFA promoted inclusion campaigns, only to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where homosexuality is criminalised, and rainbow armbands were effectively banned from the tournament. The 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia raises many of the same questions again. Football cannot continuously market itself as inclusive while repeatedly placing its biggest events in environments where many queer fans may not feel safe travelling openly.
Statistically, there have always been queer men in football. There are queer men playing football right now. The lack of openly queer male footballers at the top level isn’t proof they do not exist, but proof of the culture around them. Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay professional footballer in England, was publicly ridiculed after coming out in 1990 and later died by suicide. More recently, openly bisexual German referee Pascal Kaiser was hospitalised after being assaulted following a public proposal to his boyfriend on a Bundesliga pitch. Visibility still comes with risk.
Queerness in women’s football evolved differently, and I honestly think part of that is because, for years, nobody cared enough about women’s football to police it properly. The women’s game existed on the sidelines for decades: underfunded, underpromoted and largely ignored. And because so few people were watching, there was far less scrutiny over who occupied those spaces and how they existed within them. Men’s football became heavily governed by ideas of masculinity and image, whilst women’s football developed outside of that spotlight. Misogyny unintentionally created room for queer culture to exist within the women’s game.
Women’s football gave queer people somewhere to go. In a world where spaces for queer women and non-binary people are still incredibly limited, football became something more than a sport; a community. You can go to a match with your girlfriend, sit in the stands in broad daylight and not feel like you have to shrink yourself. As a queer woman, women’s football genuinely changed the way I saw myself because it was one of the first places I encountered queerness without shame attached to it.
At the same time, Pride in football cannot only mean conversations around sexuality when trans people are increasingly being pushed out of the sport entirely. Following the UK Supreme Court ruling redefining the legal definition of a “woman”, the Football Association moved to ban trans women from women’s grassroots football, impacting a tiny number of players who were not competing professionally, but instead trying to access community, exercise and belonging through local football.
I love football deeply, but loving football as a queer person can feel complicated because you are constantly aware of the gap between inclusion as branding and inclusion as reality. I know there are men’s stadiums where I would think twice before holding my girlfriend’s hand. I also know that at a women’s match, in the exact same stadium, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.
Perhaps that’s the clearest indication of football’s queer divide: one side of the sport still makes queerness feel like risk, while the other makes it feel like home.
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