GAY

MOMEN

ATLANTA,

IVUNLEVEL

Playing Fields

From softball diamonds to Dinah Shore,

lesbians are seeing more play-unless they're in the big leagues, where it's still better to be seen, not heard.

SUSAN REED looks at the "mannish" athlete's stigma.

T'S 9:30 AT NIGHT, and I am talking on the telephone to a woman I have never met. She is a young lesbian golf pro, and she has agreed to talk to me about life on the Ladies Professional Golf Associa-

tion tour. The call has been set up by a friend of my sister's who played golf with this woman-I'll call her "Liz"-in college. I'm catching her at home in the South, where she lives between tournaments. She will talk to me on the condition that I not use her name.

Despite the fact that players estimate that 30 to 40 percent of the women playing professional golf are lesbians, none among the top-ranked 144-nor any among the several hundred nipping at their heels from the satellite tours-is out. When I ask why, Liz's voice registers impatience. "Because it would be suicide," she says. "Because you'd get cut off from every endorsement opportunity possible. Because there's money and careers at stake." Apologizing for her tone, she explains that even she was surprised at how explicit the rules governing homosexual behavior were when she joined the tour. "There was a mandatory players' meeting once," she recalls. "One of the top players, a dyke, led the meeting. She told us, 'Ladies, we do not care what goes on inside your bedroom door. But keep it there.' The message was loud and clear: For the women's golf tour to succeed, we need to rid ourselves of the lesbian stigma."

S 15,000 ATHLETES GATHER this month to compete and celebrate in the Gay Games, it is important to remember that, in the real world, the majority of homophobic men and women who control women's sports are busily attempting to erase the lesbian, rather than the stigma. For example, the women's golf tour employs a fashion expert who travels to tournaments, advising players on dress, hair, and makeup. ("The lesbians these days look more femme than the straight players," says Liz.) "Men see sport as a way to express masculinity and competitiveness," says Lucille Kyvallos, the former basketball coach who built a nationally ranked women's program at New York's Queens College from 1968 to 1980. "If you are a confident woman athlete, men are threatened. If you are a confident lesbian athlete, they're even more threatened.

Susan Reed is a senior writer at People. She has contributed to Women's Sports and Travel & Leisure.

The men who control sports would prefer that women were not gay. If they are, they want them to stay in the closet. That way, I think, in their heads they think they can still fuck them."

Men today fear that their formerly exclusive male preserve, sports, is being invaded by women-and they are right. Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, participation in women's high school and college sports increased by 500 percent. At present 2 million high school girls play organized soccer, and 16 million women play softball. By far the most popular women's sport in both high school and college is basketball.

Why are lesbians so drawn to sports? One would have to be stupid (or straight) not to notice that there are lots of us out there on America's softball fields, volleyball courts, golf courses, bowling alleys, and a current hotbedkarate dojos. What binds us together? Were we all tomboys as kids? Did the fact that I made my mother buy me a G.I. Joe rather than a Barbie presage my interest in sports, and even my sexual orientation? Even before my heart raced for a woman, it raced for gym class. It was the happiest part of my day, the physical exertion, the camaraderie, and the emotional intensity that was part of team-bonding. And who didn't have a crush on a coach? I've never met a lover in a bar, but I have met several on the squash court.

"To my knowledge, there's been no study on the correlation between women athletes and lesbians," says Dr. Dee Mosbacher, a lesbian psychiatrist and the medical director for mental health in San Mateo County, California. Says Mosbacher, who has just completed a video on homophobia in women's athletics, "I played football as a kid. Dad and I would take everybody else on. My feeling is that we would find a high correlation between lesbians and girls who selfidentified as tomboys as kids."

We do not know how many lesbians participate in sports, though the number is significant. But of the hundreds of lesbians who compete in the marquee sportspro tennis and golf, and college basketball-only one, Martina Navratilova, has come out. (No offense to her, but we can't yet count Billie Jean King, who was outed in a galimony suit by her former lover, Marilyn Barnett, in 1981. At the time, King appeared on TV with Barbara Walters, husband Larry by her side, to deny that she was a lesbian. In a People magazine cover story King said,

PHOTOGRAPH FROM AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

HOOPS OF FIRE: The most

popular women's sport fears lesbian allegations.

GAY GAMES IV

CUTIS

CONS

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