Gay skater
This is not a knock on Adam - he had an amazing skate last night (judging issues aside). I just can't help but go to youtube and watch some of the ones that came before Adam. They in many ways paved the way. Point being: without the ones that came before, Adam most likely could not have broken down that closing barrier. I don't think we'd be seeing him stick his tongue out suggestively at the judges in an Olympic season without the likes of Boitano, Galindo (who did not produce it to the Olympics, but certainly deserves credit), Goebel, Savoie, and of course Weir.
I'm not going to list all of them, and since the media is focused on him entity the first US man, I'll just share a few of my favorite Olympic moments by known (out) gay men because I think they need a shout out.
Probably most notable is our Olympic Champion Brian Boitano. If you grew up with skating in the 90's you know who Brian is. Brian only came out in , but I'm fairly certain most fans "knew". It just wasn't something we cared about. As Brian said in a recent interview it is a part of who he is, but it's only a part. H
'Queer Skateboarding': Photographer documents gay skater culture
Ross Landenberger first got into skateboarding at the age of 12, and can still remember his first experiences with the sport while growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a city about 30 minutes west of Knoxville.
“We only had one skate park in the area, and it was just a blue piece of concrete on the ground,” he recalled. “All that was there was one or two little ramps that kids had built and brought.”
Landenberger admits that as a homosexual kid skateboarding at his local skate park in a suburban Tennessee, he never felt all that welcomed by other skateboarders.
“It was just a very hyper-masculine environment, especially in smaller southern towns,” he said. “Once I was a little bit older, and knowing I was lgbtq+, and people throwing around slurs all the time, just being around that, I had no interest in becoming friends with these people.”
As a finding, Landenberger thought of his queerness and his skateboarding as two separate parts of his individuality that could never intersect. It wasn’t until professional skateboar
By: Jimmy Morgan, Professional figure skater and Athlete Ally Ambassador
“You’re a figure skater? What, are you gay?” Older hockey players laughed as I walked down the hall to perform . I was an year-old kid wondering why figure skating made me lgbtq+ and why hockey players found that so funny.
This made me think existence gay was bad. As I grew older, I had been laughed at and called gay so many times, that I hoped to never be gay.
To my dismay, I started realizing I was attracted to men. Since my life had taught me that being queer led to being made fun of, I suppressed those feelings and started to convince myself that I was straight. On top of that, I didn’t want to symbolize further proof that every male figure skater is gay. I didn’t need those hockey players to be right.
When I was 16, I started pairs skating. I thought it was so cool to be part of a team and to be able to perform lifts and tricks impossible for solo skaters.
But now, I was expected to carry out with my partner, Alex Shaughnessy, and I was told by coaches and judges that our show would be partially s
Brian Anderson, Three Years Out
It’s been a wild three years since Brian Anderson came out as queer , making him the first out, male pro skateboarder. It was obviously a historic moment, but to me it was something more than just a “first.” It was love something snapped in our subculture. Since his announcement, it feels like we’ve all breathed a monumental, collective sigh of relief, and shrugged off a lot of the toxic masculinity that’s been holding skateboarding back. It’s still a boys club, by and large, but people of all genders and sexual orientations are more free to be on a board AND be their truest selves these days. I think we can trace a fine bit of that endorse to BA. But he’s also become, it seems, his truest self, diving deep into art, posing for Cave Homo in leather, and generally leaning into his role as a gay icon in skateboarding. And still skating hard, of course. While I’d intended this interview to be about all the cool stuff he’s doing now, not what he already did, we ended up talking a lot about what led him to come out, and what life was like before he did. Everyone