How Being Gay Affected My Relationship With Chelsea

As a teenager, I perfected my straight, ahem, football-boy credentials: I went to the gym; I got a David Beckham haircut; I even hung a racy poster of Cara Delevingne above my bed. In retrospect, these were three of the gayest things I could have ever done. Most damaging of all, I dated girls obsessively. I bounced from one dysfunctional relationship to another, never really understanding (or wanting to understand) why I found the sex so confusing and unfulfilling.

I feel bad that I did that to myself for so long and that I didn’t have the courage or self-knowledge to be myself. But I was only doing what I thought “someone like me” was supposed to do. After all, everyone in the locker room was talking about beer and boobs. And it probably didn’t help that I went to watch Chelsea at the weekend, of all clubs.

If you don’t know much about the fan cultures of various Premier League teams, my Blues have a chequered past. The National Front recruited outside our stadium in the 70s and 80s and despite the best efforts of the club hierarchy, our matchday fans are still not exactly known for their tolerance and acceptance. As recently as last season, Stuart Mathews, the chairman of Brighton’s LGBTQ+ fan group Proud Seagulls, told me The independent newspaper that the homophobic abuse he received in the match against Chelsea was “the worst I’ve ever heard from a club”.

You might be wondering: why would a straight gay man want to support a club like this? Supporting a football team is a bit like joining the mafia: once you’re in, you’re in forever. I should also say that I’ve thankfully never been the target of homophobic abuse at Stamford Bridge (again, straight-passing), but that doesn’t mean I don’t hear the same abusive nonsense at every match.

Let me tell you a few of my favorite microaggressions I hear on soccer fields. If a player has the audacity to wear gloves in the winter, it makes him a “fanny” or a “fairy,” and if (God forbid) one of the strikers does a cute little dance after scoring a goal, he should “stop whining!!.”

And yes, when I go to Chelsea, I still hear the rent-boy chant. Sometimes it feels like the away team have been hired to do a private performance, and they point and sing, specifically at me. But then I remember that I am just one boy in a sea of ​​thousands and thousands of blue shirts.

Some fans tell me they’re surprised that there won’t be a single ‘out’ footballer in the Premier League in 2024, but I’m not at all surprised. Men’s football is a hostile and unsafe environment – ​​not just for LGBTQIA+ people – but for anyone who doesn’t conform to a prescribed set of gender norms.

You have to be exceptionally brave or mad (or both) to stick your head above the parapet, as Justin Fashanu (the first and only British top-flight footballer to come out as gay) did on 22 October 1990. The tragedy of Fashanu’s career since coming out – the tabloids, the abuse from fans, his fall through the divisions and his escape to America – and his eventual suicide in 1998, casts a long shadow over the men’s game.