Non-performing inclusion: A critique of the English Football Association’s Action Plan on homophobia in football

Masculinity and sexuality in English football

Few areas can tell us as much about the divisiveness of gender and sexuality as the landscape of modern sport. Mean and Halone (2010: 255) explain that ‘sport has a major impact on understandings, definitions, and demarcations of gender and sexuality that reach beyond the boundaries of sport and into wider culture’, while Wellard (2009: 21) underlines the degree to which ‘sport is a significant part of a social arena in which masculinities and femininities are constructed, learned and structured in relations of domination and subordination’. Modern sport is thus closely related to the re-production of power along the lines of gender as well as other social categories, such as sexuality, race, social class and ethnicity. In short, modern sport has operated as ‘more than just a mirror to society; it has also been an active engine in the creation and preservation of power relationships’ (McDevitt, 2004: 3).

The masculinised and heteronormative history of English football provides a good example of the powerful and divisive impact of masculinity and sexuality. Culturally and historically, football in England has always been a male-dominated and masculine-coded affair (Parker, 2001). As historians of football have documented (McDevitt, 2004; Mangan, 1995), the masculine culture of football harks back to the days of the sport’s codification and institutionalisation within the all-male environment of public schools in the middle of the 19th century. Rahman (2011: 152) describes how the existence of homosocial all-male settings meant that ‘ideological policing was required to prevent the potential for homosexual encounters (...) creating a concurrent culture of heterosexual normalisation and homophobia throughout society and within sport that remains to this day’. In the case of English football, this ideological policing thus excluded sexual and gendered ‘difference’ to cement the seeming naturalness of football as a masculine, male and also heterosexual, terrain (Hughson and Free, 2011; Rahman, 2011).

One of the key functions of modern organised sport such as football has been to ‘shape young people’s behaviour in socially acceptable ways and define and entrench hegemonic femininity and masculinity’ (Lenskyi, 2013: 146), and, by implication, sexuality. Within the sociology of sport, scholars have only recently begun to explore the many issues around homophobia, homosexuality and heteronormativity in the ‘beautiful game’, for instance through the lens of masculinity (Adams et al., 2011; Cashmore and Cleland, 2012), fans’ attitudes (Cashmore and Cleland, 2011, 2012; Caudwell, 2011), specific gay and gay-friendly football clubs ⁴ (Jones and McCarthy, 2010) or via the role of media discourses and images (Hughson and Free, 2011; Rahman, 2011).

Cashmore and Cleland’s (2011, 2012) writings on homophobia and gay footballers in English professional men’s football are particularly important in light of the public and highly publicised ‘coming out’ of Welsh rugby union player Gareth Thomas and English cricketer Steve Davies in recent years, which subsequently resulted in a number of media commentators highlighting the conspicuous absence of gay footballers in English professional men’s football (Bury, 2012). In their most recent article (Cashmore and Cleland, 2012), the authors discuss the results of an online survey based on 3500 football fans and professionals’ views on gay footballers and discover that contrary to claims made by football governing bodies and scholars, fans appear significantly more liberal and tolerant of homosexuality. For example, 93 per cent of participants insisted ‘only a player’s performance on the field is relevant’ (Cashmore and Cleland, 2012: 378). Caudwell (2011: 128) provides another angle to academic discussions of homophobia in football and draws attention to the difficulty of legislating effectively against homophobia, something she believes to be particularly a consequence of ‘the highly intricate nature of the sounds and gestures of homophobia in public spaces’ and draws a comparison with racism in football: ‘Those working to prevent homophobia at football grounds (…) are finding the task more difficult than previous anti-discriminatory initiatives’ (Caudwell, 2011: 133). For Caudwell, this is not surprising given that, in comparison to homophobia, ‘racism and racist chanting are generally understood as no longer acceptable in the UK’ (Caudwell, 2011: 133).

Caudwell’s comparison between racism and homophobia in football is crucial and has been insufficiently addressed in the literature, something I take up in the analysis below. Caudwell raises the question of the extent to which anti-homophobia campaigns and legislation can follow the same trajectory set by anti-racism campaigns, in particular given the significance anti-racism campaigns and football governing bodies have ascribed to visibility as a means of tackling racism; as Woodward (2007: 763) notes, ‘(t)he public face of football is (…) concerned with representations of visible difference (…). High visibility is accorded to images of players wearing anti-racist insignia and Black players acting as iconic figures of race equality classified as “role models”’. However, the emphasis on Black players or ex-players functioning as ‘role models’ in anti-racism campaigns can also hide the many barriers Black individuals face institutionally, particularly in relation to positions in the upper echelons of English football (King, 2004). Moreover, given that homosexuality is not visible in the same way race is, attending to the notion of visibility is crucial when examining the relationship between homophobia and racism, as I demonstrate in the analysis below. The power dynamics involved in each of these patterns of discrimination, however, are similar and instructive precisely because homophobia and racism are the result of a history of exclusion for non-heterosexual and non-White individuals in the landscape of English football.

The nuanced relationship between sexuality and visibility is addressed by Cashmore and Cleland (2011) in their discussion of ways in which gay footballers negotiate their sexuality in the heteronormative sporting environment that is English professional men’s football. Drawing on their survey results, they discover that many footballers are ‘out’ to some of the teammates ‘and are accepted as “normal” within the confines of the football industry’ (Cashmore and Cleland, 2011: 9) and thereby expose the limitations of viewing male homosexuality in football solely through the lens of visibility. While Cashmore and Cleland restrict their discussion to professional men’s football, Jones and McCarthy’s (2010) ethnographic study of a gay and gay-friendly football team in the UK demonstrates how homosexuality can be negotiated in grassroots football and underlines how the gay football club operates as a safe space away from the dominant mainstream footballing environment some players had previously been part of. Crucially for the present analysis, the option of joining a non-heteronormative footballing environment, such as a gay football team, does not exist in the case of professional football. As will become apparent in the analysis below, when examining the FA Action Plan, it is essential to acknowledge such differences between grassroots and professional football.

My article builds on this developing area of research, particularly to address the complex workings of visibility and LGB&T inclusion. In my analysis, I expose the limitations of understanding inclusion through strategies of visibility. Before proceeding with the analysis, I briefly explain Ahmed’s concept of non-performative institutional speech acts.

Institutional speech acts as non-performatives

In her work on diversity documents and discourses within Higher Education, Ahmed (2012) explores the question of what diversity ‘does’. Her interest in the institutional language of diversity and what it ‘does’ follows both from her own experience of being involved in writing diversity documents within Higher Education and her observation that despite official commitments to diversity and the circulation of diversity language in institutional life, many institutions continue to ‘block’ diversity within their respective structures.

This ‘blocking’ is not done in visible ways, however, and so, to make sense of the discrepancy between ‘saying’ and ‘doing’, Ahmed (2012: 117) proposes to rethink ‘the relationship between names and effects’ and does so by way of using Austin’s (1975) concept of ‘performative speech acts’ as a starting point. For Austin, speech acts are ‘performative’ and ‘happy’ when the speech acts do what they say; this scenario occurs when external conditions are in place that allow speech acts to have the desired effect. In contrast, performances ‘fail’ or are ‘unhappy’ when the conditions for the speech act to be successful are not met (Austin, 1975: 15–16). Ahmed moves away from Austin’s reading of speech acts in two fundamental ways; first of all, she extends speech acts to institutions, thereby moving beyond the usage of speech acts in the first person. Although institutional speech acts are usually spoken in the first-person plural, where the institution is addressed as a collective ‘we’, they can also be spoken by individuals. Ahmed uses the example of a vice-chancellor: institutional speech acts by such individuals would then constitute institutional speech acts in which the person speaking ‘is speaking for or even as the institution (and) might make claims about an institution as well as on behalf of an institution’ (Ahmed, 2012: 54).

A second difference between Ahmed and Austin lies in Ahmed’s particular understanding of the speech act’s failure to bring into effect what it names. As Ahmed (2012: 117 italics in original) states, in her ‘model of the non-performative, the failure of the speech act to do what it says is not a failure of intent or even circumstance, but is actually what the speech act is doing’. In other words, unsuccessful speech acts do not fail because of external conditions, as would be argued by Austin, but because this failure is part and parcel of what the speech act does. There is a caveat attached to this, because despite speech acts not doing what they say, they can still be ‘taken up as if they are performatives (as if they have brought about the effects that they name)’ (Ahmed, 2012: 117 italics in original). In other words, even though they are non-performative, they can be read as performative in an Austinian sense and therefore create the effect of ‘working’ and being successful. As I argue in my analysis, this is precisely what the FA, in its employment of speech acts and images in the Action Plan on LGB&T inclusion, effects.

English Football Association Action Plan

At the centre of the FA’s overall equality framework, of which the FA Action Plan on LGB&T inclusion forms a significant part, is the promotion of inclusion and diversity in the game alongside the eradication of all types of discrimination. The 40-page long Action Plan, put together by the FA’s Advisory Group on Tackling Homophobia (AGTH), ⁵ comprises seven different thematic sections. The first two sections include key principles underpinning the Action Plan and background information. Central to the background information is a revisiting of past actions, such as the signing of the Government’s Charter ‘Tackling Homophobia and Transphobia in Sport: The Charter for Action!’ in June 2011 or the launch of an anti-homophobia film titled ‘Kick Homophobia Out of Football’ in early 2010. The third section comprises the six delivery themes of the Action Plan, which include Education, Visibility, Partnerships, Recognition, Reporting Discrimination and Monitoring and constitutes the main section of the Action Plan. Here, alongside columns delineating ‘actions’ and what ‘success look(s) like’, each page includes an image of a (former) footballer, coach or FA employee with a respective quote about the Action Plan. The remaining four sections introduce the FA’s delivery partners, a number of case studies of inclusion, and information about the contributors to the document and links to important organisations.

In what follows, I examine how the FA’s institutional speech acts on inclusion are non-performative, beginning with the Action Plan’s use of gay football clubs as exemplary cases of inclusion.

Visualising diversity

Visual images are a central feature of the FA Action Plan. Interestingly, for an institution dominated by white men, four of the six delivery themes in the Action Plan on LGB&T inclusion are accompanied by images of Black women and men: the images include those of former footballers Paul Elliott and Mark Bright, as well as those of Hope Powell, the coach of England women’s football team, and Funke Awoderu, the FA Equality Manager. Although these visuals might communicate an intersectional understanding of sexuality – whereby various categories such as race, class, sexuality, gender are seen as in constant and continued interplay with each other (see Yuval-Davis, 2006) – I suggest that they are rather indicative of the degree to which the likelihood of being perceived to be ‘doing’ LGB&T inclusion relies on the perception of being seen as ‘diverse’. The success of creating the perception of ‘doing’ inclusion with regard to LGB&T subjects, then, depends on the visibility provided by Black fe/males. The FA Action Plan is thus using these images to cement the perception of inclusion, but nothing more.

The images of Elliott, Bright, Awoderu and Powell, published by an institution notoriously dominated by White men (see Lusted, 2011), articulates that diversity remains, as Puwar rightly states, ‘overwhelmingly (…) the inclusion of people who look different’ (Puwar, quoted in Ahmed, 2012: 33). Indeed, the visibility of subjects deviating from the institutionally dominant White core of English football is reflected throughout the document and illustrates the extent to which the FA is fully aware of existing criticisms facing the institution, whether this applies to the almost exclusively all-White and all-male make-up of the institution or the conspicuous absence of Black managers (Burdsey, 2011). The FA’s usage of visual images in the newly released Action Plan can thus be regarded as ‘a way of managing the relationship between an organisation and external others’ (Ahmed, 2012: 33–34) and constitutes a visual response to critical voices from the public. The images communicate that ‘we are not what you think we are’, but they do not reflect an institutional reality within English football anchored in whiteness. To quote Dyson ‘we must not reduce the problems of race to face and skin; we must also see them in structure and system’ (Dyson, quoted in Burdsey, 2011: 5). The display of a few visible, recognisable and successful Black subjects, then, cannot overshadow on-going forms of racial discrimination in English football.

The visibility provided by racial ‘others’ is a resource the FA draws on, where, as Ahmed (2012: 153) describes in relation to her own experience within Higher Education, ‘(b)odies of color provide organizations with tools, ways of turning action points into outcomes’. In other words, the bodies’ difference from whiteness is what makes them so visible in an unchanging context, but their visible presence within the institution articulates change and sets the preconditions for reading the FA’s commitment to homophobia as just that.

Conclusion

In the analysis, I pointed out the extent to which the FA’s goal of tackling homophobia and achieving LGB&T inclusion depends on an institutional investment in image management and performance culture. I drew on the FA Action Plan entitled ‘Opening Doors and Joining In’, given that the document constitutes the FA’s most recent document to showcase its commitment to homophobia and LGB&T inclusion. I pointed out what the discourse and celebration of inclusion, diversity and commitment overlooked: power dynamics and exclusive mechanisms in gay football clubs, the lack of Black men and women in influential positions within football and the on-going accusations of institutional racism within the FA. I thus concluded that the many images of gay football clubs, the display of Black individuals in the Action Plan and the FA’s anti-racism work operate as frequent points of reference, creating a specific effect.

To make sense of this conceptually, I drew on Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘non-performative institutional speech acts’ to argue that the FA, rather than being fully committed to tackling homophobia and including LGB&T individuals, creates an effect of being committed to ‘doing’ LGB&T inclusion and tackling homophobia. I highlighted the many images of gay football teams, as well as Black men and women, displayed in the Action Plan, posing the question what the images ‘do’ and effect. These are particularly important questions in light of the discrepancy between institutional structures in English football dominated by white heterosexual men, and the gendered, sexual, ethnic and racial diversity presented in the FA Action Plan. Moreover, adding to the literature outlined at the beginning of this article, I presented some of the complexities involved in tackling homophobia in English professional men’s football and hope to add nuance to our understanding of what institutional speech acts, such as those included in the Action Plan, do.

I nonetheless recognise the difficulty and enormity of the task the FA is confronted with. There is no single solution to eradicating homophobia and including LGB&T individuals, but rather many solutions. However, existing problems will not be solved only through a selective approach by institutional celebrations of ‘pride’, by the appropriation of Black, female and gay bodies to provide the veneer of ‘doing’. A more productive approach would be suggested by the taking on of a humble and self-critical stance and acknowledging that action is necessary on a multiplicity of fronts. Self-declared leadership should allow for this.

What would this look like in the context of LGB&T inclusion and homophobia? A self-critical stance, I suggest, would lead to an institutional focus on what it is precisely that LGB&T individuals are included into. We would then see a recognition that the centre, namely, those who ‘open the doors’, inviting LGB&T people to join in, have contributed to the exclusion in the first place. One way for a climate of homophobia to be ameliorated is by implementing a policy whereby more women become involved within the FA and the wider landscape of English professional and grassroots football, whether as referees, lineswomen, coaches, managers, board members and even as players. Currently, none of the 92 professional clubs employ a woman as a head coach, and women’s involvement in football is by and large limited to the women’s game, even though there are a wide number of qualified women in football, whose influence, however, is confined to the women’s game. ⁹ My argument for more women in the men’s game is not to suggest that women are any less likely to ignore the complexity of homophobia in football or that this is the ultimate and only answer; rather, there needs to be a recognition by the football authorities that ‘(a)ll male settings are precisely the kind of environment within which homophobic and sexist “banter” becomes normalized’ (Bury, 2012: 91). The presence of different women and femininities can help destabilise and unravel this. I am not suggesting here a tokenistic presence of women in influential positions, but a serious commitment to thinking of non-male, non-white, non-heterosexual and perhaps even non-competitive and non-able bodied persons as equally eligible to shape the landscape of English professional men’s football as those already inhabiting that sphere. ¹⁰

Following the more practical solutions above, I want to conclude by commenting on how research on English football, masculinity and homophobia might be advanced theoretically. Even though the FA Action Plan is intended for the English game, its wider message of tackling homophobia and including LGB&T individuals needs to be situated in the wider global arena of football. Although, currently, very few national football federations have taken the issue of homophobia and LGB&T inclusion on board, ¹¹ discourses on homophobia and LGB&T inclusion in football will feature more prominently in upcoming years, particularly in light of widespread concerns among LGB&T and human rights organisations following FIFA’s decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. I suggest that, in this context, Puar’s (2007) concept of homonationalism can be helpful in shedding light on government and media discourses problematising the criminalisation of homosexuality in Qatar.

Puar coins the term homonationalism to make sense of the development of homosexuality and LGB&T identities in the global north, in particular the US, since the 1970s. Writing about the US context post 9/11, Puar (2007: 39) contends that for ‘contemporary forms of US nationalism (…) the production of gay (…) bodies is crucial to the deployment of nationalism, insofar as these (…) bodies reiterate heterosexuality as the norm but also because certain domesticated homosexual bodies provide ammunition to reinforce nationalist projects’. Puar thus shows that the US, in its ‘war on terror’ and invasion of Muslim countries, uses its (partial) recognition of normative gays and lesbians to frame those countries who do not recognise LGB&T identities (i.e. Muslim countries) as ‘barbaric’ and ‘other’, thus justifying an imperial agenda. The inclusion and visibility of certain types of gay and lesbian subjects, then, is constitutive of the nationalist project of fighting barbaric ‘others’ rather than an end in itself; it is used as a corollary to a larger project, a ‘discursive tactic that disaggregates US national gays and queers from racial and sexual others, foregrounding a collusion between homosexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetorics of patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves: homonationalism’ (Puar, 2007: 39).

In the context of football in a global arena, homonationalism can offer a valuable tool to analyse the ways in which the UK government, and also the media, governing bodies and campaigners, draw on LGB&T inclusion and anti-homophobia legislation in the UK when discussing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. For instance, at the Downing Street Summit on Discrimination in February 2012, Chris Basiurski from the GFSN, requested ‘“strong representation” be made to FIFA about gay England fans, and players, who wish to attend the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a country where gay acts are currently illegal and punishable by imprisonment’ (quoted in Gray, 2012). Basiurski thus appealed to the English government to pressurise the worlds governing body of football, FIFA, to voice the concerns of gay and lesbian English citizens, and, by implication, catapulted the English government into a potentially leading actor in efforts to address anti-homosexuality laws in Qatar. Indeed, a year prior to the Downing Street Summit, UK Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Althani, and addressed the issue of homophobia:

…football is for everybody, no one should be excluded on the basis of race or religion or sex or sexuality (…) and I’m sure that will be the case when the football World Cup comes here to Qatar (…). I think we saw in our own country how successfully football drove racism out of the stands, and I think just as that has happened so too we need to make sure that there is no place for homophobia in football either. (Cameron, 2011)

While it is important for the UK government to articulate its citizens’ concerns to the Qatari government in the face of the criminalisation of homosexuality, I suggest that it is equally important for scholars to be wary of the ways in which this is done; this applies not only to the ways in which, as above, the tackling of racism is celebrated as if it has been driven out, but particularly how the same script might be adhered to in the case of celebrating LGB&T inclusion and anti-homophobia policies as a blueprint for other countries to follow. For theorising such processes and their implications, homonationalism constitutes a useful concept, as it allows us to interrogate what speech acts ‘do’ and what they effect in their discursive unfolding. They are thus an indispensable part of interrogations into the non-performativity of speech acts and the institutions wielding them.