Advocates call for better LGBTQ access to local sports
City expected to consider recommendations raised at Sport Inclusion Summit
“There’s lots of opportunity for us to become better and more aware of the needs of the LGBT community” HOWIE DAYTON CITY OF TORONTO
It took 58 years for Steve Hirshfeld to pick up a baseball bat and feel like he belonged.
Slight as a boy, Hirshfeld was diagnosed with arthritis in his teens, making it difficult for him to bend his knees the way others could with ease.
Although he loved playing and watching hockey, Hirshfeld said he was “crummy” at many sports. For a long time, he also felt he didn’t live up to a traditional, standard image of masculinity.
It wasn’t until 2010, when he discovered an LGBTQ baseball league in the city designed to encourage all ages and skill levels, that he started associating organized sport with fun.
Now, when he sports his red and white Eagle Eyes jersey at 63 years old, Hirshfeld beams with pride.
“It’s so funny, people think I’m an athlete because I do these things,” he said, adding that he also enjoys activities like cycling.
Hirshfeld has become an active member at The 519 community centre, part of a network of sport and LGBTQ agencies advocating for safer, better access to athletics and recreation programs for LGBTQ members in Toronto and across the coun- try. In consultation with organizations like The 519 community centre, the city is expected to consider a list of recommendations born out of The 519’s recent Sport Inclusion Summit held July 13 to 15. The list suggests creating non-gender-segregated spaces, a task force on LGBTQ sports inclusion, and more inclusive registration forms that “avoid outing through gender and family assumptions.”
“If I’m a member of the trans community, or I’m somebody who is gender nonconforming, and I’m going to sign up for a program and I’m seeing there are two options, I know that that’s not necessarily an environment that is aware of inclusive practices or necessarily an environment where I may be welcome,” said Kristina Flynn, senior consultant of sport and recreation at The 519.
According to Howie Dayton, director of community recreation with the city of Toronto, it’s unclear how such recommendations might turn into action, but he says he’d like to see partnerships help the city determine how to implement them.
“There’s lots of opportunity for us to become better and more aware of the needs of the LGBT community,” he said.
Dayton pointed to the Regent Park Aquatic Centre as a model to learn from, specifically the gender-neutral change room and dedicated open and inclusive swim hours set for Saturday nights.
The 519 also hopes its proposed rec- reation centre for Moss Park, if and when it is built, could serve as a model for inclusivity in the future.
But physical space and facilities aren’t the only barriers to participation, according to Barb Besharat, a senior specialist of sport and recreation at The 519.
Black-and-white language like “Sir” and “Ma’am,” and exclusive girls’ teams or boys’ teams, can also be destructive to a member of the LGBTQ community.
Besharat, who has played countless sports and kept active as much as possible, said those subtle assumptions can become powerful overtime and happen much more frequently than blunt homophobic remarks.
But those still pop up, too — and they’re seared into Besharat’s memory.
One day, during a Frosh week party for the University of Toronto’s newest Kinesiology and Physical Education students around the year 2000, Besharat realized athletic talent couldn’t protect against fear or intolerance of LGBTQ members.
Besharat said the captain of a popular men’s varsity team, part of the group hosting the Annex house party, had “outed” a teammate at the packed party, calling her a lesbian — doling out the term like a punchline.
“He just started telling a bunch of the different first years that this person is a lesbian, and you know, in a really making-fun-of-them kind of way, not like a ’isn’t that cool?’ — not so much,” Besharat said, realizing talent couldn’t make the field hockey teammates feel safe.
Although there are more than 6,000 LGBTQ adults playing sports in various leagues and teams offered in the city, according to The 519, it’s unclear how many people avoid recreation because they feel isolated from the sport environment.