Barriers to Inclusion

Openly sexual minority athletes are conspicuously absent from or otherwise underrepresented within many social settings. The social exclusion that lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and other sexual minorities experience within spaces conducive to health likely contributes to health disparities faced by these groups. This dissertation examines the case of athletic spaces to explore nuances related to the inclusion of sexual minorities in social spaces, specifically to address whether their underrepresentation is due to attrition, a lack of disclosure about their sexual minority identities, or a hesitance to initiate participation in the first place. A sequential explanatory mixed methods study design was used to first quantitatively establish the extent of disparities in sports participation faced by sexual minorities, followed by a qualitative investigation to both identify mechanisms contributing to disparities and to theorize about the role that outness plays in these differences in participation. The findings from quantitative analysis using data from the Add Health study suggest differential attrition by sexual minorities compared to non-sexual minorities. These findings are considered within the context of themes that were determined through qualitative analysis that demonstrate gendered differences in pleasurable physicality derived from sport and how sexualized norms and perceptions of sexual minority athletes affect the motivation to persist in athletic activities. An elaboration upon Self-Determination Theory is presented to highlight the role of outness in sports persistence, which has the potential to be applied to other healthy spaces and to the inclusion of populations with hidden, stigmatized identities. Together, the results demonstrate how sexual minorities remain sexualized, stigmatized, and silenced within sectors of society, and foreshadow how further exclusion through political and social action will exacerbate the physical and mental health disparities seen today.