David Guerrero: "We are 'selling' sports competitions to countries that condemn LGTBI people"

When in 2013 David Guerrero and a group of athletes launched Madrid Titans, the first Rugby LGBTI+ inclusive team in Spain, nobody took them very seriously.However, when they began to compete they realized that their rivals used to align upper league players to ensure victory."No one wanted to be the first team to lose against the fags," he says.Little by little, they have been demolishing stereotypes, eliminating prejudices and bringing this sport to everyone.

Eight years after planting that seed, the journalist, who is also president of the Sports and Diversity Association, publishes Corres as a girl (two mustache editor), a informative essay, with a prologue of the sports journalist Paloma del Río, in whichIt addresses gender stereotypes, machismo and lgtbifobia in sport, from great stadiums to the courtyards of schools, through the personal stories of the pioneers and the pioneers who have broken with their diversity the rules imposed on the rules imposed.

At the beginning of the book he says that sport reproduces gender stereotypes.As it does?Why are sports socially feminized and others male?

Has reproduced them historically with women, judging them as less.In addition, when other sexual orientations begin to appear and accept, sport adapts the stereotype.He says that lesbians are more capable because they have a male component and gay men are related to femininity, creativity and sensitivity and tell you that other sports such as artistic gymnastics or skating will be given to you better, they havemore glitter and more shine.This has an impact on visibility: in contact sports, which in theory are very masculine, there is not a single gay reference, but many visible lesbians.And vice versa, in more artistic or creative sports, such as synchronized swimming - without entering that it requires a lot of physical strength and sports power - only gays are seen.In the pyramid of what society considers "best athlete", the heterosexual male is on the cusp, below are trans women, below gay men and at the end there are women.It is a terrible analysis.

In Spain there are three million male chips, compared to 890.000 female, according to the 2019 data of the Higher Sports Council.How has the participation of women in sports?

Girls have been educated since physical undervaluation, even in schools.Sometimes children are trained differently and different things are required, adapting sports tests or practices.To that we must add a lack of important references in sports by the media.In the sports press only 10% of the space is dedicated to women and are always brief, without a signature, without photo or with a stereotyped photograph of a model, of a footballer's girlfriend with little clothes, and so on.In addition, being a woman in sport is very complicated because most have to leave it because they can't live on it.They have to have other jobs and, at the time when other responsibilities or other vital developments arrive, they cannot maintain it.

All this makes it quite complicated that the woman joins in an efficient and efficient way in sport.Besides, most regulators are men, who regulate them without thinking about them in every way.We have to remember that until three days the players did not even have a collective agreement that marked their working conditions.There are very few federations presidents in our country, even in sports with more women's chips, such as Gymnastics or Artistic Gymnastics.

The basketball referee Sara Peláez explains that she has suffered more discrimination for being a woman than being a lesbian, a speech that other athletes repeat.

The key is that being a lesbian can hide and be a woman, not.Sara tells very well that when she is arbitrating in high -level matches with shells full very few people know who she is, but they see that she is a woman.In addition, she is a referee and in the coaching staff things are worse.We have had an Olympic Games where parity has almost been achieved between athletes, but women have only been 10% of the total of the coaching staff.It is a discrimination after another.One of the great insults that women athletes tell you is that of "go to scrub".This gender stereotype also comes into play that makes lesbians in the social mental ideology better in sport.

Heterosexual athletes are called "fag" when they want to be less.

Many times we hear that there are no gay players living freely.The soccer fields are potato pots of verbal violence and if you are marked by a diversity such as gay being the constant insult will be "fag".When Borja Iglesias painted black nails to support Black Lives Matter, they started calling him "fag" and telling him that he lost oil.Without pretending, it also became a symbol of the struggle for diversity.

Are those insults in the football fields socially penalized?

There is absolute impunity.The first sanction for a homophobic insult in sport was put a few months ago and it was not in football.It was in Waterpolo, the player Nemanja Ubovic, who called Víctor Gutiérrez several times several times.He decides to report it and the Swimming Federation, which did it very well, began an administrative process with the Higher Sports Council and put the first economic fine.But the only thing that the CSD and the autonomous communities have to do with LGBTI laws that prohibit this type of insult is to go to a football field.How many fines would they put in a single league day?

In recent years, many countries that do not respect women's rights and pursue the LGTBI collective are using sport as a propaganda tool.Do sports organizations and federations lose the opportunity to position themselves and launch a message that makes their athletes feel safe?

Money is buying everything.In this country, by law, only male football and basketball are professional sports.But they are no longer sport, they are pure business where only the check you are going to get.Unfortunately, we are selling great competitions and shirts to countries where LGTBI people are sentenced to death and women do not have a single right.It is also happening in the Olympic Games, surrounded by that halo of peace, tolerance and union between countries.We have seen how Russia have sanctioned doping, but not when you have persecuted homosexuals.The World Cup in Qatar is going to be held, one of the countries that does not respect human rights.In Beijing the streets were "cleaned" so that there were no homeless people.

And we are going to celebrate the Spanish Cup to Saudi Arabia, where the few feminist women who have been able to raise their voice are in jail.Imagine that you are a gay footballer from Real Madrid or Barça: you wear a shirt with the logo of a country where you are sentenced to death -Madrid carries the sponsorship of Emirates Airline and until recently Barça carried that of Qatar Airways-.And then the fault is of the LGTBI soccer players who invent a life and have girlfriends to go out in the photos....The fault is the system and how sport is mounted!

Indicates that the subject of Physical Education is the one that contributes the most to the reinforcement of gender and sexism stereotypes.How do these early stages determine the way in which we interact with sport for the rest of our lives?

I do not mean that all physical education teachers are doing a bad job because some and some are doing very well.Historically, in this subject what was done is what I told you before: the boys were forced to take six laps to the field and the girls three;They are given a two kilos medicinal ball and they of one and a half.The other great drama is that many teachers move what happens in professional and youthful professional sport.If you believe that your classroom is Real Madrid in little.I think the key is that the base, child and youth sport has to get away from the professional.The objective of that stage must be health, socialization and recognize oneself and advance your own limitations.

How should the debate on the participation of trans women in sports competitions be addressed?

The first thing to do is separate the professional and elite sport from the rest of the sport.If we talk about base sport, the objective must be the inclusion of all people.In professional sport you have to explain many things to help regulators make decisions based on scientific and social evidence.Trans women and intersex people directly hang the qualifier of "competitive advantage".And they do not have it, beyond what they have had for their genetic inheritance.Rafa Nadal has it to be a left -handed.All people who arrive at the elite sport are extraordinary and normally have a competitive advantage awarded naturally by their own genetics or physical.Trans or intersex people do not choose to be, they are also naturally.That is my way of seeing this matter.If we continue using bad indicators to classify or prohibit their participation we will be committing an injustice after another.

And with trans minors?

In sport and diversity we have had cases of trans children under ten years of age to those who did not give the federative file for sex felt because they said they were going to have that competitive advantage.They are children under ten years old!Two things have to be explained to the President of the Federation: that until the eleven or twelve, boys and girls have the same corporality and that the sport that is done in their community should not be competition, but of education, of education,Socialization and Health, which has to be developed at those ages.We had to go to a sports court to get a nine -year -old trans child to compete in his sport with his sex felt.A child who in a few years, at the Olympic Games, can participate without any restriction.

Because men do not need that verification.

A man does not think of touching the testosterone!There is a maximum regulation for women, but not for men.That I do not understand me badly: I do not want the testosterone to be regulated outside the doping.But it is also that intersex reality itself demonstrates that this indicator is not a good measure, because there are people who process it well and others who do not process it.To this we add that there are studies that show that the moment in which trans adult women begin hormonal treatments their physical abilities are drastically reduced and equated to women CIS.If they do forest, with the hormonal blockade they will have the same physical conditions.

Encourages to end binary categorization in sport, especially in base sport.It is a disruptive proposal.How do you imagine these new categories?Is society prepared for it?

The analysis is very wide.What I am convinced is that you have to extend the mixed category in all sports as much as possible.It makes no sense to separate boys and girls from 11 to 16 years.I think it would be an interesting measure, that things would change.Then we would have to see for sports.In some it will be easier to break those normative categories and in others it will be more complicated.In any case, the key is that we cannot move towards that breakdown of the categories in professional sport until the female is equated with the male and women have all the rights, all public and economic recognition and all the tools for thatThey can participate in sport in an equal way.In base sport we must break the categories as soon as possible, because they make no sense.We must talk less about genres and more than bodies.Sometimes it is more important to have a strata person than a fast male, or a strong woman than a slow man.It will depend on sport, sports strategy and the characteristics of the discipline.