Martha Ehrenfeld on the absence of LGBT issues at the IOC Women and Sport conference

Martha Ehrenfeld comments on the deafening silence on lesbian issues at the IOC Women and Sport conference:

There was no panel topic that covered any LGBT issues outright. Terms like "gender expression" and "gender stereotypes" came out in one panel covering “Matters Medical.”

That panel was asked about transgender rugby players and boxers. It is clear that the IOC still has a lot of work on this issue.
It would be my dream to see a NBC up-close-and-personal story feature during the Olympics cover an out LGBT athlete.

I asked Alan Abrahamson, USC Professor and international sports reporter about that—when will that happen? We agreed it was a chicken and egg situation. Athletes don’t come out because there is not a safe environment but you need out athletes to create that safe environment. He also said that some athletes had worked so hard to get the Olympics and they did not want their story to be defined by their sexual orientation.

Yet we know that there are already out athletes, and that the mainstream media usually makes great efforts to speak of their sexual orientation. We expect that there will be more out athletes than ever in London... will the world hear their story?

Read all our coverage of this conference HERE.