Cyd Zeigler

While skiing, skating, baseball, basketball, football and swimming were passion of mine, when I was a boy in grade school and high school, college and professional sports never became more than of casual interest. As time passes that fact becomes only increasingly true. So it was that only the odd character of this book caught my eye. How LGBT athletes are claiming their rightful place in sports seemed so incredibly unimportant an issue, and undoubtedly dull and uninteresting besides, that I wondered how I could find anything of interest in such a book.

Never say never, that's what I say. Cyd Zeigler's look into the reality of gay men and women in sports is an eye-opener. I'd recommend it to anyone.… (altro)

I won a copy of this book as part of the LibraryThing early reviewer giveaway.

Overall, this book presents a very good overview of some of the major issues LGBT athletes face in sports, especially college and professional leagues. I don’t really know a lot about professional sports leagues, so I was happy to find that this book was written in a way that’s very accessible to everyone. Zeigler has written a great addition to the growing number of titles out there that explore LGBT history and civil rights issues.

One of the more interesting discussions posed by Zeigler is how transgender athletes are treated in the world of professional sports, especially mixed martial arts. Zeigler wonders if it’s time to stop separating athletes by gender and start considering separating them by ability, skill, height, weight, etc.

Working in a school setting, I would recommend this book to any coach or adult that works with youth sports to help them better understand how to promote inclusive teams that are welcoming, safe havens for all athletes.… (altro)

I like non-fiction, but I'm mostly a fiction reader. I rarely find a non-fiction book that pulls me in (I can probably count them all on one hand), or a non-fiction book that only takes me a couple of sittings to read because I'm so engrossed.

This book was one of those rare books.

I wish I could explain exactly why, but unfortunately, I can't.

I do know that Zeigler mixed the 'historical' with the more current quite a lot, which I thought made it flow really well, and while it seems as though he knows and has helped some people from comments in the narrative, it didn't seem to me like he was name dropping to me. Those statements seemed matter of fact in the narrative.

I did have a small problem with it mostly being about the guys. I do understand the reasons why it was focused on the men. For one thing, Zeigler is a guy, and as with so many other parts of life, the world is different for men vs. women. But, still, I wish that there had been more about the sports women and their stories, not simply one chapter.

Still, I liked the book, and there was so much delightful Massachusetts/New England goodness too. Heh.… (altro)

Well-meaning, but unfortunately not well-written. Given the hostility that some people still harbor toward members of the LGBT community, I was hoping this would be a strong defense of the principle that everyone should be equal under the law, in the locker room and on the field/court/etc. At the minimum, I was hoping for athletes' stories and specific details about how their actions changed the attitudes of their family, friends and wider communities.

Instead, Zeigler makes one grand claim after another, starting with the assertion that the murder of Matthew Shepard directly resulted in greater approval of same-sex marriage. (Yes, seriously.) Similarly, he seems to believe that anytime an athlete comes out, it always has this huge ripple effect across all of society, even as he concedes that people tend to only remember Michael Sam, Jason Collins and other big names. Given that writing about LBGT athletes (and encouraging them to come out) is the whole premise of Outsports.com, the site he co-founded, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but the book was still so disappointing that I just couldn't finish it.

(If you want a book that does make the case for equality, "Then Comes Marriage" by Roberta Kaplan does a fantastic job and is a great read for Pride Month!)… (altro)