Gay figure skating

Growing up, I was always told that figure skating was a pretty same-sex attracted sport. We had Adam Rippon and Eric Radford bringing glory to the rainbow flag in PyeongChang, Johnny Weir chatting away in the commentary booth, and the two wonderful Brians – Orser and Boitano – out and proud. I got lulled into believing that the figure skating community was a safe place for openly LGBTQ+ athletes, but a few days ago, I learned that this was not true and never has been so.

It all started when the aforementioned Adam Rippon recently donated $1,000 to a charity for black transsexual people and posted about it on social media. Alexei Yagudin, the 2002 Olympic gold medalist in men’s skating, brutally denounced Rippon’s decision to encourage the cause and proclaimed that trans people and people of color didn’t need charities. He also verbally attacked Rippon himself, although he later issued a perfunctory apology for his choice of words. Many people in the skating community pulled together to support Rippon, but this incident shattered the illusion of an Queer haven inside the earth of figure skating. It also sparked a discussion about the underlying homophobia, transphobia, and enforcement of traditiona