Social Deviance

               Jason Collins is a basketball player in the National Basketball Association. He has had a solid career playing for several teams since he entered the league in 2001. He even made a few trips to the NBA Finals with the New Jersey Nets. Although Collins has made many notable athletic accomplishments, the thing he will be most remembered for is becoming the first openly gay male athlete that is still active in a major North American team sport.

               What Collins did was a deviance from what is normally accepted in major professional sports today. In sociology, deviance is the action or behavior that goes against the accepted social norms, where social norms are behaviors and actions that society believes are normal. So why, if he was going against what society thinks is right, did Collins come out? He didn’t have much to gain in the announcement but plenty to lose.

               One possible explanation comes from the push for gay rights that we have seen in recent years. It could be that the gains made in the gay community are giving confidence to people in higher positions, like Jason Collins, to be more outspoken. This could be true, as reports surfaced just a few months ago that several football players in the NFL were considering coming out as a group. Just like a clothing trend going through a high school, it only takes a few people to start a movement that others will follow.

               How would a movement like this affect professional sports? More importantly, how could something like this affect our society as a whole? It seems that only time will tell how this plays out, but it surely will be a struggle for the athletes and the society they’re against.

Bibliography:

Kim, Bo-Rin, Alison Liss, Monica Rao, Zachary Singer, and Rebecca Compton. 2012. “Social Deviance Activates the Brain’s Error-monitoring System - Springer.” Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 12(1):65–73.

Wikipedia. 2013. “Jason Collins.” Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 17, 2013 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Collins).