Chris Kluwe is no unknown name to the LGBTQ community. The straight man has been a vocal proponent of LGBTQ issues and it may have cost him his place on the Minnesota Vikings.

Sure, Jason Collin’s coming out in professional basketball is huge news, but Kluwe’s words and actions, even as a straight man, dwarf that pronouncement, because Football is the true King when it comes to the male sports hierarchy. Consider this interpretation of Football and Masculinity: (bolded emphasis is mine)

I believe we’re so passionate about football because it embodies everything we love about American exceptionalism. Merit is rewarded, not punished. Masculinity is celebrated, not feminized. People of various beliefs and backgrounds — a melting pot, if you will — must unify for a common goal for the team to be successful. In football, fortune favors the bold, just as it once did in the American frontier. But football also sprinkles in the right amount of fairness by letting the bad teams draft first in the NFL, so there’s at least a chance that one day the glass slipper fits Cinderella.

Note the confusing contradiction where in one sentence, masculinity is not feminized, yet a sentence later, compared to the Cinderella story. In the King of Sports, definitions mean only what the masculine decide they mean. Even scholars link inherently, Football and Masculinity, as this dissertation abstract identifies:

This dissertation traces the development of the football narrative in order to determine the relationship between football and American masculinity as it has evolved over the last century.

Or this quote from a site about Notre Dame Football:

“American football remains the arena par excellence in which a young man can demonstrate his masculinity”

I think that Kluwe’s importance, has not only been about his advocacy efforts, but rather, Kluwe role models a new masculinity- one where care for our youth, and all of our youth is placed at higher worth than the status quo self-aggrandizing of professional sports. In a recent interview he said:

‘I love football, I love playing football but at the end of the day, it is a children’s game that grown men play. If I can speak out on something, especially something that affects millions of lives and causes young kids to kill themselves – if I can speak out on that and help one of those young kids realize that you don’t have to take that step, to me that’s worth far more than anything that I could gain from football.’

A New Masculinity

In other words, Chris Kluwe displays a new type of Masculinity. One that recognizes the power of the game and at the same time sees a greater role for the player than simply being the spectators’ hero. The new masculine is not just a role model for the budding masculine, but for all youth, especially those at risk, and the ones who need support, encouragement, and dare, I say it, love and compassion.

The Far Right uses a mantra than youth need loving parents of both genders, and there is a part of that, which is accurate. All youth need to know that both men and women care, support and believe in them.But the part they have wrong is believing this happens 1) naturally by default, and 2) only within the microcosm of the nuclear family unit. Kluwe models this love and care like no other masculine figure in our contemporary arena. Even Tim Tebow, a player known for his religious devotion displays openness to youth, but doesn’t articulate this loving masculinity like Kluwe.

Given the enmeshed relationship between Football and Masculinity, there is no better place for this new masculinity to become seen if it is to have a real impact on the whole of our culture and Chris Kluwe is leading the way.

I was personally touched by Kluwe’s quote. I was one of those youth who needed desperately to hear what Kluwe has to say. But when I was 13, and 14, there was no one standing up and speaking out like him. I can not even imagine how different my life would be today, had I been able to see and hear a Pro Athlete express what Kluwe has. I was however fortunate, and my suicide attempt was unsuccessful. My lungs are scarred and damaged such that I have only a 40% lung capacity, but at least I lived and didn’t die.

It is hard to say what reverberations Kluwe’s quote and the new masculinity he portrays will have on culture in general and on Professional Football specifically. The status quo changes slowly and often fights to be maintained against change, even change for the better. But today’s and tomorrow’s youth need players like Kluwe, and all men need to shed the status quo and adopt this new masculinity. One that places our supporting and caring for all youth first and foremost.