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Matty Hayward

@MattyHayward96

JUSTIN FASHANU

June is Pride Month. But, like much of this article, that won’t be news to you. You’ll have seen the social media account of every bank, supermarket, political party, and sports club has adorned its profile picture with a rainbow banner. You’ll notice, throughout the summer, all of these organisations will join in with ‘parades’ through your local city and town, waving flags, blowing whistles, and revelling in the festivities that celebrate the LGBT+ community. While these events are fun, and these tokenistic displays of solidarity are welcome, Pride month should be about more than this: it should be a realisation of and protest against the struggles of LGBT+ people, as well as a celebration of their achievements.

There are some stories that are told often, and many that are not told enough. Justin Fashanu’s falls into both categories: you probably know it, but it bears repeating, because it’s important, and because it was very often told uncharitably by bigots.

THE STORY

It is important to remember the context of pervasive homophobia in which Fashanu came out, and the terror in which he must’ve lived. Almost a decade before he came out to the newspapers, the much-celebrated Brian Clough showed his homophobic colours at Nottingham Forest. As rumours of Fashanu’s sexuality circulated, Clough would regularly call him a “poof” in training, and, when the forward refused to be forced out of the club, his manager called the police to “come and nick my own centre-forward” (Crafton). In 1985, The Sun ran headlines like “AIDS is the wrath of God, says Vicar”, “Perverts are to blame for the plague”, and “I’d shoot my son if he had AIDS, says Vicar”. These were the tip of the gay-panic iceberg, and no individual examples can sufficiently capture the hostility of the environment, where rampant homophobia disguised itself as concern, where widespread, entrenched bigotry hid under the veil of moral panic. These were the circumstances in which Fashanu and other LGBT+ people were living.

When he came out to the press in October 1990, he became the first man in top-flight football to do so. He said then that he knew of at least twelve other players who were gay. Thirty-three years on, he remains the only top-flight male professional to have come out. You could assume, then, that his coming out was a result of enormous courage. Indeed, it should be a moment of liberation and joy. In reality, for Fashanu, it was a desperate attempt to control his own story. He had been informed that a Sunday newspaper planned to ‘expose’ him, so, in a panic, he called football agent Eric Hall, who was able to arrange an interview with The Sun. In exchange for a fee, Fashanu allowed himself to be heard, rather than allowing the rumour mill to churn further. The sub-headline on the front page read “Justin Fashanu confesses” – the implication of guilt and sin was not lost on readers, and should not be lost on us.  

The theme of Fashanu not being in control of his own story continued throughout his life. His brother, ‘Crazy Gang’ star and Gladiators presenter John Fashanu, offered him an equivalent fee to keep silent about his sexuality. Later, John would go on to describe his brother as “an outcast”, “belong[ing] to Satan”, and a “stranger.” He, like many footballers after Justin’s truth was told, said that he would refuse to shower or change in the same room as his brother. Tony Sewell, a prominent writer in Afro-Caribbean newspaper The Voice, wrote that “heteros are sick and tired of tortured queens playing hide and seek around their closets.”

By this time, Justin Fashanu’s status as a top-ranking footballer was long-gone. The man who had been the first £1million black player had succumbed to injury struggles, and found himself aged 30 recapturing his fitness as a player-coach at Southall FC. He maintained, though, that his injuries were far less of a decisive factor in his difficulty to find football than his sexuality.

In November 1991, Fashanu did receive an opportunity, from Torquay United, on the condition that he took an HIV test as part of the medical. The reason given was that he was “high-risk” due to having “multiple partners.” This was a false presumption based on homophobic stereotypes – Fashanu had not had multiple partners at that time, but was assumed to have done because of his sexuality. His time at Plainmoor was not without complications: at Fulham on Boxing Day 1991, he was roundly mocked by the home fans, and he was often asked to change in the referee’s room as the Gulls players did not want to change with him (Baker).

This is not to eulogise Fashanu at all. His life was complicated, wrought with difficulties that went well beyond homophobia, and his behaviour was far from perfect. More than that, actually. In March 1998, five charges were registered against him by Howard County police department, including two of assault, one of sexual assault, against a 17 year-old. The alleged victim stood by his accusations after Fashanu’s death. The other two charges were of “sodomy” and “perverted practice”, laws which effectively banned homosexual relations. In his suicide note, Fashanu denied any criminality, claimed that the accuser had threatened to blackmail him and wrote that he feared an unfair trial as a black gay man in 1990s Maryland – a state in which homosexuality was criminalized until 2020 – against a white complainant. Critics of Fashanu would argue that a guilty man doesn’t run; his close friends saw a man ridden with angst and fear (Crafton). Realistically, we will never know what happened, and it is unhelpful to speculate.

The tabloid coverage of his death was a continuation of the tabloid coverage of his life. Vicky Powell of The Gay Times wrote that “scarcely have there ever been obituaries so devoid of feeling, compassion, and warmth.” His brother, in 2012, claimed that Justin had lied about his sexuality in order to “get attention,” continuing in his desperation to write Justin’s story for him. His niece – Amal Fashanu, John’s daughter – continues to campaign for justice for Justin, and has made a documentary in his honour.  Tony Sewell, who was appointed to lead a commission by Boris Johnson in 2020, apologised for his comments thirty years too late.

WHAT NOW?

I wonder, and this is a question to which I genuinely don’t have an answer, if Torquay United (as a football club, as a fanbase) should make more of having Justin Fashanu as an ex-player. He was a trailblazer, not just as one of the country’s best centre-forwards at his peak, but as a talented, briefly successful black player, as a man who overcame a challenging childhood to find his way in the game and score the Match of the Day Goal of the Season aged 19, and as a gay man who fought torrents of homophobia pursuing his chosen career. We gave him an opportunity in the professional game when nobody else would. Should we have a Justin Fashanu Suite, an award, a flag? I don’t know. Of course, the unanswered allegations make this far less clear cut.

More broadly, it’s important not to make over-simplistic leaps in our analysis, here. However, it is hard to look at Justin Fashanu’s story and not conclude that it is, at least, in part a factor in the lack of openly gay male pros in English football. That Blackpool’s Jake Daniels, who came out last year, remains the only example is a clear indictment that men’s football still has a cultural problem with homophobia, so gay footballers (who simply must exist) prefer the comfort of the closet to facing the abuse they know they’d receive.

Another factor in this, surely, has to be how men’s football itself treats homophobia. Homophobic chants, directed particularly towards Brighton and Chelsea fans, remain rife. The last men’s World Cup was hosted by a nation where homosexuality is illegal. The one before that was hosted by a nation where homophobia is not illegal. The best team in England – arguably Europe – is owned, ostensibly, by a state where homosexuality is illegal. This is the case for at least one club who qualified for the Champions League this season, and it may soon be the case for a third. These owners – all of whom will claim that they are ‘separate entities’ from the states from which they hail, though that claim is highly contested – are celebrated by large swathes of their fanbases. Can you blame a gay footballer for not coming out, knowing how little interest many fans take in his right to exist, knowing that the owners of the most successful clubs in your country believe your very existence to be immoral?

Homophobia and transphobia, of course, are not limited to men’s football. They are social scourges. Football is a mirror that reflects society: football fans and players and managers and board members are people who live in wider society. The aforementioned bigotry masquerading as concern is a tactic that has mostly dissipated in terms of homophobia, but is commonplace in ‘debates’ about the right of trans people to exist. To tackle anti-LGBT+ discrimination in football, we need to tackle it in society.

I’m definitely not the right person to be writing this. I am a straight, cisgender man who was born a year after Fashanu’s death. Better accounts of his life, and of homophobia, exist. But, in a way, I am the right person to be writing this, to be thinking this, to be taking a very minor action in this. I am an ally of the LGBT+ community, as we all should be. If you want to do something useful this Pride Month, don’t ask your company if they can put a rainbow flag in the window, don’t buy a specific brand of smoothie because it says “Love is Love” on the bottle in a crude attempt to shift more units. Instead, listen to LGBT+ voices, follow them on Twitter (start with Adam Crafton, Musa Okwonga, and Shon Faye), challenge your mates when they use language that you know is homophobic or transphobic, lobby your MP and your preferred political party to provide better support to LGBT+ people, tell the story of Justin Fashanu to those who might not know it, make a noticeable effort to make a small change to the small environment that you inhabit. Significant cultural change starts with these things, not with rainbows, as lovely as they are.

References:

A range of sources used, but particular thanks go to Adam Crafton’s article on Fashanu’s life in The Athletic, which can be found here: https://theathletic.com/2382097/2021/02/14/we-know-justin-fashanu-died-now-let-us-hear-how-he-lived/ and Nick Baker’s biography of Fashanu’s life – ‘Forbidden Forward’.

COYY – MATTY

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