Tom Daley comes out of the closet - am I surprised? (Part 1)

Some friends have asked me to respond to the news that British Olympic bronze medalist diver Tom Daley has come out of the closet this week - am I surprised? Allow me to gather some of my thoughts on the event of today and respond to some of the questions that my friends have asked me on the issue.

Now firstly, I am glad that Tom Daley has come out - after all, he has been in a relationship with a man since spring of this year, so he had the choice of either trying to hide his boyfriend away like some dark, shameful secret or be open about it. He chose the latter - good for him. I hope that he is happy in his relationship and that his boyfriend will be a source of support for him as he works towards the 2016 Rio Olympics. This will put an end to years of speculation about his sexuality - now we can say, "that's that issue settled once and for all, can we just focus on his diving please?"

He is paying a price for it of course because he is potentially losing out on many lucrative product endorsements given that some global brands may be hesitant to embrace an openly gay/bi icon like Tom Daley if they are marketing into parts of the world which are not gay friendly, like Russia, Africa and the Middle East. I don't think Daley is thinking about his potential earnings in terms of sponsorship deals - from his emotional and heartfelt message, it does seem like he doesn't care so much about any potential earnings he may lose out on. It was a choice between keeping his relationship a secret or being open about it - he chose the latter.

This begs the question: why the announcement then? Couldn't he have simply kept a lower profile and just not talk about his private life if it could potentially cost him millions in sponsorship deals? I suppose he could have - one can only wonder how many high profile celebrities from professional athletes to K-pop boy band members to actors are gay men maintaining a heterosexual public profile. Let's take the example of a K-pop boy band: now these K-pop stars rarely have much freedom, everything they say or do is controlled by the record label. They do not use social media, they barely have a social life outside work and are marketed as single, available and of course, heterosexual. This is the formula that will ensure that they will have a lot of fans and make a lot of money. The South Korean K-pop industry is a ruthless machine when it comes to producing these perfect boy bands like Big Bang, Exo, Shin Hwa, MBLAQ, TVXQ, B2ST, 2PM, SHINee, U-Kiss and Super Junior, just to name a few. As a fan of K-pop, I know that I am seeing the image that these record companies want to sell me, I am under no illusions. This is K-pop, after all.

Tom Daley however, is a diver who has become a celebrity. Sports people are simply not subjected to that kind of scrutiny that K-pop superstars are by their record labels - the rules are different. Most professional divers and gymnasts are on social media and they would often have their own Youtube channels where they show their fans and peers some of the latest skills they are working on - it is remarkably easy for fans to communicate with some world and Olympic champions (language barrier notwithstanding) through the medium of social media. I have left questions for such gymnasts and divers on Youtube and Twitter which have been answered remarkably quickly - there is quite a sense of community within the sports community, quite unlike say the relationship between a singer or actor and his/her fans where there is usually a PR manager managing the kind of communication and interaction with the fans.

This is a double edged sword - if you put yourself out there on social media for the public to judge you, then you have no control over what kind of interaction they will offer. Whilst Tom Daley has received many messages of support since he came out, there was also quite a lot of homophobic abuse, particularly on Twitter. You just have to take the good with the bad and as long as the majority of the interaction are coming from people who are nice or at least civil, then you just have to put up with (or deal with) the minority who are downright hostile.

I'm more interested in his diving than his sex life.

I had a taste of this myself through this blog - now I don't think my blog is particularly high profile, I just like using this format to share my opinions of current issues. Yet I found myself in the middle of a controversial debate in Singapore earlier this year over an interview I had done with the BBC - I was simply astonished that people halfway around the world could take such interest in what I do or say, given that I am not at all a celebrity. Thus I can quite easily see how people would take interest in Tom Daley's private life - I don't condone this invasion of his privacy but I can see how this has become a part of participating in social media. So what do you do? The only way to avoid the problems of social media is to avoid it altogether, but is Tom Daley willing to give up that part of his life (the way many K-pop idols have)?

So whilst Tom may be behaving like many of his peers in the sports community who have a close relationship with their fans, he has also become a media celebrity by the same token over the years - he has his own TV series now "Splash" and has been a feature of numerous documentaries about his life. Very few British sportsmen actually achieve this level of fame, but there's David Beckham of course who has set a precedent of how you can become a celebrity through sports. Mind you, there have been members of team GB at the Olympics who have had a much bigger medal haul than Tom Daley who won a bronze medal in diving at the 2012 London Olympics. Chris Hoy the cyclist has 6 gold medals, Steve Redgrave the rower has 5 gold medals, Bradley Wiggins the cyclist has 4 gold medals and Ben Ainslie the sailer has 4 gold medals (the list goes on), but none have achieved Tom Daley's level of fame.

What makes Tom Daley such a star then? His good looks and endearing story (he lost his father to brain cancer a year before the Olympics) further propelled him into the hearts of many not just in Britain but around the world. Furthermore, he started young - by the age of 14, he had already represented Britain at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and had become world champion at the age of 15. Now compare this to Chris Hoy or Steve Redgrave - they were adults before they had a taste of world and Olympic success. Tom Daley was a teenager - practically a boy, when he was already competing with the best in the world. So many of us were awestruck by the image of that young Tom Daley standing on the edge of the 10 meter platform early in his career. As a diver myself, let me tell you this: diving is a very scary sport. Things can go spectacularly wrong if your nerves take over and you can get badly hurt. It is not just about courage per se, it is a constant battle between the rational side of your mind, trying to remember the right technique to use and the irrational side of your mind that is screaming, "this is scary! What the hell are you doing!?!??!"  A good diver is one who wins that mental battle and for a teenager to get to that level of mental strength so early in his career - well, that is what makes Tom Daley a rare prodigy who has achieved this at such a tender age.

All these things make Tom Daley an ideal role model in a country where teenagers are desperately lacking positive role models. It is easier for teenagers to relate to someone around the same age, rather than a person much older like Chris Hoy or Steve Redgrave. Someone achieving such success at such a young age sends out a great message that teenagers can achieve great things and become world champions if they put their mind to something, they don't have to wait till adulthood before trying to make something of themselves. Too many teenagers are simply content with muddling along, going to school, keeping their heads down and not trying to do anything special to define themselves - that is why it was so inspiring to see someone like Tom Daley go to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing at the tender age of 14. Teenagers need to be inspired to do something extraordinary, rather than be content with mediocrity.

Diving: scary, challenging and exciting all at the same time.

There are some within the gay community who are skeptical about Tom Daley's coming out though - many have taken offence at the way he said (and I quote), "Of course I still fancy girls." You can read his full statement here. The reaction to that statement has been, "what's the point of coming out if you want to add a disclaimer like that? Are you bisexual? Are you doing this just to keep your female fans happy, that they still have a chance with you one day? Are you gay or bi? Why haven't you been honest about this earlier? How would your boyfriend feel about you making a statement like that? Why can't you just use the word gay or bi? Why have you been lying about it all the time by trying to give people the impression that you're straight? What else are you hiding from us?"

I cannot defend Tom Daley's choice of words - it is what it is and you have the right to read whatever you want into it. I am sympathetic at least to Tom Daley because of his age - let's remember he is just 19, he is still a teenager, so I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on many of these issues. One's sexuality is a complex issue - there is firstly a basic instinct as to what turns you on sexually, but for many young people who are inexperienced or virgins when it comes to sex, how are they supposed to know what they really like or want? Sure there is plenty of sex depicted in mainstream media from TV programmes to movies and yes, there's no shortage of porn on the internet, but it is like trying to decide which fruit you like the best from a collection of photographs. The only way for you to know if you like the taste of durian is to take a bite and let your taste buds experience the taste of the durian. You may like it, you may not - but you will never know till you try and if you are willing to wait till you're ready to take that first bite, then I am not going to rush you to pick a label to describe your sexuality in the meantime.

Can you decide if you like the taste of durian from this photograph?

Beyond the immediate sexual gratification, there is also the emotional aspect of sexuality - there is a huge difference between a gay man who is open about his sexuality with everyone from his family to his friends to a man who does experience sexual desire for other men but chooses to hide it from the rest of the world. Indeed, if Tom wishes to experience a proper relationship with his boyfriend (who has been identified as Dustin Lace Black), then they need to take the big step and be open about it, rather than try to hide it away like a secret to protect the commercial interests of Tom Daley's lucrative product endorsements. This is a big step and one that most 19 year old gay men do not have to take yet as most 19 year olds (gay, bi or straight) are not ready for a proper relationship at that tender age.  They can even get married one day, now that we have gay marriage in the UK.

I had an exchange with a friend of a friend on Facebook on this issue, they were saying that they knew Tom Daley was gay all along and that another high profile British gymnast (whom I am not going to name) is almost certainly gay. Now I can never resist replying to a thread like that and I said that I had been following that gymnast's career for years and had even met him a couple of times over the years. Now I didn't think this gymnast is obviously gay, but even if he was, why should it matter? That's just his private life, surely even sportsmen have a right to privacy? If an athlete decides to be openly gay (I'm thinking American Greg Louganis and Australian Matthew Mitcham, see video below - both openly gay Olympic gold medalist divers), then so be it - I'm sure many diving fans don't really care either way. They would judge their divers by their dives, rather than sex lives, right? After all, who cares if they're gay? It's not as if you even know them personally, right? It's not like you're talking about a family member or a close friend.

Actually, I found out that not everyone felt that way! Perhaps that's just me having had a professional sports background, that's why I take sports so seriously. Many of the people out there, like those friends I had that discussion on Facebook with, probably know very little about sports and when they watch a diving competition, the different dives, the different tariffs mean absolutely nothing to them - they are just interested in looking at the sports as an outsider, as someone who is curious rather than a die-hard fan. So whilst they have no idea what the tariff is for a reverse 3½ somersault dive in tuck position may be, they find other things they can relate to - like what the diver does outside the pool, what kind of public persona they may have, their family background, their life story, the journey they took to get to where they are today, what they are like as people, what they may have in common with that diver.

This is why those friends on Facebook thought this British gymnast is in all probability gay - they were commenting on the way he talked and dressed. And I was like, huh? WTF? No, I never noticed such things as I am far more focused on his routines during the competition. Why would I even care how he dressed outside the gym? I was far more interested in whether he could keep his toes pointed and legs perfectly together as he performs a triple Russian on the pommels.  Go figure, I suppose I feel the same way when I go to those boring banking conferences, when I judge people by the way they dress because I am probably not that interested in what specific area of banking they work in.

Like Tom Daley, I am a diver too and love the sport. 

So there you go. That's part 1 on Tom Daley's coming out. In part 2, I will talk about some of my personal experiences on the issue as a gymnast back in the 1990s and how the mindset of a being so intensely focused on training coupled with my upbringing had changed the way I viewed love, sexuality and relationships - and how it took moving to England to undo all of those knots in my head. It may give you some insight into what it is like growing up in an environment where your life revolves around sports, sports, sports and little else. Akan datang!

As usual, feel free to leave a comment below. Thank you very much for reading.