The Fifth Estate: The Legacy of Brendan Burke

[thrillingdetectivetales]

So, y'all may or may not be aware of the fact that professional sports in general suffer some fairly homophobic cultural mores. The NHL in particular hasn't seen any out LGBTQ+ players, current or retired, though they're making efforts to change the culture to allow that to happen. A lot of those efforts are thanks to a young man named Brendan Burke, who died in a car accident before he could see any of his efforts come to fruition. CBC's The Fifth Estate put out a really great, if slightly painful, documentary about Brendan and queer players in the NHL that's very good, if you've got 45 minutes to spare. Tumblr user camwarden was kind enough to upload a non geoblocked version to YouTube, and you can watch it here:

Watch on YouTube

It's a really great, painful look at the treatment of homosexuality in pro sports in general and the NHL in specific, and makes some really good points about a lot of aspects of that issue, including addressing (if briefly) the differences between pressures that male and female pro athletes face to stay in the closet.

Comments

[muccamukk]

That was very well done. I'm glad to have seen it.

Would you change anything about gongshow if you'd seen it earlier?

[kore]

Oh, this looks really good, even tho I'm so not into hockey (or sports in general).