Sean Strickland former middleweight champion and current contender is a very controversial figure in MMA.
Strickland is a very divisive fighter cultivating either anger or admiration. Many fans have a level of admiration for Strickland respecting his honesty, enjoying his sense of humour, and generally agreeing with what he says. On the other hand are fans who are angered, disgusted, and embarrassed about the popularity he has picked up and what he says. It will only take opening up Strickland Twitter profile to understand this.
Sean Strickland And Homophobia
Strickland has said many distasteful and disconcerting things on his social media and in interviews. Typically he’ll say some insensitive uninformed comment which will either get people agreeing with him or disagreeing. One theme for some of these comments seems to be homophobia. It’s really par for the course with a UFC fighter or someone in combat sports to be homophobic.
Regardless, Strickland has a history of homophobia there being quite a few recent examples. One of the big ones was where a a press conference he was asked about previous anti-LGBT comments by Alex Lee sparking quite a reaction from Strickland. Notably Strickland talked about he wouldn’t want a gay son as he wouldn’t have grandchildren. Strickland would then ask Lee his opinion and when Lee said he wouldn’t have a problem Strickland resorted to calling him the enemy and how he is what’s wrong with the world.
That was quite the over-reaction from Sean and shows different levels of homophobia. Firstly, the fact that he wouldn’t want a gay son not due to the potential hardship that son would experience but rather having grandchildren is absurd. Firstly, a big part of parenting is loving your child unconditionally regardless of sexuality. And secondly being gay wouldn’t actually stop his son from having children. For one adoption does exist or if the concern is for biological grandchildren surrogacy is another option. There’s also the fact that if Sean is so concerned about grandchildren he can easily have multiple children. One of which is bound to have biological children. So, this seems a thinly veiled way of just saying generally he doesn’t want a gay son and is poorly attempting to rationalise it.
And then he vilifies Lee for not caring about having a gay son.
Strickland Addresses
There are examples such as him calling Dricus Du Plessis “f*ggot” multiple times at a press conference. Using an anti-lgbt slur at an opponent as insult isn’t exactly subtle. It’s also buried in a strange misconception about Du Plessis. Some fans theorise that Du Plessis is gay due to the fact he kisses his male coach. Now to the uniformed it could be fairly reasonable to conclude Du Plessis is gay. However, in South Africa where Du Plessis is from kissing is also a platonic display of greeting or affection. Besides that Du Plessis has a girlfriend.
Moving on from the homophobia Sean Strickland put out a tweet which might in some ways explain his homophobia. It was in response to a picture of a young Strickland circulating on the internet.
So Strickland calls himself “gay looking” apparently due to his long hair. I assume this is following the stereotype of gay men being feminine looking and having long hair being part of that. Now if we were to follow that stereotype Strickland in that picture doesn’t particularly “look gay” he literally just has long hair and looks a bit younger. Besides showing more misconceptions about gay men there is something interesting revealed here.
Insecurity
Strickland brings up how he was hiding from a life of hate and anger. It doesn’t seem like a leap that Strickland used to be called gay as an insult growing up and how that may have made him angry and hateful. As a result he may just in general associate being gay with those memories of being picked on for his appearance. So, as a result being gay and just gayness in general is viewed negatively by him.
Also interesting how views looking gay as a bad despite the fact appearance wise looks totally fine. In fact you could argue Strickland looks better then than he does now at least regarding his hair. Strickland in that photo just doesn’t really fir the bill of stereotypically gay so it is strange he calls himself that. Now it could just be again using gay as an insult or he may have revealed something about his sexuality.
For a straight man Strickland seems awfully concerned with gay people. Now this could just be regular bigotry or a generational thing but it could be more. Something that can be quite common is homophobes are actually gay themself. And that their homophobia is a result of being unable to accept themselves which could be the case for Strickland. Granted he does have a girlfriend who he seems to have a happy relationship with but this doesn’t rule out bisexuality.
Sean Strickland mentioned harbouring a lot of hate and anger but didn’t say the target. Perhaps it was and still is self hatred and anger at himself for being the way that he is. Obviously that could also be due to many other factors in his tragic childhood. This is a lot of speculation but ultimately Strickland’s homophobia as with many of the things he says as a result of his tragic upbringing.