My response to ignorant comments like that is: Newsflash - your junk is not that special; we’ve all seen better. Get over yourself.
Just to be clear. whether football was involved or not, Hernandez was part of the gang culture, which is not open and accepting, and it is from those people that he was undoubtedly in fear of his life/safety if he was outed. Among certain communities (other than football), being gay or bi is a very dangerous life situation. Other than football.
@zoosermom is right about that, the world that AH was very much part of as an adult was the world he grew up in, and it was one tinged with gang violence and a community that is not exactly positive towards LGBT people, and he could have been a lot more afraid of his ‘streed cred’ than his professional sports career if this came out, we will probably never know.
Pro sports is very jekyll and hyde, while they have made efforts to be supportive of LGBT people, for example threatening to pull events from cities with laws they see as discriminatory, it also is not so easy to change a culture. There are obviously gay athletes and many players know they have teammates who are gay, but it is also very much a kind of "don’t ask don’t tell’ kind of situation from everything I have heard through the grapevine and read so a player may be out to some players, but not others and that doesn’t surprise me. Take a look at the background of pro players, and you see a lot of guys who come from backgrounds and places where there is still significant resistance to gays, whether it be religious or cultural, lot of players are minority or come from the more rural areas of this country or other backgrounds where being gay is not that accepted and it shows in that there aren’t many openly gay players when likely every team has someone who is gay (at least football and baseball, basketball rosters are small enough it is likely some teams don’t have any gay players).
I will add that trying to pin Aaron Hernandez and his actions simply on fear of being outed might be simplistic, but that doesn’t change the culture that he grew up in and was around or that fear of being outed could be a very strong reason, or one of the reasons, that he might kill someone. There is something of an irony with the Hernandez story, if the bi/gay angle is true, that he had had a kid with a woman supposedly his ‘fiancee’ out of wedlock, never married her, that once was considered a major sin, a sign of someone being immoral, etc, yet that is these days considered normal, is no big deal to teammates,fellow players and the world at large whereas being gay or bi is something that could be worth killing someone over to keep quiet over in that same community.
I want to correct a mistake I made in a prior post. I said that AH’s will left money to his fiancee, daughter, and long term BF. In fact, he transferred money to all three before he was arrested. The largest amount went to his BF.
“How is it that lesbians are able to thrive so successfully in women’s sports? Must be a hyper masculinity thing in mens lorckerrooms.”
There have been issues with that as well, while for example the WNBA has a lot of openly gay athletes , there have been problems with it, there have been allegations at the college division 1 level of pressure put on lesbian athletes to keep quiet. There have been golfers and tennis players who came out as gay, but they generally did that later in their careers or after they are done, because they were afraid of backlash from sponsors (I don’t follow golf or tennis at all, so I don’t know if these days any major starts in either sport, women’s or men’s, have come out as gay). Women in my experience tend to have a lot easier time accepting women who are gay then men accepting men who are gay (and obviously, I would never say all women, homophobia is not exactly unknown in either gender) and don’t feel like for example a gay woman in the locker room would ogle her (and this is telling, that so many women feel uncomfortable with a transgender women in the locker room or bathroom, assuming that they would act like how they perceive a man would, without thinking that a)a transgender women may not even be attracted to women or b)even if they were, would understand it is inappropriate to leer at other people, the same way a gay woman would understand that), whereas maybe because of the way men are, they assume that a gay man would be with them the way they are with women shrug
Jurors invited to Hernandez’ funeral…Well, isn’t that special!
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/sports/aaron-hernandez-cte-brain.html
He had the brain of a 67 yr old NFL player. Now his daughter is suing the NFL and possibly NCAA for the loss of paternal support.
He’s about the same age as my oldest son. As a parent, I feel sad for the loss of a life but as a taxpayer…
I am not surprised about the finding of CTE in his brain but I am a little shocked at how advanced it appeared to be in someone so young. I now wonder if it had any causative effect in his becoming an actual killer. I know he grew up in a gang environment but he had made it out and could have had a really good life, for himself and his hangers on, if he hadn’t started murdering people.
That may be the seminal issue in the wrongful death brought on behalf of his D. If he didn’t kill because of CTE and he didn’t die from CTE (and by that I mean whether the CTE led him to commit suicide as is believed to be the case with other football players) - if the CTE was an incidental finding - then the lawsuit may not be viable, although I am certain that the NFL will toss millions their way for a non-disclosure confidentiality agreement.
Over 40 years ago, I wrote my English Regents’ exam essay on how terrible and dangerous football is and how it should be banned and I had never even heard of CTE! None of my sons was allowed to play football.
How far back should the blame go. His parents put him in youth football, he played football in HS. It didn’t start with college or the NFL.
Also, is there any way to tease out the effect of his drug use on his behavior and eventual suicide?
His crimes always seemed more methodical than most of the CTE-related stuff I have read about. But it will be interesting to see how the lawsuits go and what other information will come out as a result.
In Aaron Hernandez’s case, I’m sure the NFL lawyers will point out the possible effects on the brain of all the drugs he put into his system.
Definitely. It will not be the easiest case. Drug abuse, surprisingly to me, is listed as a symptom of CTE:
So it could be a chicken/egg issue.