TMU alum inspired to make sport – and the world – more inclusive
As children get older, sport is the first area in which they are divided by gender. This is when problems of sexism and homophobia begin, says Erik Denison. (Photo: Bruno Kelzer/Unsplash)
Growing up in Vancouver with two “hippie” parents, Erik Denison – who will be speaking at The Creative School’s upcoming 23rd International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations – said he was always taught that the purpose of life is to help make the world a better place.
And that’s what the social psychologist and TMU alum has devoted his life to doing.
In fact, his work – tackling negative forms of masculinity in everything from gym classes to power plants – has been so impactful, he was invited to be the keynote speaker at the June 22-23 conference.
TMU sociology professor Nicole Neverson will also be a keynote speaker at the event which has attracted visitors from around the world to explore four major themes: identity and belonging, education and learning in worlds of differences, organizational diversity, and community diversity and governance.
Denison’s work touches on each of the themes.
Finding his calling
When he began his career, Denison said he wanted to create change in the world through journalism. He chose TMU, he said, since it had “the best program for broadcast journalism.”
After successfully pursuing his dream to be a CBC reporter, he realized he had another calling: ending harmful behaviours in children’s sport.
“At the time that I was figuring out that I was gay, I was very involved in sport. Sports had so many benefits – they gave me confidence and motor skills and so much more,” he said.
But he also realized that the sports world came with something else: homophobia and sexism.
“I think that, for me, it was quite traumatic to experience homophobia in sport – and be rejected because of it,” he said.
The whole experience inspired Denison to try to effect change in a different way.
Using science to create change
Today, he’s a researcher based at Monash University in Australia, working in the Faculty of Education and a behaviour-change institute called BehaviourWorks. He specializes in behavioural science, and stopping discriminatory behaviours in children's sport.
His mission is to “use science to drive meaningful change in behaviour,” which he does by investigating the underlying causes of prejudicial behaviour in sport, along with other traditionally male-dominated settings.
“That's critical because we're not going to have gender equality, we're not going to have equality for LGBTQ+ folks and we're not going to have racial equality unless we can make these environments more inclusive,” he said, noting that his work has involved a variety of industries, including sports, mining, the power sector and more.
“I’m helping them develop interventions, and then we run trials to understand if they actually change behaviours and improve the culture,” he said.
Importantly, Denison immerses himself in the environments that he is trying to change.
Erik Denison’s research shows that exposing young athletes to anti-homophobic messaging through posters or guest talks is not enough to change their behaviour. (Photo: Kenny Eliason/Unsplash)
At the time of our interview, Denison was taking a break from his 12-hour shift conducting research at one of the world’s largest iron ore mines, located in one of the hottest places on earth in remote Western Australia.
It’s all part of his work studying environments of negative masculinity.
“We need researchers to actually get out into the field to conduct the research that is urgently needed to find effective solutions,” he said.
“We need academics to spend less time sitting in their armchairs talking about problems and more time working with people to find solutions,” he added.
Study’s surprising results
To illustrate the cross-environment application of his research, Denison points to research (external link) he and his colleagues published last month in the top-ranked British Journal of Sports Medicine, called “Effectiveness of an educational intervention targeting homophobic language use by young male athletes: a cluster randomised controlled trial.”
“We tested a platinum standard educational intervention to see whether it had any impact on the pervasive homophobic language (external link) which is being used by boys when they are playing sports,” said Denison.
“Everyone always says, ‘Oh, kids are using homophobic or sexist or racist language because they don’t know that it is wrong. Let's just educate them and tell them that it's wrong. Let's make a poster that says, ‘Everyone's welcome here’ or ‘Don't use that language’ but no one knew if these approaches were effective.”
Denison’s research found these types of tactics fall flat.
Denison studied the impact of having professional athletes talk to kids for 30 minutes about the harm that is being caused from their use of homophobic language and found that these types of interventions have no impact on behaviours in youth sport.
“Imagine being a 16-year-old boy, and you go to rugby practice and some professional athletes show up at your training ground. The athletes then spend half an hour talking with you about gay kids self-harming and how the language you're using is causing this problem, and explaining to you why you need to stop. We thought that should have a pretty big impact on kids, but in our study, it didn't have any impact,” Denison said.
“It was as if the professional athletes didn't even go to these sports clubs. The homophobic language went up in both the treatment and control conditions -- the ones who got that training, and the group that got nothing. And the reason, we think, is that the surveys themselves made the boys notice the behaviours going on around them,” he continued.
“If that type of intensive education doesn't work, then we can be pretty confident that a cheery social media post celebrating diversity, or a poster in a changing room, is not going to have any benefit,” he added.
TMU alum Erik Denison is a social psychologist at Monash University in Australia.
Sport is ‘the engine’
“I’ve come back to youth sport environments as the engine that's driving one of the biggest problems in society: gender inequality and gender-based violence. Sport is where boys, in particular, learn about the division of boys and girls, right?”
He explains: “Kids play sports together until about age 12 and then suddenly they get divided up, just as they're entering puberty and starting to feel all these weird hormones and gaining a self-identity. And just at that time, we separate them and tell boys that girls are too weak to play with boys, which is why we need to separate them to protect the girls, and that boys can't be trusted to play with girls.
“You start to realize that this is where boys are learning that they're supposed to be tougher and stronger and more dominant than women and they often use homophobic and sexist language to prove their toughness and dominance to others,” he said.
Instead of delivering education to children, he says the focus needs to be on educating adults and then enforcing laws which require them to stop behaviours which are harmful to children.
He says governments need to intervene to help solve these problems, particularly the local councils which own or control access to the sports facilities where harmful behaviours are occuring. Denison is currently working with the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Parks Board to trial the introduction of ‘safe sport officers’ who will work with sports clubs to ensure they are stamping out homophobic and sexist language and other harmful behaviours.
Denison will discuss this study and more at the conference, which will take place June 22-23 at the Rogers Communications Centre, and is organized by professors Joseph Recupero and Laurel Walzak from the Sport Media program in the RTA School of Media.
To learn more, please visit the conference website.
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