There's More to Stanford Swimmer's Claims of Homophobia on Swim Team

The Stanford swimmer who accused his coaches of cutting him from the team because he’s gay is walking back his statement…sort of.

Abrahm DeVine drew attention last week after an Instagram post began circulating, in which he called out homophobia in athletics in general as well as specifically claiming that he experienced homophobia from coaches and teammates at Stanford, ultimately leading to his not being asked back to train as a post graduate.

“There are surface level reasons I was kicked off the Stanford swim team, but I can tell you with certainty that it comes down to the fact that I am gay,” he wrote.

The head coaches at Stanford, Greg Meehan and Dan Schemmel, had previously released a statement denying DeVine’s accusations of homophobia, and insisting that he wasn’t asked back for unrelated reasons, though they declined to cite what those reasons were.

Now, DeVine has admitted that at least part of the reason he wasn’t asked back to train was because he was caught drinking at a Team USA swim meet, which was in violation of the honor code.

But he insists his original statements about homophobia on the Stanford swim team are still true, telling The Stanford Daily that “homophobic slurs were commonplace among team members’ conversations before he came out to the team his junior year.”

“What I really wanted was some thought and reflection on where [the homophobia] was coming from, on why you think gay equals bad,” he said. “And I think what actually happened was like, ‘Oh shoot. We can’t really say these [slurs] anymore. We might still think it’s kind of funny, but we’re going to censor ourselves.’”

DeVine’s recent comments seem to revolve more around an insidious form of homophobia and heteronormativity rather than one where his coaches and peers are actively looking to exclude gay people from participating in swimming — though that’s still damaging.

“I think that I wrote this entire Instagram post where every sentence is very important, but the only one that people are really focusing on is me calling out Stanford, and that makes my message sound very aggressive and that I’m out for blood, when in reality that is not what I wanted at all,” he said. “I’m here to just say this is a systemic issue.”