What do your friends and family think of your naked pictures Lucas?
I think most of my friends and my family, especially, are extremely proud of everything I've been doing with the Warwick Rowers, not only because
we think it's such a great cause, but Angus has met my mom and she is very, very grateful for how I've been growing up with this project and how it
has helped me become the person I am today.
I also have a lot of LGBT friends who really came out and supported me like, "What you're doing with this project is absolutely incredible."
There are some who are a little bit more uncomfortable, but I think it's a good way to start a dialogue and confront peoples' thoughts,
opinions and assumptions.
Are you surprised that there's still so much homophobia in society in 2020?
Well, I'm not surprised, but then at the same time I think it's shocking, but I'm not surprised, that's the problem. I'm not surprised because
when I arrived at university, I realised how privileged I was to have grown up in an environment where it was so healthy to be homosexual. And it
was healthy to be heterosexual too. I grew up in a very homo & heteronormative environment, but I've met some British friends of
mine who went to a public boarding school who have very posh, conservative parents. I don't think they even had met a gay person in their lives
before. So how can you expect that person not to be homophobic? Not because they are, but because they grew up in a heteronormative environment.
So some of the things they will do, some of the things they will say will result in them sounding homophobic, even though that's not really who
they are. Football or rugby are the beacon of masculinity and the beacon of straight culture. I mean, I'm
not surprised it's still there, when you know that football is the sport that has the most amount of professional players - yet none of them
are gay, well out. That's the problem. They're not in an environment where it's safe. They're not in an environment that is understanding.
They're not in an environment where economically speaking, it's good for them to be gay. In some sports it's okay, like swimming or diving,
but they are not sports where you really have to be the big man. So somebody like Tom Daley, whilst it was undoubtably hard for him
to come out - its not like a player in the Premier League who face consequences that other sportsmen do not.
Angus, do you agree?
Yes. I'd like to comment on the homophobia thing too because I spoke earlier about the evolution of this project and we definitely started
as a gay straight alliance. And the idea was straight sportsmen could make gay men feel more included in the world of sport. If they said,
"We acknowledge your sexuality by taking our clothes off because we're guys too. And we know that you'll appreciate that." And, and of course,
gay men have very much appreciated the Warwick Rowers and Worldwide Roar.
But as time went on and as we started getting the interest of academics at universities who started interacting with us, we realised that was my
way into this story. That was my lived experience. My big bang moment when I was in puberty of being confronted with a man's naked body and my
journey to reaching a healthy relationship with that moment. But the thing is that the heteronormative world that Lucas is talking about, the
world of hegemonic masculinity, it's not just about homophobia. It's also about misogyny and sexism. And it's also about structural racism.
And these three things come from the same place.
Minorities, people who are not straight white men, they have to fit around the margins of the agenda of straight white men. They live in
relationship to it. And some of us conspire with that. I think it's very interesting in the recent US election, that the number of LGBT people,
the number of black people, the number of ethnic minority women who voted for Trump actually increased.
Trump for me is almost the very emblem of toxic masculinity. He's part of a world that is on its way out the door. And something
struggles most when it's dying. And I think that homophobia, misogyny, racism, they're as much of a problem as ever in some countries and
some communities. I read that the EU is having to introduce new regulations to protect LGBT people in countries like Poland
and Hungary. Now that seems to me to be extraordinary in 2020 that we're having to do that, but we are, and this authoritarian, populist,
strong man regime culture is not going away. Look how Trump has been clinging to the White House. That's just a tiny metaphor for the
fact that these people are not going to let go of power easily. We're going to be living with homophobia, misogyny, and racism for a long time to come.
The great thing is that we have allies within the straight white male community like Lucas and that's what I'm working on. And that's what
I'm proud of. The idea that we can create allies within that community and that they can encourage change from within that power.
Angus, what made you decide to change your name from Warwick Rowers to Worldwide Roar?
Well, there were a few reasons. I think the most important one, really, was that we wanted to grow as a project and it became unsustainable
for one small boat club to provide all the visible faces for this project. That was one thing. And the second thing was that, actually, there
were a lot of people who were very interested in what we were doing but didn't row at Warwick University. Well, why should they be excluded?
This year we saw a lot of comment on the lack of black visibility in our project.
The truth of it is that if we had stayed as Warwick Rowers, there would never be any black visibility in our project because that's such a
very small subset of the population that we would be working from. And we want it to be more inclusive.
Lucas, what's your view?
I think is important for us is to have more and more men getting involved. That's our primary goal. And I think that a lot of people saw us
as people getting naked for creating content in order to fund something. Well, actually, no, it's about getting as many men involved in order
to create change agents for society. And we've realised that actually the guys who get involved, no matter what their sexual identity is,
come out of the project and they've grown and they've learned something and they become a change agent. The guys who have taken part in WR
will start dialogues that are not necessarily had in their environment.
I think that what we've realised, and hopefully with the results of the academic
study that's being carried out on us, we'll try to steer the project into trying to be a training for change agents around the world and
for it to help men be on a journey to their own identity and to help the world be a little bit healthier than it is right now.
Angus and Lucas, thank you so much for telling us all about Worldwide Roar. Good luck with this year's calendar!
Part 1 of our interview about Worldwide Roar
You can purchase a Calendar direct from the Worldwide Roar Website for just £15.99. On the site you'll also find loads of other
items including photo sets, film downloads, signed limited editions and picture profiles of some the guys.
A proportion of every sale is donated to Sport Allies, a charity that aims to combat homophobia in team sports.
These guys have certainly made a name for themselves amongst the sporting fraternity and for all the best of reasons. Their calendar is superb
and they've achieved something worthwhile in sport, both on the water and off. Please support this fantastic cause and buy yourself or your friends
a really great Worldwide Roar Calendar for 2021.
See the Sport Allies website: sportallies.org
Tweet Sport Allies @SportAllies: twitter.com/SportAllies
Find Sport Allies on Facebook here: facebook.com/SportAlliesCharity
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