Referee Igor Benevenuto on coming out as gay: ‘I was scared of being attacked in the street’ – The Athletic
Only once, over the course of an extraordinarily moving interview, does Igor Benevenuto begin to choke up.
It is when he explains the extent to which he buried his true self in order to pursue a career in football. For 23 years, he took the brighter parts of his personality — the positivity, the generosity, the warmth — and shoved them right down to the bottom of his gut. The sacrifice is written all over his face.
“Around my friends, I was always an extrovert, a happy person,” Benevenuto says. “But in football, I put up barriers. I was always the most aggressive, ignorant, impolite guy in the room. Why? Because when you become that kind of person, no one will want to get close to you.
“I didn’t speak much with others. I closed myself off, put on this serious, impenetrable look. I wanted to keep people away. It was painful, because it wasn’t me. I had to create a persona that was the complete opposite of who I am.
“That was my mask — the character I created in order to survive. Macho. Straight.”
Benevenuto is a referee in Brazil. He has officiated in the top-flight Campeonato Brasileiro since 2012 and is an international-level video match official.
He is also gay.
In a just world, that would never be news. In another industry, it might not be. But this is football.
Benevenuto is the first openly gay FIFA-level referee.
When he came out two weeks ago, on a podcast produced by Brazilian media network Globo, it made headlines around the world.
Benevenuto did it for himself. He was tired of playing a part. He wanted to properly introduce himself to the world. “A rebirth,” he calls it. But he knew that his decision would also have ripple effects. Despite the recent bravery of Josh Cavallo and Jake Daniels, the number of openly gay men in football is still vanishingly small. It means that anyone who comes out is, almost by definition, a flag-bearer.
“I thought about all of that,” Benevenuto says. “If I have to be a spokesperson in order to change things, I will be. There are people out there who are suffering intensely. If I can help one person improve his or her life, that means something.
“This is the 21st century. We can’t continue with the retrograde behaviour of the past. We have to change attitudes.”
To fully comprehend the significance of Benevenuto’s revelation, not to mention the courage involved, you need to understand a few things. The first is just how hostile the world of football — particularly Brazilian football — can feel to gay people.
“It is totally masculine, straight, ‘a sport for men’,” Benevenuto tells The Athletic. “If you don’t fit that stereotype, you can’t participate. I know players who live their lives hidden in plain sight. It’s a clandestine existence. They know there would be a backlash — that they would be suppressed or excluded if they came out.”
Sometimes the prejudice is right there on the surface. Anyone who has watched a match in a Brazilian stadium will have heard fans aiming homophobic slurs like ‘bicha’ and ‘viado’ (rough equivalents in English would be ‘poof’ and ‘faggot’) at opposition players. There have been countless depressing examples of players and club presidents using the same kind of language.
“It is almost comical how open it is,” Benevenuto says.
In that context, you can see why someone would put on a front. But the subterfuge carried its own cost. “It was so exhausting, being this other person,” Benevenuto says. “I always had this radar turned on inside of me. I was forever policing what I was doing. It sapped my energy and consumed me.
“You are also living with the constant comments, the aggressive behaviour, yet not able to say anything, to stand up for what’s right. That hurt even more.”
Perhaps inevitably, some saw through the act. Many of the resulting interactions were deeply hurtful. “There are guys — players, and even referees — who take one glance at you and look disgusted,” he says.
“It’s repulsion — to them, you’re a piece of litter. Because you’re attracted to people of the same sex, you are nothing and you are nobody. It was very hard to be around those people for so many years, and it still is.”
In refereeing circles, Benevenuto’s sexuality eventually became something of an open secret. For years, he encountered the more insidious strain of discrimination — the kind that has silently shaped so many careers and lives. “It changed certain people’s behaviour towards me,” he says. “Nothing explicit, but veiled, unspoken, well hidden. It ended up holding me back at certain moments when I should have had the chance to progress.”
There was, understandably, a cumulative psychological toll.
Benevenuto saw a psychiatrist and took medication for depression. “I used to lie in my bed, asking, ‘Why am I gay?’. I thought about it round the clock. I used to pray to God to free me, to rip it out of me.”
On countless occasions, he thought about walking away from football. Only his own indignation kept him going.
“I was always moving towards my goal,” he says. “I didn’t want to give all of that up due to other people’s prejudices. I didn’t think it was fair.”
There are societal issues at play in the background here. Benevenuto did not keep his sexuality a secret for decades simply because he feared for his career.
“I was scared of being sidelined,” he says, “but also being torn apart in public. Of being attacked in the street when people found out.
“Brazil is not like in Europe, where gay people hold hands in the street, people live together normally. Do that here and you get attacked. In Brazil, you are constantly seeing news reports of gay people being attacked. A guy might be walking down the street and just because he looks gay — he might not be at all — he gets jumped by a stranger and smacked in the back of the head. People are kicked, punched and beaten.”
This is not hyperbole. According to research by watchdog Grupo Gay da Bahia, 300 LGBT+ Brazilians died as victims of homophobia and transphobia in 2021. Over the last 10 years, the death count stands at 3,374. That’s one life lost every 26 hours. For an entire decade.
Little wonder that Brazil is widely viewed as one of the most dangerous places in the world for LGBT+ people.
Throw in a president who has never hidden his antipathy towards LGBT+ people — “I would prefer my son to die in an accident than come home with a guy with a moustache,” Jair Bolsonaro once told Playboy magazine — and you have the very definition of a hostile environment.
(Those who doubt that the rhetoric of politicians could ever filter down into sport would do well to recall 2018’s Belo Horizonte derby and a stomach-turning chant from Atletico Mineiro supporters: “Watch out, Cruzeiro fans! Bolsonaro is going to kill faggots.”)
In that context, Benevenuto’s decision to come out does not just make him a likely target for verbal abuse; it puts him at risk of physical reprisal. “The fear is still there,” he says. “But I had to overcome it. I want to show that everyone should be free to live the life they want to live.”
He is apprehensive about what lies ahead but heartened by the reaction so far. The Brazilian federation and the refereeing authorities have been supportive. Thousands of messages have come in from around the world — “Overwhelming,” he says — and he has yet to read a negative one.
One particular response, from the academy director of one of Brazil’s top clubs, struck a particular chord.
“He said that I had no idea how important my decision was for football, and for the kids who observe the behaviour that exists in the game,” Benevenuto says. “He said he hoped that every director and coach will be able to draw positive lessons from this within their clubs. That really touched me.”
For somebody who has first-hand experience of the Jurassic thinking that has long underpinned Brazilian football, Benevenuto is surprisingly optimistic.
“We can now see a light at the end of the tunnel,” he says, citing a cluster of new initiatives aimed at tackling discrimination at club and federation level. He will be involved in future projects and has already been invited to speak at a conference in September. “That kind of thing just didn’t happen before,” he says.
There is growing momentum. Referees have been given greater authority to stop games, and instances of homophobia and racism are now treated as the scandals they are, not met with shrugs.
In the media sphere, too, things are shifting.
A few days before Benevenuto’s revelation, Richarlyson — a former Brazil midfielder who was the victim of constant, harrowing homophobic abuse during his career — came out as bisexual in a TV interview. It has rightly prompted a fair amount of soul-searching about the way he was treated as a player.
As for Benevenuto himself, the last fortnight has been a whirlwind. It has been emotional, cathartic, and literally life-changing — both for him and for all the people who will take heart from his inspirational story.
“Today, I have this sense of calm,” he concludes with a hard-won smile. “I am lighter, freer, happier. I can live my life and do what I want, the way I want. It’s like someone has taken a ton of weight off my shoulders. It’s a huge relief.
“I know there are big battles ahead and that there will be a backlash, but I’m ready for it. I hope to create a positive legacy for our society and for football. That is my biggest desire.”
(Graphic: Sam Richardson)