There is no L in the IGRA: The Complicated Position of Lesbians in Gay Rodeo

The popular view of American rodeo is of a rugged, manly space, a place where men are not just masculine but hyper-masculine. Their counterparts are hyper-feminized, barrel racing women, and together they exist within an often conservative and always heterosexual realm. There is accuracy in these stereotypes, but they fail to accommodate other types of competitors and rodeo circuits. The advent of the gay rodeo in the 1970s provided an opportunity for an alternative space where this sport could be remade into one that was less competitive, less masculine, less heterosexual, and more inclusive. While the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) has focused on inclusivity and equality across the LGBTQ spectrum, it has done little to move away from the masculine idea of the rodeo and the cowboy. An examination of three decades of visual material and organizational notes from the IGRA shows that the gay rodeo, too, invokes a narrow, gendered framework. This rodeo was designed as a space for gay men to escape the “limp wrist” stereotype and become “real” men. This focus created an inherent conflict for male and female-identified competitors. Men could become “real” men by adopting the traditional cowboy role. However, for women, the ability to move beyond barrel racing and discard the feminized image of straight rodeo produced an unexpected tension as women effectively moved closer to societal stereotypes of butch, sporting women, not feminized, “real” women. Accordingly, this paper examines the IGRA as a complex and contradictory space for male and female-identified competitors.