How Queer Pro Wrestlers Are Handling America’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Heel Turn
August 10, 2023 7:31 AM Subscribe
Pollo del Mar wants to be hated. As a bad guy (or heel) in the NWA—the National Wrestling Alliance, a professional wrestling company owned and operated by the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan (no shit!)—it’s her job to get heat, i.e. the boos and jeers and chants that separate professional wrestling’s villains from its heroes. There’s just one problem: She’s a drag queen, and it’s made her too popular. (archive.today link)
I have vivid memories of attending a non-televised WWF “house show” at the Nassau Coliseum as a kid, watching “The Genius” Lanny Poffo mince around the ring limp-wristed to rile up the crowd.
Me too! Possibly even the same show! I am still working through all this shit from my childhood and it's just so fucking exhausting to unpack.
The crowd not only roared its approval, but chanted “HE’S GAY! HE’S GAY!”—inarguably the first time an arena full of wrestling fans have hollered these words and intended it as a positive.
I've seen this clip before, but watching it again just genuinely made me tear up a little. Could you have imagined this even a few years ago? Wrestling fans, like Juggalos, get a bad rap, but they're (largely) much better than that.
Still, the point that travel for queer and trans performers is so fraught right now is well-made. Can trans people legally use the correct restroom in a Florida airport? Like, yikes. How do we reverse this, in a broad sense? The hate is a tacit (or, especially in local races, explicit) plank of the GOP platform, and it's been so successful for them that I have trouble seeing how this gets undone, at least in the short-medium term.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:08 AM on August 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Me too! Possibly even the same show! I am still working through all this shit from my childhood and it's just so fucking exhausting to unpack.
The crowd not only roared its approval, but chanted “HE’S GAY! HE’S GAY!”—inarguably the first time an arena full of wrestling fans have hollered these words and intended it as a positive.
I've seen this clip before, but watching it again just genuinely made me tear up a little. Could you have imagined this even a few years ago? Wrestling fans, like Juggalos, get a bad rap, but they're (largely) much better than that.
Still, the point that travel for queer and trans performers is so fraught right now is well-made. Can trans people legally use the correct restroom in a Florida airport? Like, yikes. How do we reverse this, in a broad sense? The hate is a tacit (or, especially in local races, explicit) plank of the GOP platform, and it's been so successful for them that I have trouble seeing how this gets undone, at least in the short-medium term.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:08 AM on August 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Pollo del Mar
Is...is that an LA Story reference?
posted by The Tensor at 9:58 AM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Is...is that an LA Story reference?
posted by The Tensor at 9:58 AM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I could have sworn there was an article posted in the Blue a few years ago about exóticos and how they present themselves and become babyfaces in Mexican wrestling feds, but I can't seem to spot it now.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:31 AM on August 10, 2023
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:31 AM on August 10, 2023
Well, that was fast, thanks! Although I'm surprised that it was posted nearly nine years ago... I don't even think I knew about Sonny Kiss back in 2014!
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:00 AM on August 10, 2023
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:00 AM on August 10, 2023
Pollo del Mar
Is...is that an LA Story reference?
i thought it was a ref to the scene in starwars at the cantuna
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 4:53 PM on August 10, 2023
Is...is that an LA Story reference?
i thought it was a ref to the scene in starwars at the cantuna
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 4:53 PM on August 10, 2023
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Just watched the Dark Side of the Ring episode on Keith Frank, aka Adrian Adonis. His contemporaries were complaining about how the WWF made Adonis give up his leather to play a fairy, etc., and then you see what he dressed in and his macho getup would absolutely read as gay now. (The Adrian Adonis persona would read as evil pedophile or maybe evil social justice baby whiner? A heel, but for a different reason than man on man.) It's fascinating how times change but pro wrestling still has this primal power to call on our deepiest, carniest emotions.
posted by kingdead at 8:21 AM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]