In the ring, vulnerability is everything

May 30, 2023 6:08 AM

Wrestling turned me cis, then it turned me trans by Abraham Josephine Riesman [Polygon] “Wrestling is built around masculinity, but in its own way it is also transgressive — even queer. Men in wrestling wear bright colors. They intimately touch other men in public. When they’re allied, they speak of each other in the warm terms of life partners; when they’re at odds, they issue ambiguously sexual threats such as “I want your ass.” Most importantly, they show pain. The essential, irreducible element of a wrestling match is the ability to show suffering — the very thing drummed out of every boy by high school, if not earlier. It’s the heart of the art form. No matter how skilled a wrestler is technically, it doesn’t count at all unless they can make the audience believe they’re being hurt. Every wrestler has to spend a significant amount of every match showing nothing but raw, visceral agony. They have to show their secret face, the most vulnerable one of all. Wrestling is an art form, one that turned out to have also planted seeds in my mind about how fun it is to dress up, show tenderness, be vulnerable, and do the things you’re not supposed to.”
posted by Fizz (5 comments total)

A rare example of a piece that touches on transition where the comments section isn't a dumpster fire. Thanks for sharing!
posted by terretu at 7:56 AM on May 30, 2023

I immediately thought of James Stephanie Sterling and their wrestling:

Jim Sterling: From 'Pathetic Edgelord' To YouTube's 'Princess Of Pansexual Pandemonium'
James Stephanie Sterling speaks on The Jimquisition and their caustic, decade-long journey covering the video game industry

“I’ve been cutting promos on the game industry week in and week out for 10 years. It’s now very natural for me to just grab a microphone and speak from the heart so taking those skills and transporting them into wrestling really didn’t take a lot of work. It was a very natural move for me,” they said.
posted by AlSweigart at 8:40 AM on May 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

(previously, about her book Ringmaster)
posted by box at 6:16 PM on May 30, 2023

Thank you for sharing this. A lot of my dude friends loved wrestling and I never understood it, but she's explained something no one else did previously to my cis self.
posted by holyrood at 10:30 PM on May 30, 2023

"The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess...."

...

"The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to a world a defeat which, far from disguising, he emphasizes and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mold of the spectacle. In wrestling, as on the stage in antiquity, one is not ashamed of one's suffering, one knows how to cry, one has a liking for tears."

-Roland Barthes, The World of Wrestling [pdf via MIT]
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:14 PM on June 1, 2023