“We’re real men and we like sports.” Womanhood and femininity are parodied all the time, as women are made out to be superficial, insecure, inauthentic and sneaky in their creation of a false self. Of course, the inverse of this is a masculinity that is “natural,” unadulterated, and true. As a number of my fabulous cis male queerlings attest to, such framing of masculinity is a propagandistic falsehood. Young men are subject to intense gender regulation which is justified by excluding alternative behaviors from the realm of masculinity (e.g. a little boy who wants to do ballet, paint his nails, cry with his mom, etc. isn’t allowed to be a “different kind of boy,” he’s attacked for being “a girl”). The naturalness claim of this macho masculinity demands that no one admit how much work is necessary to embody it. Were people to challenge assumptions that all boys are violent, athletic, or unemotional, the cultural pressure to cultivate these characteristics would be lessened and we would see a greater variety of masculinities.
Images of men attempting to act out the macho standard of masculinity and doing it poorly demonstrate that the standard is external and not an organic part of all men. So imagine my delight at the hilarious new Lonely Island video where two men move through the motions of proclaiming their love for sports, but never seem convinced by their own posturing.
In general, I dislike the professional sports institution because its a waste of tax dollars, genrally promotes a ton of problematic shit, and is totally a misappropriation of cultural money that should go to something productive like schools. Wow, you can knock a ball around, here’s a couple million dollars… gonna leave that joke alone. That all said, I admittedly LOVE going to baseball games, mostly for the cancerous comfort food and nostalgia of me and my dad, but I’m also one of 8 people on this earth who enjoy watching baseball sober. And with all that said, it is pretty fucking cool to have athletes speaking out against homophobia. Badass, in fact.
“The Chicago Cubs on Monday released their “It Gets Better” video, becoming the second professional sports team to participate in the campaign aimed at providing encouragement for LGBT youth struggling with adversity and intolerance.”
We like sportz and we don’t care who knows…
