“A Gay Rodeo, Not a Queer Rodeo”: Examining the Contested Nature of Gay Rodeo Rough Stock Events

The American gay rodeo circuit was founded in 1976 as an inclusive space for gay rodeo participants. However, despite its inclusive goals, gay rodeo ultimately upheld a strict division of people based on biological sex, gender roles, and the presumed capability of gendered bodies. In gay rodeos, stock animals—such as the bulls, the broncos, and the wild cows—were used as a tool to define the “masculine” and the “feminine,” the “male” and the “female.” For the rough stock events, which included events such as bull riding, wild cow riding, bareback bronc riding, and chute dogging, the rules for cowgirl participants stated that a woman might elect to ride with one or two hands, with a ten-point reduction if using a second, while men were required to ride one-handed. Indeed, the gay rodeo fostered itself as a space for gay men to be ‘real’ men, a place where rough stock rules upheld traditional cowboy masculinity. This paper builds upon concepts such as Raewyn Connell’s hegemonic masculinity and Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix to examine how spaces such as the gay rodeo can be exclusionary based on expectations of performance at rough stock riding events.

“A Gay Rodeo, not a Queer Rodeo” uses the rules and the traditions surrounding gay rodeo livestock animals to show how ideas about masculinity were bound up in performance. Even more, the maintenance of the gender binary excluded people who do not identify with male and female categories. This paper shows that the rodeo is overwhelmingly a gay rodeo, with cis male participants being dominant, not a queer rodeo due to its investment in gender norms.