Wrestling Forward: We’re failing LGBTQ wrestlers during Pride month
This week’s “Wrestling Forward” is packed with positive nuggets on Kofi Kingston’s trip to Ghana and Mick Foley’s fundraising efforts for Ashley Massaro’s daughter, but it also takes a look at some serious issues within the wrestling community during “Pride” month.
While LGBTQ people should be celebrated (yes, celebrated, not just “accepted”) during all months of the year, June is the specific month when the national conversation should center around LGBTQ individuals and the history of the LGBTQ Community. From reflecting on the Stonewall Riots to researching ball culture, there are so many opportunities we have to learn more about the history of an important social group whose voices have been suppressed for far too long.
Ideally, Pride Month is a time when we pay especially close attention to the concerns of the LGBTQ community and send them tangible support. When it comes to wrestling, this would mean running shows built around booking LGBTQ talent, profiling LGBTQ wrestlers and buying merchandise created by wrestlers who wear their colors with pride.
Unfortunately, the ideal isn’t even close to being met. Instead, Pride Month has become a time when corporations can pretend to care about the serious issues that affect this community, change their profile pictures to a branded Pride flag and sell their own branded merchandise.
Much of this money doesn’t even go back to the LGBTQ community and even if it all does, this “donation” isn’t done selflessly. Note that none of the money was actually donated, but rather delivered from the public to the charity with the corporation or celebrity operating as the middle man.
It’s an insidious way of pretending to support the LGBTQ community in exchange for receiving social capital. The shirt acts as an advertisement and a false signal of support for the LGBTQ community, and the combination of advertising, positive PR and additions to a mailing list obtained from these purchases yields social capital for the corporation or straight individual engaging in this practice.
This becomes even more worrisome if the individual is, say, Ronda Rousey, who has never apologized for her transphobic comments on fellow fighter, Fallon Fox. If you want to receive the social capital from converting your fan base’s money into donations instead of just encouraging them to donate by signal-boosting (or donating yourself as a celebrity with money … what a concept!), you have to stand up for LGBTQ rights as a bare minimum.
Yes, not being homophobic or transphobic is the lowest bar to set and it is honestly disheartening to see how many people get pats on the back for being an “ally”. Or, worse yet, self-identify as an ally as if it is something that should be rewarded effusively or something that gives them the right to exploit the community they are supposedly supporting.
An ally is simply someone who, as the University of Illinois-Springfield puts it “a person who is a member of the dominant group who works to end oppression in his or her own personal and professional life by supporting and advocating with the oppressed population”.
The opposite condition is not being an “ally”. If a person is not an ally, then they are not in support of equal rights based on sexual orientation or identity. They are not interested in celebrating the LGBTQ community. They may be blatantly homophobic and/or transphobic. They are almost certainly prejudice. Not being these things is the bare minimum.
It, therefore, does not give you the right to profit off of the LGBTQ community or speak over their voices under the guise of being an “ally”. It also means you aren’t an actual “ally”, under the guidelines set by the Human Rights Campaign.
Actor Billy Porter pointed out that straight actors receive universal admiration for playing gay characters, whereas gay actors struggle to receive any roles – let alone roles that portray them beyond the stereotypes that straight people in Hollywood have of gay people.
The same issues plague professional wrestling when it comes to booking straight wrestlers with gimmicks that fit a gay stereotype to the promoter in question. Gay wrestlers aren’t booked prominently, whereas “allies” are busy profiting on shows with pride flags or merchandise bearing the colors of the flag.
You can count on one hand the number of openly LGBTQ wrestlers booked for major promotions, and while AEW have helped change things, it’s not like their roster reflects proportional representation yet. We also haven’t seen the storylines in place, as encouraging as it is to see the first openly trans wrestler in Nyla Rose and the exceptionally talented Sonny Kiss on the roster.
So far during Pride Month, I’ve seen more tweets about shows and tweets about merchandise from non-LGBTQ people. There’s also been a severe lack of representation for non-white LGBTQ wrestlers, who face more discrimination and barriers due to having multiple identifiers that make them targets for prejudice (and make it more difficult to find people who can relate to or celebrate both of their identities).
It was disheartening to see Darnell Mitchell inform fans that Black LGBTQ wrestlers were asked to pay in order to wrestle. This is never OK; wrestlers should always be paid for their work. But to ask Black LGBTQ wrestlers to pay during a month when they should be front-and-center? Disgraceful.
Pride Month has reminded me of something extremely important about representation. It’s not enough to just talk about and celebrate LGBTQ wrestlers for 30 days and then forget about it, just as companies make their money or get their PR buzz for 30 before quitting until next June. No, we have to make a point to show independent wrestling promotions and major wrestling promotions that we value the talent, brains, and storylines that LGBTQ wrestlers have.
Their identities are but merely one part of them, but being LGBTQ gives wrestlers a different perspective that allows their stories to be different. We need to hear from them and their stories, and we need to talk about them during all other months of the year in more general pieces, rather than just pieces that focus on the LGBTQ community as a whole.
We need our coverage to elevate their brands as individuals, because that is how they will stand out; they are unique, not just part of one lump sum of LGBTQ wrestlers that are commoditized by fans trying to seem woke.
Notice how I use “we”. Not only am I not absolved from these failures, I am inherently culpable in not amplifying the voices of LGBTQ wrestlers by failing to do this. Therefore, you can consider the “Wrestling Forward” feature to be a place where these wrestlers will be written about more frequently.
The focus will be on their accomplishments and talents, rather than a paragraph blurb in a “Whoa, did you know LGBTQ wrestlers exist?!” piece. It also seems like most of the focus on LGBTQ wrestlers is directed towards the few talents at major promotions, such as Sonya Deville. In order for representation to happen in the biggest promotions, there needs to be a groundswell of support for the LGBTQ wrestlers putting in incredible work on the independent scene.
In the meantime, I’d like to give a brief list of talented LGBTQ wrestlers whose work you should support. This is by no means an expansive list, so please let me know who else I should keep an eye on. I’d also like to shout out @eric_shorey for his “1 LGBTQ wrestler for each day of pride” tweets. (Side note: Eric is a tremendous writer and well-worth a follow.)
Look for more information about each of these wrestlers in future columns. Please follow all of these wrestlers!