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To begin, we must first take stock of the pre-WWE world of wrestling masculinity. Placing WWE performers with limited artistic agency on the same spectrum as self-made performers like Gorgeous George obscures the fact that, for over twenty-five years, the WWE suppressed rather than celebrated alternative expressions of male sexuality and masculinity.
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Namely, that the artificial spectrum from Gorgeous George to Goldust obscures an important shift in professional wrestling from a loosely connected and managed enterprise to the singular entity of the Vince McMahon’s WWE. The implied place of Darren Young’s authentic and unperformed sexuality as part of this genealogy is problematic for reasons that are the subject of this post. A few ambitious authors connected their initial observations to studies by Sharon Mazer, Danielle Soulliere, or Nicholas Sammond, and noted, as Mazer once did, a range of masculinities “between the flamboyantly feminine to the lumpen macho.” While these popular discussions of the importance of Darren Young’s “coming out” disengaged from more theorized frameworks, what they shared with the authors above was a tendency to view all of wrestling’s non-heteronormative masculinities as part of an evolving genealogy that begins with Gorgeous George and ends with Dustin Runnels’ sexually ambiguous Goldust persona.
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Photo credit John Pantozzi.Īs the WWE celebrated Young’s decision to speak openly about his sexuality, a fresh wave of journalists and fans of wrestling began to pour over the history of American professional wrestling, looking for other moments the sport “grappled” with issues of sexuality.