Off the Field: Examining Sporty Boys as Allies Disrupting Normative Masculinities

Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2023

DOI:

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Off the Field: Examining Sporty Boys as Allies Disrupting Normative Masculinities

Michael Kehler, Gabriel Knott-Fayle

ABSTRACT: 

In this article we explore the ways that allyship and queer-straight alliance-building are constructed by a group of men who have participated in a men’s mixed-sexuality social justice project. We examine the ways that ten participants’ accounts collected through online semi-structured interviews represent both important challenges to masculinities’ obstacles to social justice engagement as well as the limitations of these understandings of allyship. We conclude with a reading of these limitations, and specifically the challenges made to them in the pluralistic mixed-sexuality space, as holding the potential for productive (un)learning and the possibility for ‘horizontal’ forms of alliance-building.

keywords: masculinities, queer, allyship, sport, social justice