Making Queer Spaces within Women's Roller Derby: Rolling Forward but Never Straight

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Queering Spaces

Abstract

Contemporary women’s roller derby challenges the hetero-gendering and hetero-sexing of sport and sport spaces. While roller derby is one of the fastest growing sports in the world and rapidly gaining mainstream visibility, the tactics, strategies, and social practices deployed by participants within derby also position it as an emergent site of queer space and queer resistance. Drawing from my ethnographic study of women’s roller derby leagues in the western part of the U.S., I highlight two ways derby and its skaters perform queer acts that implode traditional assumptions of gender, sexuality, and ritual, in and out of sport: The unique derby ritual of derby weddings and derby wives, and the development of the Vagine Regime, a league comprised of lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender skaters from the US and abroad. In a culture where female athletes may still distance themselves from the label of lesbian, use perceived, if not real, heterosexuality to claim an advantage in the media and sponsorships, or downplay their commitment to other women in an attempt to emphasize their own heterosexuality, roller derby may offer a different type of cultural space in sport by setting a precedent for openness and acceptance toward sexuality and gender diversity. In its presentation of a queer positive public image, women’s derby blatantly challenges heteronormativity of sporting spaces and the traditional, masculinist model of aggressive, competitive, consumerist sport.

Author

• Suzanne R. Becker, University of Nevada-Las Vegas