The sport of wrestling has been around for hundreds of years and was practiced by many ancient civilizations. However, in recent years, the sport is no longer seen as such an admirable display of strength and masculinity, but instead as a homosexual competition. This is often due to the large amount of same-sex contact involved in the sport. However, the sport must be seen through a deeper and more sophisticated lens, rather than simply throwing a weak blanket term to not only depreciate the sport, but to attack the LGBTQ+ community.
Touching the same sex is okay!
Guys (I'm talking to straight men), let’s be so for real. We have all seen the memes about “kissing the homies goodnight”. While some of y'all might claim that's satire, I think not, there is surely at least an ounce of truth in that “joke”, and there is nothing wrong with that! Like y'all said, that's not gay (being gay is fine), right? So how come when two dudes (or two women) decide to duke it out in spandex y'all turn into the homo police? The hypocrisy is crazy.
Fight, Flight, or Freak
When you are mid match and you’re about to be pinned or get your entire body broken, the thought of “damn this is kinda freaky,” never crosses your mind because you are too busy fighting for your life. Like yeah sure your face is near their crotch right now but considering this dude/chick is about to put their entire body weight on your neck and maybe even throw you on your head I feel like that should be the least of your concerns. During matches, wrestlers are focused on their skills and strategies, not their sexual orientation.
Society (In The Joker Voice)
So at what point did we, as a society, decide that this kind of same-sex comradery is a bad thing? Afterall, when a person calls something “gay”, they really mean it as a generally negative term, rather than literally homosexual. This sport was once cherished as a display of masculinity and was not once looked down on due to the seemingly homoerotic nature of it. I would like to attribute this to an overall rise in negative attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community over time, rather than the nature of the sport itself. Wrestling overall is absolutely in no way a gay sport. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a wrestler and a lesbian. And I am NOT compensating!