Chapter 15: Learning Masculinity: Experiences of a Gay Boxer

When I told my mom that I had picked up boxing, she laughed. “I’m just surprised, that’s all,” she said. “I never imagined you boxing.” Masking my bemusement, I asked her what sport she could imagine me doing. “Jogging, maybe?” she answered. My mom’s reaction to my interest in boxing was not just a comment about my personal affinity for a particular sport. She reacted to the idea of me, as a gay man, boxing. She (unintentionally) associated my sexual orientation with a feminized gender presentation and body. If we imagine gender as a spectrum, some people, through their tastes, attitudes, mannerisms, and styles, seem more masculine, while others seem more feminine (Connell, 2005). These gendered associations are socially constructed. Through our interactions with one another, we learn to make connections between particular actions and gender ideology (West & Zimmerman, 1987). One such connection is the association between male homosexuality and femininity. This feminization is not necessarily associated with actual characteristics; instead, it merely represents widespread social beliefs about the way men and women should behave (Mora, 2013). As a gay man, I am thought to possess a feminine masculinity. Because of this, my mom could only reasonably imagine my feminized gay body participating in feminized sports.