Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo - Hardcover

Ford, Elyssa; Scofield, Rebecca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295752122 ISBN 13: 9780295752129

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2024

Synopsis

Unapologetically brings gay rodeo out of the closet

Campy and competitive, gay rodeo offers a community of refuge that straddles the urban and rural. Since the mid-1970s, gay rodeos have provided space to both embrace and challenge the idealized masculinity associated with the iconic cowboy of the US West. Slapping Leather traces the history and growth of gay rodeo over the decades, demonstrating how queer cowfolx have fought to build a community where LGBTQ+ people can escape discrimination in both mainstream rodeos and broader society.

Yet not all LGBTQ+ groups have found full acceptance in gay rodeo. Originally formed by gay men for gay men, the rodeo has at times perpetuated historically problematic ideas about the US West, the iconic cowboy, and the meaning of masculinity. Despite the gay rodeo's credo of acceptance, its history reveals complicated relationships with straight rodeo, gender stereotypes, and women competitors. Drawing from multiple archives and over seventy oral history interviews, historians Elyssa Ford and Rebecca Scofield demonstrate how amid these tensions, participants, volunteers, and spectators continue to redefine the performance of the cowboy and national belonging.

About this title

About the Author

Elyssa Ford is associate professor of history at Northwest Missouri State University and author of Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion: Gender, Race, and Identity in the American Rodeo. Rebecca Scofield is associate professor of American history at the University of Idaho and author of Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295752122
• ISBN 13: 9780295752129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288