These images by photographer Joe Oppedisano have reminded me of comments I’ve heard from several readers who tell me that reading this blog and others like it have helped them recognize, for the first time, that there are others who are turned on by wrestling. Depending on the circumstances of where you grow up, just coming to terms with being attracted to the same sex can make one wonder, “Am I the only one.” If no one talks about it, acknowledges it, or normalizes it, it’s no wonder that so many of us experience significant periods of our lives as a struggle to figure out if what we feel indicates that there’s something wrong with us.
As for me, at this point in my life, I’m feeling more and more certainty that not only is it a normal part of the diversity of human sexuality to be attracted to the same sex, but it’s also remarkably common to find the image of male wrestlers centered in the eroticized gaze.
Sexuality and physical competition are closely paired in many species. In the classic heterosexual formulation, the young, virile bucks start the mating season by locking horns, butting heads, sparring, or competing for who’s bigger and more intimidating. As the heterosexual logic goes, the fighter who comes out on top proves himself to be of better breeding stock. His offspring will inherit more hearty genetic material. And he, therefore, lays claim to his choice of the female (or females) with which to mate.
Of course, more and more we learn that homosexuality, and same-sex mating and pairings are much more common across many species than the heterosexual version of evolution would suggest. And the story of young, virile men battling with one another is both age old and intimately tied to erotic arts, sexual prowess, and physical attraction. And clearly, mainstream fight-sport is pitched not for female eyes at all. MMA, boxing, wrestling, frat house grappling… these are not packaged and pitched for women to consume. It’s not a female audience that makes televised fight-sport profitable. These competitions are between men, managed by men, for male eyes to hungrily witness.
I wouldn’t suggest that all men who treat a UFC pay-per view as must-see television are raging ‘mos. But I certainly don’t buy the argument that the physical excitement, passionate intensity, and visceral delight that so many men take from following the UFC, or boxing, or pro-wrestling, or their frat brothers scrapping in the chapter house, or the furious young punks throwing down behind the gym after school is somehow an intellectual pursuit divorced from erotic pleasure. Viewers aren’t engaged on a simply cerebral level, no matter how exclusively they sleep with women. They care because watching young, fit, fierce men battle single-handedly for physical domination is titillating. They’re hearts beat faster. Faces grow flushed. Lungs automatically pump faster. Adrenalin is released at the sight of the hard bodies going head-to-head. And men of all stripes find themselves physically reacting, aroused at the sight of young bodies locked in battle for domination, with a physical, climactic thrill to see one competitor decisively triumph, leaving his challenger entirely, physically at his mercy.
You and I aren’t at the far margins of human sexuality. Straight men may not actually have sexual fantasies about wrestling competitions between hard-bodied men (and then again, a lot of them probably do). But the physical arousal to witness beautiful male bodies in body-on-body competition is hardly some unexplained, bizarrely fringe, freakishly abnormal kink.
Perhaps straight men don’t actually orgasm to the delights of wrestling. Perhaps a lot of gay men don’t place wrestling at the center of their erotic fantasies. But for those of us who have a passion for the homoeroticism of wrestling, I certainly don’t believe that we are at all far removed from what is at the heart of the human condition and masculinities that cross many cultures. The heterosexual version of reality will continue to expend a lot of energy attempting to narrowly define normality to protect the privileges that hetero-normativity has long provided. But let’s face it: hard, beautiful young men squeezing and tossing and pressing their muscled bodies against one another to settle who’s dominant is hot. You and I just appreciate it a little more explicitly than most.
Sidelineland 