Page 551 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer 531

Gay Jock Sports

Written September 17, 1977, this feature essay was pub-
lished in Drummer 20, January 1978.
I. Author’s Eyewitness Historical-Context Introduction
written April 2, 2006
II. The feature article as published in Drummer 20,
January 1978
III. Eyewitness Illustrations

I. Author’s Eyewitness Historical-Context Introduction written
April 2, 2006

Bullies, Gods, and Gay Bodies:
Without Pecs You’re Dead!

Years before Tom Waddell, the Gay Olympics, and the Gay Games,
This 1977 “Jockstrap Declaration of Independence”
Framed and Reclaimed Sports, Gyms, and Balls
for Gay Men Self-Fashioning Their Masculine Gender Identity

This is the first magazine article written on gay sports, and the politicizing
of gay sports. Written two years before Tom Waddell announced his idea
for the Gay Olympics, this “Gay Sports” feature reclaimed for gay men
the playing fields and locker rooms denied them in high school and col-
lege. Waddell, traveling the same path, found the article an encouraging
assessment of the temper of the times. Many readers liked the article’s
focus on black men (O. J. Simpson, Ken Norton), on the idea of sports
as a metaphor of rethinking gay masculinity, and on the analysis of the
politicizing of gay men.
As editor in chief of Drummer and as a theorist of queer culture,
I have always tried to stay “on message” regarding the self-fashioning
esteem of homomasculine men emerging from the deepest closets of the
pre-Stonewall world.
Historically, clock, calendar, and circumstance have put me in a
pro-active position to reflect homomasculine men’s lives in an immedi-
ate way in monthly magazines. Unlike books that take years to produce,

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 05-05-2017
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