Homosexuality and MMA

Homosexuality in MMA has been a touchy subject of late. Between Dana White's use of the f-word and boxing promoters declaring MMA as gay, the discussion of homosexuality in MMA is beginning to reach a crescendo.

Enter The Daily Beast, which poses the questions, 'Is Ultimate Fighting Gay?'

But when Chase Gormley threw Stefan Struve to the mat and mounted him between his legs, a young woman in the corner of the bar yelled "that is so hot!" A minute later, Struve turned the tables with his own throw and mount, then clasped Gormley's head, neck, and shoulder between his legs in what is called a "triangle choke hold." At this point the woman, who was sitting with two quiet and increasingly embarrassed men, moaned lustfully then turned to her companions and told them she was "getting ideas" for things to do with her boyfriend. A man wearing skull-and-bones MMA gear sitting near me slammed down his Bud Lime and shouted at her that she was "ruining the fight."

I found out later that the two men sitting with the aroused women were among a growing gay MMA fan base. They told me that they were just as turned on by the action as their female friend but contained themselves for fear of retribution from the "hyper-macho" crowd. "She says what we can't when we watch the fights in public," one said.

Recently, gay bloggers, homophobic critics of MMA, and even straight fans have declared that one of the great appeals of the sport is its homoeroticism. They note the large number of gay men and straight women who have become fans of MMA and attribute it to the appeal of the nearly-naked hard bodies of the fighters and the intimate, often pelvic techniques of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the favored grappling discipline in the sport.

As someone who has gay friends that are interested in MMA this doesn't appear to be a particularly pertinent subject to discuss but we will do so anyways. 

Before you lambast The Daily Beast read the whole article, though, it should be said that their use of "ultimate fighting" in the title exemplifies the popular ignorance facing MMA.

Homoeroticism in MMA, and sports as a whole, is nothing new.

That being said, there is a sizable contingent of fans, from any sport, who are thin skinned when it comes to the perceived homoerotic qualities of their favorite sport.

Yet MMA is different animal when compared to the other major sports (which feature their own homoerotic moments) due to the use of wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu. For instance at the bar where I watched UFC 104 there were some homosexual references made when Machida stuffed Shogun's takedwon by reaching his arms in between Rua's groin.

Then again, this is nothing different then a quarterback taking a snap from a center.

So let's ask the question, would we be even be having this conversation if we replaced MMA with football? Probably not.

But due to the alien nature of MMA to our collective society it isn't hard to see why someone jumps to sexual imagery when they see two half-naked individuals rolling around on the ground.

David Plotz of Slate made this observation back in 1999,

UFC's caged matches revolutionized the idea of fighting. Nursed on boxing and Hollywood, Americans imagine fights as choreography, a dance of elegant combinations, roundhouse kicks, clean knockouts. The UFC punctured this. Boxers floundered. Experts in striking martial arts such as karate and tae kwon do, who fancied themselves the world's greatest fighters, found themselves pretzeled by jujitsu masters, who pulled them to the ground and slowly choked or leg-locked them.

...

Instead of being carnivals of gore, UFC fights looked strangely like ... sex. Almost all fights ended on the ground, one man mounting the other in missionary position, the pair of them wiggling mysteriously along the canvas for five, 10, even 30 minutes.