Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo

by Elyssa Ford, Rebecca Scofield

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.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, History

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 9, 2024

Reviews

[auggie :3]

read this for a paper I am writing for class and enjoyed every minute. Inter splices the tumultuous history of gay rodeo with short transcripts of interviews of gay rodeoers and rodeo organizers, providing a look at the cowboys and cowgirls who worked to create a space for queer wranglers to express themselves and their love for the sport of rodeo. Googling the closest gay rodeo to me right after this! Go queer joy, go rodeo! Yeehaw!!

[Leslie]

Gay rodeo was started in the early 1970s. The authors state that gay rodeo was founded "by gay men, for gay men" to "fundraise for your communities, be out and proud, and embrace a country-western lifestyle". As gay rodeo grew over the 1980s - 2000s, the leaders embraced a more gender inclusive strategy. The organization tried to reach out to the whole LGBTQ+ community although the authors describe the struggles the organization had with growing membership with most of the groups outside of gay men. There is an emphasis and history about the impact of AIDS on this community and how the organization grew during this crisis and the contributions they made to fundraising to support those impacted by AIDS. Overall, this is a good history of the effort to create and grow gay rodeo but the authors language gets a little academic at times.

[kghgte]

I thought this would be more of a history of gay rodeo than an analysis of gay rodeo if that makes sense. Also I found this fairly repetitive and slow at times because of that. But I liked learning about gay rodeo because I didn’t even really know that was a thing before this book.