5 Stupidest Questions Wrestling Fans Get Asked
4. Are You Gay?
Apparently, some find the idea of scantily-clad, oiled-up and supremely muscled men rolling around with one another on a mat to be slightly homoerotic. All wrestling enthusiasts must therefore be latent homosexuals who watch the product purely as a means of fulfilling their hidden desires.
This argument is ridiculous in itself but, moreover, wrestling is considered by many to be the lamest geek interest of all. If you were struggling with your sexuality - so much so that you felt shamed into hiding it - why would you then readily admit to enjoying something which is equally sneered at?
What non-fans don't know is that pro wrestling is, in reality, an uncomfortably regressive arm of the entertainment industry.
Gorgeous George pioneered the art of cheap heat with his effeminate posturing and predatory behaviour in the 1940s - wrestling prior to that was entirely straight-laced, no pun intended - but the industry never accepted homosexuality, even to the limited extent seen in wider society.
Goldust in the 1990s would also psychologically torture his heroic, straight opponents by molesting them with his unwelcome advances. Billy & Chuck infamously renounced their standing as open homosexuals to an eextent that was designed to be comedic. Both Kanyon and Orlando Jordan pitched sympathetic homosexual characters who weren't defined judgementally by their sexuality, but WWE refused to sanction the proposed gimmick shifts.
The irony is that we're meant to be the backwards idiots for enjoying wrestling - but it is non-fans who associate it, with an upsetting degree of ridicule, with an entirely natural sexual orientation.