We will ruck.
[Photo: GaySports]Rugby and the gay male body
Gay men have a strained relationship with their bodies. We are taught so often that our desires are wrong, that we never will be butch enough, and that we never were. Team sports raise the threat of exposure and incompetence before other boys. We train ourselves to look too critically at ourselves lest we fail to perform the correct rituals of manliness. You can't be self-conscious in rugby. To hesitate is to lose the ball or to miss the tackle. You have to act even if the action is wrong."RELATED LINKS:
Gotham Knights Rugby Football Club.
Mark Bingham, Hero of 9/11.
Word of the day.
Scrumdown: Rugby Players and of course jockstraps.
Five times WOOF!
Ruggerbugger: Pro Sportsmen Nude Galleries.
SF FOG RUGBY: The Rookie Primer
I think I'll take rugby as my fetish from now on.
Rugby first exploded on American college campuses in the 1960s, and one reason why, argues Timothy Chandler of Kent State University, is that its free-form rugged playing style offered an alternative to football. The intense bonding among players, the public nudity on the pitch, and the bawdy, blasphemous, sometimes sexist drinking songs made rugby disliked by college administrators but popular among young men attracted to its anti-authoritarian vibe. Even today, football doesn't seem to offer gay men the same opportunities for unconventional fellowship and mayhem. For gay bodies, rugby rituals seem both ironic and real. It's small wonder that Oscar Wilde called it "a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys."
