Gay cowboys in the old west
STAFF OPINION: Cowboys in media are inherently gay
Spending time away from your wives, going on adventures, dusty and clad in leather is not straight people behavior…Cowboys are gay.
Cowboys are inherently lgbtq+. Not the redneck “pop country” cowboys that we see today, but the pop culture versions that we’ve seen on our T.V.s.
Being from Colorado, I hold had interactions with cowboy society all my life, from riding horses at my grandma’s home to my school annually participating in “Wild West Days,” where kids dressed up as cowboys and participated in wild west-themed activities.
In terms of this piece, though, I intend to see at more of the portrayal of the wild west in the media and how oftentimes it is so very queer.
Now before I get too far into it there are a few spoilers (notably for "Tombstone," though it is based on a historical event, so carry out with that what you will).
Movies like "Tombstone,""Brokeback Mountain" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"cement these ideas. From Val Kilmer’s very fruity portrayal of Doc Ho
By John Polly
As "Brokeback Mountain," director Ang Lee's heartbreaking film tracking the ill-fated relationship of two ranch-roaming cowboys in rural Wyoming, continues to stack up awards and nominations for its powerful love story and its talented cast (most notably leading men Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal), it's also drawn a bit of attention from a few nay-sayers who feel that the movie somehow misrepresents the long-iconic figure of the traditional Old West cowboy.
One Wyoming native, playwright Sandy Dixon, was quoted in an article in the Casper, Wyoming Star-Tribune newspaper, which was then widely reported in national media, claiming she had certainly never met a gay cowboy, and that "real cowboys" would forget the film as "hogwash." Dixon stated: "There is nothing better than plain old cowboys and the plain old history without embellishing it to suit everyone."
Real gay ranchers, who do in evidence exist, whether Dixon knowingly met them or not, may beg to differ that the film doesn't embellish at all. One of them is Tracy Lehman. Lehman, who is now 38, was raised on
Whenever anyone imagines the “Wild West” certain images are always conjured up. A heroic gun-toting cowboy (probably John Wayne), a grand stallion, free in the desert plains, delivering justice, saving the girl. These Hollywood visions are increasingly resisted. Historians of the American West are recovering the stories of marginalised groups and individuals, helping us grasp the way of life and persona of the “real Wild West”.
There are many explanations as to why Americans began to migrate west. There were the political motivations of America’s “Manifest Destiny” to colonise westward and ‘civilise’ the Indigenous population. Another motivation was economics, declining opportunities of the Eastern Seaboard and economic recessions drew migration west with the promise of opportunity, particularly in the gold rushes and with the go up of ranching.
Black and queer Americans also headed west but for many additional reasons. For African Americans, the west presented an opportunity for freedom. Many initially headed west as fugitives escaping southern plantations and lat
Gay Cowboys? Sure, Pardner.
But real-life gay cowboys and Wild West historians say that the plot of Brokeback Mountain -- an Oscar favourite after topping the Golden Globes nominations -- is nothing new.
And in a claim that is likely to outrage many rural conservatives, they say that homosexuality was an unspoken norm on the American frontier, where men were close and women were scarce.
''There they were, a couple of men, alone together in isolated frontier country, for weeks or sometimes months at a time,'' says Randy Jones, 53, who was the stetson-wearing, lasso-throwing homosexual cowboy in the Village People and who acted as an adviser on the film.
''The mind must have passed through their minds, even if they didn't act on it, because men are sexy animals. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be so much homosexual sex in prison.''
There is growing evidence to support Jones's theory. As