ABSTRACT
After the Mexican national fútbol team beat defending champion Germany in its first 2018 World Cup match, FIFA announced it would once again ‘investigate’ Mexican fans for their use of the controversial, homophobic term, ‘puto,’ as a chant during matches. Our chapter, ‘“Ehhhhh … pu! … what?”: A critical conversation about Mexican football fandom and the word at the centre of a homophobic chant,’ unpacks the gendered, sexualised and racialised reinforcement of nationalism through persistent use of this term, ‘puto,’ by Mexican fans during national and club matches on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
