ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we expand the analysis of sports, organizations and masculinity to include behaviour often hidden in private communications by broadening the definition of the “locker room” to include social media and other online spaces. Drawing upon high-profile events, research on male-dominated sports and arguments on sports and hegemonic masculinities, we illustrate how strongmen create locker room spaces to embody narratives of hegemonic masculinities that disparage and mock certain groups. Demonstrating their values and ideas on whiteness, masculinity, and domination, the strongmen’s misogynist, homophobic, and racist language constructs women, LGBTQ + individuals, and ethnic minorities as inferior. In particular, the weaponization of misogyny and homophobia serves as a warning not only to women and gay men but also to “non-feminized” heterosexual men whose behaviour or ideas fall outside dominant “normative” constructions of masculinity. By focusing on hidden (or not intended to be public) communication between men in sports organizations, our analysis illustrates that demeaning behaviour is, on the part of some white men, a response to their fear of social change – prompting an examination of the fragility of hegemonic masculinity.
