ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the emergent discourse that “everyone’s the same” through intervening in debates on whether fighting “de-genders bodies”. In assessing these debates, it highlights how discursive knowledge about gender is still drawn upon within the space and can subsequently hail female fighters into a gendered subjectivity that disrupts supposed constructions of sameness. To do this it draws out the insights of Nicole, one of only two Black female fighters in the space, to explore how knowledge of her racial, gendered and class subject position disrupts contingent sameness. It then demonstrates how hegemonic masculinities hold currency within the Fighters Class, as femininity is banished from the space as all members, particularly female fighters, must embody hegemonic masculinity in order to be accepted as fighters. Thus, becoming a fighter relies on the privileging of gendered masculinity rather than being a gender-neutral space.
