Nick Villanueva, CU Boulder’s associate professor of critical sports studies, grew up in rural Indiana, surrounded by cornfields and cowboys. For a closeted gay teenager coming from the only Mexican family in a majority-white town, rural Indiana was far from welcoming.
“I’d go over to the city and see men holding hands, [but] in my little, small hometown, it was just 4-H and rodeo,” Villanueva said. “I grew up very much with the Western lifestyle in me culturally and just the idea of meeting other gay men who were also into rodeo and Western lifestyle [was exciting].”
It wasn’t until Villanueva moved to New Mexico as a young man that he found a Western scene where he felt he could fit in: the gay rodeo. Looking to pursue an acting career in Hollywood, he stopped in Albuquerque for a night to see his boyfriend at the time. That all changed when he walked into a country gay bar called The Ranch, now Sidewinder’s Ranch, and was offered a job as a bartender.
Villanueva decided to stay. A few months later, he stumbled across a poster for the 1996 International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) finals. Now 50, the cowboy has competed in rodeo for nearly 30 years and has solidified a community that blends his upbringing with his identity as a gay man.
“Within the culture, there was, for me, this need to maintain a masculine identity that’s denied by stereotypes,” Villanueva said. “Because I’m former military, I’m Mexican American, and a man that’s gay, I feel like there’s this heteronormative identity that I still want to identify with. Rodeo is this masculine event that helps me feel like I’m masculine, and that’s been something that was ingrained in me in the army and in my Mexican American family.”
Growing up, Villanueva remembers his family celebrating his high-school-aged male cousins when they accidentally got their girlfriends pregnant. In contrast, his acceptance into Purdue University was initially met with disappointment by his father, who had wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and work in the Gary, Indiana steel mills.
“When I started doing rodeo, I just kind of felt like it was helping me be the person that maybe my father wanted to see,” Villanueva said.
First established in Reno, Nevada, in 1976 by Phil Ragsdale to raise funds for a Thanksgiving dinner for seniors, gay rodeos quickly became a safe space for queer people to compete in rodeos the way they wanted to. Today, the IGRA consists of 17 local circuits in the U.S. and Canada. Each year, contestants compete across the local circuits during the winter, spring and summer to qualify for the World Gay Rodeo Finals, which take place every October.
Tommy Channel, who works with the IGRA alumni association, looked back on the first time he attended a gay rodeo in the early ‘80s. “It changed my life forever,” he said. “I met a bunch of cowboys and cowgirls who were being themselves and didn’t have to hide their lifestyle, their sexuality, at an event where they could be free and open and have fun doing what they love.”
Denver hosted the 41st Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo from July 12 to July 14 at the National Western Complex. While many of the participants had been competing in rodeo for several decades, the event also drew younger competitors.
Melanie Ortloff, who goes by Kade Jackwell at the rodeo, was performing as a drag king in Missouri when she was approached about participating in the royalty team for the International Gay Rodeo in 2018. She ended up volunteering at a rodeo in Minnesota in 2019 and, after encouragement from other cowpokes, decided to try chute dogging, calf-roping on foot, steer decorating and goat dressing that year.
“Everyone is very friendly and very welcoming and offers to help with any events you want help with,” Kade said. “It’s very welcoming, even in the ways that sometimes gay spaces are not as trans-friendly.” To Ortloff’s “drag daughter” (or mentee) Summer Jackwell, gay rodeo is a space where she can celebrate her queer identity even if it isn’t always understood by outsiders.
“I’ve had people tell me I’m not a real cowgirl because I’m in a gay rodeo,” Summer said. “What they don’t realize is that the events we do here are the exact same ones they’ll do in any other rodeo. We just put underwear on a goat and tie ribbons on a cow’s tail…but that’s the beauty of it. We make it ours.”
To many contestants, both straight and queer, the strict gender roles and macho culture found in mainstream rodeo can be off-putting. Villanueva remembered competing in straight rodeo during the nineties; the environment, he recalls, was far from welcoming.
“I felt like I had to go back in the closet,” he said. “I mean, I was standing on the rails waiting for the events to start, and I just heard phrases like, ‘Don’t be a sissy. Don’t be a faggot.’”
Inclusivity is key to IGRA culture. The rodeo is open to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, and, beginning in 2000, the IGRA allowed competitors to compete in the gender category they identify with. Cowpokes in IGRA can also compete in any event regardless of gender, whereas the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PCRA), the professional mainstream rodeo association, limits roughstock events to men, which continues to be a contentious issue for women looking to compete in bull riding and bronc riding.
While transphobia remains a huge issue, mainstream American culture and rodeo events tend to be more accepting of the queer community than they were 30 years ago. Several cowpokes reflected that while acceptance is an overall positive step, it does make events established as safe spaces for the queer community, like the gay rodeo, less of a necessity.
During its heyday, gay rodeos could draw more than 8,000 spectators and over a thousand contestants. Rodeos were preceded by big country dancing parties, and the events even drew what Villanueva called “cowboys for the weekend,” men who were there for the party and not the rodeo.
Today, gay rodeo looks very different. Crowds are smaller, and contestants tend to be older compared to mainstream rodeo, where the median age on the bull-riding podium for the Professional Bull Rider (PBR)’s “Unleash The Beast” January tour was just over 22 years.
“It’s bittersweet,” said Villanueva. “The growing acceptance of the LGBTQ community is a great thing, but then the lack of a need for gay rodeo is going to see that, maybe, I don’t want to say disappear, but certainly not grow.”