How gay is football this year?

Abstract

Sexual identity categories are often constructed in everyday discourse as relatively fixed and stable, but such constructions usually do not sit comfortably with people’s lived experiences of their own and others’ sexualities. This paper examines the tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall 2004) used in the discursive construction of sexual identities among members of a university women’s football team. Using tactics of adequation/distinction, authentication/denaturalisation and authorisation/illegitimation, the women both construct and deconstruct boundaries as they seek to diminish the potential for conflict within the team. Instead, a tolerant and ludic attitude to sexuality is projected, and one which the speakers acknowledge arises from the university context, and at their particular life stage. We conclude that this community of practice has embraced ‘queer temporality’ (Halberstam 2005) — among the women, the possibility of temporary and contingent sexual identities is foregrounded, and these identities can be discursively signalled in various ways, including, but not co-extensive with, desire.