Did you know that queerness in the West is at least 140 years old? The original cowboy community was biracial, bilingual, and homosocial. Two men getting married in far-flung places like Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming wasn’t a rarity - it was commonplace.
In this episode of PRIDE, we sit down with Rebecca Scofield, a professor at the University of Idaho who specializes in gender and sexuality in the American West to discuss the origins of Gay Rodeo, how the LGBTQ+ community was integral in settling the Wild West, and how to keep the Rodeo as queer as ever.
You can buy a copy of Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo, the book Rebecca Scofield co-authored with Elyssa Ford here: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295752136/slapping-leather/
