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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on gender politics and issues in a rugby team in Athens highlighting on the sexualized bodies and the interconnection of gender, sexuality and pleasure. Critical comments and embodied performances shape Centaurs’ rhetoric challenging the creation for a hopeful future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on gender politics and issues in a rugby team in Athens (Greece) highlighting on the sexualized bodies and elaborating on the interconnection of gender, sexuality and pleasure. The grassroots rugby team Centaurs being the first organized LGBTQ+-inclusive sport initiative in Greece became the motive for focusing on the playful disposition of being introduced the game as well the pleasure for joining a sport team which is self-characterized as inclusive to homosexualities and heterosexualities. The study of different glamourous masculinities and the ways they act in the specific social field through the interaction of the athletic agents highlight different inequalities in sport field as well an alternative rhetoric for sporting sociality. Centaurs parodic performances challenge “normality” of sports. Critical comments and embodied performances shape Centaurs’ rhetoric showing the cracks where informal but popular discourses about sportshood are coming up. These informal discourses weave masculinities and femininities providing different roles that sculpt sport which sets in motion and orchestrates processes of social change invoke the creation of a new era that can include themselves and their dreams for a new hopeful future.