Virtually Normal

Abstract

This essay explores media narratives about Mark Bingham, the gay, rugby-playing Republican and successful businessman, who is believed to have played a key role in the struggle with the hijackers of United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. The analysis reveals that, with few exceptions, both lesbian and gay and mainstream publications mobilized Bingham's story in ways that lent tacit support to the intensified militarism and imperialism that have characterized the post-9/11 period. By focusing on the deployment of narratives about Bingham's athletic abilities, the argument points to the ways in which antihomophobic and gay-positive discourses about sport participation and prowess can operate in ways that bolster regressive political agendas and reproduce, rather than challenge, exclusionary norms of subjectivity.

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