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Gender Performance In Womens' Mixed Martial Arts, Linda Tompkins, Michael Ian Borer

McNair Poster Presentations

Academic research has typically focused on men who practice Mixed Martial Arts and their expression of hyper-masculinity. There is a lack of comparative work which examines women who practice MMA as a sport. This article aims to address this oversight by exploring the meaning and importance of the sports for women. The main focus is to explore how women navigate and “perform gender” in the patriarchal subculture of MMA. Drawing on a “grounded theory” approach, semi-structured interviews, content analysis, and participant observation, I developed a preliminary model of female Mixed Martial Artist. I examine three female fighter “types” (“Feminine inclined …