Bodies and sweat. Sweat and passion. Passion and touch. Touch and power.
Pleasure, play, position meets stamina and grit: fundamental connections between sex and sports. Sex is a sport. Sport is…sexy. Some people win while others can’t score. But win or lose, the popularity of American sports signals the public lust for the clashing of bodies. You know the adage: Sport (Sex) sells. In today’s market driven culture, together these industries bring in the big dollars. And what we all witness is that whether those dollars are crispy $20s tucked into a stripper’s thong, or the dizzying, multi-million dollar deals offered to pro athletes, the culture puts cash behind its desires.
…Sex and Sports define and detonate the boundaries of our social and cultural imagination
But sex and sports also define and detonate the boundaries of our social and cultural imagination. The field and bedroom too often restrict our collective understandings of manhood, womanhood—personhood—altogether. The dominant player on any given field may well be a sexual submissive in the bedroom. Imagine! In fact, so many of the hang ups people have with sex and sports has much to do with the ways these activities are shaped by tired notions of race and gender. In the public imagination, too many still demand that the big man on the field should play it small when it comes to speaking on serious issues and that the sexy pin-up girl should be seen, but never heard at all—and that when the two meet, the relationship can’t be anything other than superficial.
But nah…CASSIUS isn’t here for the usual, lazy tropes stripping Black folks of their dignity, need for pleasure—or dollars.
We do the opposite. Welcome to the August 2017 Sex x Sports issue of CASSIUS. Take in the many perspectives on these complex, colliding worlds. All month we’ll be running (cultural) interference, putting points on the board and going hella deep.
