2021 marks the twentieth anniversary of the film release of ‘Billy Elliot’, the story of a working-class boy from a north-east of England mining village who preferred ballet to boxing.

Albeit fictional, Billy’s tale has parallels in real life, inspired as it was by Thomas Allen, also from the north-east, and his ambition to become an opera singer in the 1960s. Now a world-famous baritone, Sir Thomas reflected on his journey as ‘unexplored territory’ and one ‘paving the way’ for other male performers . Of Billy Elliot’s situation he commented, ‘I identified with a lot of those feelings, those characters in the backstreets I knew very well. It was all very recognisable.

In the film, set during the miners’ strike of 1984/5, Billy’s father and brother, both miners, are violently opposed to him attending a ballet class since ‘it’s only for lasses’ and boys who dance are ‘poofs’. This is a neat and literal encapsulation of an embodied hegemonic masculinity voicing and enacting a discourse that posits dance, (at least in the West), as a ‘feminine’ pursuit and, ergo, boys who dance with a homosexual presumption.

Borne out of this, my research into the experiences of 26 young male dancers aged 11-18 from the north west of England, explored the continued salience of these discourses and examined how young male dancers accepted, negotiated and resisted them. Interested by its claim of a ‘declining significance of homophobia’ (McCormack, 2012) and a ‘softening’ of contemporary masculinity, especially among young men and teenage boys in the USA and UK, I drew upon the sociological lens of ‘inclusive masculinity theory’(IMT).

Central to IMT is the proposition that as homohysteria (the fear of being thought gay) decreases, males no longer need to position themselves as hyper-masculine to be thought heterosexual and so are free to exhibit a range of once-stigmatized behaviours such as bromances, an acceptance of physical tactility (including kissing and cuddling), metrosexual appearance and the inclusion of gay male friends, including the use of pro-gay language. Thus, homohysteria differs from homophobia (a distaste for or dislike of homosexuality) since the former focuses predominantly on the impact of gender policing by homophobia – a core thread of my research.

My work suggests that homophobia, marginalization and stigmatization of some young male dancers remains problematic, especially for those studying ballet - culturally coded as the most ‘feminine’ of dance styles. By contrast, boys who partook of urban dance (break/hip-hop/street) did not exceed the ‘limits’ of masculinity and so escaped censure. Indeed, by embodying an esteemed version of heteronormativity, I found that such boys were often valorized for being ‘cool’, suggesting the continued prevalence of gender essentialism among some young people.

However, while perhaps sceptical of the bold claims made by IMT, contemporary masculinity is, nevertheless, in an acknowledged state of flux as we edge towards greater inclusivity, (evidenced by a decrease in the stigma attached to homosexuality, for example). To illustrate, my research explicates how some young male dancers embody complex and even contradictory subjectivities which defy both the crude reductionism of an outmoded gender binary and the umbrella term of an ‘inclusive’ masculinity. Thus, nowadays, it is perhaps more appropriate, and helpful, to theorise this in the plural, referring to the heterogeneity of ‘masculinities’ instead of a singular and homogenous ‘masculinity’.

Moreover, if IMT’s claims are correct and homophobia is in decline, my findings infer this to be a potentially uneven social process and one subject to both cultural lag and contextual nuance – factors not always acknowledged fully by IMT hitherto. This ‘lag’ is perhaps especially acute in traditionally ‘femininized’ domains such as dance when, as I found for young males, the discourses around it remain restrictive, potent and damaging.

And so, while my work taps into a cultural zeitgeist of masculinity in transition, the end goal of truly inclusive masculinities seems some way off. Too often, boys who dance continue to be ‘othered’ and much worse; so, let’s wish Billy Elliot a happy birthday, but realise that, as yet, we’re not all jumping for joy.

Chris Marlow is a PhD alumnus of the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University.

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