Nos Vemos en la Cancha: Latinx Women Athletes Making Place in Los Angeles

Abstract:This essay considers how queer Latinx recreational sporting communities construct homosocial environments through their occupation of public spaces in Los Angeles. Field observations and ethnographic analysis identify how soccer communities provide Latinx women access to homosocial spaces through the social networks they create on and off the fields. The relationships and interactions of the participants in women's leagues serve as case studies of the radical homo-intimate formations within the Latinx community. The amalgamation of homonormative and heteronormative identities within women's teams alludes to the tacit treatment of sexuality within leisure sporting community spaces. The narratives of league women grant an auxiliary conceptualization of Latinx identity formation and negotiations of belonging outside the frameworks of the traditional Latino community and the hegemonic gender and sexual body politics of the US state.