Failure and Futurity: The Transformative Potential of Queer Skateboarding

Skateboarding has been thought to possess a certain alternative ‘potential’ to challenge prevalent inequalities in sport. However, skateboarding remains a largely hetero-masculine domain. As such, queer identities have been marginalized and relegated to a peripheral space. Nevertheless, radical scenes of young queer skateboarders are offering alternative definitions and possibilities for what it means to be a skateboarder and do skateboarding. Through Jack Halberstam’s concept of queer failure and José Esteban Muñoz’s queer futurity and utopianism, I investigate how queer skateboarders are tapping into a queer potential that persists in the practice and aesthetic of skateboarding through the symbolism of the child and camp. They use this potential to affirm their identities as simultaneously queer and skaters. In so doing, today’s young queer skateboarders are changing the landscape of skateboarding by queering and claiming space for themselves within the largely heteronormative dominant industry and culture.