‘The first step is the two‐step’: hegemonic masculinity and dancing in a country‐western gay bar

Gay men are often rendered feminized males according to masculine, heterosexual ideologies. This research demonstrates that gay men are actually more creative and active agents in their gender performance, simultaneously resisting and reinforcing dominant ideologies around gender and sexuality. One context where the creative agency of gay men is readily prevalent is in their leisure. Leisure contexts, used to shift the goalposts of cultural domination, are important locations where both social control of individuals and social strategies for change are prevalent. Using ethnographic methods, the author investigated a country‐western gay bar to identify those practices that reveal how gay men shape and assign meaning to the bar as a leisure context, the structures that exist to facilitate and/or prohibit gendered practices, and how gay men negotiate hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic gendered practices. This paper focuses on two‐step dancing, the most visible and popular activity that occurs in this country‐western gay bar. Yet, despite its popularity, analysis and interpretation reveal that two‐stepping, a heterosexually based, gender‐defined activity, provides gay men with a unique recreational opportunity to both challenge and reinforce dominant gender and sexual ideologies.