It´s time!: WMMA emergence and gender performativity

Abstract

WMMA (Women's Mixed Martial Arts) has been emerging in the sports scene for the past few years and had its coronation when the first women's division of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) - the main organization of the sport - was established in 2013, a factor that strongly increased its worldwide growth and visibility. This research project is based on a Queer epistemology and aims to identify and analyze the factors that led to the recent emergence of women's MMA in Brazil, focusing on issues concerning gender performativity and media representations of the fighters. We start from a micro structural scale, the universe of women's MMA, to seek to understand macro aspects that help situate the personal strategies of these athletes to respond, via sport, to the significant changes in the field of gender relations and non-normative sexualities in contemporary Brazil. In order to do so, a multi situated ethnography will be held with Brazilian female fighters, both in the virtual environment as in person, on occasions where training sessions and competitions will be observed. Collected data will be analyzed in dialogue with the area's literature. (AU)