Still, Cavanagh’s assessment appears spot on. Hider, though, plays down the academic analysis: “It’s really just about the social aspect,” she says. “ begin to see gay men and queer women as strong.”
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“It disrupts myths we have that women don’t know how to use an axe or gay men don’t know how to throw an axe.”
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“It challenges our ideas about who is athletic and who isn’t athletic,” she says.
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Sheila Cavanagh, coordinator of sexuality studies at York University and playwright of the Queer Bathroom Stories, commends the QAF for breaking the boundaries of sports often inaccessible to LGBT people, like wrestling, football and axe throwing. Some say it’s revolutionary that the group has thrived at BATL. “It felt good to throw when they were cheering.” Villasenor, who is soft-spoken and reserved, says that support comforts him while throwing. In videos shot during the late-November night of the QAF’s first event, the crowd “oohs” and “ahhs” at every throw of an axe - even when the throwers are complete strangers. Players cheer each other on and no one roots for any one specific competitor. “I wanted to create a queer event where people would socialize and bring people together and bond,” she says.Īs a result, Hider says, the competition becomes more about trying to hit targets than winning. Hider says it makes for a perfect social space.Ī bubbly Johannesburg native who became infatuated with the sport after trying it at a friend’s birthday party two years ago, Hider says she wanted to establish the type of relaxed social space she thinks Toronto’s LGBT community is lacking. The QAF held its inaugural event at BATL’s 425-square-metre facility in Toronto’s west end, described by online reviewers as a hotbed of “sawed wood and freshly sharpened steel.” A rough-around-the-edges venue, the atmosphere differs from the typical glitzy hangout on Church Street.
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Founded by Matt Wilson in 2006, BATL has more than 100 regular league members in addition to one-timers who give throwing a try for parties. The sport then made its way to North America in the early 20th century and took hold among lumberjacks.īut recreational axe throwing entered the mainstream only recently, with the advent of the Backyard Axe Throwing League (BATL), a Toronto company that has hosted axe-throwing competitions in two downtown locations. The first logging competition dates back as far as 1870 in Australia. It originated in logging sports as a “strongest man competition” among lumberjacks. All QAF competitors are novices (no professionals are allowed to participate) most competitors learn the ropes just 20 minutes before facing off in tournaments against each other.Īxe throwing has historically been incredibly competitive. Similar to darts (“but not,” Hider loves to joke), the sport requires competitors to toss axes at a giant wooden target about four metres away, aiming for the bull’s eye.
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The QAF was jokingly named after the early-2000s TV series Queer As Folk, and it contains a hodgepodge of competitors on the LGBT spectrum. QAF founder Melanie Hider formed her group of throwers in November 2013 - it now numbers about 40 people. And yet, this new breed of axe throwers is finding a sense of community through the sport - one the typical Village gathering just can’t match.
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In fact, he’s just one of a handful of LGBT Torontonians, known as the Queer Axe Folk (QAF), who come out every two months to try their hand at what one Toronto blog has dubbed the city’s “newest homegrown sport.”Ī competition created by burly lumberjacks to show off their masculinity and strength, axe throwing has previously had little appeal among gay people. He flashes a quick smile at the man filming him he’s won the first game of the match.īut Villasenor is not an expert: he’s neither a lumberjack, nor a World’s Strongest Man competitor. After retrieving his axe, Villasenor clinks it against his competitor’s - a sign of sportsmanship.