Secret Story Time Bonus Episode: The Saga of GOLDUST: How The WWE Turned Homophobia Into Dollar Signs

[00:00:01] Pride Month is coming to a close, and what a surreal, delightfully silly, and sometimes outright sad collection of rainbow-splattered weeks it's been. Yes, we've had more joyful parades, examples of inspired allyship, and unashamed glitter-covered hookups than you can shake a wig at.

[00:00:22] Tennessee and Florida's so-called drag bands have been temporarily blocked by federal judges for being overbroad and obviously fascist, Arizona's governor issued an executive order banning conversion therapy, and the Instagram account RooPublicans has used AI art for good,

[00:00:42] developing incredible renderings of what bigoted fucktangles in far-right politics would look like if they just embraced their inner queen and beat their faces like a true covergirl. All of it is vital, and deeply appreciated by the queer community.

[00:00:59] But there's no pretending that 2023 has been anything other than an especially brutal year for anyone who doesn't identify as anything other than a nice, straight, easily recognizable and binary guy or gal. Fascist domestic terrorist group The Proud Boys terrorized Pride events across the country

[00:01:21] while law enforcement agencies did basically nothing but watch. Elon Musk decided the best use of his obscene wealth was to go on Twitter and declare the word cisgender a hate slur that will get users banned, even though Twitter already does

[00:01:37] nothing about the n-word or dyke or fag or literally any actual slur not invented by a transparently insecure billionaire with a trans child. An 86-year-old woman with dementia was beaten nearly to death in Ireland because her attacker

[00:01:53] assumed she was a, quote, transgender pedophile, which was a stark reminder that, A, anti-trans propaganda has very violent real-world consequences and, B, cisgender men are completely incapable of distinguishing trans women from the biological women they claim need to be protected from trans women. What a shitshow.

[00:02:16] How, how did we as a populace get to a place where the mere existence of LGBTQ humans is more worrying to some grown adults than climate change, war, and a recession combined? The answer is a very complicated combination of neural wiring, the church, and money-hungry

[00:02:38] cockmongers like Vince McMahon. This being the Human Fuckery podcast, this month we're diving into the latter. It was not so long ago, within most of our listeners' lifetimes, one of the largest entertainment and sports conglomerates in human history decided cultivating and exploiting homophobia was

[00:02:58] a brilliant way to make a metric fuckton of money. Hate has always been as lucrative as it is contagious, and putting it on prime-time television for billions of women, men, and children to get high off is an incredible formula for sustained wealth.

[00:03:15] And in the case of today's story, we really do mean billions of men, women, and children. According to The Hollywood Reporter, over one in four Americans identify as professional wrestling fans. Major professional wrestling accounts enjoy a combined 1.5 billion followers and 35 billion

[00:03:37] YouTube streams, with the WWE's WrestleMania events streaming to 180 countries. The WWE, which is just one of many wrestling promotions, regularly draws more viewers than baseball's World Series or college football's playoffs. Just under half of all pro wrestling fans are under the age of 26, meaning a massive

[00:04:01] portion of the eyes watching pro wrestling events are young and wildly impressionable. So keep those numbers in mind as you listen to this very true piece of pretty recent American sports and entertainment fuckery. It makes figuring out how we got to today a little easier.

[00:04:19] Gary, put these spandex briefs on and tell Edward to launch himself between the ropes. We're gonna tag team this story like The Hulkster and Macho Man Savage. Also, grab me my Valium. I'm gonna need it. Secret Story Time. Secret Story Time.

[00:04:37] During my time in the business, of all the gimmicks I saw, three were near-guaranteed hits with the fans. The cowboy, the Native American chief, and the flamboyant homosexual. Tom Clark, pro wrestling journalist. It was getting late, and Dustin's parents still weren't home.

[00:05:07] He was pacing nervously, little heart fluttering in his already tight chest. There's only so long you can leave an eight-year-old boy to watch his young sister before anxiety sets in. He went to the front window, overlooking their crispy, sun-cooked lawn, swiveling his head

[00:05:26] in each direction, growing concerned as the sun fell lower along the Texas horizon. Any minute now. Dustin heard them long before the visual confirmation. Screeching tires echoed down their usually quiet suburban street. Startled, the boy moved to the front door in a panic.

[00:05:48] It was instantly clear why they were delayed. The engine cut, truck doors flew open, and amidst unintelligible screams, Dustin's mother and stepfather spilled out of the vehicle, locked in a vicious confrontation like a pair of rabid animals. He suddenly wished he and his sister were alone again.

[00:06:08] The calamity he was witnessing had sadly become commonplace ever since Dustin's biological father left home for good. The short years following his departure had been a rotating door of violent men, negligently assuming the mantle of Dustin's new paternal figure.

[00:06:27] Over time, his mother would remarry three times, working just as many jobs in a desperate effort to hold together what was left of their little family. Chaos and traumatic transition were their normal, as were the shocking domestic disputes. He was too small to defend her at eight.

[00:06:47] So Dustin watched helplessly that day. As the conflict escalated on the front lawn, his mother swung at his stepfather, but the belligerent man caught the punch and violently bent her hand backward. The sound of her finger snapping like bubble wrap was audible from yards away, and as it

[00:07:04] cracked, a gold wedding band slipped from her knuckle, disappearing into the tall grass. It was the least of her concerns. She retreated to the house in tears, cradling her badly broken digit. Dustin's stepfather cleared off soon after the fight, leaving the young boy alone to

[00:07:22] process the emotional and physical rupture he had just observed. As children of abuse often do, Dustin quickly assumed responsibility for repairing not just his mother's fractured bones, but broken heart as well. That evening, he spent the next five hours sifting through every blade of grass outside

[00:07:43] their home long into the night. Finally, around 10pm, Dustin walked inside and presented her with the ring she had lost just hours earlier, eager to restore its symbolic integrity. It was all he knew to do in comforting her, despite this comfort not being his to provide.

[00:08:01] As a child, it was a role he was never meant to play, a responsibility that was never his. Shoes his little feet were never meant to fill. His bitch-ass stepdad should have been on his knees in the grass, missing dinner, not him.

[00:08:17] Tragically, these would become Dustin's cues for manhood, palpably grotesque and entirely without direction. The absence of his birth father loomed large, and Dustin ached for his love and protection. Unfortunately, many miles separated the pair, and this little boy was left to imagine what

[00:08:37] life could have been like had his father not walked away. As collateral damage, Dustin and the pain he lacked words to express were invisible, and it would be years before either emerged from their exile. But they would emerge in colorful, devastating fashion.

[00:08:57] Dustin's eventual revolution from a race child full of despair would eventually become a transformation most bizarre. A journey of discovery, desperation, uncertain triumph, and surprising advocacy. The first step would be another search for yet another ring, though entirely different

[00:09:16] from the one that disappeared into the grass that hot Texas evening. This ring was not a symbol of unyielding love, but a proving ground carved from violent urges and hero worship. It was the pro wrestling ring, and in it his father stood as a giant amongst men.

[00:09:47] To the world, he was known as Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, a multi-time world heavyweight champion, and one of the most beloved and revered professional wrestlers of all time. But to young Dustin Runnels, foremost, he was dad.

[00:10:04] It wasn't until little Dustin was nine that he saw his father wrestle for the first time. The promotional banner Dusty wrestled under was rolling through Texas, and it conveniently served as an opportunity for his son to finally discover a big piece of what kept them apart

[00:10:22] for all those years. The crowd was electric that night. Fans were on their feet watching sweating Goliaths crash into turnbuckles inside the ring. This was long before promotions could rely on explosive pyrotechnics and LED walls to keep the attention of attendees.

[00:10:48] Heroes and villains had to carry the entire traveling circus on their backs, upholding the ruse long after the lights faded. It wasn't uncommon in those days for grudging wrestlers to travel together, but swapped vehicles miles from the arena out of fear fans might see them together, shattering the

[00:11:06] illusion of animosity. Folks rooted and cheered with gusto, but only a few wrestlers could bring an entire arena to its feet. Dusty Motherfucking Rhodes was one of them, and the response to him was otherworldly. His applause was deafening, and lights somehow shone brighter on his hulking 275-pound frame,

[00:11:32] especially when performing his signature finishing move, the bionic elbow. The American Dream had a way of working an audience that few would ever match. Little Dustin watched and beamed with pride. After all, these people celebrated his father in the same way that he did.

[00:11:55] Papa Rhodes was a titan, larger than life, but it wasn't entirely lost on Dustin that the collective, they, seemed to have more of his dad than he ever would. And as Dusty's star continued to rise, there would be even less room for his son.

[00:12:13] Little Dustin would very soon find himself standing in the darkest parts of a very long shadow. Once Dustin reached his sophomore year in high school, he finally had the opportunity to move to North Carolina to live with his father.

[00:12:35] By this point, Dusty had started a new family, and Dustin's effort to find his place in the mix was beyond daunting. The new living arrangement wasn't exactly what the attention-starved son had envisioned.

[00:12:49] Despite now living with dad, he had to accept that Dusty lived most of his life on the road, and that wasn't changing anytime soon. It ate ass, big sweaty ass, but Dustin acclimated. He made fast friends in his new school and utilized his growing physical size to become

[00:13:08] a star defensive tackle on his football team. Despite his prowess as a baller, Dustin remained consumed by the desire to be close to his father. He had hoped football would allow him to play in front of Dusty each week.

[00:13:23] Instead, dad was rarely home, and when he was home, he was usually tired and grumpy. Every chance Dustin got, he tried to create a world where his father was with him, cheering happily from the stands. Dustin convinced his friends to play trampoline wrestling in the backyard, curating entire

[00:13:44] shows from start to finish. His girlfriend would videotape Dustin pulling up to the house in his dad's Mercedes as if he were arriving at the arena. He'd wear dad's robes and replica title belts while walking out to entrance music.

[00:14:00] He carefully constructed elaborate setups, making the entire experience as authentic as possible. But these highs were a poor substitute for a father's attention. Before Dustin even finished high school, Dusty, holy shit, moved back to Texas for work without his boy. He what?

[00:14:22] Yes, Dusty Rhodes departed North Carolina entirely, leaving his teenage son behind with a family he'd only just become familiar with. Dustin realized then that if what he wanted was a father's love and attention, he had

[00:14:38] no other choice but to kick the fucking door down to Dusty's world himself. Upon graduation, Dustin bypassed a football scholarship, packed up what little he had, and followed his dad to the Lone Star State. This time, he wouldn't be denied.

[00:14:57] And once he was there, standing in his muscled and persistent glory, it seemed Dusty was finally ready to let him in. One day, Dusty asked his son to pick him up from the Dallas airport, insisting there was something significant he needed to speak with him about.

[00:15:16] Inside the truck cabin, Dusty used the 45-minute drive back home to reveal to his son the closely guarded secrets of the polarizing religion known as professional wrestling. It was akin to Houdini sharing the brilliance behind his every illusion, David Copperfield

[00:15:38] explaining how he made the Statue of Liberty fucking disappear on TV. The ride was more thrilling for Dustin than receiving an invitation to tour the subterranean levels of Roswell Air Base. Dusty was passing the torch, and shortly thereafter, Dustin was sent away to begin his training.

[00:15:59] The first steps into his father's boots weren't exactly smooth, but Dustin devoured every lesson. As cliche as it sounds, wrestling was in his DNA. He never missed workouts, but he also quickly discovered the flip side of his new calling, partying just as hard as he worked.

[00:16:20] But after just two years, when Dusty was a mere 20 years old, Dusty called him up to the big leagues. It's a very special day for Dustin Rhodes, the American of Dreams. Because standing here with me today at 65 and 245 pounds, he ain't all filled out yet,

[00:16:36] you know what I mean? And he's green behind the ears, but I want to introduce you to Dustin Rhodes. This is my son, and the legacy of the American Dream lives in this kid's heart. And what he don't know, I'm sure we gonna teach him.

[00:16:51] The father and son duo bounced from the NWA to the WCW. Hell they even worked briefly in Japan. It was a fever dream of euphoria. Dustin was learning at the feet of the masters, making good money, and wrestling side by side

[00:17:08] with his dad in their trademark cowboy attire. His American Dream was finally coming true. But splinters of the past remained. Now that Dustin had a relationship with his father, it became increasingly apparent that he wasn't exactly sure of who he was without him.

[00:17:28] Even as Dustin succeeded as a wrestler, the deep shadow of Dusty Rhodes seemed to blot every spotlight turned his way. Dustin's demons circled him like an arena lighting rig. How could he convince anyone? He wasn't just some watered down version of his dad.

[00:17:47] How would he ever convince himself? The little boy, now chronologically a man, struggled to individuate while standing beside the very man who had erased him for years. Their newfound closeness only emphasized how starved Dustin was for simple words of affirmation.

[00:18:07] He wasn't even sure how Dusty felt about him as a wrestler. I was once their father's approval. Tell me how you feel, I wanted to say. Tell me I'm doing a good job. Tell me you're proud of me. I never really knew how well I was doing.

[00:18:26] As a result, I was always very critical of myself. To this day, I can't watch myself on television. All I see are the flaws. I've had to figure out life by myself, but in many ways that experience didn't make me a stronger person.

[00:18:44] Figuring out where I fit and how I measured up to my dad made me weaker in many ways. I guess the fact is that while I've been performing in front of 20,000 people and millions more on television, I was looking for the approval of only one person.

[00:19:04] Dusty would eventually share his feelings with his son, but none of them positive and none of them even about wrestling. While working for WCW, Dustin fell in love with a makeup artist named Terry. Their attraction was instantaneous.

[00:19:22] They tried to keep things casual for the sake of their careers, but there was no fighting it. Within six months, the couple moved in together. Dustin somehow kept this a secret from his dad, but no secrets lasted long in pro wrestling.

[00:19:37] Once Dusty found out, things came to a head quickly. Terry Rhodes disapproved of Terry, suggesting that she got around quite a bit. Dustin was shattered. A wedge appeared between the Rhodes men for the first time in years.

[00:19:52] As Dustin's relationship with Terry deepened, the connection with his dad only began to unravel. Before long, a brief argument over something relatively innocuous dropped the bionic elbow on their bond. I had always wanted nothing more than to be a part of my dad's life, to make him proud

[00:20:13] and earn his approval. Then, in a moment I never saw coming, he disappeared. He was gone, out of my life all over again. The duo wouldn't speak for the next five years. Dustin filled the void with pills and alcohol.

[00:20:30] His relationship with Terry became increasingly strained in the process. Soon, wrestling was the only thing holding his life together. Then, disastrously, the WCW unceremoniously handed Dustin his walking papers. It only seemed to confirm that he was nothing without his father.

[00:20:50] With no prospects or hope, Dustin spent the next eight months living on his meager savings. The bills stacked high, but the pills stacked even higher as he fed himself prescription drugs to tamp down the emotional ache. And then, the phone rang.

[00:21:10] It was the voice of a man some would describe as either the savior of professional wrestling or its sauron. Vincent Kennedy McMahon, Chairman, CEO, verse bottom to Donald Trump, and controlling shareholder of the World Wrestling Federation. For a wrestler, it might as well have been God calling.

[00:21:35] He spoke in his signature gravel voice. Dustin, are you sitting down? I've got this character I want to run by you. His name is Goldust. Vince described Goldust as a mysterious and androgynous character, a bizarre figure he said Dustin would be perfect for.

[00:21:58] Unsure if he was being fucked with, Dustin still jumped at the chance to get back in the game. But once the call ended, he rushed to his bookshelf, grabbed his dictionary, and looked up the meaning of androgynous. What have I gotten myself into? He muttered to himself.

[00:22:17] The genderqueer implications mortified Dustin, knowing this choice would only intensify his father's ire. With reflection, he decided this mega departure from Dusty's wholesome, all-American, macho legacy could be precisely what drove him toward a throne of his own.

[00:22:40] The WWF's newly minted Prince of Perversion was his to sit upon, spotlight shining off his glittering crown. The life of Dustin Runnels and the landscape of professional wrestling would never be the same. Early ideas for Goldust were the brainchild of not only Vince McMahon, but WWF creative

[00:23:06] director Vince Russo. Russo says, When people ask me which character I enjoyed writing for the most, the answer without even thinking is Goldust. When Vince McMahon first laid it out to me, he didn't have much. He said he wanted him to be Old Hollywood.

[00:23:25] From this basic concept, the design morphed into that of a drag queen starlet painted gold to emulate the striking Academy Award statue. The look was amplified by jamming Dustin into a gold vinyl gimp suit and topping him with a long, flowing blonde wig.

[00:23:47] He had an amazing fucking robe as well. But in case you've never seen Goldust personally, understand that Dustin was around 6'6 and 260 pounds. His massive shoulders and traps were sometimes draped with a feather boa.

[00:24:05] What began as a sexually ambiguous oddity quickly evolved into, at least for the average heterosexual male in the 1990s, the stuff of homophobia-driven nightmares. Goldust the character was at odds with literally everything the real Dustin Runnels had been to that point in his life.

[00:24:28] The son of a classic conservative hero, he was now playing a heel, aka a villain, for the first time, and doing so dressed in the trimmings of what neocons had been groomed for decades to see as shameful fetish wear embraced by sex criminals and pervs. McMahon would warn,

[00:24:48] Dustin, you're gonna get a lot of trouble from the boys, the fans. Just call me and we'll talk about it. Dustin wasn't entirely clear on what he meant at the time, but with no other options, he placed his trust in Vince and poured his pain into Goldust.

[00:25:07] And on October 22nd, 1995, the world met the bizarre one for the first time. As a matter of fact, standing by we have comments recorded earlier on, I believe, from the most bizarre individual in the history of the WWF, Goldust. But the things have fallen on us, Mr. Rucker.

[00:25:29] The Hollywood premiere that the whole world has been anticipating. Tonight. Lights. Cameras. Ooh, so much action. Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. Remember the name. Goldust. He would defeat Marty Jannetty that night before a largely bewildered and mouth-breathing audience.

[00:26:12] Fans weren't sure what to make of the character, nor were they aware that it was actually Runnels beneath the wig. Suffice it to say, the act hadn't yet found its legs. Things were rough for the first six months.

[00:26:26] Goldust couldn't draw heat, as they say in the biz, and appeared doomed to the bottomless trash heap of horrible pro-wrestling ideas. And believe me, there are a ton in that fucking trash heap. But for whatever reason, Vince stayed behind Dustin, working with him closely to get this

[00:26:45] character over. Dustin felt both suspicious and supported by the inexplicable support. In fact, Vince became something of a father figure to him during this time. That said, just when it seemed all was lost, in a match against Savio Vega in Madison Square Garden, something finally popped.

[00:27:06] I can't remember who suggested I do something in the ring with definite sexual overtones. At first, I resisted anything like that, but finally, I decided to try something to get the character over. That's when Savio Vega really helped me.

[00:27:22] The moment I did something that left no doubt as to Goldust's orientation, the crowd went wild. It was like turning on a light switch. It was that easy. I locked up with Savio, and he said, go behind me, take your gold hands, and rub up and down

[00:27:40] on my chest. I did exactly as Savio directed, then scampered out of the ring like a coward when he charged me. Everybody went crazy. The fans were screaming, calling me every derogatory name you can think of. It was automatic. I felt it immediately.

[00:27:59] So I returned to the ring, and we locked up again in the corner. Savio said, spin me around, turn around, and shake your butt in my crotch. He pushed me out of the corner and started charging me, and I just ran out of the ring again.

[00:28:14] They went ballistic. We were on the undercard, but we took over the place. The crowd nearly got out of control. They were out of their minds. They were so riled up that guys were jumping the rails trying to get to me.

[00:28:28] That night, fueled by the critical mass of homophobia, the show had to be stopped to prevent fans from continuing to throw shit in the ring and aisles. With the simple wiggle of his ass and one gentle caress, Goldust magically became the most hated wrestler inside the squared circle.

[00:28:49] And that hatred catapulted him into the upper echelons of WWF superstardom. It's not unfair to say that the wrestling world had never seen anything like Goldust before. Known for decades for its one-dimensional, archetypical characters, the good and moral

[00:29:12] cowboy, the violent and duplicitous foreigner, the heroic pretty boy, the evil boss, etc., Goldust was something very different. But he was also cut from the same cloth as a handful of notable wrestlers in wrestling's history because pro wrestling has maintained a flaming love affair with all things queer

[00:29:34] for the better part of a century. Kimberly! What? Do you have a moment? I've been writing an angry tweet about that shit Alexis Michelle pulled on Lollary on Drag Race All Stars Y. We need an injection of queer history here. How queer are we talking? Gorgeous motherfucking George.

[00:29:52] Oh, hells yes. Hold on. Fuck you, Alexis Michelle. Okay, so. Homosexuality and wrestling had their first official grinder date in the 1950s courtesy of Gorgeous George, televised wrestling's first major star. With his sequined robe, meticulously coiffed blonde curls held in place by gold bobby pins,

[00:30:16] and an impeccably primped appearance, Gorgeous George captivated audiences. He was so famous that historian John Nash credited him with selling more TVs than Milton Burrell, saying, His impact will go way beyond the ringed circle in television. He will be credited with introducing camp to the mainstream public.

[00:30:38] A Reader's Digest poll will suggest he's better known than the president. Muhammad Ali will claim he learned his trash talking from him. Dylan, James Brown, John Waters, Liberace, and more are inspired and influenced by one gorgeous George Wagner.

[00:30:55] Before his matches, George's valet would spray his opponents with disinfecting perfume — a very subversive nod to gayness being contagious — for a touch of theatrics. His flamboyant behavior unfortunately catalyzed decades of homophobic jeering from fans, setting a lingering tradition of wrestling audiences working themselves into a hateful froth over

[00:31:21] fictional characters' fake gender identity or sexual preferences. Which is wild, given the deeply homoerotic roots of all wrestling, a sport where mostly naked adult men consent to trying to top each other publicly. The big gay gimmick continued into the 60s and 70s with Exotic Adrien Street, a character

[00:31:47] whose signature move in the ring was to kiss opponents to escape being pinned. At the height of the 1980s AIDS crisis, adorable Adrien Adonis — no relation to Mr. Street — tapped into the gay panic spreading across the United States at the worst possible time.

[00:32:07] The flamboyant, adorable Adonis, costumed in pink pastel and a face full of Barbie-esque blush, would infamously be pitted against the show's most notorious heel, Rowdy Roddy Piper — an athletic caricature of big-mouthed, toxic masculinity. At WrestleMania III, the promotion's marquee event, Piper delivered an unmerciful beatdown

[00:32:32] of Adonis in front of 93,000 live fans and millions more at home, all of it carefully curated to satisfy the base's rabid desire to see some assumed gays bashed into submission. The loss would cause Adrien to be cut from the company and swept back into the closet

[00:32:53] of wrestling history. Soon after, the athlete playing him — real name Keith Frank — would die in a tragic car accident on his way to a shitty regional promotion at just 34 years of age. So what gives? Why the fixation on flamboyance and gender expression in a business built on messages

[00:33:14] of morality, manhood, and masculinity? Why does the WWE feel like one of those guys who goes to a circle jerk, then commits a hate crime once they're done ejaculating? In Roland Barthes' book Mythologies, he calls pro wrestling a quote,

[00:33:31] a spectacle of excess, which represents moral situations usually kept private. Namely, man's suffering — including struggles with his own sexuality. The primal drama of wrestling provides moral clarity to the ambiguity of our very challenging human life.

[00:33:51] Each wrestler puts on an unmistakably simple mask to help express their role, allowing fans to easily digest who is who in a cliched drama of good, evil, and justice. These costumes and simplified characters ensure there's zero confusion for audiences — no

[00:34:11] coded behavior or complex layers to figure out, in other words, for the time they're tuned into their television sets. Pro wrestling makes the world a more comprehensible and digestible place for fucking idiots. Now, we're not saying that all wrestling fans are idiots.

[00:34:31] Because the real world isn't actually that simple. I watched pro wrestling as a teenager with enthusiasm. Edward still enjoys it, and he has a fucking doctoral degree. There are tons of intelligent people who dig it. It's like American Kabuki, but on steroids. Literally.

[00:34:52] Most of wrestling's stars are exaggerated cartoon characters, enacting the eternal battle of good versus evil in ways that don't make us think very hard. So it should come as no surprise — especially given the art form's celebration of male

[00:35:08] bravado — that something as complicated as sexual ambiguity becomes a sinister force to be grappled with. It also draws attention to the inherent homoeroticism embedded into the sport, something which makes its largely male audiences pretty uncomfortable. Goldust's flamboyant predecessors survived in decades arguably less tolerant than the

[00:35:32] 1990s by leaning just enough into heterosexuality to appease the fans. While gorgeous George was manicured, costumed, and dainty, he also towed an entourage of adoring and sexy ladies, allowing the public to comfort themselves that the scissified man in front of them was just vain rather than totally queer.

[00:35:55] Goldust, by comparison, aggressively imposed an almost pornographic character of homosexual masculinity, leaving no room for other interpretations. And he did so in a carefully crafted and fragile social order where roided-up heterosexual masculinity is so much the norm, it's rendered invisible to its players.

[00:36:19] It was as if no sexual act had ever existed in pro wrestling before the arrival of Goldust, despite decades of drugged-up dudes in their underwear fake-fighting over bikini-clad ladies with breast implants on a national stage. Am I making sense, guys? Yes, it makes sense.

[00:36:39] In fact, there was a famous moment in pro wrestling where the Undertaker, an avowed Satanist, God bless him, kidnapped Vince McMahon's beautiful young daughter and then staged a satanic wedding center stage with her tied to a cross in front of a stadium full of fans.

[00:37:01] This is incredibly epic. His vows promised he'd rape his new bride in the name of the devil while she cried and begged for help, and the crowd jammed to bursting with the same people who screamed that satanic gaze or corrupting their children cheered for him.

[00:37:21] You can look it up on YouTube right now. The hypocrisy of folks today who take their kids to hooters but foam at the mouth over the idea of a drag queen reading a storybook at a library has always been woven into wrestling

[00:37:36] in a world packed with men proclaiming proudly that they're murderous clowns, voodoo doctors, felonious lunatics, a life-size chicken, and or the actual risen dead. Only Goldust was thought to have transgressed the bounds of acceptability. This totally unrealistic but still unapologetically overt approximation of homosexuality was seen

[00:38:02] as the epitome of evil. It represented everything they didn't understand about others, and in some cases, themselves. Their heroes, by comparison, were displayed as traditional, conservative, muscular, nationalistic, and overwhelmingly white, and demonstrated on stage violent intolerance for anything nuanced.

[00:38:27] This is the firestorm Dustin had to confront head-on, and the controversy skyrocketed him from the undercards to the main event. Fans couldn't decide if they wanted Goldust expelled from wrestling altogether or be gay-bashed on pay-per-view more.

[00:38:46] Regardless, the violent impulses of the public could only create so much space for this sort of challenge to its social order. So the WWE, then still the WWF, threw a bone to the mob and pitted Goldust against a character

[00:39:05] so heavy-handedly dripping in machismo it almost ensured a beatdown, Razor Ramon. The pair drew heat for months as Goldust perpetrated outrageous behaviors to incite homophobia in the fans. He sent flowers to Razor, sent suggestive photos, cut sexualized promos, and painted

[00:39:30] a heart with the man's name across his chest. Do you miss me, sweetheart? Romeo is bleeding, 1994. Razor Ramon, bad guy. Oh, I like that, my boy. You know that I am watching your every move.

[00:39:48] You understand that there is a special bond between you and I, a bond that is unbreakable, unimaginable, and reeking with the smell of taboo. You claim that you ooze machismo. Well, Chico, let's ooze it together. Oh, you remember the name. Goldust.

[00:40:20] The depiction of these efforts were leveraged as justification for any violence coming to Goldust, feeding the insanely stupid narrative that gay men are all cock-hungry for heteros, hell-bent on converting the masses in service to the terrifying blitzkrieg of the gay agenda.

[00:40:40] But the limp wrist of Goldie even reached behind the curtain. Scott Hall, the performer behind Razor Ramon, he actively struggled with his own discomfort in dealing with Goldust, fearing what the audience and his own family might think.

[00:40:56] At one point, Hall was driven to tears as real-life tensions escalated between he and Dustin, ultimately necessitating an intervention by Vince McMahon. Fascinatingly enough, Vince tried to diffuse the situation by sharing with Scott the details of his first homosexual experience while hitchhiking as a young man.

[00:41:19] Rather than calm things down, it merely left those present wondering just how many gay experiences McMahon had in his pocket. Nonetheless, the wrestlers squared off at WrestleMania for the vacant Intercontinental Championship. This match served as the debut of Dustin's wife, Terry, assuming the role of Goldust's

[00:41:41] cigar-smoking Hollywood director, Marlena. This confused fans, enraging them further with the ambiguity of the character's sexuality. The only thing worse than knowing he was gay was not knowing if he was gay. But the public's long-desired beatdown of Goldust, it would have to wait as the Bizarre

[00:42:05] One assaulted Ramon that night with 20 minutes of violence and sexual innuendo. In the end, the gold-painted queerdo left the ring that night with a world title around his waist. Underneath the gold paint, Dustin knew he had finally arrived, even if he'd done it

[00:42:26] in a pair of heels instead of his father's cowboy boots. Dustin Rhodes had defied the odds and forged a legacy under his own steam. But for the crime of showcasing a gay character triumphantly, he'd eventually have to pay the piper. Unprecedented media coverage followed Goldust's upsetting victory.

[00:42:49] News articles, magazines, and news reports considered the bewildering icon from all sides. Conservative groups, not surprisingly, railed against the perceived contamination of primarily children's TV viewing, once again ignoring the sport's legacy of felonious conduct, rape culture, and mostly naked dudes running around being violent.

[00:43:14] As a LGBTQ activist, they protested that the character upheld destructive gay stereotypes and complained that his incendiary behavior only validated the concerns of right-wing moralists. Regardless of whether Dustin aimed to challenge the frail architecture of social norms or

[00:43:34] he made a Faustian bargain for personal gain, the future, for a short time, seemed paved in glitter and gold. Faust and Marlena even appeared on Conan O'Brien, thrusting the polarizing figure into the mainstream.

[00:43:50] The world was riveted, but from his couch back home, Dusty, his father, was livid, fearing his son was tarnishing the legacy of their family's name. How could the American dream have given birth to the American nightmare?

[00:44:07] Soon after, Dustin was called to partake in a match that would, in hindsight, be his most controversial yet career-defining, and it would be against the wrestler who had delivered Adrian Adonis his televised gay-bashing. Rowdy, roddy, Piper. Goldust's bill had come due, and the Piper would be paid.

[00:44:32] Their main event at WrestleMania 12 began with a pre-taped backlot brawl, the two wrestlers throwing down in a simulated, quote, real-life scenario. The clash was so brutal that many WWF employees later stated it glorified hate crimes.

[00:44:51] And whether scripted or not, Piper actually threw punches, some landing so hard he required medical attention for a broken hand, and Dustin for a split skull. The outside match was designed to spill into the arena seamlessly, and boy did it ever.

[00:45:11] For the next ten minutes, the world, not just America mind you, but dozens of countries would yet again witness what appeared to be ritualized gay-bashing with fetishized glee. The match ended with Piper stripping Goldust of his suit, revealing black bondage lingerie,

[00:45:29] as fans were induced into a mammoth homophobic rage, yelling, kill the queer. A similar match with Ultimate Warrior saw the crowd of 10,000, comprised chiefly of children, loudly chant, faggot, on three separate occasions. None of this was more egregious than this miserable promo, however, recorded by Jerry

[00:46:07] the King Lawler. Jerry was most famous at this point for smacking the shit out of Andy Kaufman on The David Letterman Show. How are you going to fare against the bizarre nature of Goldust? Well, you know, it seems our sissy friend is having a little identity crisis.

[00:46:19] First he was Dustin Runnels, then he was Goldust, and now he wants to be the king of the ring. Well, we all saw you out here with tears running down your face, wondering why your old man, Old Dust, don't love you anymore.

[00:46:35] Well, I know Dusty Rhodes, and he told me why. It's because you married the biggest gold digger in Georgia, then you put on a woman's wig, and you went around the ring kissing men like a flaming fag.

[00:46:45] But let me tell you something, they're going to all have tears running down their face tonight. Bring that gold digger to the ring and bring that little crap, Dakota, with her. What? Because I'm going to tell you this, they're going to all have tears running down their

[00:46:59] face tonight. I don't know what I'm going to do with you. What'd you name that brat, Dakota? You should have named her Target, because I heard everybody in Atlanta had a shot at it. All right.

[00:47:07] Now, you may have heard that Jerry, at the end of the clip, he mentioned the name Dakota and how she had been defiled by everyone in the city of Atlanta. Well, that was actually Dustin's real life toddler, an actual child he shared with Terry.

[00:47:21] But I guess drag queens are still the world's most significant threat to children. Not surprisingly, none of these mass indoctrinations of violent homophobia are mentioned in any official retrospectives of the matches. If this were a legitimate sport, like there would be 6,000 fucking Bryant Gumbel documentaries

[00:47:41] on this by now where a whole audience cheers faggot for like five, six minutes. But you know, hey, pro wrestling, none of it's real. They've conveniently scrubbed it all from the record, lingering only in the worldview

[00:47:55] of the billions of viewers who grew up chanting slurs with the quote unquote heroes of the sport. In the months following that WrestleMania loss, Goldust was at the height of his popularity. But Dustin's inevitable descent had already begun.

[00:48:11] Outside pressure continued from the right and the left, directed not at the men using real hate speech on primetime TV, but the guy in the leather costume pretending at queerness. Goldust's outlandish behavior was increasingly scaled back by the writers, in part because

[00:48:29] the WWE was under fire for various allegations of rape, child molestation, drug dealings and numerous other scandals. The organization alleged that they could no longer afford the heat that Goldust drew, a nice way to place blame on a gay character rather than the CEO accused of violently raping

[00:48:49] a female referee. I'm sorry. I have to say something else. I've literally never been able to stop you before, so you just... Okay, great. Move over. It's just that Vince McMahon is such a creep and a degenerate, which makes this whole

[00:49:06] the gay leather daddy is the real problem angle that much more incredible. So look, Vince McMahon did just settle out of court for raping a female referee in 1986, but he's also accused of spending around $15 million in company money hushing up several

[00:49:24] other instances of sexual misconduct with staffers across two decades. Some of that money may have included covering up wrestling bigwigs Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin doing a literal casting couch kind of thing with male wrestlers and underage

[00:49:40] ring boys, which was a cute term for unpaid child laborers back in the 90s. Also, McMahon actively participated in helping wrestler Jimmy Snuka get off on murder charges when he beat up his girlfriend so badly she died in 1992.

[00:49:56] But the weirdest detail went down in 2001 when McMahon gave this wild interview to Playboy Magazine where he detailed undressing his cousin in the woods and being consumed by the desire to stick dead leaves in her vagina. I'm not making this up.

[00:50:16] He literally said, quote, we would go into the woods and get naked together. It felt good. And for some reason, I wanted to put crushed up leaves into her. Don't know why, but I remember that. Don't kink shame.

[00:50:31] Then his stepdad married that cousin as soon as she came of age, which is just like, oh, anyway, finish your story. It just felt like these details matter when we're learning about the utter hypocrisy of people who claim to be upholding morality and justice. Wow.

[00:50:51] Thanks for that potent visual. I will never unsee. Jesus Christ. Dead leaves, huh? Just crackling and just OK. My God. All right. Now, McMahon, the the actual pervert, made sure the Goldust character was eventually relegated

[00:51:13] to comedic skits and buffoonery only, neutering his sexuality to make him more safe and at worst just goofy. Dustin saw the writing on the wall and clung desperately to everything he'd worked for. Unwilling to give up the act, he famously offered to undergo televised breast augmentation

[00:51:33] to keep Goldust alive. A proposal quickly shot down by WWE brass. Kind of surprising after that retrospective on Vince, but whatever. Right now, Dustin had played the part of their pariah to perfection, absorbing years of hatred, death threats and ostracization from other wrestlers.

[00:51:52] Now he was quietly shuttled to the side, stranded in creative and social purgatory. During the scenes, injuries forced Dustin to turn even further to prescription painkillers. With the athlete taking over 20 opioids a day and a handful of Xanax at night, the death

[00:52:09] of a dear friend and a spiraling marriage to Terry compounded these issues. Dustin slipped into darkness. He was even forced to declare on television that Goldust was actually a heterosexual. I know, basically just killing the character, but it didn't work. Still, they didn't accept him.

[00:52:30] The character was, for a short time after that, just abandoned altogether. On May 11th, 1998, in plain clothes, Dustin Runnels would stand before a capacity crowd and burn the Goldust costume, blaming Vince McMahon for turning him into a freak and vowing revenge.

[00:52:51] But his declarations were yet still muffled by shouts of faggot from the crowd. Adding insult to injury, Dustin, the scripted character, was now a born-again Christian and in my opinion far more insufferable and dangerous than gay Goldust ever was.

[00:53:08] That said, Dustin flamed out of the company by June 1999, losing his contract altogether. Over the next few years, Dustin bounced from one small promotion to another, sometimes illegally appearing as Goldust as the WWE owned the character's copyright.

[00:53:26] He could fetch a higher fee behind the gold paint, but the money was never the same. For a time, he even tried to sell little pictures of himself for extra cash. He was hurtling towards rock bottom.

[00:53:39] His addiction persisted, eventually ending his marriage with Terry taking their child Dakota and leaving for good. Dustin's resources dwindled to nothing. Just a few years prior, he was one of the most famous wrestlers on the planet.

[00:53:54] And now, in what seemed like a flash, he was living alone in a stranger's garage, borrowing money for bills and using it to buy drugs instead. He reunited with his father Dusty during this time, but we're already clear Dusty wasn't

[00:54:10] much of a communicator and then one morning, Dustin called the WWE on a prayer and begged for help. Surprisingly, they paid to put him through rehab, likely saving his life. It was there that Dustin began the slow and arduous journey of self-examination.

[00:54:29] He finally confronted the pain that drove him to such unmanageable heights of success and dragged him to rock bottom. And once released from rehab, countless AA meetings and therapy appointments followed. As he excavated, true healing began.

[00:54:45] He learned to stand in his own light, not as a manipulated outcast like Goldust, but as the real Dustin Runnels, divorced entirely from a pair of tights. And though the fallout from these years might have been a perfect excuse for Dusty to walk

[00:55:02] away one last time, Father Rhodes got a chance at redemption too, standing by his boy. He was an awesome father to me throughout all of this. The result is that we have developed the kind of father-son relationship that I craved when I was a little kid.

[00:55:18] We do just about everything together. After all these years and all the shared experiences, good and bad, there is only love between us now. I can't say enough about my dad. He's exactly the father I always wanted him to be, and our relationship is truly wonderful.

[00:55:37] Though Dustin had finally put wrestling fully behind him, the universe has an odd mechanism which rewards people for getting their shit together. And so, in 2008, the triumphant return of Goldust hit the WWE.

[00:55:55] The fans chose this, voting the one-time most hated wrestler on the planet as one of three wrestlers they'd like to see return to battle for the Intercontinental Championship. Though this newly PG iteration of Goldust was an extreme departure from the original

[00:56:12] Prince of Perversion, it marked a notable shift in the public's perception of the character and the beginning of Ronald's being fully embraced as a legend of the sport. I'm Dusty's son, but I learned the hard way I was never going to be the American Dream, said Rhodes.

[00:56:30] And though Dusty initially rebuked Goldust, in his final years he would share with Dustin how much he admired him, discussed what the character grew into, and made abundantly clear how proud he was of his work. On June 10th, 2015, paramedics responded to Rhodes' home in Orlando, Florida.

[00:56:51] After getting a call reporting that Dusty had fallen, they drove him to a nearby hospital where he died the next day from the effects of kidney failure. He was 69 years old. Rhodes was cremated, and his ashes were spread in November of 2015 by Dustin on a ranch they

[00:57:08] both loved to visit. At the next WWE pay-per-view event, a 10-bell salute was given in honor of Rhodes. With the entire WWE roster and the McMahon family on the entrance ramp, Dustin was like

[00:57:23] that little boy again, watching the world celebrate his mountain of a father for the last time. A decade later, Dustin remains heavily involved with professional wrestling, primarily as a mentor for the next generation of wrestlers, including his brother Cody.

[00:57:40] In 2020, Dustin officially opened the Rhodes Wrestling Academy in Leander, Texas, passing the torch to others. In wrapping this up, it's impossible not to consider the lasting impact of Dustin's story. Though now beloved by the wrestling community, the legacy of Goldust remains a painfully complicated one.

[00:58:03] While some members of the queer community felt demeaned by Dustin's cartoonish representation, others saw themselves on TV for the very first time. Most notably and recently, RuPaul's Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen remarked on how

[00:58:18] Goldust served as a tremendous inspiration in his young life, stating that he was one of the first gay characters that spoke to him. Bob has even suggested Goldust compete on the popular reality competition show, Dragula, which I am totally here for.

[00:58:35] Whether or not that ever comes to fruition, Dustin is now an outspoken advocate for gay and trans rights, as well as a loving father to a transgender stepchild. He is the rare outsized heterosexual man who has experienced violent homophobia and the

[00:58:52] death threats which come with it, first hand, something which fuels his passionate allyship. He sees the work he did as Goldust as ultimately having been important to the community, even if it was flawed and hamstrung by the limitations of pro wrestling at large.

[00:59:08] I can only speak for myself, as someone familiar with wearing wigs and high heels for money, and also as a guy who once ricocheted through many years craving the love of his father.

[00:59:20] The story of Goldust taught me more about being a man than any wrestler I once worshipped as a kid. Of course, I can see just how problematic the character was and how it likely led to queer lives being further misunderstood today.

[00:59:34] I love the queer people in my life enough to hate the way professional wrestling taught generations of so-called adults and children that it's normal or funny or necessary to hate anyone who doesn't fit into a nice, neat binary box.

[00:59:51] But I would be lying if I said I didn't take deep pleasure in watching Goldust dismantle the fragile masculinity of his opponents and the crowd for all those years, exposing their fears and showing the world by their own heterocentric logic, mind you, just how quote

[01:00:13] feminine they all actually were. Their rage was a knee-jerk admission that indeed, the cisgender masculine emperor has no clothes, especially if all it takes is one lipstick-wearing guy in a gimp suit to prove it.

[01:00:30] And there's no denying that takes some big ol' balls to be a killer queen in any decade in this world. So rock on, Goldust woman. You wonderfully fucked up queerdo. I hope you do sign up for the next cycle of Dragula.

[01:00:45] And also a hearty eat shit to Vince McMahon and every other rage capitalist everywhere who makes their money teaching confused, anxious, and insecure people that hate is the right way to respond to the things that make us uncomfortable.

[01:01:00] I can't help but wonder how many of the proud boys covering their little cowardly faces while throwing up Nazi salutes at pride events were once little kids watching their favorite muscled heroes drag Goldust.

[01:01:14] Or whether the men melting down over the existence of tucking bathing suits think Rowdy Roddy Piper was a hero instead of a heel. One of the worst things we can do as people is believe that the world is divided into

[01:01:28] good and evil, left and right, or male and female alone. No one is just one thing. No matter how much we like to pretend, we are.