Ring The Belle

The world of professional wrestling has long enjoyed its place in masculine culture, but as our understanding of gender roles have evolved, so has the audience for wrestling.

DS Shin is a Chicago-based journalist who has loved women’s wrestling since he was a kid, which set him apart from most WWE fans. Leveraging his professional experience, Shin created “Ring The Belle”, the first, and largest, YouTube channel dedicated to covering women’s wrestling.

The channel has been an unmitigated success. As it turns out, the LGBTQ+ WWE fandom was just waiting for its lightning rod. Through his channel, Shin has had the opportunity to meet his heroes and give a voice to a massive community, while bearing the weight of that responsibility with a smile.

Looking at his story is looking at the interrogation and re-discovery of masculinity that’s going on globally; how spaces that used to be comically binary are splintering into new fractals of sub-culture and how this new division of traditionally masculine spaces is leading men to more deeply consider why they love what they love.

-Branden Mayer