Spinning upside down around a tall silver rod here last weekend, an Australian fellow named Matty Shields stared down a panel of women judges, a mainlyfemale crowd and decades of stereotypes. He hoped to become a gender pioneer: the world's first official king of pole dancing.

Mr. Shields, 26 years old, was one of seven men who were the first male competitors in the annual World Pole Dance finals. In a white vest festooned with feathers, ripped open to expose his chest, Mr. Shields wooed a skeptical crowd with moves like 'the body flag,' in which he gripped the pole with his hands and stretched his body out horizontally.

With its roots in strip clubs and bedrooms, pole dancing has been dismissed as a misogynistic playground in which women contort themselves for the viewing pleasure of men. But lately some women have fought to transcend titillation by rebranding it as fitness. Some have even petitioned the International Olympic Committee to make it an Olympic sport.

But a lingering taboo surfaces when men seek to slide onto the pole, too.

'When I tell people what I do, there is shock, 'No! pole dancing is for women,' said the 'poler' Mr. Shields, who is also a student nurse. 'Pole dancing, he says, 'can be masculine, too.'

For men like Mr. Shields, wresting the pole from feminine hands has become a mission with resistance. At the suburban sports arena that hosted last weekend's world championships, 39 women competed for singles and doubles titles, compared with the seven men who dared slide onto the pole.

'People say it's hard for women in a man's world,' said Keem Martinez, a Frenchman who represented Britain in Budapest. 'Well, it's hard to be a man in this woman's world.'

Pole dancing involves moving around a steel or brass pole that is held by the legs or arms, with serious polers training as any gymnast would with push ups, weights and other means of increasing strength. A few years ago, published reports that British actor Jude Law had taken it up to get fit for a movie triggered a raft of media predictions that men would hit the poles. Men should have some advantages, instructors say: their greater upper body strength is ideal for moves like 'twisted grip handspring' and 'pencil pose.' For years, Western male polers have looked with envy to their Chinese brethren performing Chinese pole, a similar acrobatic act whose long history has kept it free of any association with eroticism.

Classes across the United Kingdom began advertising for men, and competitions opened up for male groups. But men never quite climbed to the top. Pole Twisters Dance Studios in Cardiff, Wales, advertised introductory classes that were dropped when just three men showed up after two months of promotions.

Late last month pole instructor Kay Penney led a fitnessweekend at a holiday camp in southern England, bringing along 13 portable poles and a desire to break down boundaries. At her first class: 52 women and one man. 'Men are worried about what their mates are going to say,' she said.

Some male pole dancers are also worried about what women will say. In mixed classes, women are concerned that men are there just to ogle them. Thus, at his first class in Manchester, England, David Charlton talked loudly about his relationships