Abstract
Are men’s sexualities just as fluid as women’s? Does white privilege protect and obscure the homosexual behaviors of straight identified white men? And are homophobic straight men who have sex with men part of queer subcultures? These questions and concerns animate Jane Ward’s provocative new book, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men.
Written with verve and a queer imagination attuned to the sexually explicit, from cuckold pornography and fraternity sexual hazing rituals to the internet personal ads placed by straight white men who seek ‘dude sex’, Ward argues that one of the overlooked patterns of straight masculinity is how ‘homosexuality is an often invisible, but nonetheless vital ingredient—a constitutive element—of heterosexual masculinity’ (p. 5). Her analysis shows how circumstances, institutional settings, and a rhetoric of exceptionalism frame some straight white men’s homosexual activity as inauthentic or a joke, ‘not gay’ but an exercise in brotherhood or manhood, or as an initiation ritual into the male group.
One of the ways homosexual behavior by straight men is dismissed as ‘not gay’ or a joke is through the rise of the ‘fuck or die’ trope in 1970s popular culture, ‘in which two heterosexual male characters are forced by some unusual circumstance to have sex with each other in order to save their own lives’, (p. 103) to the more recent rise of bromance films such as Dude, Where’s My Car (2000) and Blades of Glory (2007), where the two straight male co-stars engage in same-sex kissing or touching for comedic effect.
If the fluff entertainment of pop culture seems trivial, how about the ‘situational homosexuality’ of ‘gay for pay’ male porn stars (pp. 98–107) or the fraternity hazing ritual known as the ‘elephant walk,’ where fraternity brothers stick their thumbs in each other’s anuses while walking in a circle (pp. 1–4)? Ward’s point is to show us that whether it is bromance movies, pornographic productions with straight actors engaging in homosexual acts, or hazing practices that coerce same-sex sexual behaviors, these examples are part of scripts and performances of necessary, accidental, and often homosocial homosexuality by straight-identified men. These situations of straight men having same-sex sex, moreover, are often construed as exceptional—a rhetorical logic that ends up protecting and justifying the homosexual behavior of straight men as ‘not meaningful’, even paradoxically bolstering their straight masculinities as opposed to stigmatizing them.
Some of the strongest evidence to support her argument comes from her inventive use of 243 personal ads from the internet website Craigslist in Los Angeles, California. Ward analyzes the ads of men who identified themselves as straight (or in the language of the ads, ‘str8’) and sought to have sex with other men. The descriptions in the ads circumvent their desire for homosexual sex by couching their identities as straight men who want to get off with a ‘bud.’ Many ads invoke archetypes of white masculinity such as surfers, jocks, and frat boys, adding the ingredient of a racialized whiteness to these solicitations for ‘dude sex.’ These straight identified white men want to have sex with other straight white men like themselves. The ads are also filled with misogynistic language (‘talkin’ bout pussy and bangin’ the bitch’) and a general disidentification with gay men (‘not usually into gay dudes’).
One of the questions that emerge is: Are straight-identified white men who engage in homosexual sex part of a queer subculture? For Ward, the answer is a clear no: the homosexual sex that these white straight men have is attached to heteronormative discourses of straight masculinity and so she conceptualizes ‘heterosexual subjectivity as constituted not by a lack of homosexual sex or desire, but by an enduring investment in … heterosexuality as natural, normal, and right’ (p. 35). Queer culture, in contrast, is defined against heteronormativity and as an identification with queer subcultures, practices, and discourses.
Are ‘dude sex’ encounters, ‘fuck or die’ scenarios, or the ‘elephant walks’ of straight fraternity brothers indicative of a society where male sexualities are actually just as fluid as female sexualities? This contention presents itself as a thornier problem to solve.
For example, in a recent survey of sexual behaviors among American men and women, 12.5% of women ages 15 to 44 admitted to engaging in sexual acts with other women while only 5.2% of men did (National Health Statistics Reports, 2011). This difference of more than twice as many women reporting same-sex activity as men leads many scholars to argue that sexual fluidity is more common among women than men. Survey findings like this, then, contradict Ward’s contention that male sexualities are as fluid as female ones.
However, another possible interpretation is that the kinds of homosexual sex some straight-identified men have is probably viewed as ‘not sex’ by them but rather as a fraternity prank or game, a messed up way of becoming part of the group, or just ‘boys being boys.’ One thus wonders whether surveys like the National Health Statistics Reports are able to capture the homosexual activities that straight identified men engage in.
Not Gay is a daring, edgy, and imaginative book for scholars and students in gender, sexualities, and LGBTQ studies. Its insights into an array of cultural texts and challenging thinking make it an important book for understanding the nexus of straightness, whiteness, and masculinity in the 21st century.