Pointer 3: Sex between straight white men
May. 11th, 2015 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livVia marina on Twitter, rivkat's absolutely fascinating summary of a book titled Not gay: sex between straight white men. Really amazing stuff about
It's also making me revisit the concept that at least some of homophobia isn't really about who one is attracted to or about what sex acts one enjoys; it's primarily about gender policing. This sense that men may want to take part in sexual acts with other men, but as long as they don't form loving relationships or have mutually consensual, respectful sex, then they're not gay. Which has the terrifying corollary that this construction of straight masculinity implies that men who behave lovingly and respectfully towards female partners are also targets for gay-bashing. Example: the Sad Puppies accusing Scalzi, who is well known to be a man married to a woman, of being gay, because he's also well known to care about not being a sexist jerk. Example: pre-adolescent and young teen boys somewhat illogically calling it "gay" when a boy expresses romantic interest a girl instead of talking trash about her.
rivkat's piece almost flips the common wisdom about orientation. It almost seems like straightness is an identity, nearly independent of attraction and sexual behaviour, whereas gayness / queerness is mostly something that emerges from choices about sex and gender expression or performance, or even a political stance. Anyway, read rivkat's post, she's saying all this stuff much more articulately than I can.
marina on Twitter, rivkat's absolutely fascinating summary of a book titled Not gay: sex between straight white men. Really amazing stuff about the amount of homosexual contact involved in heterosexuality! It relates to some ideas I've come across before, heterosexuality as a constructed identity; contexts in which straight masculinity may include seeking sexual contact with other men; challenging the idea of sexual orientation.
It's also making me revisit the concept that at least some of homophobia isn't really about who one is attracted to or about what sex acts one enjoys; it's primarily about gender policing. This sense that men may want to take part in sexual acts with other men, but as long as they don't form loving relationships or have mutually consensual, respectful sex, then they're not gay. Which has the terrifying corollary that this construction of straight masculinity implies that men who behave lovingly and respectfully towards female partners are also targets for gay-bashing. Example: the Sad Puppies accusing Scalzi, who is well known to be a man married to a woman, of being gay, because he's also well known to care about not being a sexist jerk. Example: pre-adolescent and young teen boys somewhat illogically calling it "gay" when a boy expresses romantic interest a girl instead of talking trash about her.
rivkat's piece almost flips the common wisdom about orientation. It almost seems like straightness is an identity, nearly independent of attraction and sexual behaviour, whereas gayness / queerness is mostly something that emerges from choices about sex and gender expression or performance, or even a political stance. Anyway, read rivkat's post, she's saying all this stuff much more articulately than I can.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-11 11:07 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2015-05-12 08:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 08:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 01:07 pm (UTC)After gay male activists used the bisexual threat - the idea that bisexual men would be a bridge for Aids to cross from gay men to the nice straight population - to get government action in the 1980s, much of that work was aimed at 'men who have sex with men' rather than gay men.
Because much of it was done by gay men expecting to work with gay men, it wasn't done particularly well. That, plus a reaction against some incredibly bad work aimed at gay men, led to a highly influential move to 're-gay' Aids. So particularly in London, you got the critical posts with job descriptions written and interview panels staffed by gay men who saw prioritising work with gay men as essential.
In practice, that translated as doing fuck all for anyone who wasn't gay, and attempting to justify that by saying that anyone else would end up being reached via having sex with gay men.
The biggest body of work, the biggest block of funding and of jobs, set out as a core principle that it was only concerned with sex between men rather than, oh, all the sex that men who have sex with men have. The result is seen via material - nominally aimed at 'gay and bisexual men' - saying things like "sex is when you put a man's cock up your arse or put your cock up his" or telling young gay and bisexual men "If you find that you can't say the words ('I'm gay') out loud then maybe you should take a bit more time to think about how comfortable you are with your sexuality."
Of course non-gay identified men don't respond to this sort of crap!
Connecting with non-gay identified men who are sexual with other men isn't hard in itself, but it is much more expensive than just targeting a gay scene. It also involves some people changing their minds about some things... and the ones in charge were determined not to.
Oh, another quick example of the mindset: when the organisation I worked with was taken over by THT, we all went on the induction day which involves various executives talking to you. As well as seeing us as a cheap way to get a building, we'd been snatched up because they were seeking to move to become a wider sexual health charity rather than just an HIV one. None of them, from the Chief Exec downwards, had any clue that 'sexual health' involved things like pregnancy rather than just being about STIs.
Even there, the fail was endless. Of the six people shortlisted for a job in their health promotion department and set the task of doing a leaflet for men on vaccination for HPV, I was the only one to even mention that HPV affects women too... Cervical cancer? What's that then?
In my experience, the further you get from London and places with other major gay scenes, the more sensible the health projects are.
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Date: 2015-05-12 01:11 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2015-05-12 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 08:32 pm (UTC)Oh there was that too. One of the bits of work that led to re-gaying was someone doing a survey of local HIV commissioners to see how many were paying for work with gay (oh, and bisexual) men. It was hardly any.
But there are loads and loads of examples of the biphobia. Not least because you didn't get punished for it, you got promoted.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 07:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 09:10 am (UTC)And it sounds like I should read Houlbrook and Waters, I keep getting frustrated by feeling disconnected from gay (and other LGBTQ) history. I worry that we're just repeating patterns with the pro-marriage, assimilationist respectability politics leaving out the visibly queer, so I want to learn more about older variants of those patterns.
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Date: 2015-05-12 11:30 am (UTC)I'd thought about the way people call things "gay", but I hadn't really realised it might map to s specific concept even though a different one to what I'd usually mean.
It reminded me just how MANY things, that when someone disagrees significantly with me, they're very often usually significantly different words and concepts, not just agreeing with the conclusion.
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Date: 2015-05-12 06:07 pm (UTC)But I think I still hugely disagree with the people who use gay as an insult, I obviously don't think there's anything wrong with being caring, emotionally open, gentle etc, for any gender presentation.
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Date: 2015-05-12 12:39 pm (UTC)Attraction, identity, and behaviour ('thought and word and deed') are often not congruous.
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Date: 2015-05-12 06:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 11:46 pm (UTC)I was very struck in reading the review how these straight men who have sex with men (MSM is the term we use on this side of the pond) are using the languages of identity and behavior to express a desire for a certain kind of relationship. Except I mean almost the opposite of what "relationship" usually means.
The review describes men wanting to have casual sex with buddies and strangers, with no romance, no domesticity, no emotional commitments, no entanglements. They are using this "I am not gay, I just want to boff men" language to pursue that.
In a way, I see the problem (ok, a problem) being the lack of any more direct language to ask for what they want.
We've done such a great job at nailing down the idea that – and I totally appreciate the irony of saying this to someone with the username "lovingboth" :) – sexual orientation isn't whom you fuck, it's whom you love, that it leaves people who are yes-I'd-tap-that-gender-expression, but no-I-don't-want-romance-with-them with no label for their experience, making due as best they can with the language left them.
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Date: 2015-05-14 09:22 am (UTC)There's also the homophobic stereotype that gay men pursue sex with pretty much anyone that has a penis, and don't form normal stable dyadic relationships, like that politician recently claiming that the "average" gay man has over 20000 partners or something ridiculous. That's starting to look like projection, isn't it? Wanting to have sex with absolutely no relationship, not even the very minimal relationship of offering and accepting whatever activity you want to do... maybe we do need a word for that.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-14 02:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 07:41 pm (UTC)Yes - and I think this is why trans can fit well in lots of LGBT work. The axis of identity is different but a lot of homophobia seems to come from something that actually looks rather more like transphobia.
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Date: 2015-05-13 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-13 10:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-12 11:32 pm (UTC)I have many thoughts, but few words. Patreon post may result. :)
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Date: 2015-05-13 09:52 am (UTC)ETA: Also, thank you for pointing out to me that lots of posts directing people to other content are a good way to build community and generate discussion. If it weren't for your thoughts about the balance of posts for community building, I would have just read
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Date: 2015-05-13 02:53 am (UTC)I was curious to read the other posts you linked to and was delighted to find that one of them was a review of my friend Sarah's book "Indecent." You're quite right about what she was trying to do with the book -- I had the odd experience of hearing about most of the things in the book 3 times: once when they actually happened (we've been friends since we were 5), again when reading early drafts of the book, and then finally in the version that they appeared in the book.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-13 09:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-13 12:16 pm (UTC)Sarah's in a fairly good place at the moment, though it's always relative. But we had brunch and took the dog for a walk last week, so basically, yes. :)
If you liked "Indecent," she wrote a similarly blunt (but often funny) account of her stint in rehab a few years ago, that you can get here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/241370107/Rehab-A-G0-G0
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-13 07:06 pm (UTC)That accusation, even if intended as a joke, really puzzled me, because it didn't seem to parse for a man who's not only married to a woman but who frequently posts about his devotion to her. Maybe, I thought, the Puppy response was a case of "the gentleman doth protest too much," but that didn't seem quite to make sense. The explanation you give fits better: the Puppies think a man who respects women is somehow unmanly, thus = gay. That's a really sick equation, but it's one that's been seen before.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-05-14 09:05 am (UTC)If the Ward book is right, probably some of the Sad Puppies crowd who are such ridiculous military fetishists and obsessed with how they're "real" men do in fact pursue sexual contact with other men, but don't identify as "gay" because they use the language of violence at every possible opportunity. That feels like a more nuanced analysis than the trope of, homophobes are all closet cases.