GAY MASCULINITIES RESEARCH ON MEN AND MASCULINITIES
Peter M. Nardi
GAY MASCULINITIES
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GAY MASCULINITIES
PETER M. NARDI
RESEARCH ON MEN AND MASCULINITIES SERIES Published in cooperation with the Men's Studies Association, A Task Group of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism
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Copyright Š 2000 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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To all the men who were told they "weren't gay enough", and those who were considered "too gay".
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CONTENTS Acknowledgements 1. Anything for a Sis, Mary
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Part One: Masculinities in Gay Relationships 2. Seeking Sexual Lives
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Gay Youth and Masculinity Tensions
3. One of the Guys
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Instrumentality and Intimacy in Gay Men's Frienship With Straight Men
4. Gay Male Domestic Violence and
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the Pursuit of Masculinity 66 Part Two: Masculinities in Everyday Gay Life 5. Risk and Masculinity in the Everyday Lives of Gay Men 6. Religion and Masculinity in Latino Gay Lives 7. Masculinity in the Age of AIDS:
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HIV-Seropositive Gay Men and the "Buff Agenda" 130
8. Queer Sexism 152 Rethinking Gay Men and Masculinity
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ANYTHING FOR A SIS, MARY
An Introduction to Gay Masculinities
For some time, the media images of gay men as effeminate and lesbians as masculine have persisted. They illustrate the conflation of gender and sexual orientation and raise salient questions about the social construction and relational nature of femininity and masculinity. Even though the blending of gender and sexuality can be traced to the mid19th century, it persists to this day in a variety of ways. The chapters collected in this volume represent one attempt to understand, in paticular, how contemporary gay men in the United States engage in, contest, reproduce, and modify hegemonic masculinity.
Gay men exhibit a multiplicity of ways of “doing” masculinity that can best be described by the plural form “masculinities.” Some enact the strongest of masculine stereotypes through body building and sexual prowess, whereas others express a less dominant form through spirituality or female impersonation. Many simply blend the “traditional” instrumental masculinity with the more “emotional” masculinity that comes merely by living their everyday lives when they are hanging out with their friends and lovers, working out at the gym, or dealing with the oppressions related to their class and ethnic identities. The chapters in this book vividly capture these variations in masculinities among gay men.
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Some Historical Masculinities The conflation of gender and sexual orientation that exists in conteporary popular culture and many scientific studies reinforces the sexual inversion theories of homosexuality that emerged in late 19th-century medical discourse. In Victorian times, little distinction was made between biological sex and culturally constructed gender concepts of womanhood
Anything for a Sis, Mary
and manhood (Katz, 1983). At a time when the activities of men and women were strictly separated and an association began to develop of
For the longest time, the term "masculinity" holds a very narrow definition. However, this is slowly changing and becoming more fluid.
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Throughout the course of history, sailors have always been a strong icon for the gay community as it represents a men of great strength and physique.
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male = active and female = passive, late-19th-century medical literature invoked "sexual perversion" as a way to describe those who desired to be of the opposite sex and "who were said to have done one or more of the following: wore the clothes and hairstyle, undertook the work, played the games, gestured, walked, talked, drank the drinks, acted the political role, performed the sexual acts, and felt the emotions of the 'other' sex" (Katz, 1983, pp. 145-146). It was a time when, as Kimmel (1996) argues, masculinity increasingly became an act and the need to publicly display it became more intense: "To be considered a real man, one had better make sure to always be walking around and acting 'real masculine'" (p. 100).
As emerging concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality became linked to notions of, respectively, the normal and the abnormal, the medicalization of people known as "congenital inverts" developed. Perhaps, as Katz (1983) hypothesizes, this demonstrates one of the earliest examples of the creation of a self-identity and category connected to sexual practice. But the outward manifestation of this inverted identity was assumed to be effeminate behavior in men and mannish styles in women, both of which were viewed as threatening to "traditional" masculinity and femininity. As Katz (1983) shows, American postcards and cartoons in the first decades of the 20th century depicted negative images of manly women wearing collars, ties, and coats and negative drawings of "fairies," effeminate men with limp wrists, concerned about their appearance and doing women's work as store clerks.
Yet, these effeminate men were often interested in masculine men who were depicted in paintings, cartoons, jokes, and erotic stories as sailors or blue-collar manual labor workers on construction sites or at the docks (Chauncey, 1994). That these more manly men also engaged in sex with men showed that it was not only the effeminate men who might be the inverts. The categorizations used in the 1920s and 1930s to describe men who have sex with men were not, however, so easily collated into a single label such as we typically use today, in which "gay" can cover both effeminate and masculine men who share a choice of male partners.
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Prior to World War II, gender status contributed to the terms used to distinguish various types of homosexual men: "fairies" (or "queen," "faggot," "nance," "pansy") were effeminate men, "queers" were those interested in same-sex sex but not because of their similarity to women(in fact, many rejected effeminate men), and "trade" were heterosexual men who accepted sexual relationships with the fairies or queers (Chauncey, 1994). For many fairies and queers, a masculine man was the ideal type, the "normal" man embodied in the soldier, WW, or construction worker. Chauncey (1994) makes it clear that gender status was a key organizing concept of homosexual sexuality:
The centrality of effeminacy to the definition of the fairy in the dominant culture enabled trade to have sex with both the queers and fairies without risking being labeled queer themselves, so long as they maintained a masculine demeanor and sexual role. (p. 16)
The categorization of the subcultures in the gay community has made many gay men feel disbelonging to his own community.
For many men who identified themselves based on their interest in other men, rather than on their effeminacy, "gay" emerged in the 1930s and 1940s as the dominant label. But it was applied to any man who had sexual experiences with other men, resulting in the gradual elimination of the category "trade" by the 1960s and the creation of a strict definition of "straight" as someone without same-sex sexual contacts in any form: It had become more difficult for men to consider themselves "straight" if they had any sexual contact with other men, no matter how carefully they restricted their behavior to the "masculine" role, or sought to configure that contact as a relationship between cultural opposites, between masculine
It had become more difficult for men to consider themselves "straight" if they had any sexual contact with other men, no matter how carefully they restricted their behavior to the "masculine" role, or sought to configure that contact as a relationship between cultural opposites, between masculine men and effeminate fairies. (Chauncey, 1994, p. 22)
Although these shifts in sexual categorization can be used to illustrate a change from a more gender-based culture (where "queers," "fairies," and "real" men are distinguished) to one based on sexual orientation and object choice (heterosexual and homosexual), the conflation of gender with sexual orientation by the dominant culture continues. Indeed, it is often evident in the research assumptions of biologists looking for similarities between gay men's and women's brains (see Murphy, 1997), in the gender-nonconforming psychological studies of "sissy boys" growing up (see Green, 1987), and within gay communities where the "newly hegemonic hard and tough gay masculinity was serving to marginalize and subordinate effeminate gay men" (Messner, 1997, p. 83).
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Consider these examples from the early 1960s. John Rechy (1963), in his classic novel of pre-Stonewall gay life, City of Night, describes a bar off Hollywood Boulevard:
Among its patrons are the Young, the good-looking, the masculine—the sought after—and, too, the effeminate flutterers posing like languid young ladies, usually imitating the current flatchested heroines of the Screen but not resorting to the hints of drag employed by the much more courageous downtown Los Angeles queens, (p. 186)
And in the June 26,1964, issue of Life magazine, one of the first major articles on "homosexuality in America" depicted a San Francisco bar where men "wear leather jackets, make a show of masculinity and scorn effeminate members of their worlds," in contrast with the "bottom-ofthe-barrel bars" where one finds "the stereotypes of effeminate males— the 'queens,' with orange coiffures, plucked eyebrows, silver nail polish and lipstick" (Welch, 1964, pp. 66, 68). The "fluffy-sweatered" young men who "burst into tears" when arrested are contrasted throughout the article to the hostile patrons in the "far out fringe" S&M bars, whose attempts to appear manly are described as "obsessive" (Welch, 1964, p. 70). A part owner of one leather bar hangs a sign that says, "Down with sneakers!"—described as the "favorite footwear of many homosexuals
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with feminine traits"— and is quoted proudly as saying, "This is the antifeminine side of homosexuality. ... We throw out anybody who is too swishy. If one is going to be homosexual, why have anything to do with women of either sex?" (Welch, 1964, p. 68).
Stereotypes of gay men as feminine were pervasive enough that even a Los Angeles Police Department training manual from 1965 had to remind the vice squad—in an ironically more progressive way—that among homosexual "physical characteristics of the opposite sex [are]
Anything for a Sis, Mary
rare. . . . Homosexuals are generally indistinguishable from the general population. Extreme types, however, can look like Charles Atlas or Marilyn Monroe" (p. 2). Almost 100 years after the invention of sexual inversion and the effeminate homosexual male, the perpetuation of a gender-based system of categorization for same-sex sexuality is displayed both inside and outside the gay subculture.
Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco is the world's biggest leather event. Located on the historic Folsom Street, leather and fetish players from all over the world converge with over 200 exhibitor boothsshowcasing fetish gear and toys.
Some Contemporary Masculinitiest Even in the years after the rise of the modern gay movement, the rhetoric about gender in many gay organizations and communities has often been oppositional in its tone and it questions the role of effeminate men, drag queens, and "fairies" in the political strategies and media images. Complaints about gay men acting like women ruining the struggle for equal rights for gays are heard among many conservative gay leaders. Along with the transformation in gay masculinity from the "failed male," or sissy, into the hypermasculine clone came a strong division between the feminized and masculinized. Harris (1997) argues that gay liberation created a whole new set of problems in gay men's self-images, resulting in a divide between the effeminate and the masculine:
In the act of remaking themselves in the images of such mythical icons of American masculinity as gunslinging cowpokes and close-cropped leather-necks, homosexuals failed spectacularly to alleviate their nagging sense of inadequacy to straight men, whose unaffected sexual self-confidence continues to serve as the subcultural touchstone of manly authenticity. . . . When we attempted to heal the pathology of the gay body by embarking on the costume dramas of the new machismo, we did not succeed in freeing ourselves from our belief in the heterosexual male's evolutionary superiority.
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... In fact, we . . . became our own worst enemies, harsh, homophobic critics of the campy demeanor of the typical queen, (p. 99)
When did this transformation occur from the effeminate men and drag queens who often were at the forefront of resistance (see Duberman's, 1993, account of the drag queens at Stonewall) to the men whose hyper masculinity became the privileged image? Some of the visible shifts occurred during the 1970s. Of course, there were images before
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Stonewall of hypermasculinity in the gay bars, leather subcultures, and gay physique magazines. Indeed, some of these gay body-builder magazines can be traced back to the 1940s (Harris, 1997). But in 1971, the first discussions of shifting gender roles can be found. Laud Humphreys (1971) wrote about the "virilization" of the homosexual and the social movement away from the old Boys in the Band image of "limp wrists and falsetto voices." He reminds us, however, that the new styles in homosexual manliness are "not the hypermasculinity of Muscle Beach and the motorcycle set, for these are part of the old gay world's parody on heterosexuality, but the youthful masculinity of bare chests and beads, long hair, mustaches and hip-hugging pants" (p. 41). Humphreys's comments, though, may have been premature.
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Along with the transformation in gay masculinity from the “failed male,� or sissy, into the hypermasculine clone came a strong division between the feminized and masculinized.
The stereotype of gay men came from the existing gender order. This gives gay men who do not fit in to this expectaction a hard time to identify themselves.
Connell (1992) says that gay men often seek other men who embody
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masculinity: "Gay men are not free to invent new objects of desire any more than heterosexual men are—their choice of object is structured by the existing gender order" (p. 747). In fact, Connell interprets his gay subjects' eroticism of stereotypically masculine men, their masculine personal style, their emphasis on privatized couple relationships, and their lack of engagement with feminism as indicators of a perpetuation of the gender order. For him a "very straight gay" is a contradictory position in the gender order, but it is here that the complexities of masculinities can effect social change in that gendered social system.
Within a few years, the appearance of the quintessential masculine gay role image—the clone—demonstrated the emphasis on hypermasculinity among many urban gay men. Martin Levine's (1998) ethnography of the gay macho clones from the late-1970s Greenwich Village describes them as the "manliest of men" with gym-defined bodies, blue-collar clothing, short hair, mustaches, and sometimes close-cropped beards: "They butched it up and acted like macho men.... Much to the activists' chagrin, liberation turned the 'Boys in the Band' into doped-up, sexedout, Marlboro men" (p. 7). And with the appearance of the Village People disco group and their songs of macho men, gay masculine clone images became embedded in popular culture. Did Michael's plea to Emory to avoid camping finally come to fruition?
But rather than contrasting the masculine and feminine styles of gay men in some mutually exclusive fashion, some have attempted to reconcile the range of masculinities that exist in both individuals and collectivities. Although rejecting hypermasculinity and effeminacy, many gay men embrace a "very straight gay" style by enacting both hegemonic masculinity and gay masculinity in their daily lives, as R. W. Connell (1992) argues. In the very act of engaging in sex with other men, gay men challenge dominant definitions of patriarchal masculinity. The hegemony of heterosexual masculinity is subverted, yet at the same time, gay men enact other forms and styles of masculinity, ones that often involve reciprocity rather than hierarchy. How some gay men engage in the pursuit of sex while simultaneously exhibiting an emotional commitment to sharing feelings with their friends is one example of the complex ways hegemonic and gay masculinities intersect (Nardi, 1999).
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"Masculinity", in the gay community, is no longer a concrete term. Its defintion has widen, allowing more men to find their identity.
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Gay Masculinities In recent years, it has, thus, become theoretically important to speak in terms of "masculinities" rather than use the more limiting phrase of "masculinity." Thanks in part to postmodern ideas, diversity and difference are acknowledged and privileged over a unifying, shared, homogeneous concept. No longer can we justify describing gender in terms of "femininity" or "masculinity," as if there were only one set of feminine or masculine roles. What becomes relevant is understanding people in terms of the various ways they enact masculinity or femininity and the multiple forms these take.
It is in this context that a book focusing on how gay men "do" masculinity emerged. Working under the assumption that gay men display a type of masculinity different from heterosexual men already points to a plurality of masculinities. Yet, to automatically assume that all gay men contest, modify, or challenge heterosexual masculinity—or for that matter, that they all enact the same masculinity roles—does not take us beyond monolithic concepts of gender. It does not adequately reflect the reality that gay men are as diverse as all other groups of humans and do not act, think, believe, and feel alike. Class and racial differences alone challenge any possibility of a unifying masculinity among gay men.
Just as it is with anyone in our culture, gay men carry out gender in multiple ways depending on differences related to social and psychological characteristics, contexts, and eras, as the brief history above demonstrates. The chapters in this volume develop these ideas further, reflect this diversity, and raise salient questions about the way masculinities are enacted in various contexts. Part One focuses on masculinities in gay men's interpersonal relationships. Matt Mutchler, in "Seeking Sexual Lives: Gay Youth and Masculinity Tensions," discusses the sexual relationships of some white and Latino youth (18 to 24 years old) and how their erotic lives are shaped by gendered sexual scripts and by conflicts related to definitions of masculinity. Mutchler argues that many gay male youth experience conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities related to the breakdown of gender-based sexual scripts. While dealing with the cultural expectation of masculinity and spontaneous sex drives and adventures, gay men also must deal with homophobia about having sex with other men along with a desire for romantic love. Engaging in sex while confronting masculinity tensions has implications for how these young gay men deal with HIV and safer sex.
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Besides sexual relationships, gay men seek out friendships as central for maintaining and developing their identity in an otherwise heterosexual world. But how do gay men engage in friendship relationships with heterosexuals? Dwight Fee investigates friendship between straight men and gay men and the questions these relationships raise about masculinity. In " 'One of the Guys': Instrumentality and Intimacy in Gay Men's Friendships With Straight Men," Fee explores how sexual difference challenges the gendered constructs in our culture that have managed to keep gay and straight men in separate categories. The struggles between intimacy and instrumentality in friendships are a recurring theme in these relationships, given the emphasis in our society toward a more instrumental notion of masculinity. Gay-straight friendships show that gay men embody masculinity in a much more multifaceted way and suggest a need to get away from the essentialism researchers often use when talking about men's friendships.
Romantic relationships are another site in which gay men must deal with issues of masculinity. When two men become involved in a domestic situation, issues of power, dominance, and control become relevant. And when these issues take the form of domestic violence, social constructions of masculinity come to the forefront, as J. Michael Cruz
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argues in "Gay Male Domestic Violence and the Pursuit of Masculinity." Some gay men "do" gender just as many heterosexual men do, namely, by using force, by exhibiting the need for domination, and by the
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perpetuation of homophobic attitudes.
One's confusion on his masculinity when it's a narrow term can lead to trouble forming other relation ships.
Beyond interpersonal relationships of sex, friendship, and romance, gay men must manage issues of masculinity in a variety of other everyday situations. Part TwoT focuses on gay men's masculinities in the gym, at church, in the grocery store, at political rallies, and in attempting solidar ity with women's oppression. Thomas Linneman' s "Risk and Masculinity in the Everyday Lives of Gay Men" asks what role masculinity plays in the lives of gay men as they confront oppression in everyday situations. For many gay men, standing up for their rights is a form of risky behavior— not in the way we sometimes talk about unsafe sex, but rather in the way some gay men encounter the heterosexual world and risk being embarrassed, harassed, or beaten up. Sites of resistance occur regularly, and some gay men take the chance of engaging in behavior that may have consequences for their well-being. How this risk taking is related to culture definitions of masculinity is addressed in Linneman's chapter.
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For Eric Rodriguez and Suzanne Ouellette, issues of masculinity are highlighted through studying the often-discordant identities of being gay, male, Latino, and Christian. Their chapter, "Religion and Masculinity in Latino Gay Lives," presents in-depth case studies of four gay men who struggle with being gay and religious. In their Latino culture, religion is often viewed as a female experience, and certainly something that might raise questions about a man's machismo. When a gay sexual orientation is also present and threatens definitions of Latino masculinity, religious gay men must resolve a complex set of contradictions.
"Masculinity in the Age of AIDS: HIV-Seropositive Gay Men and the 'Buff Agenda'" by Perry Halkitis explores the emphasis on body building among some gay urban men who work out to counteract both the stereoype of the weak gay man and the image of thinness and wasting associated with having AIDS. Physicality, strength, virility, and sexual prowess become part of the identity of these men as they appropriate the images of heterosexual masculinity. How AIDS has played a role in accelerating a long-standing dimension of gay subculture is explored by Halkitis. Definitions of culturally approved masculinity are embodied through the process of becoming "buff" and resisting effeminate labels.
For some gay men, their everyday lives have become entwined with political activism. For others, being victims of oppression has provided them with insights into other people's marginalization. Or so the story goes, often without criticism, as Jane Ward argues in "Queer Sexism: Rethinking Gay Men and Masculinity." Ward challenges us to reconsider the assumption that just because gay men are marginalized in our society, they therefore have specialized knowledge about women's oppression and feminism. She assesses the masculinities discourse on gay men in the work of some scholars of masculinity and of popular gay writers. Ward exhorts us to go beyond the rhetoric and to explore the actual gendered relationships between gay men and women in everyday life, the perceptions of gay men toward feminist issues, and women's perceptions of gay men's supposed Wsolidarity with feminism.
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Part Three considers the multiple ways masculinities are carried out in diverse American subcultures. Donald Barrett, in "Masculinity Among Working-Class Gay Males," considers a group of gay men who often are overlooked in research. Most studies on gay men tend toward middle-class samples; here, Barrett discusses some of the stereotypes of working-class masculinity and the relationship to being gay. How do some gay men balance the class expectations of masculinity with the gender and sexual roles expected by the more visible gay subculture? Barrett describes several presentations of masculinity—assertive, easygoing, and withdrawn— expressed in interviews with workingclass men and uses these to understand their engagement with issues of homophobia, social relationships, sexual prowess, and emotional styles.
Issues of masculinity become quite complex when considering sexual orientation among some Asian American groups. In "Asian American Gay Men's (Dis)claim on Masculinity," Shinhee Han looks at the cultural constraints and conflicts of identity faced by some groups with East Asian heritage (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). For many Asian American gay men, questions are raised about the role of the close extended family; values related to the religious traditions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism; and cultural images of the Asian body and its relationship
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to masculinity. Han discusses the powerful mythical fantasies of white men's interests in Asians and how this is played out in same-sex sexuality. She concludes by providing a set of research questions about Asian American gay men that need to be explored in this little-studied area.
"Entre Hombres/Between Men: Latino Masculinities and Homosexualities," by Lionel Cantu, describes the impact that cultural
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conceptualizations of masculinity and sexuality have on Latino gay men and the implications for HIV prevention. Experiences of sexism, racism, and homophobia are understood in the context of Latino definitions of masculinity, migration patterns, and access to resources. Using standard notions of culture obscures a more complex intersection of the multiple sites of power in these gay Latino men's lives. Cantu provides reasons for going beyond cultural pathologizing and for emphasizing a more political economy framework when trying to understand the way some gay Latino men engage in same-sex sexuality and masculinity.
Finally, the book concludes with a chapter that raises many of the cultural questions about gender, not only about how it is constructed in our society, but how it is carried out by some gay men. Steven Schacht's "Gay Female Impersonators and the Masculine Construction of 'Other'" introduces us to the world of drag queens and drag kings in a particular gay subculture. Here, the masculine embodiment of the feminine reinforces in some ironic way the conventional notions of gender while simultaneously it argues for a situational understanding of power and gender. Drag queens are not subversive challenges to the masculine hierarchies of our culture, Schacht says, yet they deconstruct for us the strong social nature of gender.
It becomes evident throughout these various chapters that pinpointing a common masculinity is impossible. It is fairly clear that the only way to describe gay men in gender terms is to use the plural, masculinities. Various cultural forces, institutional constraints, ethnic and class dimensions, and generational differences impinge on the manner gay men enact their masculinity. Understanding gender requires us to look beyond the standard categories and to poke around in the divergent subcultures and diversities that characterize contemporary American society. By exploring the multiple forms gay men's masculinities take (and have taken historically), we come to a greater knowledge about all people's relationship with the complexities of sexuality, gender, identity, and social structure.
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ONE OF THE GUYS
Instrumentality and Intimacy in Gay Men's Frienship With Straight Men
1. I would like to acknowledge the help of Harvey
This chapter discusses men's problems of gender and sexual difference as
Molotch, Beth E. Schneider, and Avery Gordon on
found in friendships between straight and gay men.1 Although problems
the dissertation project from which this chapter
of straight men's relative homophobia and heterosexism are central
emerged.
in this intersection—to the extent that masculinity itself is most often defined in theterosexual terms and contexts—I would like to more address the often neglected area of gay men's stake in gender.
Surely, what it means to be "a man" is an equally if not more complicated issue for gay men than it is for straight men. Moreover, although the very notion of equating of "proper" masculinity with heterosexuality obviously sets up substantial dilemmas for gay men, the two groups may share more experiences than is commonly thought (Connell, 1995; Nardi, 1992a; also see Price, 1999). Focusing on crossover friendships between the two groups, furthermore, provides a way to assess and challenge the dominant ways we conceptualize, and possibly experience, the gendered dimensions of male friendship itself. I am interested in ways that sexual difference between men can, perhaps ironically, provide an opportunity to challenge the gendered constructs that have informed the separation between male "heterosexuality" and "homosexuality" ever since their invocation in the 19th century.
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My approach to this problem emerged somewhat by accident. My research has explored the relationship between straight and gay men in an effort to understand recent changes in the relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality. I interviewed both straight and gay men about their crossover friendships, specifically to make sense of straight men who are somewhat "gay identified"—that is, especially gay affirming in the Wsense of often preferring gay men's company to that of straights. During the initial interviews, I focused mostly on the straight men's experience: how gay friendship was important to them, how gay men came out to them, how gay culture had become a means through which to construct gender, and so on. The interviews with gay men were
One of the Guys
geared toward shedding light on the straight friends' experiences in gay worlds.
In searching for how gay men provided a way out of gendered dilemmas for straight men, I unexpectedly found a somewhat similar story on the other side of the relationship, namely, that gay men's concerns about gender often get addressed in being close friends with straight men. Apparently, not many men, straight or gay (or occasionally bisexual or "don't categorize me"), are completely happy with their situation. Some of this dissatisfaction, I believe, can be indirectly traced to another bifurcation— "instrumentality" versus "intimacy"—that implicitly "genders" and thus reproduces the dominant meanings of the sexual difference between straight and gay men.
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Despite the difference in sexual oritentation, gay men do take part in positive frienships with straight men.
Gay Men in Straight Worlds Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer-defined persons are obligated to live in straight worlds, whereas straights are obviously not forced into gay social realms, although gay life and culture are increasingly difficult to completely ignore. The discourses of a male-dominated and heteronormative social structure provides the overarching context for the construction of gay communities and identities. Even if one attempts to live a "gay life" on an everyday basis, "moving from one gay institutional locale to the next," the experience of these locales is colored by the dominant, heterosexist institutions and practices.
The mistake, of course, is to presume that "gayness" assumes a posture of complete contrast and contrariety. If gay men must confront and regularly permeate straight culture, the degree to which they do, and the extent to which they experience it as a struggle, certainly vary. In addition, gay cultural spaces themselves are hardly immune from gay critiques. Consider an electronic communication on an online bulletin board for gay men, called "One of the Guys":
The problem is pretty clear. I kind of feel like we're the minority of the minority. . . I feel like we don't fit in anywhere.
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I embrace the gay community because it's all I've got. But I really feel like an outsider. I don't like the "scene" (i.e., gay bars, Palm Springs, Fire Island, show tunes, bla bla bla) and most of the friends I spend time with are straight. (LA Adventr) Anytime we become something someone else wants us to be and stray from who we actually are, we become pod people. I refuse to do that. (Mfilip)
Although the confines of gay worlds are limiting to some "out" gay men, there is at the same time a commonly expressed danger of falling unproblematically into a hetero-defined existence—perhaps
One of the Guys
understood here as becoming a self-abdicating "pod person." It could be argued, however, that despite the problems in always clearly defining what is "gay" and what is "straight," there are a disproportionate number of ways of being legitimately straight; the "norm" allows maneuverability and flexibility in one's gendered and sexual existence.
This makes sense in a structural way, but it does not necessarily match up with many gay men's perceptions of the costs of normative straight masculinity. Personal accounts of gay men have shown that they enjoy a specific kind of freedom and versatility that straight men do not have or utilize. In a collection of life-histories, Growing Up Before Stonewall (Nardi, Sanders, & Marmor, 1994), Louis, 50, draws an explicit contrast between straight and gay life: Because I am gay I've had a much fuller life than most of my straight contemporaries that I know well I don't know many straight men who have such close friends as I have . . . and I think this has been particularly enriching. The freedom, the range of experience, the range of intellect, moving in different circles—all of these have been pluses, in spades, as far as I'm concerned. (p. 172)
Andrew Holleran (1995), in Preston's Friends and Lovers, writes,
It always seemed to me that homosexuals were gifted with friends in a way that straight men were not. In the town my family lived in, men seemed to live like lions in a pride— surrounded, as Aristotle said they wanted to be, by their wives, children and dogs. It's not they weren't friendly—they played poker, golf, went fishing together—but once a man married, his primary emotional commitment belonged to his wife and children. Married men spent most of their time alone doing the same things (mowing the lawn, reading the paper, fixing the car) in separate yards and households. The wives had friends. The men ruled separate turfs. Often I would see my father in his chair alone reading the paper and think: Why are straight men so isolated from one another? (p. 33)
There is reason to think, though, that for many gay men, straight social worlds and performances can be extremely meaningful sites of attachment, self-definition, and, going deeper, perhaps of mourning and desire. Exploring gay men's relationships with straight men provides a location to understand what is precisely at stake and how gay men's struggles around gender conjure up questions about how identity and masculinity, as cultural forces, systematize and delimit the possibilities for relating and belonging.
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Gay Accounts of Straight Men and Their Friendships Predictably, my interviews with gay men demonstrate that they have more acumen about their straight friends' lives than the straight men exhibit toward their everyday realities. Heterosexuals simply know proportionally less about the complexity of their gay friends' lives: what contradictions they encounter, how they manage marginalization, what struggles around identity they might undergo, and so on. By contrast, gay men, because of being to some extent in both "worlds," are more discerning about straight life and, particularly, straight sexuality. "Gay men's collective knowledge, thus, includes gender ambiguity, tension between bodies and identities, and contradictions in and around masculinity" (Connell, 1995, p. 41).
To Be Real: Comparing Gay and Straight Friendships In both a practical and a conceptual sense, the gay men I interviewed easily drew distinctions between their friendship experiences and those of the straight men around them. Pointing to the lack of deep connection between straight men, they knew that they themselves posed a threat to many straight men when initiating a friendship in the first place. Building friendships with straight men was a sometimes precarious and sometimes
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exhausting enterprise. And sometimes it was not worth the bother. After all, gay men have obviously enjoyed close and innovative kinds of friendship with each other, sometimes romantic and sometimes not, but usually "intimate" in a broad sense (Nardi, 1999). That is, although their relationships are not to be simply equated with women's friendships, gay men do often have a similar, disproportionate amount of disclosure, sharing, and emotional connection when indirectly compared to research on "men" at large (e.g., Davidson & Duberman, 1982; Miller, 1983; Reid & Fine, 1992; Rubin, 1985). This body of work has demonstrated how men's friendships are based disproportionately on instrumental, distant, or activity-centered elements, relative to women's. Although some accounts
One of the Guys
have discussed the difficulties of defining and evaluating intimacy out of context (e.g., Sherrod, 1987), there is obvious reason to think that gay men's friendships more easily bypass the remoteness and relatively anxious quality that accompanies men's friendships more broadly.
31 Gay men constitute a standpoint from which to understand widespread predicaments of gender that are more generally implicated in men's mutual relationships.
Of course, gay men still find reason to complain about their friendships with each other. Holleran (1995), for instance, saw his network of gay friends splinter in later life, as happens for many straight men, at least marWried ones. Furthermore, the mixing of sex and friendship in many gay friendships led him to suggest that "our emotional commitment was not so much to other particular friends, as to other homosexuals, in general: The sea of men that could toss up, any moment, for whatever length of time, a sexual antidote to loneliness" (p. 33).
This is not, however, a description of a superficial "moving" friendship; Stan's relationships with his group of six or so straight friends are ones of genuine support and communication, as he explained, but not overly "affective" as he put it, and this is exactly what he likes. Stan described how he is not any more of a source of intimacy to his friends than they are to him. He and his friends used to smoke marijuana together regularly and talk, and now the remaining straight men who are still in Stan's life get together weekly to watch Star Trek, have a meal and drink beer, and generally catch up with each other. When crises arise, in romantic relationships, for example, Stan explained how they were able to shift out of the "doing" model
One of the Guys
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and into a genuinely supportive and communicative mode.