Male to Male

Sexual Feeling Across the Boundaries of Identity

Edward Tejirian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781560239758
• eBook ISBN: 9781136578595
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Explore the feelings of men toward other men without the pigeonholing found in terms like "gay" and "straight"!Male to Male: Sexual Feeling Across the Boundaries of Identity starts with the evidence that most studies on male sexuality have ignored--the same-sex feelings of men whose identities are heterosexual. Of the more than fifty men in this book, almost half were aware of some degree of same-sex feeling. But beyond percentages, the primary focus of Male to Male is the exploration--through their own words--of how these men experienced same-sex feelings, what these feelings meant to them, the fears surrounding them, and the consequences of the collision between their heterosexual identities and their same-sex feelings.In addition to comparative data on women's same-sex feelings, as well as on what men say in regard to their feelings about women, Male to Male includes material from two in-depth case studies. The first is on Clark, an African-American man who moved into sex with men in prison. His story shows that the need to see gay men as feminine is really a cultural defense against the powerful pull toward the male-to-male bond, and points to the movement to fulfill that bond when this defense is dropped. The second is on Zack, a gay police officer. His story explores the different dimensions and meanings of the male-to-male bond as these unfolded in his own life, while telling about the heterosexually identified men who "came out" to him about their own same-sex feelings. Male to Male will help you explore:

• same-sex feelings in heterosexual men and women
• same-sex feelings in the military
• prison culture and the "heterosexual role"
• the fear of domination
• the aesthetics of fear and power
• the dynamics of rape
• compassionate relationships between heterosexual-identified men . . . and much more!

Male to Male provides evidence showing that the identity that really counts--constituting the deepest source from which men's sexual feelings for each other spring--is not specifically a gay or heterosexual identity. That source is, rather, a male identity, and--beyond that--a human identity.

PART I:

ORDINARY PEOPLE

Chapter 1

The Inner Boundary

Much of the action of this book takes place at the “inner boundary,” the point in the mind where individuals as exponents of their culture confront—or begin to confront—their sexual feelings as these emerge from the inner world of meaning and emotion. Situated at that point there is, for most people growing up in this culture, an inner boundary, which is an internalized replica of the external boundary that separates people categorized as “heterosexual” or “homosexual.” Among other things, this book examines, in depth, what happens when the potential for individual same-sex feeling comes up against this inner boundary and the need to maintain a heterosexual identity.

The background for the present study was my earlier book, Sexuality and the Devil.¹ The first part of that book dealt with the analysis of a young man whose life experience and identity were heterosexual. His obsessional fear that he might be possessed by the devil symbolized an attraction to men that he could not accept. In the second part of the book, I also looked at male-to-male sexuality in two very different cultures—Greece of the classical period and the Melanesian culture area of the twentieth century—and at how each provided for the sexual expression of different but complementary aspects of male-to-male feeling. The Greeks stressed the ties of one-to-one love, with an emphasis on the expression of those ties between older and younger. The Melanesians focused on the ties that bound men together in groups and on rituals that drew boys and young men into the circle of male solidarity. Clearly, the potential for the sexual expression of feelings between men is a normal part of male psychological make-up, but—just as clearly—culture plays an important role in encouraging or prohibiting the fulfillment of that potential.²

For years, I taught the graduate adolescent psychology course in the School of Education at Queens College, in New York City. Starting in about 1994, I began to have the students in this course read Sexuality and the Devil. Since it dealt in depth with the development, life, and inner conflicts of one man, it fit well into the way I taught the course. I think the best way to teach psychology is to study individuals in as much depth as possible. Therefore, I had each graduate student do an in-depth case study on one actual person. Each case study was duplicated in enough copies for everyone in the class to read, which was conducted as a seminar in its latter half. By the end of the semester, each class member had read and discussed an in-depth study of thirty or more lives—both men’s and women’s. I think this method contributed to an understanding of psychodynamics in real-world terms while creating an atmosphere conducive to introspection and candor.

After the first couple of semesters of using the book in the course, I began to ask people to write their reactions to the readings. Not only did the book deal with the discovery of same-sex feelings in a man whose identity had always been heterosexual, it also dealt with how the religious condemnation of homosexuality had been medicalized and transformed into psychological terms by—among others—psychoanalysts who rejected Freud’s theory of universal bisexuality. This analysis, as well as the cross-cultural material, appeared to raise the consciousness of both men and women with respect to the relation between culture and the potential for same-sex feeling.

If asked to place themselves in one of our cultural categories of sexual identity, most of the people in this group would have chosen “heterosexual.” Although they were students, they were not the proverbial college sophomores. They ranged in age from their early twenties up to their fifties, with the average being late twenty-something. They were not selected for any special interest in sexual issues. They happened to take my course to fulfill the psychology distribution requirement for the MS degree in education. Most were already actually teaching, and the rest planning to, at the secondary level in a variety of areas—science, foreign language, math, English, art, music, social studies, or physical education. While all were, obviously, college-educated, that was by no means true for many of their parents, and they came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

Therefore, I was intrigued by the fact that the majority of both my male and female students agreed that bisexuality was a normal human potential. I was also struck by the fact that a number of them either hinted at or quite candidly told of experiencing some degree of same-sex feeling. They revealed these things in their “reaction” papers—written for my eyes only and returned with my comments and (of course) without grades. I was very interested in this unexpected development and, after a couple of semesters, added the following two paragraphs in my instructions for reaction papers, explicitly stating that people were free to say as much or as little as they wished on the subject:

At the bottom of p. 234 of S. & D. it says, “In my psychology classes, the subject of homosexuality provokes a great deal of animated discussion among students. In one class, after spending the greater part of the class in discussion provoked by questions and comments, most of it expressive of tolerance rather than condemnation, I asked them why, in their opinion, there was so much hostility directed at homosexual people. One young man, a physical-education major and from the same sort of background as Frank said, “I think because everybody, in the back of their minds, has felt something like that” [Frank was the man I had written about in Sexuality and the Devil].

In any discussion of human psychology looking inward is as important as looking outward. In reading and reacting to the material of these chapters, I’m asking you to reflect on your own inner experiences, and on your own observations about the people you’ve known, including, if you are already a teacher, the students you’ve worked with. To what extent does what the young man quoted above said resonate for you, however strongly or faintly? To what extent can you empathize with Frank’s fears? How do you, as an individual confront and react to the goals and prohibitions of the culture you have been born into?

SAME-SEX FEELING IN HETEROSEXUAL MEN AND WOMEN

I had a single class of thirty-five people in the fall of 1995—eighteen women and seventeen men. One woman was lesbian. Of the remaining women, seven gave evidence of some same-sex feeling. So did eight of the men. Thus, some kind of same-sex feeling was acknowledged by almost half of both women and men.

The spring of 1996 produced these results: Of twenty-two women, one was lesbian. Of the remaining twenty-one, five referred to some same-sex feeling. Of the ten men enrolled in this class, five acknowledged some same-sex feeling. Of those five, two had actually had some postadolescent sexual experience with another man, but did not consider themselves gay.

In the fall of 1996, six out of fourteen men acknowledged some same-sex feeling, including one with actual experience. Of seventeen women, two had some actual experience with the same sex, while three others acknowledged some same-sex feelings in waking life or dreams.

In the last semester for which I have data—the spring of 1997—five out of twelve men acknowledged some degree of same-sex feeling, while a sixth had an actual experience. Of seventeen women, six referred to some same-sex feeling.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

In spite of the variability in percentages inevitable in groups of this size, I think consistency exists. Across four different groups over two years, about a third of seventy-four women and just under half of fifty-six men acknowledged some degree of same-sex feeling or had an actual sexual experience with someone of the same sex after the age of sixteen. Even though—starting with Freud—clinical experience and research have demonstrated the existence of same-sex feelings in people whose identities are heterosexual, those observations and data have typically been discarded, ignored, or rationalized away.

Almost half a century has passed since Alfred Kinsey shocked America by revealing what ordinary Americans told, when asked, about their sexual lives. Half of American men had experienced some degree of homosexual arousal, including 37 percent who had actual homosexual experience, after the onset of adolescence.³ America has yet to assimilate these findings. For women, five years later, the figures were smaller but still impressive. The cumulative incidence of homosexual responses was 28 percent, with 13 percent having sexual contact to orgasm.⁴ A realistic response to the results for both men and women would be to discard the rigid categories that had been constructed to sort and classify people as heterosexual and homosexual. But no. Rather like a virus that keeps mutating to fend off a toxic drug, the categories have simply redefined themselves.

The two Kinsey studies are probably still the best ever done on the subject of what Americans are actually like sexually. A more recent survey that did not have the methodological sophistication of those studies nevertheless turned up some interesting results. As part of a public health survey designed to provide information helpful in combating the AIDS epidemic, it took the unusual step of looking at same-sex attraction as well as homosexual behavior in large, broadly based samples of both men and women in three countries and provided some further statistical food for thought.⁵ Men and women in the United States, United Kingdom, and France were surveyed. Numbers were on the order of 1,000 or more men in each country, and 600 or so women. Ages ranged from sixteen to fifty. Within each country, samples were stratified for geographic region and for metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan residence. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews and self-completed questionnaires. The data on sexual attraction and behavior were included in the questionnaires. The researchers felt that confining these questions about sex to the self-completed questionnaire would decrease the “potential for embarrassment,” not only on the part of the respondents but, interestingly enough, for the interviewers as well. This method—and attitude—in comparison with the careful and sympathetic probing by Kinsey’s trained interviewers, would suggest that the results are on the conservative side where the admission of socially touchy behavior or feelings are concerned. The questionnaire asked about actual sexual behavior with either or both sexes over the previous five years. In addition, it asked whether, since the age of fifteen, a person had felt any sexual attraction for—or actually had sex with—someone of the same sex.

In the United States, 8.7 percent of the men reported feeling some sexual attraction for another male without engaging in sexual behavior. The figure for the United Kingdom was 7.9 percent and for France, 8.5 percent.

For the United States, 11.1 percent of the women reported feeling some sexual attraction for another female without engaging in sexual behavior. The figure for the United Kingdom was 8.6 percent, and for France, 11.7 percent

For men, when some kind of same-sex behavior was added, the totals—including both attraction and actual behavior—were: for the United States, 20.9 percent; for the United Kingdom, 16.3 percent; for France, 18.5 percent.

For women, the totals—including both attraction and actual behavior—were: for the United States, 17.8 percent; for the United Kingdom, 18.6 percent; for France, 18.4 percent.

Only 1 percent of the men surveyed in all three countries reported having only a partner of the same sex in the previous five years. For women, the comparable figure did not reach 1 percent in any of the three countries.

The percentages of men who report having a partner of both sexes in the previous five years (rather than at any time in their lives) were: for the United States, 5.4 percent; for the United Kingdom, 3.4 percent; and for France, 10 percent. For women, the percentages were smaller: 3.3 percent for the United States, 1.6 percent for the United Kingdom, and 3.2 percent for France.

Another recent source of data about the relationship between categories of identity and actual behavior is the book by Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor called Dual Attraction: Understanding Bisexuality.⁶ It is one of the few studies combining statistical analysis with in-depth interview techniques. In addition to studying those who identified themselves as bisexual, the authors gathered some comparison material on people who identified themselves as heterosexual.

About one-third of heterosexual men indicated having at least some degree of sexual feeling for the same sex. About 10 percent reported some actual same-sex behavior. Of the women, a larger proportion—about half—reported some same-sex feeling. However, only about 12 percent reported any same-sex activity, quite comparable to the men.

The authors also looked at heterosexual feeling and behavior among gay men and lesbian women, which is unusual. Like the heterosexual men, about a third of the gay men said they had some sexual feeling for women as well, with about 9 percent having some actual heterosexual experience—almost identical to the 10 percent of heterosexual men who had reported some homosexual activity. About half the lesbian women reported some sexual feeling for men—the same proportion of heterosexual women reporting some sexual feeling for women. About 10 percent of the lesbian women had crossed their “identity” lines to have sex with men, comparable to the percentage of heterosexual women who had crossed over to have sex with women.⁷ This study was done in San Francisco in the 1980s and the self-identified heterosexuals were drawn from organizations that were rather like sexual “interest groups” whose purpose was to foster discussion and exploration of sexuality. The sizes of these groups were: heterosexual men, 84; heterosexual women, 84; gay men, 182; lesbian women, 93. These results for the three studies, followed by my own data, are summarized in Table 1.1.

I prefer to use the term “same-sex feeling” rather than “same-sex attraction” for my own data, because it is a broader term that is capable of taking in not only actual behavior and acknowledged attraction, but also inner meaning.

COMPARISONS WITH WOMEN

Although this book focuses on men, the data on women are a useful comparison because they demonstrate that the sexes are more alike than different in their capacity for same-sex feeling. The line between the emotional and the erotic is not stricter for men than for women. In fact, overall, men seemed to cross it more often than women—but they usually worried about it more. In line with the primary focus, the data on men are more extensive. For the most part they are based not only on what they wrote but also on one-to-one dialogues. On the other hand, women were, right off the bat, more completely up-front about their same-sex feelings in their written communications.

TABLE 1.1. Statistical Comparisons

Sources: A. C. Kinsey, W. B. Pomeroy, and C. E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders & Co., 1949; A. C. Kinsey, W. B. Pomeroy, C. E. Martin, and P. H. Gebhardt, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. New York: Pocket Books, 1965; F. L. Sell, J. A. Wells, and D. Wypij, “The Prevalence of Homosexual Behavior and Attraction in the United States, the United Kingdom and France: Results of National Population-Based Samples,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 24(3), 1995, pp. 235-248; M. S. Weinberg, C. J. Williams, and D. W. Pryor, Dual Attraction: Understanding Bisexuality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Much of what has passed for research on sexuality—including the current revival of attempts to prove biological and genetic hypotheses—has ignored the effects of culture on sexual feeling and behavior even as it unwittingly incorporated cultural biases in its premises and methodologies. On the other hand, cultural theorists have had (for the most part) to rely on historical and literary sources and were unable to engage actual people in the kind of dialogue about their sexual feelings and experiences that I had the opportunity to do in the course of this study.

THE INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE

Culture is not monolithic. Ours is a culture in dynamic conflict. Late-twentieth-century America has been obsessed with sexuality. The obsession with sexuality—like most obsessions—reflects deep ambivalence and profound conflicts. The ambivalence and conflicts about sexuality have their roots in the religious traditions that have shaped our view of the world and our place in it. Although detailed historical analysis is not something this book will undertake, I think it is important for anyone doing research on sexuality in this country to be aware of the historical and religious context.

In the villas of Pompeii, buried beneath the ashes of Vesuvius in the first century C.E., the walls bear murals of satyrs and maenads making love. The erect phallus is freely depicted in painting and sculpture.⁸ It is almost as if the burial of the city itself stands as a metaphor for the fate of the exuberant sexuality of the pagan worl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Ordinary People
• Part II: Clark
• Part III: Zack
• Appendix: David and Jonathan
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index