Not Gay

Sex between Straight White Men

Jane Ward

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781479825172
• eBook ISBN: 9781479898978
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

A different look at heterosexuality in the twenty-first century

A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other's penises and stick fingers up their fellow members' anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can—and do—have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity.

Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward's analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality—not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

Index

Aberrations in Black (Ferguson), 226n23

accidental homosexuality, 28–29, 111–15

Ahmed, Sarah, 31, 32–33, 36–37

Allen, Bob, 18–19, 80–81, 103

anality, 156, 168–69, 229n19

anal resilience, 43, 126–27, 143, 158–61

anal sex, 16, 38, 43, 49–50, 92, 105, 126–27, 143, 158–61, 168–69, 189

Anderson, Eric, 13–14

anonymous sex, 70–75

Ashburn, Roy, 80

authenticity: bisexuality and, 201–4; heteroflexibility and, 197–204; of homosexual identification, 115–18; normative masculinity, 191–97; pornography and, 177–81; scientific sexuality research and, 91; straight white males conception of gay authenticity, 191–97; white homosociality and, 137–40

BDSM (bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism), 148–49, 167, 176, 201–2, 226n25

Between Men (Sedgwick), 221n8

biker gangs, 66–70

bisexuality: use of term, 217n2; authenticity and, 201–4; female sexual fluidity, 17–20, 85–86, 206–7; hetero-erotic/hetero-eroticism and, 20; homo/hetero binary and, 217n2; scientific sexuality discourse, 89–90, 91; str8 and, 133–34. See also heteroflexibility; sexual fluidity

black men: appropriation of blackness and, 140–44, 151–52; black masculinity, 140–44; down low (the DL), 144–47; heteroflexibility and, 21–26, 145–49; homosociality and, 140–49; pathologization of sexuality of, 224n6, 226n23; sexual fluidity and, 22–26. See also cross-racial intimacy

Blades of Glory (2007), 112

Blank, Hanne, 56

Borat (2006), 112

Boyarin, Daniel, 59

Boykin, Keith, 145–46

Brain Storm (Jordan-Young), 85–86, 87, 89

Bridges, Tristan, 198

Bring Me Men (Belkin), 158

Brokeback Mountain (2005), 145–46

bromance tropes, 111–14, 113. See also homosociality; love; social bonding

Butler, Judith, 30, 34

Cantú, Lionel, 148–49

Carey, Benedict, 89–90

Carter, Julian, 59

Casual Encounters ads, 127–34, 134–36

Chauncey, George, 61–65, 81, 184, 217n2, 218n7, 219nn16–19

class status: ana...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Nowhere without It: The Homosexual Ingredient in the Making of Straight White Men
• Bars, Bikers, and Bathrooms: A Century of Not-Gay Sex
• Here’s How You Know You’re Not Gay: The Popular Science of Heterosexual Fluidity
• Average Dudes, Casual Encounters: White Homosociality and Heterosexual Authenticity
• Haze Him! White Masculinity, Anal Resilience, and the Erotic Spectacle of Repulsion
• Against Gay Love: This One Goes Out to the Queers
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author