Book Review: Not Gay

[osprey_archer]

Elizabeth Jane Ward’s Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men is a bonbon of a book. I didn’t end up agreeing with all of its arguments, but then, I’m not sure the book always agrees with its own arguments; there’s a certain “let’s throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” aspect which I found appealing, a fundamental pleasure in making the reader go, “Wait. What?”

Take this sentence, for instance, which I can only imagine that Ward typed with a gleeful shit-eating grin: “The long history of straight men’s sex with men, and the varied places where it occurs and the varied forms it takes, requires an expansive view, one that illuminates the all-too-often ignored probability that straight men, as a rule, want to have sex with men.”

“Doesn’t that fly in the face of the entire definition of straight?” wails the discombobulated reader.

And this is of course Ward’s point: the definition of straight is basically bullshit, and maps poorly on real human sexual behavior. Not Gay “is based on the premise that homosexual contact is a ubiquitous feature of the culture of straight white men,” Ward explains. “White straight-identified men manufacture opportunities for sexual contact with other men in a remarkably wide range of settings, and that these activities appear to thrive in hyper-heterosexual environments such as universities, where access to sex with women is anything but constrained.”

It really struck me that the behavior of these straight white men hearkens back to the fairy/trade dynamic, which was the dominant understanding of men’s sexuality until the homosexual/heterosexual binary crept in like kudzu over the middle decades of the twentieth century… at least in textbooks and medical discourse and, more slowly, in the popular imagination as well.

But clearly the takeover of the popular imagination was far from complete, because in fraternities and the army and anywhere else that straight white men congregate, there’s still a powerful sense that a man can have loads of sex with men and still be a “real man” as long as its the right kind of sex (he’s not being penetrated, or if he is it’s in context of a hazing ritual or something like that) in the right kind of setting: at sea! in prison! in the army! Anywhere where it’s hard to get access to women! Which could be stretched to include a night on the town where you’re just striking out with the ladies! The really important thing seems to be that it’s just for fun, purely physical, or if it does have an emotional component that component is group male bonding (to the fraternity, or the army unit) rather than individual and romantic.

Ward quotes this beauty of a want ad from a straight dude lookin' for a straight dude to jack off with: “No gay sex, I am looking for legit male bonding, masturbating in the hot sun only.”

(There’s a whole chapter on these want ads from straight guys looking for male bonding through side-by-side masturbation or occasionally blowjobs. They are fascinating. I was particularly struck by the fact that so many of the ads specify “straight or bi” for the partner.)

So what defines straightness in men, if it is not, in fact, characterized by an exclusive interest in sex with women? Ward comments, “people who identify as heterosexual, unlike gay men and lesbians, are generally content with straight culture, or heteronormativity; they enjoy heterosexual sex, but more importantly for the purposes of this book, they enjoy heterosexual culture. Simply put, being sexually ‘normal’ suits them. It feels good; it feels like home.”

Or, to sum it up more succinctly: “this book works from the premise that heterosexuality is, in part, a fetishization of the normal.”

Now obviously those words “in part” are doing a lot of work here. Occasionally Ward seems to forget that a person needs to take pleasure in both normalcy and heterosexual sex in order to make straightness work, and those parts for me where the times when the spaghetti stuck most poorly.

It also occurred to me that this “fetishization of normalcy” paradigm offers a new angle the tension between homonormativity and queer radicalism. I tend to see this cast as a difference of philosophies or politics, but maybe it’s fundamentally a difference of temperament. Maybe some people simply get pleasure from experiencing themselves as normal and other people don’t feel that pleasure and, because they don’t personally experience it, fundamentally don’t see it as a real thing.

At any rate, even if I didn’t always agree with Ward’s framing of certain situations, the book definitely made me think. And you can feel that Ward had a blast writing it, and that’s a rare, rare thing in an academic text.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Wow, absolutely fascinating.

aybe some people simply get pleasure from experiencing themselves as normal and other people don’t feel that pleasure and, because they don’t personally experience it, fundamentally don’t see it as a real thing.

I think you're onto something with that, definitely.

[missroserose]

This passage jumped out at me as well.

In high school, I was good friends with a dude who fit the phrase “fetishization of normal” to a T—he got along with almost everybody, had no real rivals or enemies, code-switched (something that confounded me at the time but that I recognize in retrospect) like a pro. If he’d ever wanted to be a spy, he’d have been amazing at it—he was amazing at being the likable, affable dude in the background. And for years I thought that was just his natural personality.

Appropriately (in the context of this post), what made me realize otherwise was my accidental discovery of a significant paraphilia of his. I don’t remember exactly how I came across it, but what I do remember was how strongly he reacted when he found out that I knew. I was genuinely puzzled—we’d talked about homosexuality and fetishes and stuff like that in a general way, like you do when you’re teenagers exploring this new arena, and while his kink was a bit odd, it certainly didn’t seem any weirder than several others we’d discussed without judgement—but he was acting like I was going to either shun him or decry him as a pervert and call for his execution. It was somewhat later that he confessed to me just how hard he worked to come off as normal, and how he was desperately afraid that people would discover his secret and think him weird—even though he often hung out with people like me who were unabashedly weird, and even took pride in it.

It gave me a lot of food for thought in subsequent years.

[asakiyume]

I had to look up paraphilia!

I think I can understand his fear: I feel like I've witnessed plenty of people being tolerant in one realm and then absolutely not in another--and usually there's an intelligible logic behind the things they're tolerant about and the things they're not, but I can well imagine feeling that even though your friends thought a, b, and c were okay, they might be horrified by d or e.

[osprey_archer]

I also think there's a tension in American culture between a craving for normalcy (to quote Sally Belfrage: "the majority of Americans want to conform and lose their identity") and an admiration for the maverick: so many television shows led by allegedly maverick cops/lawyers/doctors/whatever. I don't know that the actual number of Americans who want to conform has actually changed since Belfrage was writing in the 1950s, but quite possibly the number who would be loath to admit it has risen.

[asakiyume]

And then there's the thing my kids always talk about: how being a maverick **is** a normal, conventionalized thing. A certain sort of maverick, of course ;-) Everyone exerting themselves to walk to the beat of a different drummer, everyone beating down the path less traveled by. But within guard rails.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! This makes me think of John McCain, and the sort of conventionalized maverick image he had for a long while (when he was running for president, for instance) - but in the end, under Trump, he genuinely did break with his party's most destructive urges. And it cost him. Trump is *still* mad about it.

It occurs to me that Trump also likes to see himself as a maverick, and in a way he is (typing that makes me throw up a little in my mouth, which just goes to show how intrinsically positive we consider the identity maverick!) - it's just that the conventions he breaks are things like "politicians should condemn white supremacy," which sensible people agree are convention *for good reason.*

[asakiyume]

And the fact that there are mavericks we like and mavericks we don't like just goes to show ... something. I guess it's what you suggest: there are some standards or conventions we find stultifying and worth breaking away from and others that we think are necessary for peaceful, affirming social living.

[ancientreader]

Of course the first words out of my mouth were "Wow, that sounds fascinating," which to judge by asakiyume's response seems, er, normal.

I wonder how many queer persons find a disparity between how they appear to the straight world and how they experience themselves. Spouse and I, e.g., are well aware that we look like Good Gays -- middle-aged, kind of frumpy, prosperous married homeowners -- but neither of us identifies with the idea of normality or with normality as a political goal if "normality" is taken to mean what I gather this author means straight men experience themselves as. Wow, that sentence got out of control fast and I have no idea whether it's intelligible.

[missroserose]

I think I understand it, a little. I might’ve mentioned before, I’m a very bi/pansexual woman married to a straight dude, and for years, especially when we lived in a more conservative part of the country, there was a low-key dissonance between my social presentation (monogamously married vanilla straight woman) and my self-perception (kinky poly bisexual woman).

Now that we live in a major city and are openly poly, and I’m dating a trans dude as well, that pressure is much lessened. Interestingly, though, what really made me aware of it was hanging out with my boyfriend’s friends—even when I talked about my husband, there was no immediate assumption that I was straight—more the reverse. I found it so much more comfortable.

If there’s a fetishization of normal, is there also a fetishization of weird? Because I suspect I know where I land on that scale, heh.

[ancientreader]

Kink is also part of the perception/internal reality disjuncture for us. Similarly our politics, which despite our landed status are fairly leftward, and our personal histories -- I suppose mine in particular: no one is ever unsurprised to learn that before I met Spouse I had a heroin-addict boyfriend. (Some of this, of course, is straight-up ageism and sexism. I've lost count of the number of fanfics I've backbuttoned out of because an "older" or "middle-aged" woman turns up as a stick-figure emblem of stupidity and Not Getting It, whatever It is in the scene in question. [Bitter much?])

Fetishizers of weird, unite?

[missroserose]

Yeah, it's a little weird once you get old enough to realize you have a whole past most people don't see, isn't it? As a much more tame example, I've had short bright-dyed hair for long enough now that people are genuinely shocked to look at (say) my old Facebook photos and see me with long brown hair, even though until recently that had been how I looked for most of my life.

In any case. Fist-bump to fellow landed lefties, middle-aged fandom members, and respectable-presenting fetishizers of weird. <3

Are you on tumblr at all? Only I'm always looking for cool people to follow. I'm the same username over there.

[asakiyume]

Now I need to go look at those old photos ;-)

[ancientreader]

I have a Tumblr -- ancientreader there as well, -- but I hardly ever visit. I never liked the interface or the lack of privacy controls, and then the implosion in the Sherlock fandom killed it for me.*

I love a chatty AO3 comment thread.

*ICYMI: conspiracy cults, pedophilia panic (if you liked to think of BBC Sherlock as a bottom that meant you were a pedophile; don't ask me to explain), and doxxing

[missroserose]

Holy crap, I've seen some fandom drama in my time (and had seen vague rumblings floating around Twitter about the Sherlock fandom) but that is a whole new level. o.O Cripes.

Noted, about AO3! Though really, who *doesn't* love getting a full-on essay in their comments? XD I'm missroserose over there, too!

[osprey_archer]

It really was fascinating! It's not often these days that I read a book that turns my preconceived notions inside out and turns out their pockets and hangs them up to dry, but this one really did.

There seems to be a certain overlap between "experience of normality" and "stunning lack of self-awareness" in the way that these straight white guys experience their own normality. They're not self-conscious about it, in the way that a college-educated 1950s housewife might be self-conscious about embracing her role as a Typical American Housewife; part of the reward for their normalcy is not having to have any self-awareness at all.

I'm not sure I'm explaining that well or that it's accurate. But I did come away from the book with the overwhelming impression that most of these dudes could fit their self-awareness into a thimble with room to spare.

[anna_wing]

I've always found it a bit essentialist and reductive, the way that sexual practice/habits should have become such an intrinsic part of identity for so many people.

Not to mention that in my lifetime milieux it would not be relevant information to share in the majority of my daily social or professional interactions.....

[osprey_archer]

There seems to be a sort of "if you build it, they will come" thing going on with the way that sexual habits have become identity. Sexologists/psychologists defined the category "homosexual" and people started going "that's me!" even though in many cases the fit was really quite imperfect.

[anna_wing]

I remember a Chinese friend trying to explain to an American that it was impossible to tell how many "homosexual" people there were in China historically because it was socially irrelevant. Whoever you actually fancied at any particular time (and whether or not you were in a position to do anything about it), your job was to have a son to carry on your, or your husband's if you were a woman, family line.

I've noticed that some of the boxes get smaller and smaller too. Surely the same person would normally have quite different levels of sexual interest and activity throughout their life, depending on their age, personality and general circumstances, including whatever would be considered appropriate and unremarkable for their milieu (which is a long way of saying that as far as I am concerned 'asexual' is for amoebae).

[lokifan]

This sounds fascinating. I read a great piece discussing this, in part, years ago; a book on it sounds great.

It also occurred to me that this “fetishization of normalcy” paradigm offers a new angle the tension between homonormativity and queer radicalism. I tend to see this cast as a difference of philosophies or politics, but maybe it’s fundamentally a difference of temperament. Maybe some people simply get pleasure from experiencing themselves as normal and other people don’t feel that pleasure and, because they don’t personally experience it, fundamentally don’t see it as a real thing.

Yeah - there's definitely something appealing for a lot of people about being misfits. Though (as I think is common) the biggest queer radicals I know were almost all abused when they came out and/or aren't fully out, so they're deeply suspicious of aping the stuff that hurt them.

[osprey_archer]

I know I saw an article that was either an interview with the author or an extract from the book years ago, when the book first came out ("I should read the book," I thought, and then promptly forgot the title) so maybe you read that too?