Josef Thorak, 1937, Comrades
This blog is the by-product of increased media exposure on Sex Classifications, vs Gender Identification vs Sexual Orientation and of course “Bromance”.
Questions to me about “Bromance” began surfacing five years ago because of alleged stories that got out, tagging me in alleged tryst with various straight men, over a 10-year span of time. I found myself in conversations and debates about the subject. That led to some readers imploring… no, demanding… my thoughts and information on what I might know about ‘straight men’ sensuality, and sexuality.
I must admit, because of the nature of mens’ sensuality/sexuality, I have tried to steer clear of this conversation in blog forms. I felt a few lines on a page cannot give a comprehensive appraisal of the subject matter, nor the depth needed to establish legitimacy, or to evaluate its potential for future generations, not even to give justice to its place in its historic past. Since the issue won’t rest and with mounting pressure to speak on the subject, I will speak as objectively as I can.
I begin by calling your attention to a Blog written for the prestigious - New York Magazine website called ‘The Cut ‘
The Cut is a blog site for hip readers who proport to seek provocative takes on issues that matter from culture, politics, power, and relationships; I concede, that the Cut site also panders to the usual celebrity sightings and women’s fashion trends.
In their AUG. 05, 2015 issue, under the heading of “Q&A” a blog title appeared - “Why Straight Men Have Sex With Each Other” which was written by Jesse Singal, as an excerpt piece from a larger conversation between Singal and Dr. Jane Ward. Jane Ward, an associate professor of women’s studies at the University of California, Riverside, had authored the book “Not Gay : Sex Between Straight White Men”. Dr. Ward, in her book claimed that beyond: “the fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other's penises and stick fingers up their fellow members' anuses; there are 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.” Jane Ward, suggests 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.
The Book and a term “bromance”, these past 20 years, kept popping up in song, seen on television, and at the movies, it was even spotlighted in a 2007 high school’s humorously, awkward friendship movie, staring Jonah Hill titled Superbad.
I believe bromances are not new, I find it was more common and fluid before 1950 and before the introduction of twin beds, but that is a blog for another time. Bromances were especially prevalent during the war years (WW1 and WW2) and was not considered homosexual at all, that is because there is a difference between sensuality and sexuality; between a manly embrace, wanking off together, versus some type of orifice penetration. Bromance contains more of an element of sensuality rather than sexuality.
I find that the majority of men identifying as straight cisgender males(straight) are those men that feel romantic desires towards women, but Cisgender relates specifically to gender rather than sexuality. A person can be considered cisgender (often abbreviated to just cis -straight) and can still be open to any sort of sexual couplings.
Cisgender males with the moniker of straight are usually connected to a hetero-centric community which is the way they understand their masculinity. Thus the advantage of a ‘Straight’ identification, in that community, for by its very nature it insures the man’s sexual identity will avoid discrimination. and if the off chance of sex with another man occurred, it is treated as irrelevant to their identities. Thus bromances can occur without consequence.
Since 1950’s more and more of what would have been considered straight sensuality between men has fallen into the category of homosexual activity, creating a clear male from female gender divide in behaviors tolerated in the Western man and Western woman in the U. S. Culture. The gauntlet had been laid down after WWII dealing with the divide between how Women and how Men after the war would define their sexual roles and mores in American life. Therefore, what would be tolerated culturally and who could dapple with their own sex had been restricted. Under these Cultural constraints, a man’s sexual choice was conscripted to a fixed monogamous, heterosexual, head of the household model.
Jane Ward references in her book, that “when heterosexual women make out with one another at a bar or party, it’s generally understood that they’re simply playing around for attention, or exploring the fluid space that is female sexuality.” Versus “when heterosexual men hook up with each other it was seen as an act of desperation.”( due to lack of access to female companions.)
When straight women hook up with other straight women, no real explanation is required; when straight men hook up with other straight men, it’s a different story.
The divide stems from a notion of female sexuality being more malleable, thus more inherently open to experimentation and variety, than the males.
In Ward’s book “Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men”, she makes the case that this is a flawed understanding. Male sexuality sometimes labeled “homosexual contact” has been a regular feature of heterosexual life ever since the concepts of homo- and heterosexuality were first created — She states “not just in prisons and frat houses and the military, but in biker gangs and even conservative suburban neighborhoods. Given how prevalent this behavior is in so many different sorts of settings, Ward suggest it’s time to stop explaining it away — and argues that society’s conception of male heterosexuality is an unrealistic, expedient one.”
Edward Casey. 1939, Stevedores Bathing Under The Brooklyn Bridge
I can remember as a youth, that if a man could reach the rank of being called a “Man’s Man”, there seemed to be permission for him to explore and break boundaries and be looked up to for it. It is with that attitude of manhood that I suspect Ward’s assumption 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 acts of sexuality are not slippages into a gay way of being; no, they are more like a sensual expression of a desired but unarticulated identity for balance. We all contain male and female attributes, 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”. I call it, its own unique mode of engaging in androgynous sensuality, a mode of behavior that Ward would say would be “characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege.” In this new era of heterosexuality complexities in the modern era prevail.
There is new and on-going sexological and psychological research being done like Jane Ward’s. This research suggests that men’s sexuality within long-held belief systems of the term ‘ heterosexual’ desire as having been strictly hardwired impulses to spread their seed and thus being relatively inflexible to anything else will prove false.
So what happens when sexological and psychological research evidence is all pulled together? What might we glean about straight men’s Sexuality/Sensuality?
Will it be that the fundamental difference between men’s and women’s ‘sensuality’ is not accurate. That by combing the facts on 20th-century American heterosexual sensual/sexual behavior, we would find dabblings in male on male sensual/sexual behaviors by straight-identified, single and married men? That there will be evidence that such homo-erotic overtones took place within biker gangs, fraternities, male-only social clubs and societies, as well as male -for - male free and sex-for- pay (flash for cash) encounters would not recreate a sexual misidentification for them.
These scenarios play out in more or lesser degree in all sorts of different situations and cultural contexts, Evidence will show that this occurs without having the excuse of men being without women or in prison.
Men in the act of genital sensuality with another male is not because they are building a gay sexual union with another man, nor do they want one. The language in that act may mean something different for the participants, perhaps an act of courage, or a ritual like a rite of passage, a celebration, as seen from sailors crossing the equator for the first time or of college students in a fraternity. Physical sensuality can be a release having no connection with gender identification at all.
I hear it a lot “Oh Yeah Sure” or, “Oh, come on, I think these are really gay men who are posing as straight men.”
What am I to say to that? Of course, there’s no way for me to verify everyone, If they say they are straight then they are straight. What I know of male sexuality/sensuality is that many men do identify as straight in their lives and have engaged in these activities.
It is clear to me that there is needed a new language or way to talk about men’s needs to express themselves with other men, sensually and physically, that is accepting of a man keeping their heterosexual identity intact, when that’s the logic that applies.
Everyone has the right of choice of their gender and their expression of sexuality/sensuality, and that includes you.
