Читать книгу Still Straight - Tony Silva - Страница 14

This book specifically examines residents of rural areas and small towns in the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, the Mountain West, and far Northern California.199 These areas are home to a white majority200 and are socially conservative,201 as indicated by voting patterns.202 The areas I examine were historically part of the mythic American frontier.203

The rural focus is not meant to suggest that all rural areas and small towns are homogenous or the polar opposites of urban areas.204 The boundaries between rural and urban areas are blurring due to their increasing economic, social, and political interdependence, and there are many types of rural areas and small towns that are not necessarily the binary opposites of urban areas.205 However, research indicates that, broadly speaking, expressions of sexuality and gender do differ between rural and small-town America and its urban counterparts. Hence, building on operating definitions of the US Office of Management and Budget,206 I concentrated my efforts to find people to interview on nonmetropolitan areas in my target regions: those with fewer than fifty thousand residents. I also interviewed men who lived in towns with a population of under fifty thousand that were located near similar towns.207

In total, forty of the men I interviewed were raised in rural areas or small towns with a population of under fifty thousand and not located near major cities, and forty-four currently live in these types of areas. Most either grew up or currently live in similar areas. Only five were raised and currently lived in large metropolitan areas with populations over five hundred thousand.

To find the men I interviewed, I posted advertisements in dozens of men-for-men casual-encounters sections of Craigslist, which is organized regionally.208 Unlike most other apps/websites, Craigslist was, at the time of the research,209 widely used, anonymous, free, and frequented by individuals with a variety of sexual identities. Of the 654 men who inquired about participation, sixty agreed to a semistructured interview. I did fifty-six of these interviews over the phone and four in person. During each interview I used an interview guide, but reordered and rephrased questions to make the interview less formal.210 Interviews, which were conducted between 2014 and 2017, lasted between one and one and a half hours.211

The sample was racially homogenous but diverse in terms of who they were attracted to. One man identified himself as Latino and another as multiracial although he said that most people perceive him as white. About 65 percent of the men I interviewed were only or mostly attracted to women, and a majority were currently married to women. While all were secretive about their male sexual encounters, all also identified as straight—both to themselves and to others.

About two thirds were in their fifties or older. Although the men I talked to had a variety of educational and occupational backgrounds, most were middle class. Almost all had at least some college education, and a majority had at least a bachelor’s degree. The sample was more highly educated than most Americans. Other studies have shown that straight working-class men also engage in secretive sex with men,212 but the men who responded to my advertisement were overwhelmingly middle-class. (See tables A.1 and A.2 in the methodological appendix for more detail about the men I interviewed.)

The men I met in person were polite, expressed themselves in a way that most people would interpret as typically masculine (none were noticeably feminine), and dressed in conventionally masculine attire. Most wore jeans and a t-shirt, a polo shirt, or a button-down shirt that looked nice but was neither flashy nor expensive. All looked completely presentable, although not “fashionable” or “trendy.” In other words: they were men most people would describe as resembling somebody’s dad or grandfather. A “guy-next-door.”