Читать книгу Still Straight - Tony Silva - Страница 15

Straight men who have sex with men can of course be found all across America, including in large urban areas. They are all a part of some type of straight culture, and as a result there is quite a bit of overlap in terms of how they understand their sexuality and masculinity. Yet men who live in rural areas or small towns differ from their urban counterparts in several key ways, related to why they have sex with men, their specific sexual practices, and how they understand their masculinity.

Rural/urban differences shaped the reasons why the men I talked to had sex with men and how they began doing so.213 A higher proportion of rural and small-town men are married (to a woman) than are their counterparts in large urban areas, a state of affairs reflecting the fact that marriage is more central to their identities. This attitude encouraged many of the men I interviewed to have sex with men rather than extramarital sex with women because they felt such behavior was not as threatening to their marriages. Counterintuitively, the enhanced importance of marriage to rural and small-town culture actually encourages sex between men in these areas. To many rural and small-town men, sex with other men is a loophole in their marriage contract: it does not really count, at least compared to sex with other women.

Additionally, unlike many urban and suburban men who first begin having sex with men in threesomes with their wives,214 most of the men I talked to first had sex with men in one-on-one contexts. While some men I interviewed did have threesomes with their wives, this was fairly uncommon. Men in urban areas appear to be more likely to have threesomes than men in rural areas and small towns. The situations that led the men I interviewed to have sex with men, in other words, appear to be different from those that men in urban areas experience, despite some common aspects.

The sexual practices described by the men I talked to also differed from those of urban men. Some straight urban men post advertisements to find sex with men and write about women in these ads in sexualizing or demeaning ways, with the hopes of continuing this behavior during their hookups with men.215 In contrast, the men I interviewed rarely talked about women to their male sexual partners and almost never watched heterosexual pornography (or any other type, for that matter) in their hookups. This behavior suggests that rural and small-town men do not feel the need to sexualize women in their male-male hookups in order to feel more straight. Thus, they were less overtly misogynist than many urban men, at least as urban men present themselves in online advertisements. This attitude may relate to masculinity: marriage, but not sex with women per se, is central to how many rural and small-town men understand themselves as men. In contrast, sex with women, but not necessarily marriage, appears to be key to how many urban men construct their masculinity.

Additionally, whereas a sizable proportion of white men in urban areas fetishize black and Latino men for being purportedly highly masculine,216 the men I interviewed preferred white men. Being with men who looked and acted like them and other people in their rural and small-town contexts helped reassure the men I talked to that what they were doing was “normal” and thus compatible with heterosexuality and masculinity. Many of the men I interviewed also preferred men who looked and acted specifically like rural and small-town men: for example, men who hunted, fished, or wore jeans and a t-shirt. By contrast, urban men often post ads seeking specific types of urban men—for instance, “skaters” or “bros.”217 In short, while urban men have a variety of preferences because of the diversity of people to which they have been exposed in urban settings, the men I interviewed tended to prefer a more specific type of sexual partner that reflected the people who lived in their rural and small-town settings.

Also related to rural and small-town life, smaller social networks and greater community interconnectedness encouraged the men I interviewed to integrate their “friends with benefits” into the social fabric of their lives, allowing them to become sexually and emotionally closer to them. This behavior facilitated lasting bonds for the men who were open to such arrangements, even though other people had no idea about the sexual aspect of their friendships.

The way the men I talked to understood their masculinity also differed from that of men in urban areas. Most considered heterosexuality a key part of rural and small-town masculinity, so being masculine to them meant being straight. Many urban men also feel this way, of course, but they have greater options for expressing a “softer” masculinity than most rural and small-town men.218 They also see a variety of sexual-identity options that are less overt in rural areas.219 Similarly, a majority of the men I interviewed used elements of rural and small-town life to describe their masculinity: hunting, fishing, shooting, ranching, and so on. Thus, while most men across the United States construct masculinity in some way or another, the way they do so—and what their masculinity looks like—differs across rural/small-town and urban settings. Additionally, rural and small-town men tend to define themselves in opposition to what they believe men in urban areas are like.220 So, even though there are many similarities between men in rural areas/small towns and urban areas, men in the former often strongly distinguish themselves from the latter.

Many of the men I talked to felt as if they could choose a gay or bisexual identity, on one hand, or a rural/small-town identity, on the other. They chose the latter. Many gay and bisexual men live in rural areas and small towns.221 Yet they are usually less visible, since LGBTQ people in rural areas publicly look and act much like their straight counterparts, in part because there is less freedom of behavior outside cities.222 There are also fewer LGBTQ institutions like bars and community organizations in rural areas and small towns than in urban areas. Thus, in rural areas and small towns, LGBTQ people are less visible, and there are fewer resources to support LGBTQ subcultures. To many men, including the ones I interviewed, it feels as if a gay or bisexual identity is simply not possible outside of a major city, even though—factually—it is. Urban men have more contact with visibly gay and bisexual men, so they know that being gay or bisexual is an option for them even if they distance themselves from the possibility.