Читать книгу Still Straight - Tony Silva - Страница 19

The men I talked to identify as straight and masculine. What they told me shows that there is diversity within heterosexuality and that broad categories of sexual identity often do not represent the lived experiences of sexuality. Above all, my research shows that many people identify as straight because they are a part of a straight culture and want to stay that way. Part of the reason for this is that they can feel connected to a socially dominant group and not experience sexuality-based discrimination. Another part of it, for men, is that identifying as anything other than straight would threaten how they see themselves as men. As the men I talked to explained, it also made the most sense for them to identify as straight because all other aspects of their lives were straight. They had straight friends, most were partnered to a woman, and few felt that “gay” or “bisexual” described any social aspect of their life. Sex with men was mostly irrelevant to their identity.

Unsurprisingly, the stories these men tell are filled with irony and paradox, and seem embedded with contradictions, even though they are not. The findings that came from this project are messy, like most parts of social life, but I make sense of them through this book.