Читать книгу Still Straight - Tony Silva - Страница 7

Hundreds of thousands of straight American men have had sex with multiple men.1 Not all are closeted gay or bisexual men. Nor are they all just experimenting. While most straight men do not have sex with men, those who do have thought a lot about their masculinity and why they identify as straight. It is rare to have an opportunity to study an identity that most people take for granted. What if heterosexuality, and particularly male heterosexuality, is not always what it seems? That is the issue this book explores.

Here are some of the questions driving my investigation: How do rural and small-town straight American men who have sex with men (a category sometimes labeled “MSM”) understand their sexual identity and gender?2 Why do they have sex with men? How do race and geographic location shape their experiences? My qualitative research helps us understand findings from national surveys.3 While it is true that some men are closeted and come out only later in life,4 although less commonly in an era of more tolerant attitudes toward sexuality in general, the men I interviewed were for the most part not like these men. The men I talked to actively identified as straight, and most were not looking for an opportunity to come out. Additionally, while some straight men have consensual sex with other men while in prison5 or for money,6 I only talked to men who reported sex outside of prison or sex work. Some men have consensual sex with other men out of desperation—or so they say—in all-male environments like prisons and the military. Many others do so, however, even when women are available as sexual partners. What could explain this?

The men I talked to provided answers that appear contradictory yet are also genuine. The findings in this book are complicated and messy. Even as their lives might to others seem contradictory or disingenuous, the men I interviewed did not see their lives that way. They identified as straight and saw themselves as masculine, and sex with men did not detract from either attitude. Most viewed sex with men nonchalantly. Several had sex with men for what they described as the “thrill” of it, and most did not develop emotional feelings for their male sexual partners.

One man in this group was Cain, a fifty-year-old man from Missouri who described himself as highly religious. This explains why he chose the pseudonym “Cain” for this study. Cain said he was simply looking for what he called a “regular bud,” an ongoing nonromantic sexual relationship, to keep his “urges” in check. Until he found that regular bud, he was content with hookups (nonromantic sex). Cain admitted that he found risky, taboo sex exhilarating. “It’s almost like the closer I am to being caught, the greater the thrill,” he said. One of the hookups he found most thrilling involved topping7 a man on a church pulpit when no one else was around. Cain also found it arousing to tell me about these situations, since he could not confide in anyone else. This is why he called me for several years after the initial interview to inform me about what he called “hot updates.”

For Cain, sex with men was exciting in part because it was taboo. On at least two occasions, he had sex with another man while near his wife.

I’ll give you an example. My wife and I went shopping one time in the mall. She was picking out clothes for me, and there was this real cute college guy that was also trying on clothes. They had kind of like a bathroom setup in the stalls or whatever, and I kind of looked at him, and I could tell he was kind of interested. And so, I sat down and I just, kind of moved my foot just a bit, and fuck, he was all over me. And so, the thing is I was going back and forth getting clothes from my wife, who was right outside the dressing room. And here I was going back, and I worked the guy in my stall and he was nursing on my cock, sucking on my cock as I was going back and forth getting clothes. And fuck, she would have killed both of us, had she known, but it was just, fuck, it was so exciting, it was just, so thrilling. I don’t know how to describe it.

In the other story, Cain described meeting a man at his home and having sex with him while his wife was upstairs, asleep. Cain enjoyed sex with men, but not emotional intimacy. Like several although not all of the men I interviewed, he was aroused by what he considered taboo sex.

While they shared a diversity of experiences, all sixty men I interviewed were embedded in straight culture, including the groups, institutions, and communities undergirding this culture. “Embedded” means they were a part of and felt connected to these groups, institutions, and communities. Most of these men felt more connected to other straight people than to gay or bisexual men. Those married to a woman wanted to stay that way rather than leave their wives and start a completely new life with a man. They had varying levels of attractions to women, different sexual histories, and distinct reasons for having sex with men, but all identified as straight. In order to maintain that identity, they prevented, cut off, or set boundaries on romantic attachments to men. Doing so allowed them to maintain their relationships with women partners and allowed them to remain a part of straight culture.

Additionally, identifying as straight ensured that these men could maintain their ties to others in their straight communities, which they did not think would have been possible had they identified as gay or bisexual. Identifying as straight, of course, also prevented them from experiencing homophobia or biphobia (an aversion to bisexuality). They enjoyed being part of a socially dominant group.

The men I talked to also felt that identifying as straight was a major part of how they understood themselves as men. The ways they had sex with other men—what I call “bud-sex”—both reinforced and reflected their straightness and masculinity. Embeddedness in (being a part of) straight culture, I argue, is a key reason the men I interviewed identified as straight. Those who still had sex with women saw this activity as tied to their straight identity, but it was only one of many reasons they identified as straight. None of them considered sex with men an important aspect of their identity. As Mitch, a thirty-nine-year-old man living in Washington, said about having sex with men, “I wouldn’t say it defines me or anything like that.”

The experiences and behavior of Cain, Mitch, and the other men I interviewed make it clear that sexual identity does not necessary reflect sexual behavior. Identity also indicates feelings of belonging to certain communities and cultures and not belonging in others. Straight identification is also appealing to many because it brings social benefits unavailable to LGBQ people, like never experiencing discrimination or facing rejection from loved ones on the basis of sexuality.

The men I interviewed were not closeted gay or bisexual men. They were straight men who sometimes liked to have sex with other men. This may sound contradictory, but one nationally representative survey I analyzed shows that a little over 1 percent of straight men aged fifteen to forty-four in the United States reported having had consensual sex with at least one other man. This equates to about 689,000 straight men.8 About 221,000 of them identified as straight and had had two or more male sexual partners.9 About a quarter of this group had had sex with at least one other man in the past year.10 Understanding why these men identify as straight requires recognizing the difference between attractions, sexual behaviors, sexual identities, and sexual cultures. To explore and clarify these differences, I talked to sixty of these men, focusing on men from rural areas and small towns.

This geographic focus was intentional. Despite hundreds of news stories and academic articles exploring the politics and economies of rural and small-town America in the years after the 2016 election, which undeniably marked a watershed in American politics, few of these articles have examined the issues of sexuality and gender in these areas. We know that white residents of rural areas and small towns helped elect Donald Trump in 201611 and remain a key part of his base. We also know that over the past few decades such factors as outsourcing, deindustrialization, government deregulation, a greater concentration of economic activity in urban areas, and other economic and political changes have negatively affected many rural and small-town economies.

This shift has fueled both resentment and a desire for change.12 Many small towns and rural areas are today facing major challenges: population loss, an aging workforce, a reliance on federal disability payments, low rates of educational attainment and labor force participation, opioid addiction, hospital closings, and an excessive number of deaths from heart disease and cancer.13 While not all of America’s rural areas and small towns face these issues, particularly in the western United States,14 they are much more likely than urban areas, suburbs, and small- to midsized cities to be confronted with them.15

Many white rural and small-town Americans have responded to these economic issues by embracing the Republican Party, even though Republican office holders support many policies that harm them and oppose policies that could help them.16 Rural and small-town America has increasingly turned toward the Republican Party within the past decade, even as large urban areas have moved further left.17 These political divides will probably become more pronounced over time. Because of the way the Senate and the Electoral College work, rural and small-town America will continue to wield more conservative political power than generally liberal urban areas for decades to come.

These aspects of rural and small-town life are well documented. What we do not know much about is how men in these areas understand their sexuality and gender. This is a major oversight: about 20 percent of Americans, or sixty million people, live in rural areas,18 and even more live in small towns that are not technically rural but could hardly be considered urban. Existing studies of sexuality and gender, and the theories they lead to, are limited by their focus on major urban areas. To help compensate for the urban focus in studies of sexuality and gender, I talked only to men in rural areas and small towns. I also did so because I thought the issues I examined might play out differently in rural areas and small towns compared to urban areas, where social norms are different.