Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men (Sexual Cultures)

by Jane Ward

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Author: Jane Ward

Publisher: NYU Press

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 9781479825172
ISBN 13: 978-1479825172

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 1479860689
ISBN 13: 978-1479860685

A different look at heterosexuality in the twenty-first century

A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight―her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there’s fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other’s penises and stick fingers up their fellow members’ anuses; 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. For Jane Ward, 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.

Ward illustrates 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 sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, 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, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

Review

"[Ward] shows that homosexual contact has been a regular feature of heterosexual life ever since the concepts of homo- and heterosexuality were first created -- not just in prisons and frat houses and the military, but in biker gangs and even conservative suburban neighborhoods." - New York Magazine

"[Ward] has arrived at an interesting conclusion: straight men - specifically white men - are having sex with other men to affirm just how straight they are, because to be straight and still be able to perform 'gay sex' - while always remaining uninterested - is the height of white masculinity." - The Guardian

"So readily visible are the pieces of evidence she amasses, and so surprising are her conclusions, that reading Not Gay is like doing a Magic Eye puzzle for the mind: All the dots you'd never before put together suddenly snap into place, allowing you to see just how hot for other men some straight men are." - Vice

"Jane Ward...has written what may be the definitive (or perhaps the only) book on [this] subject." - Breitbart

"Jane Ward...[has] penetrated the internet with one of those ideas that people were maybe thinking but just weren't saying: Male sexuality is as fluid as female sexuality... Ward's idea that our cultural understanding of men's sexuality has been way too simplistic for way too long is fundamentally sound and refreshing. Ward's reach suggests she's well on her way to enacting the change she intended with her writing." - Gawker

About the Author

Jane Ward is Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses in feminist, queer, and heterosexuality studies. She is the author of Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (New York University Press, 2015), and Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations.

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Jane Ward

Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men (Sexual Cultures)