A Very Straight Gay: Masculinity, Homosexual Experience, and the Dynamics of Gender

Abstract

I develop a conceptual approach to changes in that emphasizes the dynamics of the gender order as a whole. Homosexual is an important locus of these dynamics. After a critique of conventional discourses of I develop a theorized lifehistory method for researching gender. Analysis of eight life histories from an Australian gay communityfinds (1) initial engagement with hegemonic masculinity, (2) sexuality as the key site of difference, and (3) gradual closure based on relationships or on bodily experience that eroticizes similarity. Conventional is an aspect of the object of desire, yet is subverted by this object-choice; a contradictory is produced. Though the men in this study do not directly contest the gender order, the reification of gayness provides a social basis for sexual freedom, and the stabilization of a dissident sexuality opens possibilities for change in the social structure of gender. Recent media attention to and initiation, fueled in the United States by enormous sales of Iron John: A Book About Men (Bly 1990), does not represent a sudden discovery. Over the last 20 years, in the wake of the new feminism, debates on men's position in sexual politics have taken place in most Western countries, including Britain (Tolson 1977), Germany (Brzoska and Hafner 1990), Sweden (Bengtsson and Frykman 1987) and Australia (Lewis 1983). These debates have given rise to a body of descriptive research, termed male sex role or masculinity research in the United States (Kimmel 1987; Brod 1987). Within this literature, change in men's character or in the male role have most often been explained by the psychological discomfort of the individual or by generalized processes of modernization and technological change. I argue that we must focus on the social dynamics generated within gender relations. The gender order itself is the site of relations of dominance and subordina