This New York Times piece by Jane Gross looks at gay man who marry women and have furtive relationships with men on the side:
They spend decades denying their sexual confusion to themselves and others. They generally limit their encounters with men to anonymous one-night stands and tell all manner of lies if their wives suspect.
What's interesting is that, as Gross points out:
…so-called "Brokeback" marriages have hardly disappeared, as many experts assumed they would, even in an age when gay couples, in certain parts of the country, live openly and raise children just like any family.
Internalized homophobia, guilt, and fear of life outside the culturally enshrined heterosexual norm are still potent forces.
Another article of interest, from the London Times, looks at sexual fluidity. Matther Parris argues that sexuality often doesn't fit neatly into the categories of "gay" and "straight":
I think a substantial preponderance of men are more heterosexual than homosexual, but scattered fairly evenly between 100 per cent and half-and-half; and that the smaller number who think of ourselves as gay are likewise quite evenly distributed along the spectrum from the halfway point.
That's seems a bit too fluid to me, and I think Kinsey was probably right that toward the ends of the spectrum sexual orientation is pretty well fixed and in no sense a "choice." Still, Parris may be right when he notes:
... we who call ourselves gay know well that most men who call themselves "bisexual" are more gay than straight, but afraid or unwilling to say so. But what we overlook is that for every gay posing as a bisexual, there are probably a dozen bisexuals posing as straight.
And in a better world, of course, all that posing wouldn't be necessary because (among consenting adults) who you love and how you build a life together just wouldn't make any difference.
11 Comments for “Gay, Straight or In-Between?”
posted by Brian-Kevin Beck on
It’s complex, this issue, so here is only my experience. For me, Sexual Orientation does exist, and it isn’t erotic so much as emotional. When I was with Amy “the living-room TV was black-&-white, the windows closed,” etc. When I then was with Robert, it was “full-color, sensurround, windows open with breeze blowing in,” etc. A fuller dimension of my total self. I am thus same-sex oriented, period… As for the Parris comment on fluidity, probably true, but dangerous to gay identity. As for Choice & Change: we don’t choose but instead discover our S.O.’s, and they can change, but we don’t change them, we discover them changing. Blase belief in utter fluidity, could endanger the fact of a gay identity–not approved of, but firm after all. (P.S.–to say “we have rights because we can’t change,” is dangerous; it means “if we could change we should to accommodate bigots in power, instead of leading our own lives as we wish which do not endanger society.) But as I said, this issue is complex…
posted by dc on
I definently agree with you Brian-Kevin Beck that the idea of sexual fluidity endangers gay identity, but I think that is a good thing. I think that the notion of fixed gay and straight cultures and identities is harmful in that it divides people. I think gays should move away from this polar idea of identity and question what it means to be gay, straight, ect. Sexuality after all is a social construct; definitions like gay, straight, ect are meaningless. If you are biologically male and feminine in your gender performance but prefer masculine men does that make you “homosexual” or does it make you “heterosexual” since you like what is opposite to yourself?
Americans are just beginning to recognize gays as a legitimate group to be respected in society, but in doing this gays are framed as a distinct group seperate from the rest of society with their own gay culture, attributes, characteristics, ect. This is what some gay activists have long wanted, but it goes against the idea that sexuality is a construct and sexual labels are useless.
posted by JimG on
Matther Parris talks about bisexual men posing as straight. What does that mean? If a guy is Bi and he has a relationship with a women how is that posing as straight? Is it because he doesn’t have a pin on his sleeve that says, “I like d*ck too”? I’m also not sure I am convinced by the statement that bisexual men are more gay than straight. What yardstick are we supposed to be using? How can anyone see into the soul of us all in order to come up with such conclusions? I have often wondered if gay men did not resent bisexual men because they were not “completely on our side”. And how many times has a bisexual man who was in a committed relationship with a women had a little fling on the side just to satisfy that particular need, and discovered that his relationship with her has come tumbling down. Sometime it seems that we are in the dark about bisexuality more so than the other two categories.
posted by kittynboi on
“””” I think that the notion of fixed gay and straight cultures and identities is harmful in that it divides people. I think gays should move away from this polar idea of identity and question what it means to be gay, straight, ect.””””
I’ve always been vary wary of this ideology, as I fear that it could led to a line or unreasoning like this;
“no one has a fixed identity, so everyone can technically like women, so we should expect all gays to get married since they arent really gay.”
I think it’s the first step on a road to a much more subtle kind of oppression.
posted by raj on
This is one reason that I distinguish between the hetero-/bi-/homo-sexual trichotomy and the ga/straight dichotomy. (Actually, the latter can have a lot of shades between gay and straight–such as polyamory–but that’s a bit of a different issue). The first has to do with the sex of the person with whom one wants to have sex, and the second really is more of a lifestyle issue.
For example, as far as I’m concerned Jim McGreevy, former governor of NJ, was a straight man–because he was married to a woman (actually two, successively) and fathered children by them–and he held himself out as being straight. But he apparently liked to have homosexual dalliances on the side. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that he liked to have homosexual dalliances did not make him gay.
posted by Brian-Kevin Beck on
Hello again. Complex issue! (1) As for GLBTQ’s etc. segregating themselves from mainstream, but is the bigger problem still more the reverse? A continuing “heteronormative panorama” wherein gays still seen as lesser. Non-gay folks’ upper layer shows reduced homophobia and “tolerance-acceptance,” but lower emotional layer still holds disgust, distancing. (Nobody’s fault; it’s a human trait–cf. “aversive racism,” etc.–major change goes slowly.) Especially in the provinces; (see Dale Carpenter’s still-classic piece on Minneapolis, “Heart of Darkness”). I’m ready to integrate, gay to me = only lefthandedness, Big Deal, but my straight evangelical etc. relatives and others? (See also Thomas Glave’s fierce piece on supposed heterosexual openness.)
(2) Is “gay” just too hard to define? See the many good, but varied, descriptions in these posts. Does it help to focus instead on “sexual orientation” (meaning emotional not just erotic too!)? AND to see S.O. as perhaps fourfold? (A) behavior, (B) self-labelling/identifying (and social image of), (C) actual direction of arousal-and-fantasy-and-release, (D) deeper central self-identity?
By this model, is McGreevy straight? By earlier self-labeling (and social image) yes, but what about his “sideline dalliances” (his truer arousal?) giving way to statement “I am a gay american,” and divorce and male partner anyhow. And a male who is femme in gender-role but prefers masculine men, is bi or gay. (Gender-role and S.O. are distinct.) The four-fold scheme interests me as fitting somewhat the complexity of the situation; I think it came from the recent and infamous Spitzer study. And I feel that the key factor of the quartet is (C), What Turns You On. This says the male prostitute fantasizing women when with male clients is heterosexual. And of course the straight-married guy stopping at the public toilet for a dalliance–but what truly Turns Him On? Complex, complex! “Psychosexual identity,” complex, complex! Thanks for these posts–they Make Me Think and reconsider, even Arouse and Stimulate my thinking (thinking is sexy???!!).
posted by Pete on
Mather Parris’ analogy of sexuality to choice of wine to drink is a bad one. His emphasis is on the choice. To his article’s ending, “I think some people can choose. I wish I were conscious of being able to”, I can only add: people who choose are called bisexuals. That’s hardly news.
I don’t think it’s wise to confuse his argument for changing the shape of distribution patterns or orientation frequencies with the idea that people fluidly change their orientations. Frankly, I don’t care how many folks there are on the bowl, the stem or the base of the wine glass. I couldn’t care less whether distribution is shaped like a champagne flute, a margarita, or a shot of bourbon!
He offers anecdotal tales about switch hitters as if bisexuality is a new concept, but then confuses himself with the issue of cause or origin and choice. His “equality of self-regard as well as public esteem will have arrived when we are as careless as a blond or a redhead might be whether or not we were made that way.” Well, of course, but as long as a conservative religious lobby maintains that orientation is a choice and therefore undeserving of civil rights, the issue has to be addressed by advocates.
His argument that “Does “I can’t help being black” strike you as a self-respecting argument against racism?” only faults people for self defense. The only “intellectual sloppiness” here is his ignoring of age and consent in his reference to pederasty. His thinking would be just as sloppy if the defense were “I don’t care how I was made, its my right and personal freedom” or “it’s none of your damn business”, etc.
His statement that arguments for inherency are “comforting for those troubled by suppressed guilt” only leaves me wondering whether he’s suffering from suppressed guilt. If he finds his lack of choice to be “self?oppressing”, maybe he should check into Exodus. And after all the hand wringing, his “I would choose to be gay”, just rings a bit disingenuous.
posted by Randy R. on
All this debate about ‘gay’ and we haven’t even discussed how other cultures handle sexual orientation! So many are so different — compare ancient Greeks with traditional American Indian in N. Amerca, compare today’s people in Brazil with today’s people in Cambodia — sheesh! Every one comes up with different ideas of sexual identity, and what is acceptable and what is not.
This all goes to show you that we in America do NOT have the definitive definition of gay, whatever it is, and that we really have no idea what sexual orientation really is.
posted by kittynboi on
“other cultures” are the scourge of humanity.
posted by Tony on
M.P. touches a lot of points in his article and we could comment on them all! But the key matter surely is fluidity. We are sometimes afraid of the idea because it seems to afford us an element of choice. But that is not necessarily so! There are men described as hetero or homo who change (without any real element of choice). It is surely a fact that many men may change their orientation as the grow older – in this sense I agree that there is a fluidity. And then there are bisexuals who have an element of choice right the way through – but even bisexuals may find that as they age the strength of one or the other orientation changes – they become more gay or less gay.
Personally I think the whole orientation in human beings thing is far too complex for us to understand yet – more work has to be done on it before we really understand ourselves!
posted by Bobby on
“Parris argues that sexuality often doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of “gay” and “straight””
—-If that was the case, I would have an easier time sleeping with my straight friends.
Those who argue about sexual fluidity are probably horndogs that want to screw both genders. LOL.
I see sexuality like food. Those who like chocolate like chocolate, and they shouldn’t be encouraged to try vanilla, that’s unnatural.