Straight men with gay
Why do some unbent men have sex with other men?
According to nationally-representative surveys in the Merged States, hundreds of thousands of straight-identified men have had sex with other men.
In the modern book Still Straight: Sexual Flexibility among White Men in Rural America released today, UBC sociologist Dr. Tony Silva argues that these men – many of whom savor hunting, fishing and shooting guns – are not closeted, bisexual or just experimenting.
After interviewing 60 of these men over three years, Dr. Silva set up that they love a range of relationships with other men, from hookups to sexual friendships to secretive loving partnerships, all while strongly identifying with straight culture.
We spoke with Dr. Silva about his book.
Why do straight-identified men have sex with other men?
The majority of the men I interviewed reported that they are primarily attracted to women, not men. Most of these men are also married to women and prefer to have sex with women. They explained that although they loved their wives, their marital sex lives were not as active as they
By Karen Blair, Ph.D., and Trent University Students Laura Orchard and Bre O'Handley
“We fell into each other’s arms because of our similarities in our career and because of our age and because we like the same sort of things.” This quote could quite likely be the beginning of a wonderful romance story, but instead, it is a quote about friendship delivered toThe Huffington Post by Sir Ian McKellen about his decade’s long friendship with Sir Patrick Stewart.
The two men first came to know each other well on the establish of the first X-Men film in , and although the duo played adversaries on the silver screen, offscreen, they were developing a close friendship. On the set, the two men had adjoining trailers, where they spent more time getting to know each other than in front of the camera. By the cease of filming, they had discovered how much they had in common, and to this day, they share one of Hollywood’s most well-known friendships.
Both actors are often photographed together doing mundane things, such as walking a boardwalk while deep in conversation. Perhaps one of the reaso
For a long time, friendships between gay men and straight men – what some now name “bromosexual” friendships – were uncommon. Homophobia was likely one reason; another was that straight men probably assumed they didn’t hold much in common with lgbtq+ men.
But lately, “bromosexual” friendships have started to receive more attention, acceptance and interest. They’re being explored and depicted in movies, books and blogs. In October, The New York Times even devoted an article in their Style section to “The Rise of the ‘Bromosexual’ Friendship.”
This sort of normalization is great news. But social scientists still haven’t studied the dynamics of these friendships: why they grow and how they’re maintained.
We’re part of a team of community, evolutionary and social psychologists that has recently begun a research program with the objective of studying this very topic. Specifically, we’re interested in looking at the reasons gay men and straight men become friends (or remain friends after the gay friend comes out). We currently have a survey enquiry underway that explores some of th
I recently finished reading Dr. Robert Garfield’s terrific recent book, Breaking the Male Code: Unlocking the Influence of Friendship, and last week participated in a joint interview with him by Dr. Dan Gottlieb on WHYY (National General Radio) in Philadelphia. This all got me thinking about my own friendships and those of my gay male clients. The bonds between gay men and straight women hold been written about and featured in popular media (i.e. Sex in the City, Will and Grace), though a lot less has been said about how gay and vertical men recognize and negotiate the distinct challenges, complications, and rewards of their friendships.
Source: istock
According to Garfield, among the many obstacles to male-male platonic attachment, fear of homosexuality looms large. Straight men fret that if they receive too close, others will see them as gay; which in their minds means feminine (horrors!), feeble, and perverted. Perhaps even scarier is that their emotional connections will somehow morph into sexual attraction. Interestingly, in the U.S., before there was such a thing as a gay identit