Not Gay

Thanks to Netgalley for giving me a chance to review this essay !

Not Gay is a deep and well documented study on white straight male sexuality and general behavior. It shows the tendencies of a certain part of the white straight male population to have homosexual behavior under certain conditions. It takes a bold stance concerning the fluidity of the sexuality and its evolution especially nowadays (while having a look on how the roles and gender evolved through the last century).

This essay is really interesting, quite deep and demands to be focused on its reading (especially due to the multiple use of queer terms and gender-theory related terms), but teaches a lot on things related to the straight white male sexuality through the hazing rituals, the marine and military initations, drunk sex, craiglist ads of straight dude looking for other straight dudes... It shows also how gender and sexuality evolved, with the apparition of the heteroflexible sexuality (neither gay, bi or totally straight), and explains how those straight homosexual relations can be interpreted but also what they imply.

The whole book was really interesting, challenging my mind at every part. It made me discover some things I really didn't know (like the fact that until 1930, both heterosexuality and homosexuality were considered as perversion as they didn't aim for conception) and surprised me on a lot of subjects (male rituals, “on the down low” sex, ...). For everyone interested in gender and human sexuality, this is quite an essay to read !

I have a LOT of mixed feelings about this book. I think I'm going to try and separate my thoughts into a few categories: 1) as a topic; 2) as an academic text; 3) the author's voice and presence; and 5) gut reactions.

1) As a topic. As a topic, it's interesting. I spent a lot of time in the library stacks trying to find and understand myself when I was an undergraduate, and I read a lot of stuff this book cites. Especially CJ Pascoe's work. This book takes some issue with the diametric opposition of hetero and homo, and sort of dances around bisexuality. There's a section on the concept of sexual orientation as a congenital, fixed, trait. “Born this way.” Ward doesn't have much interest in it, and takes time to explain its rather weak standing in capital-R Research and the protective haze that surrounds it. Ward draws a line to the “homonormative” gay folks for putting this line in place.

I don't really know much about that. I can see where Ward is coming from, as someone who in general doesn't believe anyone is 100% gay or straight. And, I guess, as someone who in general is not a big fan of labels, and who thinks our (the LGBTQAI+ community in general) fascination with subdivision and labeling is probably a little more damaging than it is healing. But, I can also recognize that as a relatively vanilla gay white guy, that's easy enough for me to say.

The cultural angle of the book, centering the discussion on straight white men, is another interesting angle. Personally, I really like exploring this specific subset, as I think Ward is right in denoting the pernicious influence of white superiority in many of these contexts (military, frat, etc). Ward essentially says that whiteness facilitates the creation of a context by which homosexual activity can be understood as straight. Ward doesn't use the word “context” but throughout, I thought a lot about Goffman's facework theory and the idea of cultural contexts, and I think these things are in play in a big way in these environments.

However, I think the research question (if, indeed, there is one) gets lost in Ward's tangential exploration of her personal life and experiences. I'll talk more about that in the next section and section 4.

2) Did you notice what I just did there - say that I'll talk about something in the next section? That's a sin that a lot of academic texts commit. I'm sick of it. It's bad writing, folks. This book commits it over and over again and suffers from too much scaffolding. The first chapter lays out the rest of the book, along with the thesis and supporting points of each chapter. Each chapter strings together its sections by referring to the next in the same way I just did. This is not good writing! I find it hard to blame Ward for this because it's a sin I see in academic writing all the time. Are editors telling their writers that their readers are too dumb to get through a text without their hands being held? With all this scaffolding, Ward's book is only 211 pages long. Believe me, I can keep an idea in my head long enough to get through!

That aside, I bumped on the writing frequently. Is this an academic text? It isn't an ethnography. It isn't exactly a sociological study (though Ward refers to it as one). Having images denoted as figures does not an academic study make. There are endnotes, which I appreciated, and this is the most studious element of the work. It does read like a very long literature review, which is fine! It gets its point across. However, I can't help but feel like there was a better academic text inside of this somewhere.

Now, maybe this is intentional. I have edited academic journals and (especially the last time), I've thought a lot about what “academic” writing is supposed to look like. Why does it have to look a certain way? So, I'd be inclined to give this a little more grace if it weren't for the author's voice (see the next section — see how annoying that is?).

3) The author's voice. Ward talks about herself and her personal life a lot. On the one hand, this has given me the absolute best understanding of what it means to be gay versus being queer. On the other, it is very much so presented as a versus. Ward repeatedly voices her frustration and pity on the gay movement and, to be frank seems really condescending and rather privileged about it at times.

Pg 200: “I am not suggesting a direct causal relationship between the cultural turn to gay love and the emergence of heteroflexibility discourses, but rather a convergence of mutually complementary forces. As the gay movement continues its transformation into a PAC-funded celebration of homonormative love, it becomes more difficult to conflate naughty, casual, and disavowed homosexual encounters with gay identity, as gay identity is now so commonly represented by the image of out, proud, and respectable gay couples.” Tell me how you really feel!

Ward talks frequently about the damage that the view of homosexuality as a congenital trait does to the overall queer movement. She talks a lot about the kind of relationships and sex she likes, and the kind of behavior she finds ‘exhiliarating' while vaguely side-eyeing the plain gays that just want to go to work and go home and have a regular fuck now and again. I don't really get her frustration. I don't understand why Ward believes that sex is inherently and always, ALWAYS, political. Why does every liaison have to be about sending a message to somebody? She seems to contradict herself at times with this, by saying that by ascribing meaning to men's non-homosexual-homosexual behaviors, that we're putting a meaning onto them that they have not taken upon themselves. One of her key points is that men who have sex with men (MSM) who say they are not gay... Are not gay! So why does she devote so much time to judging non-queer folks?

This is a significant cause for my bridling at thinking of this as an academic text. Ward is happy to tell us about her time viewing pornography (for science! though this is really the least of my concerns, I simply am not sure I'd ascribe quite as much meaning to hazing porn videos as Ward does), her fetishes, and her judgments on gay vs queer culture. That does not feel academic, to me. At some points, I was wondering, ‘why is Ward sharing this with us, what are we supposed to take from it?'

4) Gut reactions. I had a few. Particularly about the gay vs queer politics that book talks about on and off throughout. But I had one that I'm not super proud of, and I'm thinking through its source. I am not 100% sure that a lesbian feminist sociologist is the best person to try and interpret the dynamics of gay or queer men. Problematic take, right!? It was a gut reaction, and when the thought went through my head I put the book down to think about it for a minute. I'll tell you where it came up the loudest. Page 139. Ward is comparing surfer bros and leather-clad bikers and cowboys. She contends that these forms (the surfers) are desirable for white MSM because leather-clad bikers and cowboys have higher associations with queer culture.

Let me put it bluntly: I don't buy it. My actual thought? “Has Jane Ward looked at a surfer bro and a leather-clad biker dude next to each other before?” Not to be too stereotypical, but they don't look much alike! I think there is an element of truth in the “simply buddies” thing, but I think that is but one element and not the most significant. It's little things like this that add up and make me wonder, “okay, has Ward talked to a gay guy about this?” She probably doesn't have too, but I hope my gut reaction is understandable.

It's also worth noting that Ward addresses this head-on in the closing chapter, which IMO is the best chapter of the book (in particular, this discussion takes place at 204-206). There is another place in the book (unfortunately I can't find the page rt now) where Ward talks about the particular importance that a feminist lens can bring to this examination, and I found it super interesting. I came away wanting to read more from that lens.

I'm still thinking a lot about this book, Ward's arguments, and the way in which she presents them. I don't fully understand why she chose to discuss so much about herself in this, but she clearly made that choice and feels it is important. I may come away with a deeper appreciation for this after more thought. But, while I found the topic super interesting, I think I'd have valued a modern-day take on Howard's “Men Like That” (which Ward references here), compared to this amalgamation of personal essay and literature review.

I pretty much love everything about this book. It has some turns of phrase that I'm not sold on (“anal resilience” is... not what I would have called that bit of theory), but even the theories I didn't think were convincing were written in a compelling way.

But, yeah, you gotta be good with constructivist and value-neutral approaches to sexuality, because Ward doesn't hold back when it comes to dissecting the not-gay homosexual sex straight white dudes are having.