M1 was born in 1949, growing up in Los Angeles California. M2 was born in 1984, growing up in Sarasota Florida. M3 was born in 1979 growing up in Cartagena Colombia, and M4 was born in 1982, growing up in rural Wisconsin. All four males came from two parent households. M1 describes his two-parent household as not being stable, due to his fathers binge drinking problem.
M1 “My father would work for a year and then disappear for two weeks.”
When M1’s father would disappear, his mother took on the primary role of care giver and financial provider. M2’s parents both worked; mom worked as a nurse director and father as a freelance attorney; M2’s mother was the primary care giver, but said his father helped as well. M3 and M4 both came from two parent households, where the fathers were the primary financial providers and their mothers were the primary care givers. M3’s mother went back to work when he left for college.
M1 grew up Catholic, but renounced the Church at age 12, still going to church with his mother to make her happy. M2 was raised Jewish and is part of the recent structure Judaism sect today, which he describes as very liberal towards gender and sexual issues. M3 was raised Catholic, M4 was raised Methodist. Both M3 and M4 describe their mothers as the ones who took them to church, and are now on their own not very religious.
Gender Identity Background
Everyone learns gender in different ways; the question is how gender is learned throughout different periods of human development. When I asked M1 how he learned gender during his elementary years, his answer was very direct.
M1 “I watched everybody else. We mimic, we are a mimicking people and we mimic the people around us.”
For M2, his answer was more detailed, tracing back memories from pre-school through elementary school.
M2 “They [his parents] always bought me boy toys; they never bought me dolls or anything. They bought me army toys or gender neutral toys like legos and log-building blocks, but I guess even those are more boyish toys... When I was younger I always used to play dress up too. It was a common part of my childhood. I had a bin full of dress up clothes, and used to play with my friends. So that was there as an option… I remember when I was in pre-school and I had a boy friend over and I was three or four and I thought it was a fun idea to take off our clothes and play doctor…In Elementary school it was definitely, boys are supposed to date girls. I had a kindergarten girlfriend. We would go kiss in the corner of the playground, and we would also play cat’s cradle. So I was doing some of the girl things, but kissing the girl too, because that was the expectation. I think there are definitely expectations for what boys are supposed to do in sports, what boys are supposed to like and if you don’t fit those categories, it sucks, especially if you are a boy and just aren’t good at those things. Boys are supposed to be good at sports and if you’re not, does that question your boyness? I think it definitely does; even as an adult people [men] get picked on just because they have effeminate traits or because they aren’t Macho.”
For M3 and M4, their earliest memories of learning how to be a boy centered around family and friends. M4 struggled with the dichotomy of what was “me”, and what was “them”.
M3 “I remember for example, I had two brothers growing up (one 10 years older, one 9 years older), so in a way they initiated me into the rights of manhood. I lived in a man’s world; all my friends were boys I used to do karate when I was a kid from five to ten.”
M4 “I think from watching my dad, and from being with other kids. I guess like my mom was there all the time, so what she told me about it, like how to act and behave. Obviously she couldn’t model those behaviors, but she was the one who was always there. It was her guiding behavior… It’s tough to figure out how much of being a boy is directed by me and how much is parent directed, simple things like what toys I played with, what Halloween costume you’re going to wear, how much of that is because I wanted to be playing with He-man and how much is because that was just what was around, I don’t know In the pre-teen years, what seemed to be on M1’s mind and the biggest influence was puberty and the specifically biological boy traits that go along with that.
M1 “I don’t know if you know about boys, but boys get 15 hard-on’s a day. They have no control over them at all, they just come. You’re hornier than a hoot owl at that age. All of a sudden you go into puberty and you’re popping boners all over the place. You have no idea what to do with them, they’re just there, it’s true, it drives boys crazy.”
For M2 and M3, their recollections about their gender identity as pre-teens centered around key memories; with M2 it was not just his emerging sexuality, but also school and religious socialization moments. M3 remembered the impact of a specific incident concerning his emerging sexuality, as well as social factors.
M2 “I think maybe a small piece of it was religious, I was active in Judaism, I learned about bar mitzvah and bas mitzvah, I learned in pieces what women and men did. I remember the sports like gym class, P.E. class, there was some picking-on of people for what they did as compared to the things that that category is supposed to do. I did really well in the presidential fitness test, I set the flexibility record, because I was in gymnastics, and people were like great, but you’re a boy, even the teachers were like, ‘This kid is flexible, that’s weird.’ That probably wasn’t celebrated as it would’ve been if I had been a girl who was super flexible. There were also definite gender norms. I was kind of on the outskirts of this friend group, this group of like 20ish boys and girls. And I wanted to be in, and to be in you had to flirt with the girls all the time. You had to have your little relationship. I remember when I was in 7th and 8th grade I had a lot of these really short relationships. I had a crush on so and so, and then a three day relationship, because that was what you were supposed to do. But I hung out with more guys than girls. I was definitely closer to boys at that point. I remember as a pre-teen the pornographic instincts, the sexual instincts that I had, on my own time when you are playing on the internet, was towards looking at men, but I was still hooking up with women and going through relationships with women, probably because society told me that’s what you’re expected to do.”
M3 “I remember an incident, where my parents actually caught me playing sexually with my male cousin. They got really angry and had a talk with me that boys don’t do that with other boys, that was horrible and they hit me; they separated my cousin and I. I was about 11 and my cousin was 13… I remember that I had a boy group. I hung out with the jock group, from when I was 13 to 18. I played soccer and I did karate as well.”
M4, in his pre-teens, learned how to be a boy through movies, and activities
M4 “From movies more than anything, else like Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger. My family hunts, so I grew up hunting, like birds and deer and what not, practicing shooting guns and bows and arrows, those were all activities with my dad. I was also in boy scouts, so I guess that would probably have influenced a lot through out the entire process, being socialized with boys in a certain way in a hierarchal structure. What you do as a boy you go hiking and camping, outdoors.”
During high school M1, had bigger problems than gender conformity, which was the easiest part for him, due to his physicality.
M1 “I didn’t do well in high school. The last semester I got five F’s and one A. The A was in physical education,. I was kind of butch. It was my attention deficit disorder. I just couldn’t concentrate; they didn’t know anything about it in those days. I had a sister who was really popular who was dating the mayors son, who was on the varsity basketball team, and something happened in the locker room and he took a swing at me and I ducked, and his fist hit the locker, he broke all the fingers in his hand so he couldn’t play basketball, so I had the whole basketball team after me… I didn’t feel like an insider. My life at home was just miserable. The rent was paid, there was food in the fridge, but there wasn’t any harmony at home.”
For M2, high school was about discovering and expanding his ideas on gender and sexuality.
M2 “With boys it was always blah blah blah straight sex, and I probably wasn’t that interested in the blah blah blah straight sex. Even though in 10th and 11th grade I had a long term girlfriend and that was the last time I dated a woman. Until I turned 17, I never kissed a boy even. But there was interest. But I didn’t really feel oppressed and for a while I thought I was bisexual…In high school, I became more aware of sexuality and what that meant. Before, gender was more like this is what boys do and this is what girls do, and boys dig girls and men inseminate woman and have babies and then when I became a bit older I started to see more gender non-conformity, I do remember in 8th or 9th grade I got picked on incessantly by this one girl for being gay, and this was before I even knew I was gay. I think I had behaviors that transcended what was expected of the boy category. When I first came out to myself, and told one friend, I was 17. I left high school and went to New College. When I was 17 my parents said if you are bi, just be with a woman it will make your life easier. With the career you want to have, because I am a teacher, it will be easier because they [the parents] won’t let you touch their children; you can get married.”
M3, during his high school years was involved in a gender segregated atmosphere, in which he had two identities.
M3 “We had very predetermined roles. I hung out with only men and the men, they taught me, but my brothers as well. I was the transmitter between the boys and the older boys. My brother taught me what an orgasm was, for example, and then I taught my friends that because I was the one with the older brothers. I think my brothers influenced a lot how my identity as a boy was shaped…I actually did have a gay identity back then in the sense that I used to fool around with boys, my cousin at 11, and then I had a boy who sucked me at 13 and then at 15 I used to play with this other boy. So there was always that underlying element, but I was thought to be straight, hooked up with girls. I lost my virginity to a girl at 13. I dated girls throughout high school. I didn’t see it [hooking up with boys] as being gay; I was just fooling around. I probably knew, I felt it, I just didn’t want to admit it at that point. My friends were happy to see me dating girls and they would encourage it. We would have this-I kissed a girl, I did this to her, I sucked her titties, you know stuff like that. It kind of made me have a stronger group solidarity.”
M4’s high school years were full of self-discovery, due to a lack of influences.
M4 “Very tough to say, I don’t think I had anyone teaching me at that point; peers maybe. There was no really strong role model. My dad was there but we couldn’t really talk at that point. My group of friends was pretty small. I was pretty unpopular in high school, I only had two friends, three friends, and we sort of did what ever it was we felt like; which was video games and goofing off…So mostly from myself and feeling it out… It was confusing for me.”
For the men, their gender identities were heavily influenced by social factors and emerging sexual desires, but also by the emotional turmoil of transitioning from a child to an adult and dealing with interpersonal problems that can sometime overshadow and or add even more complexity to self discovery.
Impact of Heterosexuality
I asked the men, when they started questioning heterosexuality. For M1, M2 and M3, this had to do with the realization that they had sexual attractions and emotional feelings towards men.
M1 “There are two ways that people come out, naturally or sucked in to it. I was sucked in, and it just fit. I never did well with girls. I was in my early 20’s. There was a sexual revolution at that time. I came to San Francisco, I didn’t know anything about sex… how do you know if you like strawberry short cake or not, you try.”
M2 “15 or 16 and that was after an extended relationship with a woman, not because of that, just, ‘Hey, I am kind of interested in men.’”
M3 “When I was 15 years old, and I started to hook up with this boy regularly. I was still hooking up with girls, but I new that I liked him.”
For M4, he physically questioned heterosexuality before he emotionally questioned heterosexuality.
The act of doing so was not defined, and confusing.
M4 “12 or 13, I had sex with my best friend, who was a male. We always slept at each other’s houses from like 7 on. But at the age of 13 we found out that we each were masturbating and thought, ‘Oh we should do that together,’ and it just started from there and went and went and went. He is straight and getting married this November. I am not sure I am gay, but I am not straight. From fifteen to 18 I did not have much connection to my dad. He was there but there was not a lot of emotional connection there The relationship with my mom was just anger, so there was no real emotional connection going on in my life and he was the only one I felt emotionally involved with, and I was also having sex with him. Through that relationship I felt in love with him and he couldn’t or didn’t return that emotion. It wasn’t until about 10 years later that I realized what happened and why I felt so fucked up about him. It was because my heart was open in that way, and it just felt like banging on this brick wall of his heart, because he couldn’t or didn’t return that emotion at all. The physical was there, but he was just using it as ‘this is an orgasm, it feels good, it’s fine, it’s safe, whatever.’ For me, it was a big problem. We had all these long ass conversations about how we where straight yada yada yada, and for him that might be true, probably true, but for me it wasn’t. At the time I was thinking I am straight, I am attracted to woman, but here is a sexual outlet, that’s there available and safe, why not take it. I can come like three times a day, because I am not satisfied; I am 14. I didn’t start coming out to myself and dealing with the possibility that I might not be straight until the age of 22-23. Between 13 and 22, there was just this huge tension gong on in my life, between having sex with guys and trying to be falling in love with women, and I got really self destructive. Twenty-two was when I really started dealing with heterosexuality or not heterosexuality, and then I found a boyfriend and was in love with him.”
When exploring the idea of what is heterosexuality, all the men’s answers lead back to a personal note on how heterosexuality has impacted and for some invaded their lives.
M1 “Two guys with baseball bats screaming Bible scripture at me while they’re beating me up…It’s a life style that perpetuates the species. What would we do? Where would we get all those cute men?...I look at heterosexuality as a variation on a theme, like homosexuality, like transvestitism, people who like to have foot sex, people who like to have leather sex all of these are variations on the theme. Some heterosexuals wouldn’t call heavy leather sex among heterosexuals normal, but it is a variation on the theme.”
M2 “On a base level heterosexuality is, males being with females. But it comes with a lot of baggage. I guess that’s the other level, hetero-normatively is a huge baggage and comes along with heterosexuality, all these norms that people expect you to follow for your gender and where you are… Heterosexual privilege, heterosexuality is the accepted norm. If you aren’t heterosexual then people consider you to be abnormal, maybe not as much anymore. But it’s certainly like oh yeah there’s that gay guy, gay people, gay is often used as a negative, where as heterosexuality is never used as a negative, it’s the positive, the normal, what you should be according to society.”
M3 “On the Greek roots, it means liking a person from a different sex, being attracted and liking of different sexes…I think that it’s the status quo. It’s how people should behave in terms of finding partners. It’s what’s perpetuated in society. When I tell people where I come from that I am gay, people think it’s outside the norm, that it’s some kind of deviance in that since it would be the conventional behavior as opposed to the deviance.”
M4 “Heterosexuality, the first word that comes to mind is ‘straight-jacket’, and the second word that comes to mind is ‘myth’. I think that there is a heterosexual ideal, that no one really lives up to, even if they think that they do. For me, no one is 100% gay or 100%`straight. For me, it doesn’t seem like human sexuality works like that, the binary. It’s restrictive and unimaginative and denies the richness and fullness of what it is to be human. You can be attracted to men; you can be attractive to woman and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you’re a fag. It doesn’t mean that you’re a breeder; it just means that you’re attracted to someone. Sexuality is important, but only as an expression of love, so if your heterosexual or homosexual, you more often express your sexuality like your expression of love for a particular gender, it’s not really about who you’re fucking, it’s about who you’re falling in love with. And I think that’s a little more balanced than what my dick thinks. It’s about what does my heart think and if am healthy then I can express that through my physical body.”
When talking about the institution of heterosexuality, M4 had very clear ideas on how he was impacted and, as a result, how he views the heterosexual institution of masculinity.
M4 “Heterosexuals are fine, it’s only when especially the institutional masculinity, the hegemonic version of masculinity gets involved that it gets really sick… That’s what I found in the military, a lot of people trying to live up to this masculine ideal and it’s impossible and if it was possible you wouldn’t want it, because there’s no emotion except for anger… Physical strength, heterosexual promiscuity, patriotism is wrapped up in there and a set of ethics that is adhered to all the times, and I don’t think it really matters what the ethics are as long as you have your principles: stoicism, not showing emotion, that’s what it is…as opposed to what I would consider more healthy masculinity, which of course strength is a good quality, patience is a good quality, at the same time feeling the depth of emotion and the depth of love, hope, kindness, courage, no one would say those aren’t masculine. In the Rambo version those don’t exists and if they do exist they should be suppressed.”
The men, at one point or another, had to question heterosexuality and when questioning heterosexuality, did this lead to them questioning their gender identity? For M2, M3 and M4 it did.
M2 “Questioning heterosexuality led to questioning gender identity for me, I guess, but they were very far apart. For a long time I was identifying as a bisexual male, but really only interested in the male side, thinking maybe I’ll go for a female. Then I decided to identify as a gay male, and then I was identifying as queer to be more broad and also pushing my own limits, and then I was considering identifying as trans, because gender, it’s all contrived anyway and everyone’s gender was fluid, so trans made much sense. But I sort of moved away from that label, because I didn’t think it fit. I don’t want to change my sex, I don’t really want to change my gender, I just want to be the gender I am, which is somewhat fluid and morphs’ basically male, with traits that are more neutral and some that are effeminate.”
M3 “I would have to say that I questioned my heterosexuality first and then I started to question my gender identity. I had never seen myself as being feminine in any way or masculine for that matter in that way. I never questioned that aspect of myself. Once I came out and was comfortable being gay, I started being comfortable doing female roles as well. I am a very protective person; I am nurturing; I am a maternal man. I allowed myself to be more maternal. I started working with children. I started cooking and taking care of my friends.
In Colombia we have very fixed stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. Those things are not common at all for a man.”
M4 “Yeah it did [questioning heterosexuality]. For a year or two I wasn’t really sure if I was in the wrong body or not, but doing a little more research I was reassured by the fact that most transsexuals know they are transsexual for a long time. They feel like they are in the wrong body for a long time… so there was a short time I was like maybe I am a woman. And then I worked on that for a while. I am not a woman; I am just not a straight man. That was close to the time I came out, with time and becoming more and more me, feeling more and more what am feeling instead of suppressing everything, it became clear that the version of masculinity that I subscribed to [the hegemonic version] for two decades wasn’t really the fullest version.”
For M1, questioning heterosexuality, lead to greater inquiry of heterosexuality and the impact it was having on himself and others.
M1 “The key when I was coming out, was “come out, come out, come out” and you just leave that behind, you leave your heterosexuality behind and know you’re going to explore it… and finally you’re going to pick up some experience. A lot of people never pick up that experience because they are too afraid…It [heterosexuality] worked but it didn’t work for me. I don’t want to be too mean, but most of the misery…We wouldn’t have had to come out if you didn’t put us in. I knew people who went to mental hospitals because they where gay. I knew people who had lobotomies because they where gay. That’s why I live in San Francisco and never leave.”
For M1, M2 and M3, identifying as gay means certain freedoms, but it also means dealing with negatives imposed on them by other people and society.
M1 “One of the great things that I like about being gay is being able to gender jump, like being able to put your hands up like a hooker on a light poll and acting the fool and being effeminate. What are they going to call me, ‘Queer?’ I know that. Just being able to be… Being gay there are no gender rules…That’s what hurts, heterosexuals inflicting their value system, and sometimes they will do it one way or another. I think being gay is a gift. It gives you perspective on things that other people haven’t got. It gives you a tolerance, if you’re lucky…there is no weight, no special hand shake. Have you ever seen guys hug, one hit on the back, they even have their fucking hugs down to a ritual. I don’t want to live in an environment where the hugs are down to this certain way, ‘you can only hug this way’ and it’s the way that the straight guys and the butch guys hug.
Gag me with a spoon. There is too much structure for them, we’re still finding out who we are.”
M2 “On a basic level it’s about who you’re into. Honestly, I don’t see much difference in my being interested in men and having a great long-term relationship and doing what I do, compared to being interested in women, having a great long-term relationship and doing what I do. But at the same time, it means so many more things, because it means difference, it means all of the history, it means having to come out all the time.
It’s been an issue at the work place. I am out at the place I work now and it’s awesome… Gay means a completely different social circle for many people. I am friends with gay and straight people, but I tend not to be friends with very masculine, macho guys, which is all the things that are typical male things to do, watch sports, drink beer, work on cars. Also a way of talking very masculine, very gruff, I like people who communicate…Gay is a term that had to be reclaimed, and Faggot is getting reclaimed right now, in the community a lot of men call each other fags, which I am still uncomfortable with.”
M3 “Being gay is a way of saying I feel more comfortable dating people from my same sex and I feel more comfortable establishing emotional relationships with them as well. From my own experience I feel that being gay has liberated me a lot, allowed me to explore a lot of aspects that if I would not be gay, I would not have allowed myself to go emotionally…In my personal case I didn’t have a lot of problems being gay. By 19 I was cool with it, but my parents had a lot of problems with it. That shaped what being gay was for me, in a negative way, with a lot of stereotypes and restrictions. For many years I thought that gay people were inferior. My parents told me I would never find a good job because I was gay, so I grew up thinking I was not good enough. That I was never going to be able to achieve my personal dreams or goals because of being gay.”
Indentifying as bisexual for M4 means not having to be restricted.
M4 “I find that straight men are really restricted in their imagination about sex. For me what are really vanilla sex acts really freak straight men out. Like anal play for example is like a really big ‘oh god if you put a finger up there I am going to be gay.’ Straight men, straight women, gay men, gay women, I think straight men have the least fun in bed, because of the gender identity that they subscribe too and the way their sexuality is subscribed too. What they are socialized to accept is extremely restrictive. Everything from watching TV, driving down the road, reading a book, everything has a certain way of doing things. Straight men are told who they should be attracted to at every turn. I find that they are very unimaginative when it comes to their sex lives and it sucks for them. Not to say that it isn’t that way for the other three groups I just outlined, but all I am trying to say is I think straight men have the least fun in bed; maybe straight woman, because they have to have sex with straight men.”
Relationship Dynamics: Gender Roles and Power Dynamics
The journey into one’s sexuality is different for everybody. For M2 and M3, the realization of who they were attracted and drawn to was not easy, having to deal with the struggle of self acceptance.
M2 “When I was younger, like 13ish, I started being attracted to men, but also was interested in woman.
When I was 16 I started coming out to myself and some people; I identified as bisexual. Then I slid along to identifying as gay when I was 19. There was a lot of baggage about that word, that identity. I remember how hard it was to go from being bi to being gay, the negative stigma that gay men have, definitely being gay was looked down on in my mind. At one point I thought if I were gay, it would make all these jobs so hard, it’s not something I liked to identify as, and I may have identified as queer before I identified as gay.”
M3 “I think it was always underlined. When it actually became apparent, when it became real for me, I was 18 years old. I was on a airplane, and I met this man who was about 40 years old, and he fell desperately in love with me. He started courting me, and I thought he was sexy as well, so I decided to leave that airplane with him, get into his car and have, like, real sex. Then after we had sex I actually beat him up, because of how bad I felt. When I was a teenager, we sucked each other but there was no real intercourse. There was no connection that we had. I just felt very wrong about it at that particular time. With his help [his 40 year-old boyfriend], he made me understand there was nothing wrong with being gay. He gave me a lot of love, not only sexual energy but a lot of affection and that actually helped me in that journey of solidifying my position of a gay person. We dated for two years. We had a very strange relationship, because I wasn’t out to my friends, so I always kept on lying to my friends to be with him. I started doing a lot of drugs because I was so confused. So in that sense I would have to change my answer to the previous question and say I did have a problem with being gay at one point. I actually started doing a lot of drugs to sleep that side of me. Not assume it in a sense. So I felt bad going to him, it felt good as well. So it was a very love-hate relationship from my end. Since he was 40 and very established, he could manage it very well.”
M4’s Journey out of heterosexuality helped him reform his self identity and the way he processed emotions and viewed what it is to be a man; allowing him to reassess his role in relationships.
M4 “I started to talk about the friend that I have and the sexual relationship, so after years of that going on, I was dating women on and off, and I was about 22 and I came out, and when I came out there was a female friend of mine I was spending a lot of time with, and one night I just said to her am bisexual. I even came out as bisexual. I didn’t come out as gay, and then very soon after that I found a boyfriend and I was in love with him. When I was having the conversation I was in the military, so everyone knew me as straight, so there was a lot of coming out conversations I had to have, with my parents, with my brother. Every one was super supportive, which is awesome. I could have been a lot less lucky than I was. I would always say, ‘I have a boyfriend,’ and they would say, ‘so you’re gay’ and I would say ‘I guess,’ and that sort of continued. I dated him for three and a half years, broke up with him and five months later I was with a girl. She broke up with me after six months, so now am single. But probably the next person I am going to date will be a female, because I have somebody in mind. Before I came out, the relationships I had with women were just really bad, really bad for her and bad for me, because it