Bud-Sex

This study draws on semistructured interviews with 19 white, rural, straight-identified men who have sex with men to understand how they perceive their gender and sexuality. It is among the first to use straight men’s own narratives, and helps address the underrepresentation of rural masculinities research. Through complex interpretive processes, participants reworked non-normative sexual practices—those usually antithetical to rural masculinities—to construct normative masculinity. Most chose other masculine, white, and straight or secretly bisexual men as partners for secretive sex without romantic involvement. By choosing these partners and having this type of sex, the participants normalized and authenticated their sexual encounters as straight and normatively masculine. The participants engaged in bud-sex, a specific type of male–male sex that reinforced their rural masculinity and heterosexuality. The married men framed sex with men as less threatening to marriage than extramarital sex with women, helping to preserve a part of their lives that they described as central to their straightness. The results highlight the flexibility of heterosexuality; the centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity; how similar sexual practices carry different meanings across contexts and populations; and the social construction of masculinities and sexualities by age, race, gender, time period, and place.

[1]  H. Carrillo,et al.  From MSM to heteroflexibilities: Non-exclusive straight male identities and their implications for HIV prevention and health promotion , 2016, Global public health.

[2]  Chelsea Reynolds.  “I Am Super Straight and I Prefer You be Too” , 2015 .

[3]  Sarah Diefendorf.  After the Wedding Night , 2015 .

[4]  J. Fontdevila,et al.  Border crossings and shifting sexualities among Mexican gay immigrant men: Beyond monolithic conceptions , 2014 .

[5]  Miriam J. Abelson.  Men in Context: Transmasculinities and Transgender Experiences in Three US Regions , 2014 .

[6]  J. Dean.  Straights: Heterosexuality in Post-Closeted Culture , 2014 .

[7]  Tristan Bridges.  A Very “Gay” Straight? , 2014 .

[8]  Colin R. Johnson.  Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America , 2013 .

[9]  David A. Moskowitz,et al.  The eroticism of Internet cruising as a self-contained behaviour: a multivariate analysis of men seeking men demographics and getting off online , 2013, Culture, health & sexuality.

[10]  Salvador Vidal‐Ortiz,et al.  Displacing the Dominant “Down Low” Discourse: Deviance, Same-Sex Desire, and Craigslist.org , 2013 .

[11]  Emily Kazyak.  Midwest or Lesbian? Gender, Rurality, and Sexuality , 2012 .

[12]  Alexis Annes,et al.  The Careful Balance of Gender and Sexuality: Rural Gay Men, the Heterosexual Matrix, and “Effeminophobia” , 2012, Journal of homosexuality.

[13]  J. Barnshaw,et al.  The low down on the down low: Origins, risk identification and intervention , 2010 .

[14]  C. Reback,et al.  Maintaining a Heterosexual Identity: Sexual Meanings Among a Sample of Heterosexually Identified Men Who Have Sex with Men , 2010, Archives of sexual behavior.

[15]  H. Campbell,et al.  The question of rural masculinities , 2009 .

[16]  Mary L. Gray.  Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America , 2009 .

[17]  Nancy A. Naples,et al.  The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossings and Mexican Immigrant Men , 2009 .

[18]  Edward W. Morris.  “Rednecks,” “Rutters,” and `Rithmetic , 2008 .

[19]  Amy C. Wilkins,et al.  Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School , 2008 .

[20]  Michael Flood.  Men, Sex, and Homosociality , 2008 .

[21]  Matthew Desmond.  Becoming a firefighter , 2006 .

[22]  R. Connell,et al.  Hegemonic Masculinity , 2005 .

[23]  Meika Loe.  Fixing broken masculinity: Viagra asa technology for the production of gender and sexuality , 2001 .

[24]  W. B. Msw.  Gay Men Living in a Rural Environment , 2001 .

[25]  B. Adam.  Love and Sex in Constructing Identity Among Men Who Have Sex with Men , 2000 .

[26]  Sharon R. Bird,et al.  WELCOME TO THE MEN'S CLUB , 1996 .

[27]  M. Carnes,et al.  Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. , 1995 .

[28]  M. Messner.  “Changing men” and feminist politics in the United States , 1993 .

[29]  P. Rust.  The Politics of Sexual Identity: Sexual Attraction and Behavior among Lesbian and Bisexual Women* , 1992 .

[30]  E. Sedgwick.  Epistemology of the Closet , 1992 .

[31]  D. Britton.  HOMOPHOBIA AND HOMOSOCIALITY , 1990 .

[32]  Arlene Stein,et al.  Three Models of Sexuality: Drives, Identities and Practices , 1989 .

[33]  J. Stacey,et al.  Gender and power : society, the person, and sexual politics , 1988 .

[34]  J. Gagnon,et al.  Sexual scripts: Permanence and change , 1986, Archives of sexual behavior.

[35]  L. Humphreys.  [Tearoom trade. Impersonal sex in public places]. , 1972, Beitrage zur Sexualforschung.

[36]  Will Fellows,et al.  Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men From the Rural Midwest , 2020 .

[37]  Raj Chetty,et al.  The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility: Childhood Exposure Effects and County-Level Estimates , 2015 .

[38]  E. Anderson.  “Being Masculine is not About who you Sleep with...:” Heterosexual Athletes Contesting Masculinity and the One-time Rule of Homosexuality , 2008 .

[39]  L. Diamond.  Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire , 2008 .

[40]  J. Halberstam.  In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives , 2005 .

[41]  S. Seidman.  Beyond the Closet : The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life , 2004 .

[42]  Peter G. Boag.  Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest , 2003 .

[43]  John Howard.  Men Like That: A Southern Queer History , 1999 .

[44]  S. Wilkinson,et al.  Transitions from Heterosexuality to Lesbianism: The Discursive Production of Lesbian Identities. , 1995 .

[45]  Jonathan N. Katz.  The Invention of Heterosexuality , 1995 .