Not Gay Men Who Have Not Gay Sex with Other Not Gay Men

Coming soon from NYU Press...

I've argued for years that straight guys are entitled to the same latitude—or entitled to the same fluidity—as other self-identified monosexuals. A straight girl can mess around with another girl without the whole world insisting she couldn't have done that if she weren't really a lesbian; a lesbian can mess around with a dude now and then and still identify as a dyke; and a gay guy can fuck one or two women over the course of his gay life without having to turn in his gay card. But if a straight guy sucks one cock and gets caught—just that one cock, just that one time—no one will take him seriously when he says he's straight.

Like the joke goes...

Male heterosexuality, in this way, is a lot more fragile than female heterosexuality or male/female homosexuality. But with that said... a lot of the white guys (and a lot of the not-white guys) out there cruising public restrooms, fingering each other's anuses in frat house basements, and seeking other guys to jack off with (for starters) in the M4M sections of Craigslist are closeted gay or possibly/probably closeted bi men. I kept waiting for the word "bisexual" to pop up in the press release for Not Gay but I didn't see it in there. The men Jane Ward studied might not be gay—gayness could be ruled out in some cases—but straight-identified, married-to-women guys who have sex with other men are likelier to be bisexual, closeted or not, than they are to be straight, fluidity or otherwise.

I'm going to get the book and read it with an open mind, of course, but the summary pushed out by NYU Press doesn't inspire confidence.