One of the most annoying threads to emerge from the whole NRL/Cronulla/Matt Johns/Clare/group sex/gang rape discussion a few weeks back was this whole idea that big, bulky, hyper-masculine football players bonding with their friends over group sex was somehow “gay”. (HAHAHA! Because being gay is lame, you know. And girly! And no one wants to be girly.)

In fact, if this article by Nicholas Syrett is anything to go by, it seems to be the opposite.

Syrett argues that the culture of sexual exploitation and assault associated with US fraternity culture (and Australian football culture) grew out of a historically specific to view any closeness or intimacy between men as indicative of latent (or not-so-latent) homosexuality. Thus, men who reside within these cultures began to trade in agressive displays of heterosexuality. Syrett writes:

because fraternities remain organizations made up exclusively of single men, organizations that choose to haze their initiates in explicitly homoerotic ways and that foster an intimacy among men not common in society more generally, they compensate for what might be perceived by outsiders as either feminine or gay behavior by enacting a masculinity that takes aggressive heterosexuality as one of its constitutive elements. This often has adverse effects for the women with whom they interact.

In its milder forms, this might mean trying to date and bed as many women as possible. (And, as Michael Kimmel notes in his excellent 2008 book, Guyland, making sure that those women you do date/bed are desired by your friends. Lest you think this last, rather superficial point, is simply a “guy thing”, rest assured that women do it too, and have for as long as men have.)

In its more offensive forms, it means heavily discouraging ongoing relationships and privileging casual sex, throwing large parties designed to get women drunk and throw them off their guard (making them more likely to have sex with you), and not paying attention when they say (or indicate otherwise) “no”.

But racking up the notches on the bedpost isn’t really about pleasure, or even internal self-esteem - it’s about display. That’s why frat boys gossip about and monitor one another’s “conquests”. It also explains why, like their Australian NRL counterparts, they also sometimes like to watch or join in:

Some fraternity men take pleasure either in watching their brothers have sex with women or in being watched as they do so. One brother interviewed by anthropologist Michael Moffatt for his book Coming of Age in New Jersey put it this way: “When my friends pick up chicks and bring them back to the fraternity house everyone else runs to the window to look at somebody else domineer a girl and I tell you what you almost get the same satisfaction. Some of the guys like to put on a show by doing grosser things each time… . Watching my friends have sex with other girls is almost as satisfying as doing it myself… . By the same token I enjoy conquering girls and having people watch.”

Sound familiar?