‘Straight with a pinch of bi’: The construction of heterosexuality as an elastic category among adult US men

Abstract

The sexualities of men who have same-sex desires yet identify as straight have attracted significant attention in recent years. We present findings from interviews with 100 such men, whom we recruited while they were seeking sex with men online, and examine the logics that allow them to maintain an identity as straight. Our sample is somewhat unique in that it included men across a wide age range (from 18 to 70), and also because many of our participants are white adult US men who are married or in stable relationships with women. Based on their patterns of sexual interpretation, we discuss how these men make their same-sex desires and behaviours consistent with a primary self-identification as straight. We argue that, in the process of maintaining identities as straight men, they change the definition of heterosexuality, in effect turning it into a considerably elastic category that is perceived as fully compatible with having and enacting same-sex desires.

Keywords

Heteroflexibility logics of self-identification mostly heterosexual sexual orientation straight-identified men

I think I’m straight. From time to time I might get the urge to have sex with a guy, but I’m not attracted to them. (Blaise,¹ age 39, white)

I would say [I’m] straight. I love women. But when they are not available I get head from guys. (Freddie, age 25, Latino/white)

I’m straight but a pervert. A bi guy is just attracted to either or. (Charlie, age 38, white)

In these passages, Blaise, Freddie, and Charlie succinctly explained why they self-identify as straight men in spite of the fact that they engage in sex with men. Within a strict classificatory system that divides people into three groups according to their sexual orientation – heterosexuals, bisexuals, and homosexuals – these men would be classified as bisexual based on their sexual behaviours with women and men. Men such as these ones, however, often find that the label bisexual does not adequately represent them – that being straight is crucial for their sense of who they are as individuals and as men. In this article, we examine the logics that allow adult US men such as Blaise, Freddie, and Charlie to make sense of their same-sex desires and behaviours and make them consistent with a straight sexual orientation. We argue that in the process of interpreting their sexualities, these men change the definition of heterosexuality, in effect turning it into a considerably elastic category.

Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews conducted with 100 men who self-identified as straight, but who were recruited while they were pursuing sexual encounters with men online. Our data show that, contrary to many beliefs and stereotypes about such men, many of them have engaged in considerable reflection about their sexualities and sexual lives, and their reflections have led them to conclude that their self-identification as straight is warranted. In particular, we focus on these men’s interpretations of their sexual self-identification and sexual attractions, the meanings that they assign to their same-sex behaviours, their sense that same-sex behaviours provide them a respite from the everyday pressures of being a man, and the perception that their same-sex behaviours relate to specific sexual fantasies and a desire for experiencing sexual transgression.

Our study is somewhat unique in two significant ways. First, most of the recent studies of men whose sexual identities could be described as ‘mostly heterosexual’ have focused on young, college-age men, leaving the question of whether their experiences and interpretations can be generalized beyond their generation and their particular moment in the life course. By contrast, the men in our sample ranged in age from 18 to 70.

Second, studies of straight-identified MSM (men who have sex with men) that have included older participants have tended to focus on men who are ‘on the down low’, a colloquial term that refers to African American and Latino men’s secretive involvement in sex with men, as well as to those men’s perceived cultural reluctance to adopt bisexual or gay identities. The focus on men of colour, and the perception that the down low is an exclusively African American and Latino phenomenon, has often led to reproducing racial stereotypes (Ford et al., 2007; González, 2007; Malebranche, 2008; Phillips, 2005). By contrast, a majority of the straight-identified men in our study are white, and many are also secretive about their same-sex desires and behaviours, which challenges the notion that the so-called down low is prevalent exclusively among African Americans or Latinos. We begin by providing some background that will help us frame our analysis and findings, followed by a more detailed description of our methods and sample.

Making heterosexuality more elastic

Around the turn of the 21st-century, various labels began to appear in popular and academic discourse to suggest changing contours of heterosexuality. One of the first such terms to surface was ‘heteroflexible’. In an early blog posting entitled ‘Heteroflexibility: The latest semantic ploy to keep sexual options open really pisses me off’, sociologist Laurie Essig (2000) commented that ‘heteroflexible’ generally indicated that a ‘person has or intends to have a primarily heterosexual lifestyle’ but ‘remains open to sexual encounters and even relationships with persons of the same sex’. Essig elaborated: ‘It is a rejection of bisexuality since the inevitable question that comes up in bisexuality is one of preference, and the preference of the heteroflexible is quite clear.’ Such a preference involves retaining a self-identification as heterosexual by thinking of heterosexuality as a flexible sexual orientation category. To be heteroflexible is therefore perceived as the opposite of being heterorigid. It compels a redefinition of heterosexuality, expanding the category to allow some degree of same-sex desires so that individuals who are not exclusively sexually interested in members of the ‘opposite sex’² can continue thinking of themselves as straight or heterosexual.

Around the same time, other similar terms and phrases emerged that were meant to indicate slight departures from heterosexuality that are not significant enough to permanently transfer an individual to the sexual orientation category of bisexuality, including ‘bi-curious’ and, later, ‘mostly straight’ and ‘mostly heterosexual’.³ Behaviourally speaking, however, the sexual desires and behaviours that these terms are meant to describe are not new. The fact that some straight-identified men – or, previously, men who thought of themselves as ‘normal’ or ‘regular’ – engage in sexual interactions with men has been well documented, for example, by the historical research on the sexual cultures of early 20th-century USA. The well-known work by historian George Chauncey described sexual interactions between men who thought of themselves as ‘normal/straight’ and ‘queer/fairies’ during the early decades of the 20th century (Chauncey, 1993, 1994).

Empirical sexuality studies conducted since the 1940s have also documented the participation of straight-identified men in same-sex behaviours. Perhaps most famously, Kinsey et al. (1948) found that more than one in three of the men in their sample had engaged in homosexual behaviours at some point in their lifetime. The degree of behavioural variation that they detected led them to propose the idea of a sexual continuum – which took the form of the well-known Kinsey scale – that classified men into seven categories, ranging from those who had exclusive heterosexual behaviours (a zero in the scale) to those who exclusively engaged in homosexual behaviours (a six on the scale).⁴ Other scholars later identified and described situational male homosexuality: the occurrence of sex between men who are confined in all-male spaces, such as prisons and all-male schools (Kunzel, 2002). Still others have studied the sexualities of men who lived heterosexual lives but pursued sex with men in public sex venues (including public restrooms or ‘tea rooms’; Humphreys, 1970), or have described how straight-identified men use economic considerations to justify their participation in male-male pornography (Escoffier, 2003).

The emergence of terms such as heteroflexible and bi-curious at the beginning of the 21st century possibly signalled a shift in sexual attitudes in a younger generation of Americans (in her piece, Essig (2000) was reacting to the ease with which her college students publicly used the term heteroflexible in describing their own sexualities; see also Kelleher and Smith, 2012; Savin-Williams, 2005). These new terms and labels of sexual identity seemed to represent a renewed sense of sexual identity among straight people who have same-sex desires, and possibly also their search for public recognition and social acceptance of their non-normative heterosexual lifestyles. At the same time, by not adopting the label ‘bisexual’ those youths also signalled that their sexual interest in both women and men need not transfer them out of the heterosexual category; they sought to indicate that same-sex desires and behaviours are not altogether incompatible with heterosexuality.

For instance, in a study of young American college male soccer players Anderson and Adams (2011) reported that although their participants accepted bisexuality as a legitimate category and an alternative for some people (although few actually knew any bisexually-identified people), they also believed that having some degree of same-sex attraction did not automatically transfer a person to the bisexual or gay categories.⁵ This was occurring in a context of what these scholars describe as decreasing ‘homohysteria’ among American youth, which may explain why some increasingly believed that it would be fine for a straight man to acknowledge having sexual interest in men. Finally, this study’s participants saw bisexuality as a slightly problematic category because they perceived it as devoid of emotional attachment (compared to being straight or gay), and a category that overly emphasizes the physicality of sexual interactions. Such emphasis, they felt, makes bisexuality less attractive as an identity than the more encompassing identities gay and straight.

Around the same time scholars began to report evidence of yet another emerging notion, represented by the terms ‘mostly straight’ and ‘mostly heterosexual’ (Cohen and Savin-Williams, 2010; Savin-Williams et al., 2012; Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013; Thompson and Morgan, 2008; Vrangalova and Savin-Williams, 2012). These terms are increasingly being conceived in scholarly work as an additional category of sexual orientation that is distinct from both heterosexuality and bisexuality.

This idea is well illustrated by Savin-Williams and Vrangalova (2013) in a review article entitled ‘Mostly heterosexual as a distinct sexual orientation group: A systematic review of the empirical evidence’. As this title suggests, these scholars emphasized the notion of mostly heterosexual as a category that is altogether separate from heterosexuality. In their analysis, they ‘found support for the claim that mostly heterosexuals form a unique sexual orientation group from four separate sources of evidence: sexual orientation profiles, prevalence, stability, and subjective relevance’. Their analysis led Savin-Williams and Vrangalova to conclude that:

Specifically, mostly heterosexuals of both sexes and across developmental ages revealed a distinctive sexual orientation profile – they were more same-sex oriented than heterosexuals, but less so than bisexuals, in their sexual/romantic attraction, fantasy, behaviour, and physiological arousal. (Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013: 76)

These scholars also assessed that mostly heterosexuals are the ‘most numerous nonheterosexual group, often larger than all other nonheterosexual groups combined’ (p. 76). Furthermore, they also found that ‘qualitative accounts of those who identified as mostly heterosexual portrayed individuals with a sexual identity that felt authentic, genuine, and accurate’, stressing that ‘assessments that failed to include a mostly heterosexual option were criticized by youth as inappropriate to capture an understanding of their sexual self’ (Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013: 76–7).

As noted in this last quotation, a majority of participants in the research that Savin-Williams and Vrangalova reviewed were youths. Moreover, based on what they saw as limited data on older groups they assessed that identifying as mostly heterosexual may be ‘significantly less common in later adulthood’ (Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013: 81). Also noteworthy is the fact that several of the studies referenced ‘found individuals who, even when given the opportunity to select a mostly heterosexual identity, classified themselves as heterosexual and then reported some non-zero same-sex sexuality’ (Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013: 78).

In fact, Ward (2015) has demonstrated that the idea that white men can be strictly heterosexual while having and enacting same-sex desires has considerable cultural salience in mainstream American society. Based on analysis of a range of practices and cultural expressions in the USA throughout the 20th century, including online ads posted by straight white men in the Craigslist Casual Encounters website, Ward argued that the enactment of same-sex physicality plays an important role in fostering the sense of what being a heterosexual man is all about. Ward (2015: 4) concluded that homosexuality is a ‘vital ingredient’ and a ‘constitutive element’ of heterosexual masculinity, even when heterosexual men who engage in same-sex behaviours must carefully manage those behaviours – using ‘pretense, disidentification, and heteronormative investments’ as strategies to make same-sex behaviours consistent with a heterosexual identity.

Ward’s analysis is particularly helpful for our purposes, both in its focus on a broader age range, and in its rejection of the idea of the down low as something specific to racial and ethnic minority cultures. What Ward did not do, however, is interact with straight-identified men one-on-one in order to learn directly from them how they make their sexual identities consistent with their same-sex desires, behaviours, and attractions. That is where the present work comes in. As our own findings will show, even when adult men such as Blaise, Freddie, and Charlie, quoted at the beginning of the article, have begun to (sometimes reluctantly) adopt secondary terms and descriptors as part of their self-identification, the logics of their sexual interpretations still strongly align them with the idea that they are essentially and primarily heterosexual. Moreover, they see themselves as being in many ways no different than other heterosexual men, in spite of their same-sex desires, and behaviours.

Methods

During the first phase of a two-phase study, we interviewed 100 US men recruited in the ‘Men4Men (relationships)’ and ‘Men4Men (casual encounters)’ sections of Craigslist.org, a popular online personals website where people seek friendships, relationships, or sex. We chose this recruitment method because for many straight-identified men the internet has become the preferred venue for hooking up with other men (Ross et al., 2005; Ward, 2008). Men who expressed interest were directed to our study website and asked to fill out a short screener to determine eligibility. We sought men who self-identified as straight, had experienced same-sex desires after the age of 13, and were 18 or older.

The interviews were conducted by three female interviewers, primarily using an online chat function. Before the interview, participants were asked to provide informed consent and also filled out a short demographic survey. Online interviews lasted between 120 and 210 minutes, often including long pauses during which participants attended to other personal matters.⁶ Among other topics, we asked participants about their sexual identities; sex lives, partners, and relationships; sexual desires, practices, and fantasies; and how they manage their same-sex desires. As indicated in Table 1, these men’s ages ranged from 18 to 70 and were well distributed within that span. Seventy-eight were white, 11 Latino, five African American, three Native American, two Asian American, and one Middle Eastern/white. Fifty-nine were or had been in relationships with women, including 38 who were married to a woman.

Table 1.

Demographics (N = 100)

Age
18–29	26
30–49	46
50–70	28
Race/ethnicity
White	78
Latino	11
African American	5
Native American	3
Asian American	2
Middle Eastern/white	1
Relationship status with women
Single	38
Stable relationship	18
Married	38
Divorced	2
Widowed	1
Declined to answer	3

During a second phase we recruited and interviewed 19 gay men and 21 women who had sexual or romantic relations with straight-identified men who have same-sex desires. For the purposes of this article, however, we focus almost exclusively on the interviews with straight-identified men. We only draw a few selected quotations from our interviews with gay male partners.

Data analysis

We analysed patterns of lived experience and interpretation using Atlas.ti, a software package for qualitative analysis that helped us organize and code our data. Based on initial reading of our interviews, we created approximately 20 codes for each set of interviews. Three coders independently coded a sample of transcripts, achieving an average rate of 82% inter-coder reliability. This was calculated based on the number of times that all coders assigned the same codes to specific text passages (Miles and Huberman, 1994). We then proceeded to code all interviews and conducted thematic searches to identify patterns in the data, as well as disconfirming cases. We also re-contextualized selected quotations in relation to the individual cases from which they were drawn.

The contours of male heteroflexibilities

Self-identification

The 100 men in phase one self-identified as straight at the time that we recruited them. However, more nuanced patterns emerged over the course of their interviews. Fifty confirmed that they exclusively self-identify as straight. The rest also described themselves using secondary labels. Among them, 23 used a range of terms and descriptors that indicate a sense of heterosexuality as a flexible category, 27 indicated that they might privately call themselves bisexual, and one described himself as gay. These patterns suggest that, beyond a primary and public self-identification as straight, these men often also hold a more specific and private sense of their location across an imagined spectrum of sexual orientation that includes heterosexuality on one end, homosexuality on the other, and bisexuality in the middle.

Many participants, however, perceived that in spite of increasing acceptance of sexual diversity, these three categories do not have equal social status. Thus, they generally saw no social advantages to abandoning the identities as straight into which they were socialized, and their narratives made clear that they perceived a very strong social pull toward the heterosexual side. As Frank (24, white) put it, ‘Who wouldn’t prefer a hetero lifestyle? It is what is expected of us by the society at large.’ They also felt that being straight is the only way of being that they know how to perform. Bradley (21, white), for instance, explained that he has identified as straight all his life, ‘since I was born, or rather, since I knew what being straight was’, and Devon (39, white) indicated that ‘society teaches people to be straight and it messes a lot of people up in the process… you could say I was bi… but often times I tell people that and five minutes later they are telling someone I am GAY’. Implicitly, these men felt that adopting a label other than ‘straight’ would result in a loss of the privileges associated with heterosexuality. Moreover, as we will see later, they believed that their identifying as straight is legitimate because they are primarily attracted to women.

Some were willing to depart from a strict identification as straight as long as ‘straight’ or ‘heterosexual’ was still part of the equation. They used a range of labels and descriptors (summarized in Table 2), including ‘heteroflexible’ (Miles, 30, white; and Corey, 24, white), ‘mostly heterosexual,’ (Sterling, 34, white), ‘bi-curious, but mostly straight’ (Sean, 34, white), ‘straight with bi tendencies’ (Travis, 20, white), ‘straight with a pinch of bi’ (Peter, 40, white), and ‘straight with a little weirdness from time to time’ (Lawrence, 57, white). Asked if he thought his sexual behaviours are in fact weird, Lawrence responded that he sees them as ‘off the common path. I don’t think of any of it as harmful; but private, yes’. Rather than seeing their sex with men as just a behaviour, as some of the men who think of themselves as strictly straight do, men who adopted secondary descriptors aimed to somehow incorporate their same-sex desires into their identities.

Others went further and saw their same-sex desires as significant enough for them to privately think of themselves as bisexual. As Simon (27, white) put it:

I think everybody is a little bi. Isn’t that what this research is about? There’s the Kinsey scale… It’s not like Bush saying you’re either with us or with the terrorists. I think I’m probably bi but what I present to the world is a heterosexual man. Internally I’m bi, but that’s not something most people know. I’m not ashamed, but the majority of people are ignorant and close-minded.

Table 2.

Sexual identity (N = 100)^a

Exclusive self-identification as straight or heterosexual		50
Self-identification as straight or heterosexual plus secondary descriptors ^b		50
Bisexual/privately bisexual	27
Bi-curious	9
Mostly heterosexual/straight	3
With bi tendencies	2
75–80% straight	1
Curious	1
Experimenting	1
Gay	1
Hetero-curious	1
Heteroflexible	1
Leaning toward bi	1
Maybe bi	1
Queer	1
Somewhat bi	1
Straight-curious	1

All 100 participants were initially recruited as being straight or heterosexual

Although 50 individuals used secondary descriptors, two of them used two (bi-curious/mostly straight, and bisexual/queer), with the result that the total frequency of secondary descriptors in this table is 52.

Such men believed that bisexuality is common, and they did not struggle with the idea of being bisexual, but they also believed that the outside world would not understand them if they publicly called themselves bisexual. They imagined identifying as bisexual only in certain situations, most often in the context of their sexual interactions with men. Dustin (28, white) said, ‘I am not openly bisexual to society except in sexual situations… I don’t have relationships with men; I am in a relationship with my wife and only love her. [I’m bisexual] only with men behind closed doors.’

Only a few claimed that, given the right situation, they might be willing to publicly self-identify as bisexual, disclosing also to female partners. For instance, Ethan (38, white) participated in a threesome involving his wife and another man, which made it possible for him to tell his wife that he is bisexual. She concurred with this belief, and Ethan felt that she liked the idea of his being bisexual, since ‘she brings it up when [she] gets aroused’. Peter, who self-described as ‘straight with a pinch of bi’, also said that he would say that he is bisexual ‘if asked by someone I’m comfortable with’.

In our analysis of self-identification (as well as in our analyses of sexual attraction and behaviour), we looked for differences within our sample according to age. Interestingly, we did not identify any noteworthy differences that depended on the age of our participants.

Linking self-identification to sexual attraction

As part of their self-identification as straight, for many of our participants it is of utmost importance to assert that they are primarily attracted to women and not to men. Sean (34, white) justified his identification as ‘bi-curious but also straight’ in these terms:

If I’m out in a social situation, I’m almost 100% looking at women, and not at men… Bisexual is closer to 50/50 in terms of attraction to both sexes… Bi-curious, to me, tends to be more attracted to the opposite sex and more likely not openly identifying as interested in homosexual sex.

Sean also stressed that his primary attraction to women is permanent, and distanced himself from ‘people who identify as bi-curious who are on their way to being openly bisexual or even openly gay or exclusively homosexual’.

Others argued that they have no attraction to men at all, in spite of the fact that they engage in sex with men. As Reggie (28, African American,) put it:

I know what I like. I like pussy. I like women… the more the merrier… I would kiss a woman. ANYWHERE. I can barely hug a man… I do have a healthy sexual imagination and wonder about other things in the sexual realm I’ve never done… Sometimes I get naughty and explore… That’s how I see it.

By interpreting his same-sex desires as the result of naughtiness and sexual exploration, Reggie rationalized that he is not attracted to men and that his sexual activity with men is not self-defining. Similarly Charlie (32, white) stated:

Women are hot… I can see a beautiful woman walk down the street and I instantly can become hard and get horny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy walking by and got a boner. Also, I would not want to kiss or make out with them or love them. They would be more like a sexual experience.

As Charlie’s comment suggests, for some of these men, whether they feel that they are sexually attracted to someone or not depends not only on a sense of physical attraction, but also emotional attraction. Indeed, a measure of their lack of sexual attraction to men was the frequent perception that they could fall in love with a woman but not with a man (on this issue see also Reback and Larkins, 2010). For instance, Ajay (22, Asian American) stated: ‘I can’t see myself with a guy in anything more than sex, and lately it’s with me getting head. With a girl I can see myself [spending] the rest of my life.’ Similarly, Gus (27, white) felt ‘no craving for anything long term’ involving a man, ‘there’s no wanting to be emotionally intimate’, and Freddie (25, Latino/white) went further by saying: ‘I don’t enjoy [being with] men. I use them, I guess you would say. I would describe a bisexual as someone who likes guys and girls, not just one, and I only really like women.’ For men such as Freddie, men are purely sexual objects.

Paradoxically, although sex with men can be arousing and exciting, for some of these men it does not involve a sexual attraction toward male bodies. In Josh’s words (21, white), ‘I could never really be attracted to a male body, well most of the time I would say. Just everything that makes up the human body, face, legs, etc.’ And Rodolfo (22, Latino) likewise stated: ‘I never feel attracted to men physically, never have I looked at a guy and say, “wow, good looking guy.” It is more about the sex part.’

To be sure, a few acknowledged having some level of physical attraction toward men, but they saw such attraction as highly conditional and bounded to very specific ‘types’ (compared to women, for whom their attraction is automatic and generalized). Joseph (64, white), in a manner reminiscent of the research by Ward (2008, 2015), strictly preferred ‘boy-next-door, jock types. No beards, goatees, moustaches, piercings, etc. Tattoos are ok if they are small.’ He also rejected effeminate men. Others were equally specific: ‘Tall, fit to average; a little hair on the chest and crotch; very well hung; uncut; big balls. Ethnicity is white or black usually; all of them very hygienic and clean’ (Matt, 41, white) or ‘masc men that are younger (25–40), [and] that are not overweight’ (Alexander, 52, white).

Some men distinguished between attraction to men and attraction to penises, which they believed are two very different things. They felt that male bodies do not arouse them, but penises do. Ajay (22, Asian American) was motivated to have sex with men ‘mostly [because of] their cock. Every time I did anything with a guy it mostly depended on their cocks. I didn’t really care what they looked like.’ And Josh (21, white) saw a penis as an improvement over a dildo. ‘There’s just something about the living male penis that is much hotter than a toy made out of some material made to look or slightly feel like the male penis’, said Josh. In a similar vein, Sam (42, white) said, ‘these playmates are only living and breathing dildos’. This emphasis on the attractiveness of penises also made pre-op transgender women perfect partners for some of these men. For instance, Josh (21, white) liked trans women who have ‘the features of a girl’s body… and the most “exciting” part of a guy’.

That men were able to recognize being attracted to the penis as the only salient feature of the male body, as something better than a sex toy (‘a living dildo’), or even as an exciting part of a non-male body, but at the same time denied being attracted to men, suggests the intricate interpretations that these men must make to convince themselves that they are indeed straight. Bisexuals and gays are attracted to men, and could fall in love with a man, but not them. This idea was further confirmed by the less typical case of Byron (43, white), who said that he started thinking of himself as possibly bisexual ‘when I realized I could have romantic feelings for a guy… the difference for me [was] when being with a man was no longer merely about sex with a man’. Finally, our participants’ sense of their primary attraction to women is also indirectly reflected in their estimates of the lifetime number of sexual partners, which appear in Table 3.

Table 3.

Reported number of sexual partners (N = 100)

Estimated # of lifetime female sexual partners
0	4
1	5
2–10	26
11–50	47
>50	18
Estimated # of lifetime male sexual partners
0	9
1	8
2–10	48
11–50	22
>50	12
Declined to answer	1

Same-sex behaviours and their meanings

In terms of their sexual behaviours with men, our straight-identified participants most commonly reported receiving or giving oral sex (see Table 4). A smaller number reported engaging in anal intercourse, which suggests the possibility that some carefully limit their same-sex sexual repertoire as an identity-management strategy. This idea was expressed by some gay male partners interviewed during the second phase of our study, who explained the reluctance of their straight partners to engage in anal intercourse in terms of the practice’s symbolic association with gayness. For instance, Stewart (46, white), discussing a straight partner who refused to have anal sex, observed: ‘He always said that that didn’t interest him at all. But I honestly think it was that he considered [it] to be “too” gay for him.’ Similarly, Graham (27, white) stated that:

… some guys want to try everything, but I’d say 95% of the guys I’ve been with I knew identified as straight absolutely refuse receiving anal sex. I’m just speculating here, but I think that’s the line between gay behaviour and straight behaviour for them.

Table 4.

Reported sexual behaviours with men^a

Oral sex (mouth/penis)
Receiving	59
Giving	53
Fantasies only	3
Anal intercourse
Receiving	34
Giving	20
Fantasies only	5
Other sexual practices
Mutual masturbation (including group masturbation)	22
Cybersex and masturbating to male sexual imagery	3
Receiving erotic massage	2
Anal play and rimming	5

Participants could report more than one behaviour, so the frequencies do not add to 100.

Interestingly, among those straight participants who engaged in anal intercourse with men, more reported being penetrated than penetrating, which raises questions about the perceived association between being penetrated and gayness that Graham noted.

Several straight-identified participants felt compelled, nonetheless, to minimize the significance of their sex with men and highlight the satisfaction they received in their sex with women (and this works as a corollary to their sense of their exclusive sexual attraction to women). For instance, Shaun (30, white) described receiving oral sex from a male partner, but clarified, ‘odd… it wasn’t the same afterglow that I would have with a woman… the feel good feeling after sex’. This male partner made him ‘cum harder, [but] afterward it was odd shifting back to guy talk’. And, when this man made a move toward initiating anal intercourse, Shaun stopped him. ‘He situated me to put his cock into my ass, and I couldn’t do it’. Similarly, Miles (30, white) described enjoying ‘anal play [with men]… both giving and receiving, toys and also participating in anal sex’. Yet he added: ‘I’ve given oral-anal sex, though I don’t have the same enthusiasm for it as I do giving women oral-genital contact’.

Finally, some straight men who fantasized about being anally penetrated by a man acknowledged having been anally penetrated by women using dildos. Matt (41, white), for instance, had asked his wife to use a dildo on him, and after they divorced, he began to use dildos on himself. ‘I imagine that must be similar to what it really feels like’, he added, suggesting that he had reflected on the possibility of experiencing being penetrated by a live penis.

Masculinity, fantasy, secrecy, and transgression

Beyond the various issues that we have discussed so far, our participants sometimes expressed enjoying sex with men because of the secrecy, transgressions, and sexual fantasies involved. Those aspects of their sexual interactions with men explained for them why they are drawn to seeking sex with men even when they are not attracted to them. Josh (21, white), for instance, mentioned that ‘the thought of having sex with a guy is a big turn on, maybe ’cause it’s so taboo’. Gerard (57, white) emphasized that none of his friends, including his girlfriend of 14 years, ‘know that I sometimes like to stroke with a guy. I think that’s part of the attraction… that’s it’s a secret’. And Jonathan (26, white) emphasized the pleasure of fantasizing about the forbidden: ‘I think it’s just [in] the fantasy world… basically like you can think about stealing all day long, but you aren’t a thief until you do it’.

Some straight men also reported enjoying sex with men because it allows them to suspend social expectations about masculinity. Twenty-seven mentioned a desire to be dominated, and most among them thought that can be most thoroughly achieved in sexual interactions with men. Matt (41, white) described himself as ‘an alpha male in a male dominated profession… I am aggressive, a decision maker. Masculine means the ability to do guy stuff and be strong… fix things, be brave, provide’. He often fantasized about sex with men who are more masculine than he is, ‘maybe because I am always in charge in my real life’. In a similar vein, Russell (54, white) poignantly said:

For most of my sex life I’m in control of things. I’m not a boss at work anymore but I’ve been in situations where I’ve managed a hundred people at a time. I take care of my family. I take care of my kids. I’m a good father. I’m a good husband in providing material things for my wife… I’m in charge in a lot of places… There’s times when I don’t want to be in charge and I want someone to be in charge of me… that’s what brings me over [to] the bisexuals… it’s kind of submitting to another guy or being used by another guy.

In these and other cases, sex with men provided a respite from the pressures of being a man, a much desired space where men felt they could suspend social expectations about being in charge, as well as enjoy the pleasures of being dominated. Interestingly, being dominated by a man seemed to them less threatening than being dominated by a steady female partner, perhaps because it could be construed as a temporary fantasy, instead of meaning a permanent change in the gender balance.

Discussion and conclusion

For most of the men in our primary study, being straight is a crucial aspect of their identities. Our findings show that they are motivated to maintain identities as straight in part because they see no real personal or social advantages that would stem from publicly adopting an identity as bisexual or gay. So, within what they imagine to be a continuum of sexual orientation, they believe that they fit best at the heterosexual end, or very close to it. Moreover, they are able to sustain their straight identities by relying on multiple indicators that tell them that their choice is fully justified.

Those indicators include the following: They interpret that they are exclusively or primarily attracted to women, and many also conclude that they have no sexual attraction to men in spite of their desire to have sex with men. They define sexual attraction as a combination of physical and emotional attraction, and they assess that their interest in women includes both, while their interest in men is purely or mainly sexual, not romantic or emotional. Moreover, some perceive that they are not drawn toward male bodies in the same way as they are drawn to female bodies, and some observe that the only physical part of a man that interests them is his penis. Men in the latter group do not find men handsome or attractive, but they do find penises attractive, and they thus see penises as ‘living dildos’ or, in other words, disembodied objects of desire that provide a source of sexual pleasure. Finally, as a management strategy for judging that their sexual interest in women is greater and more intense than their interest in men, they sometimes limit their repertoires of same-sex sexual practices or interpret them as less important than their sexual practices with women. That way, they can tell themselves that their sexual interest in women is unbounded, while their sexual interest in men is not.

All this contributes to their sense that they qualify as being called straight or heterosexual, even when some also recognize that their sexualities do indeed differ from exclusive heterosexuality, which in turn leads them to adopt secondary descriptors of their sexual identities. As indicated by the variety of terms that they used, those descriptors often reinforce a perception that, as a sexual orientation category, heterosexuality is elastic instead of rigid – that some degree of same-sex desire and behaviour need not automatically push an individual out of the heterosexual category. And while some men are willing to recognize that their sexual behaviours might qualify their being called bisexual – and they may privately identify with that label – they feel that there is no contradiction between holding a private awareness of being bisexual and a public persona as straight or heterosexual. Again, this conclusion is strengthened by a lack of social incentives to adopt bisexual identities.

Ultimately, a majority of the straight-identified men in our study do not see their sexualities as distinct from those of other straight men, and for many of them any suggestion that their same-sex desires would transfer them to an altogether different category of sexual orientation would be unlikely to be received as an attractive proposition. Our findings thus raise questions about whether the construction of a category of ‘mostly heterosexual’ as a distinct and separate sexual orientation would be welcomed by these men and seen as adequately representing their sexualities. Our sense is that many would probably reject the idea of being reclassified and transferred to a separate category, which is in part why they have rejected a public identification as bisexual in the first place.

In studies that revealed greater willingness to adopt the term ‘mostly heterosexual’, prevalence of the term was higher among young adults and college students (Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013: 74). Their willingness to openly and publicly identify as mostly heterosexual may possibly reflect generational shifts in sexual attitudes and what Anderson has called ‘the fall of Western homohysteria’ (Anderson, 2011; see also McCormack and Anderson, 2014), and may also tell us something about the situational context of colleges and universities. As we noted, we did not find important differences by age in our sample with regard to self-identification. In our study, men across all ages self-identified primarily as straight. Even among those who also used a secondary descriptor, only three also called themselves ‘mostly heterosexual’ or ‘mostly straight’.

This brings us to some observations about the construction of mostly heterosexual as a distinct sexual orientation category. Scholars who propose that idea see it primarily as a research tool – as a way to ensure that future sexuality studies can count on having better analytical tools to assess sexual orientation – and clearly they are not motivated by a desire to impose a new identity category that would merely push everyone who has same-sex desires out of the category of heterosexuality (Savin-Williams and Vrangalova, 2013; Vrangalova and Savin-Williams, 2012). Furthermore, they also recognize that specific categories of sexual orientation represent discrete points along a continuum that may not adequately classify or encapsulate all individuals who have particular sexual desires or behaviours.

We worry, however, that if mostly heterosexual becomes deployed as a distinct category of sexual orientation, it could easily become normative in the public realm and come to be seen as the depository for anyone who is not strictly heterosexual or who self-identifies as bisexual. In other words, the category could potentially be used to reinforce what Anderson (2008) has called a ‘one-time rule’ that would automatically exclude any and all individuals who enact same-sex desires from the realm of heterosexuality, regardless of their own self-identification. Our concern is that, if this were to happen, it could alienate individuals who believe that their same-sex desires do not make them sufficiently different from other straight-identified people to warrant being transferred to a different category. In other words, we fear that mostly heterosexual could end up becoming as controversial a category as bisexuality.

We concur with Ward (2015) that a productive alternative would be to view same-sex desires as a constitutive part of heterosexuality. Her analysis supports our finding that it would be beneficial to view heterosexuality as a more elastic category than has been typically assumed. This in turn raises new questions about the broader implications of such elasticity. In particular, it remains unclear whether more flexible interpretations of heterosexuality end up reinforcing heteronormativity (and hegemonic masculinity) or challenging it, and it could be that different enactments have divergent outcomes in this regard.⁷ Our data indicate that both reinforcement and challenge may be occurring simultaneously. For example, some of our participants expressed that they see no advantage to abandoning the privileges of being seen as heterosexual at the same time as they view the idea of adopting secondary labels of identity (though sometimes only privately) as sexually enlightening.

In relation to race, our findings challenge the notion that the phenomenon of the down low, and the secrecy that is associated with it, is prevalent exclusively among men of colour. Most of the straight-identified men in our study are white, many are married to or in stable relationships with women, and many carefully manage to whom they disclose their same-sex desires and behaviours. This pattern is consistent with the wave of white religious figures and politicians in the United States who in recent years have been found to secretly engage in same-sex behaviours, many of whom were publicly antigay. Indeed, our white participants rely on interpretations that may reflect a mainstream sexual culture that still devalues non-heterosexual identities and behaviours (see Ward, 2015).

Finally, our findings confirm how important it is to consider sociocultural meanings, contextual and situational factors, and historical contingencies in analyses of sexual orientation and sexualities more generally. Our hope is that as popular interpretations and scientific analyses of sexual diversity move forward, the effects of social, cultural, and historical contingencies, such as the ones that are highlighted by our findings, can be given the full attention that they deserve.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Our special thanks go to our study participants. We are grateful to our research team, especially to Christine Wood and Pavithra Prasad for conducting and coding interviews. Our thanks also go to Steven Epstein for commenting on drafts of this article, to Mark McCormack for shepherding this special issue, and to the journal's reviewers for their insightful comments.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB) and the Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN).

Notes

Héctor Carrillo is Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University and principal investigator of Project Teal.

Amanda Hoffman received a Master’s degree in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University where she studied the experiences of heterosexual-identified men seeking sex with men. Following graduation, she became the project director for Project Teal.

References

Anderson

(2008) ‘Being masculine is not about who you sleep with … ’: Heterosexual athletes contesting masculinity and the one-time rule of homosexuality. Sex Roles 58: 104–115.

Anderson

(2011) The rise and fall of Western homohysteria. Journal of Feminist Scholarship 1: 80–94.

Anderson

(2012) Shifting masculinities in Anglo-American countries. Masculinity and Social Change 1(1): 40–60.

Anderson

Adams

(2011) ‘Aren’t we all a little bisexual?’: The recognition of bisexuality in an unlikely place. Journal of Bisexuality 11(1): 3–22.

Chauncey

(1994) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, New York: Basic Books.

Chauncey

(1993 [1985]) Christian brotherhood or sexual perversion? Homosexual identities and the construction of sexual boundaries in the World War I era. In: Melosh

(ed.) Gender and American History since 1890, New York: Routledge, pp. 72–105.

Cohen KM and RC Savin-Williams (2010) Can men have sex with men and still call themselves straight? Available at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148876/can_men_have_sex_with_men_and_still_call_themselves_straight (accessed 28 February 2015).

Dean

(2014) Straights: Heterosexuality in Post-Closeted Culture, New York: New York University Press.

Escoffier

(2003) Gay-for-pay: Straight men and the making of gay pornography. Qualitative Sociology 26(4): 531–555.

10.

Essig L (2000) Heteroflexibility: The latest semantic ploy to keep sexual options open really pisses me off. Available at: http://www.salon.com/2000/11/15/heteroflexibility (accessed 28 February 2015).

11.

Ford

Whetten

Hall

Kaufman

Thrasher

(2007) Black sexuality, social construction, and research targeting ‘the down low’ (‘the DL’). Annals of Epidemiology 17: 209–216.

12.

González

(2007) Latinos on ‘da down low’: The limitations of sexual identity in public health. Latino Studies 5: 25–52.

13.

Humphreys

(1970) Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, Chicago, IL: Aldine Publications.

14.

Kelleher

Smith

(2012) Growing support for gay and lesbian equality since 1990. Journal of Homosexuality 59(9): 1307–1326.

15.

Kinsey

Pomeroy

Martin

(1948) Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders Company.

16.

Kunzel

(2002) Situating sex: Prison sexual culture in the mid-twentieth-century United States. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8: 253–270.

17.

Malebranche

(2008) Bisexually active black men in the United States and HIV: Acknowledging more than the ‘down low’. Archives of Sexual Behaviour 37: 810–816.

18.

McCormack

Anderson

(2014) The influence of declining homophobia on men’s gender in the United States: An argument for the study of homohysteria. Sex Roles 71: 109–120.

19.

McCormack

Wignall

Anderson

(2015) Identities and identifications: Changes in metropolitan bisexual men’s attitudes and experiences. Journal of Homosexuality 15(1): 3–20.

20.

Miles

Huberman

(1994) Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

21.

Phillips

(2005) Deconstructing ‘down low’ discourse: The politics of sexuality, gender, race, AIDS, and anxiety. Journal of African American Studies 9(2): 3–15.

22.

Reback

Larkins

(2010) Maintaining a heterosexual identity: Sexual meanings among a sample of heterosexually identified men who have sex with men. Archives of Sexual Behaviour 39: 766–773.

23.

Ross

Månsson

S-A

Daneback

Tikkanen

(2005) Characteristics of men who have sex with men on the internet but identify as heterosexual, compared with heterosexually identified men who have sex with women. Cyberpsychology & Behaviour 8(2): 131–139.

24.

Savin-Williams

(2005) The New Gay Teenager, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

25.

Savin-Williams

Vrangalova

(2013) Mostly heterosexual as a distinct sexual orientation group: A systematic review of the empirical evidence. Developmental Review 33: 58–88.

26.

Savin-Williams

Joyner

Rieger

(2012) Prevalence and stability of self-reported sexual orientation identity during young adulthood. Archives of Sexual Behaviour 41: 103–110.

27.

Thompson

Morgan

(2008) ‘Mostly straight’ young women: Variations in sexual behaviour and identity development. Developmental Psychology 44(1): 15–21.

28.

Vrangalova

Savin-Williams

(2012) Mostly heterosexual and mostly gay/lesbian: Evidence for new sexual orientation identities. Archives of Sexual Behaviour 41: 85–101.

29.

Ward

(2008) Dude-sex: White masculinities and ‘authentic’ heterosexuality among dudes who have sex with dudes. Sexualities 11(4): 414–434.

30.

Ward

(2015) Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men, New York: New York University Press.