Productive pleasures across binary regimes: Phenomenologies of bisexual desires among Latino men

Abstract

Modern orders were founded on the repudiation of sexual ambiguity and the confinement of desire within discursive classifications of man/woman and hetero/homosexual binaries. However, the persistence of bisexual practices reveals the unstable nature of these modern binary regimes, which require the “erasure” of bisexuality to perpetuate their status quo. Yet some men negotiate their bisexual desires in productive ways without undermining their sense of masculinity and sexual agency. Based on qualitative interviews I explore the sexualities of a group of these men—Latino men who have sex with men and women in southern California. I find that sex with women involves interactional work that is more demanding on impression management and moral grounds. Sex with men is rougher, adventurous, and less restrained. I conclude that sex with men opens liminal spaces that resist binary definition and are less discursively regulated—relative “anti-structures” à la Victor Turner that decouple agency from (hetero)structure. This transgressive liminality is key to understanding these same-sex spaces' recurrent attraction and productive pleasure. The study challenges monolithic understandings of migrant sexualities by finding great diversity among non-gay identified men, including homoerotic practices combined with strong desire for women.

Keywords

Bisexuality critical heterosexualities homoerotic Latino sexualities liminality

Introduction

… Only to [gay friends] can one explain how one lives, get it all out … one cannot just talk to any person about it. However, I have left many [gay] friends because then they argue with me, they tell me “… that you are gay, that you don't accept yourself,” and I respond to them “I am not, I am not gay, I am not homosexual, I am bisexual …” So then they say more things … further meddling in my life … and so what I do is I stop speaking to them … (Claudio, 43, from a town near Toluca, Mexico)

Bisexuality is arguably the most elusive category in modern constructions of sexuality (Angelides, 2001, 2006; Storr, 1999). Modern orders were founded on the repudiation of sexual ambiguity and the confinement of desire within strict classifications of man/woman and heterosexual/homosexual binaries. However, the persistence of bisexual practices reveals the highly unstable nature of these modern binary regimes which require the constant “erasure” of bisexuality to perpetuate their classificatory status quo. As Angelides has noted, the refusal to recognize bisexuality in the present tense means that in modern discourses about sex “bisexuality always had to be somewhere else—in the embryo, the sphere of human prehistory—or something else—either really heterosexual or homosexual. It could never be a stable sexual identity in the here and now otherwise the epistemological integrity of the very categories of man, woman, heterosexual and homosexual would be thrown into doubt” (Angelides, 2001, 2006: 132). And as Claudio's vignette illustrates, binaries are enforced by all implicated, heterosexual as well as gay.¹

Butler and others have argued that “the [modern] heterosexualization of desire requires and institutes the production of discrete and asymmetrical oppositions between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine,’ where these are understood as expressive attributes of ‘male’ and ‘female’” (1990: 17; Laqueur, 1990). The historical conditions setting this process in motion are complex but partly related to the differentiation of the family from its traditional politico-economic productive role and its modern institutionalization as a separate unit of emotional-cathectic reproduction within capitalist orders (D’Emilio, 1992: 3–16; Katz, 2007). In this context, the relentless heterosexualization of male desire of the last two centuries—in particular, the confounding of masculinity with exclusive female attraction—was contingent upon erasing bisexuality as an intelligible practice.

And yet some men, even in modern heteronormative regimes, are able to negotiate bisexual desires in productive and generative ways without undermining their sense of masculinity and sexual agency. Using qualitative methods I explore the sexualities of a group of these men—Latino men who have sex with men and women—as they navigate a heteronormative world in southern California. Comparing sexual narratives across male and female partners, I show how these men find liminal spaces within the interstices of binary regimes that generate new and amplified pleasures of elusive categorization.

Recent scholarship critically interrogates the “unmarked” modern categories of heterosexuality and hetero-masculinity locating their (re)production in complex institutional histories rather than simple evolutionary reductionisms. Moreover, far from considering heterosexuality as a monolithic site of domination resistant to social change, this scholarship rejects the notion that heterosexuality is always compulsory and oppressive, resting on the subordination of women. In contrast, heterosexuality is theorized as a site of pleasure, fluid and productive, including intimate experiences that fuel agency leading to social change. In this light, critical heterosexualities (Dean, 2011, 2013; Fisher, 2013) and heterodox hetero-masculinities studies (Anderson and McCormack, 2015; Beasley, 2015a, 2015b; McCormack, 2012; McCormack and Anderson, 2010) argue against conflating heterosexuality with heteronormativity. They find much diversity among heterosexualities and highlight new hetero-masculine expressions as transgressive, sexually inclusive, exploratory of homosocial “tactilities,” intimate contacts, and gay peer acceptance.

According to Beasley in many studies “hetero-masculinity is overdetermined as a source of domination, while at the same time it is under-researched and under-theorized as a site for social change” and pleasure (2015a: 135). Beasley uses the term heterodoxy to draw attention to non-normative possibilities that include not only macro social change (social movements) but also the emancipatory potential of a micro-politics of sexuality to “find fissures in the supposed monolith of hetero-masculinity” (2015a: 137). Some heterodox heterosexual practices may involve everyday activities that are not always unequivocally in opposition to the normative (Brook, 2015; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Yet hetero-masculine practices may also include unconventional or transgressive pleasures and desires that offer great opportunities for social change. In short, innovation and agency within the confines of hetero-masculinity for this scholarship are not the “oxymoron” unimaginable in some strands of gender and sexuality studies (Beasley, 2015b: 146).²

Recent research among non-exclusive “straight-identified” white men who meet online finds considerable same-sex behavior in some populations, debunking the popular myth that “down low” sex is circumscribed to men of color. Ward (2008: 421, 2015), for instance, captures the phenomenon of “dude-sex” among “str8” men as a “less desirable, but ‘easy,’ alternative to sex with women,” and a racial signifier of their whiteness. Silva (2017a: 53, 2017b) defines “bud-sex” among rural men as behavior that reinforces “their straightness through unconventional interpretations of same-sex: as ‘helpin’ a buddy out,’ relieving ‘urges’ …” and that cements their rural masculinity and heterosexuality. Carrillo and Hoffman (2016, 2017) find considerable “heteroflexibility” among a sample of straight-identified men seeking other men online. These men report a range of secondary identities and strategies to distinguish themselves from gay and bisexual men, including asserting their primary attraction to women as well as devaluing sex with other men as less pleasurable or not emotionally significant. Carrillo and Hoffman (2017: 2) argue that in the process of maintaining their identities as straight, “these men change the definition of heterosexuality, in effect turning it into a considerably elastic category,” and thus analysts should reconceptualize the category to fully capture these men's lived experience. These studies argue that participants’ same-sex desire is a constitutive part of their “straight” self-identities as long as—in the men's own interpretations—romantic or emotional attachment to a male partner is avoided. The latter attachments would signify to them the limits of their heterosexual “elasticity.”

It is in the context of heterodoxy and critical heterosexualities that this study also problematizes monolithic understandings of hetero-masculinity. However, far from conceptualizing same-sex behavior of straight or bisexual men as ultimately reinforcing heteronormative masculinities, I take the argument a step further and interrogate the limits of the emic categories themselves to fully capture men's productive and transgressive sexual experiences. Thus, the experiences of the Latino men of this study—some self-identified as bisexual, others as heterosexual—are uneasily classified as part of monosexual or bisexual identities or orientations. As will be discussed later, these men's desires open windows into liminal spaces that I argue move beyond indirect reproduction of heteronormative masculinity. They involve liminal pleasures and cathectic attachments that resist binary definition and redefine masculinity in “non-heterosexual” ways, reconfiguring gender relations without undermining strong desire for women in the process. In this regard, a significant contribution of this study is the finding that these behaviorally bisexual men experience having sex with other men to be at times more “awesome” and pleasurable than with women in unexpected ways, and even some establish intense emotional connections with their male partners. Moreover, their same-sex experiences do not diminish their sense of masculinity.

Latino men who have sex with men and women have been typically studied as part of the larger group of Latino men having sex with men. Mounting research on Latino behavioral bisexual men has revealed the complexities of this group's sexualities (Gonzalez, 2007; Munoz-Laboy, 2004; Munoz-Laboy and Dodge, 2007, 2005). This qualitative study contributes to this body of research by examining at a fine-grain level of micro-interactional analysis the sexual organization of these men's desires and practices. To my knowledge few studies have captured at this level of detail bisexual men's own reflexive comparisons of sexual encounters between men and women. Participants of this study have experiences rooted in their migration histories that articulate with their current lives in the USA, and that ultimately destabilize rigid constructs of modern and traditional sexualities.³

To the same extent that gendered pasivo/activo models of Latino/Latin-American homosexualities have been challenged by new (and not so new) forms—such as gay or homosocial sexualities and their hybrid combinations (Carrillo, 2002, 2017; Carrillo and Fontdevila, 2014; Nunez Noriega, 1999 [1994]; Vidal-Ortiz et al., 2010)—this study also challenges stereotypes of working-class, Latino bisexual men as if they were a homogeneous group engaging in rigid hetero-masculine roles. Participants of this study are mostly working class, do not identify as gay—in fact most never intersect with gay venues—and yet at least half do not practice exclusive anal-insertive roles. Many negotiate their same-sex desire in homoerotic ways—including being anal-receptive or establishing emotional attachments to men—while still strongly desiring women. In short, participants of this study challenge conventional categories of identity politics—gay, heterosexual—and instead engage in productive ways of generating pleasure. Following methods and sample description, I turn to the thematic findings emerging from the qualitative analysis.

Methods

The author conducted 20 in-depth interviews in Orange County, California, with Latino men who have sex with men and women. Participants were recruited in 2010 via community-based organization networks, magazine ads, internet sites, day laborer sites, snowballing, and flyers where men seek other men (e.g. streets, porn bookstores, parks). Eligible participants were at least 18, sexually active with men and women in the past 12 months, and self-identified of Latin or Hispanic origin.

In-depth interviews lasted two hours on average and followed a semi-structured conversational format that explored a participant's current and past social and sexual life, including a comparison of two sexual narrative “events” in the past year (one narrative of vaginal or anal sex with a female sex partner, another narrative of anal sex with a male sex partner). A short demographic/behavioral survey was completed at the end. Participants were compensated $50 each. The university's Institutional Review Board approved the study. Interviews were professionally transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were then summarized and systematically coded by the author across the whole sample using NVivo qualitative analysis software. Through detailed analysis of open and axial coding in sequential iterations, the author obtained a growing thematic tree that was further refined by memoing and selective coding. This article examines themes related to evaluations contrasting sexual encounters between male and female sex partners. Selected quotations are illustrative of important thematic findings. Two interviews were conducted in English and 18 in Spanish. Passages were translated by the author from the Spanish original. All participants' names are pseudonyms.

Study participants were on average 38 years old (range 25–48). Most (n = 15) did not have a high-school degree; two were college graduates. Most (n = 15) were born in Mexico, two in Central America (Guatemala, Honduras), one in Peru, and two in the USA. Almost half (n = 9) were unemployed. Those working reported jobs including construction, custodian, maintenance, cook, landscaping, moving, shipping, mail clerk, and day laborer. Eight participants were married to a woman currently or in the past. Seven reported a female steady partner and two reported a male steady partner in the past year. Asked about sexual orientation, most (n = 12) identified as bisexual.⁴ The rest reported a range of heterosexual-oriented identities, including derecho—straight—(n = 3), heterosexual (n = 2), normal (n = 2), and hombre—man—(n = 1). None reported a gay sexual orientation or identity.

Finding sex in southern California

Participants reported that seeking sex across genders was interactionally very different, involving distinct venues and spaces in southern California. Participants met their male sex partners at porn bookstores, via magazine/newspaper ads, internet sites, gyms, friends' networks, house parties, parks, local bars, and on the street. Only one participant, Gerardo, a 25-year-old man from Mexico City, actively sought men at gay bars in southern California's gay urban areas, such as West Hollywood or Long Beach. The rest never patronized gay bars or had never even been to a gay bar. Many disliked public displays of affection between men. To illustrate a typical cruising ritual between men, Julian, a 46-year-old man from Santa Ana, California, describes a sexual encounter with a man at a porn bookstore:

… there is little booths, and say it was you, you walked in a booth, and go, ‘hey, what's up,’ ‘hey, what's up, come here’ … by that time everybody already has their pants down or [are] jacking it off … and then usually whoever is going to go down on you, goes down on you, you know, … ‘do you want to fuck?’

Another example of a different type of male cruising ritual is described by Ulises, a 41-year-old man from a rancho in Morelos, Mexico, who had a sexual encounter with a married man:

I met him through a magazine [ad] … that said ‘married man seeking similar for fun.’ … Then I dialed the number … [He answered] ‘I am married … but I like to be penetrated.’ We got to the hotel … and he told me ‘you know that what I like is to give oral sex and … be penetrated.’

Regarding female cruising rituals, participants met their female sex partners through friends' networks, bailes (Latino dance clubs), house parties, local neighborhood, church, and also on the street. Claudio, a 43-year-old man from a rancho near Toluca, Mexico, illustrates a fairly typical cruising ritual with women to have casual sex. He describes how he seduces women at a baile:

She is dancing … I find myself dancing with her, then I treat her to tequilas … we sit down to talk … and if you like her, you tell her, ‘you know, you are very pretty, you have beautiful hair, I would like to give you a kiss like this in your ears, your pompis [butt cheeks] are hot,’ women love that … then you tell her that you would like to get to know each other, ‘yes, why not?’ ‘when? … so are you ready now?’ ‘yes,’ and finally, then, you go to the hotel …

Female cruising rituals are interactionally different from male rituals. The former require considerable step-wise interactional work and thus are more demanding. By “interactional work” I mean the face-to-face constitutive effort required in “doing” gender to produce a successful “routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment” in everyday life (West and Zimmerman, 1987: 126). Thus rather than a fixed attribute, gender is “performative … always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed … [Gender] identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Butler, 1990: 34). I argue that for the men of this study “doing gender” in order to obtain sex with women involves more interactional effort than with men. Claudio best conveys this widespread theme that obtaining non-commercial sex with women involves significant impression management:

… because I wanted a woman, [had] desires, right, before going to the casino, I went to the gym, to run, to get fit … I also bought nice clothes to look good … cologne, so that there are rules … I mean, you have to follow them if you want to have sex, you have to be presentable … women pay attention to detail. There are many women that … [when] you undress … and [if your] toenails look long and like filthy … they decide better not to have sex.

Thus Claudio eloquently indicates that to have sex with women “there are rules” to follow. Note that because participants rarely intersected with institutionalized or “commodified” gay subcultures to cruise men, they never experienced such “presentation of self” pressures with men.

Same-sex practices of bisexual men

Emerging from the analysis of male cruising rituals, I find three analytical types of same-sex practices showing consistent repertoires: homoerotic, heterogendered, and situational. I make no ontological claims since some participants combined features of various practices depending on context. Note that all participants were sexually attracted to their female sex partners as well—concurrently or sequentially.

Homoerotic practices

Ten participants typically desired and sought masculine cisgender men. Their sexual repertoires included mutual oral sex and kissing, and many played with flexible anal sex roles. To illustrate this homoerotic-practicing experience, Teodoro, a 47-year-old man from Cuernavaca, Mexico, states that he enjoys sex with men and women equally, and then elaborates on his flexible anal and oral sex role preferences with men:

I would say fifty fifty … I enjoy both [genders] … I am like, I like to please … If you want me to penetrate you, and you want to penetrate me, [then it's] both … and if you only want to do me, or I want to do you, that is, it all depends … One realizes when … by the way they [male partners] touch you. So there are times when they start kissing you … and push your head down, that's because they want you to perform oral sex on them … There are many, many ways when it comes to playing sexually.

The majority of homoerotic-practicing men had negotiated their bisexualities in positive and productive ways, including taking pride in their bisexual desires. Some had even established emotional attachments to men and a few had had boyfriends.

Heterogendered practices

Seven participants typically sought anal-receptive male partners, including gay men or male-to-female transgender persons. They performed anal-insertive roles, avoided kissing and any contact with their male partner's penis. To illustrate this heterogendered experience, Ronaldo, a 27-year-old man from a municipality in Guerrero, Mexico, prefers women but admits that men also catch his attention. However, he insists that:

I don't let myself get carried away by the calentura [arousal] … just because I am with them [gay men], does that mean that I am going to be like them? No. I have my own frame of mind that I like women, soy hombre [I am a man], I like to have encounters with them but I am not addicted to them … When I have sex with them … I grab them this way, vulgarly known as de perrito [doggy style] … With men, I never like it when they kiss me in the mouth … I don't have the need to feel their kisses, I tell them, they understand …⁵

Many heterogendered-practicing men did not experience challenges to their heterosexual identity (what some of them self-identify as being “normal” or a “man”) by having sex with other men as long as it was performed in scripted heterogendered ways—anal sex performed from behind avoiding genital contact, oral sex received but rarely performed on another man. Most participants of this group were already part of highly gendered subcultures prior to migration (Carrillo and Fontdevila, 2014).

Situational practices

Three participants did not actively seek or desire men but found themselves in same-sex situations. Two had been sexually seduced by a gay acquaintance at their apartment. Another was experiencing financial hardship and engaged in survival sex with a gay man he met at a local bar. These men practiced sex in heterogendered ways, anal insertive and avoided kissing.

Phenomenologies of bisexual desires⁶

Valuing sex with men

Across both homoerotic and heterogendered groups, many participants indicated that sex with men, in contrast to women, is less restraining when it comes to “rough” sex, anal sex, or oral sex. They reported that male partners are more willing to engage in rougher and diverse sexual practices, including mutual penetration for those of the homoerotic group. The following set of themes capture these experiences.

Sex with men is más bruto [rougher]

Alfredo, a 26-year-old heterogendered-practicing man from a town near Acapulco, Mexico, thinks that “personally a woman is more affectionate than a man, but a man, a homosexual man, is más bruto [rougher/wilder] when it comes to sex than a woman … He lets you do everything, everything you want compared to a woman … a [homosexual] man, because it is his preference he likes to be penetrated from behind.” Also Mauro, a 41-year-old mostly heterogendered-practicing man from Minatitlán, Mexico, indicates that:

What I like the most about a woman is for her to assist me, right? my meals, my laundry, agasajarme [to spoil me] … I like to caress her breasts, kiss her … and with a vato [dude], so what I like is that he can give me some becerrazos [oral sex], I like him sucking my balls, to perform anal sex on me, oral, because well … these are experiences.

When it comes to insertive anal sex with a man, Mauro also explains that it is even different from performing anal sex to a woman because with:

A vato [dude] … you can agarrarlo [fuck him] more, [it's] más chingón [more awesome], right? with more fervor … [However] not to a woman, because she is not used to those trotes [rough motions] … women are adapted to a different system than the gay guy, right? To a gay guy, the larger you got it [the penis], the better, and for a woman, no [that is not the case].

Narciso, a 32-year-old man from Acapulco, Mexico, echoing other heterogendered-practicing participants, believes that women are more beautiful, even divine, but also insists that sex with a man is rougher and thus physically very enjoyable. Asked to compare his sexual experiences, he elaborates:

Very different … let's say that women, they are everything, right? A woman is something beautiful, precious, something divine … something that is for one … that was born for one, for the man. [Whereas] I think that a man is, say, something that is of manera bruta [brutish ways], I call it that … one is a man … Not sure what I think, but I can only tell you that we are men, men and bruscos [brusque/rough] I would say …

Heriberto, a 37-year-old homoerotic-practicing man from a small town in Guerrero, Mexico, also claims that, although he feels overall more satisfied with a woman, women do not like to engage in the kind of practices he desires, like anal or oral sex:

The difference with a man … [is that] he does a bit more work than a woman. But feeling satisfied, more with a woman. The [sexual] enjoyment itself however is different, because sometimes a woman … there are things that you would like to be done to you more intensely, and a woman does not give in … However, a man, yes, a man is willing to do it … and a woman does not do those intimate things … that you really desire and want to perform. That is the difference, quite a difference …

Heriberto goes on to say that the “anchoring of a man is a woman. [However] if there is anything that draws you to do the man thing [desire for men] is because … many men want to experiment … what it [anal sex] feels like …”

Anal sex is más rico [more enjoyable]

At least seven participants, in both heterogendered and homoerotic groups, explicitly indicated that anal sex itself is extremely desirable, even more desirable than vaginal sex, because the anus feels tighter providing more pressure around the penis. For instance, Gonzalo, a 29-year-old homoerotic-practicing man from Lima, Peru, reports that “inside the anus it feels tighter, and when it's a vagina it feels wider, warmer … In the anus it feels tighter and that is what gives pleasure.” Similarly, Mauro when asked to reflect on what draws him to his male partner responds “that [the anus] squeezes … or who knows what it is … I feel [the penis] entering further inside … I don't know what it can be. It's hard to understand but it is más rico [more enjoyable] that way.” Many participants agreed that women refused to offer anal sex.

Men perform oral sex better

A few participants reported that men performed oral sex better than women. In some cases, their female partners did not perform oral sex at all or long enough. For instance, comparing two sexual events across gender, Ulises expressed that his male casual partner “made me feel sexually better … so I felt I was able to relax … and with the woman, no, she gave me oral sex but lasted roughly 5 or 6 minutes … and with the man … it was an oral sex that he gave me for hours.”

With men one enjoys both [anal] ways

A number of homoerotic-practicing participants clearly indicated that men were desirable because, in contrast to women, they could both penetrate and be penetrated. Gonzalo, for example, felt happier with men because “in a sexual act with a woman, only she receives … it can be that she receives from the front and from behind, in different positions, right? … but with a man I can penetrate him and he can penetrate me … and that is the part that I like the most, that I enjoy both ways.”

With men one feels freer and relaxed

Finally, a number of homoerotic-practicing participants reported that sex with a man, in contrast to a woman, made them “feel freer sexually,” “more at ease intimately,” “more of a thrill,” or even “better understood.” At least one heterogendered-practicing participant, Ulises, also reported that he felt more comfortable with men because “a man makes me feel … that I can relax. A man tries to give you the best … he will do the impossible so that you end up satisfied.” Gerardo, a homoerotic-practicing man and the only participant who patronizes gay clubs, also indicates that men give him satisfaction without having to work as much:

Morally I feel better with a woman … and sexually perhaps I enjoy [sex] more with a man … it's a different sensation … I think that when you are with a woman, you have to work to make her feel, to make her feel good, and when you are with a man … he does the work to make you feel good …

Some homoerotic-practicing participants had had strong emotional relationships with men, including boyfriends or co-habiting partners. A few were explicit that they desired men more than women. One participant who strongly desired and had frequent sex with women, Plutarco, a 42-year-old man from Durango, Mexico, said that he enjoyed being with men not just to be physically penetrated but to feel their masculinity and the capacity to communicate intimately. Plutarco was going through a rough breakup with his boyfriend at the time of the interview. In his own words:

Not precisely [just being penetrated] … I mean, sometimes him being the dominant, sometimes just the feeling … it is not the same to feel a pelón [shaved or short hair man] than a woman's long mane … I mean, sometimes it is that need … Or simply to feel the man, to know that you are with a man, not specifically penetration … perhaps the [same kind of] protection I give her, the dominance that he exerts on you … besides … we can talk about things … like I wanted to be with you [his male partner] … and obviously I can never talk to her about it, my other needs, of my other self so to speak …

In short, male sex partners offer sexual repertoires that are actively sought and considered by many participants to be extremely pleasurable, including unrestrained “rougher,” anal, and oral sex. Moreover, some participants of the homoerotic group (but at least one heterogendered) reported that men offered a level of sexual freedom and intimate communication that they could not find in women.

Valuing sex with women

Eight participants—most heterogendered but some homoerotic—explicitly stated that sex with a man may be physically pleasurable but that the experience overall was never as satisfying or motivating as with a woman. Three themes capture these valuations.

Women provide more erotic options

Heterogendered-practicing participants typically never kissed, caressed, or engaged in other practices with men except for receiving oral sex or performing insertive anal sex. Despite the widespread finding that men were highly valued because of their rougher ways, these heterogendered participants reported that women overall were more satisfying because they provided erotic options that simply were not available with male partners. This point is illustrated by Alfredo:

The difference is that a gay man has [sex only] through the anus, and a woman through the vagina, the anus, and you can … [fondle] her breasts, play, kiss … there are more options with a woman than with a gay man …

Ezequiel, a 35-year-old heterogendered-practicing man from a town in Michoacán, Mexico, explained that after having sex with a woman he feels satisfied because there have been kisses, caresses, and other practices, including oral sex on his female partner. For him sex with a woman is “beautiful” and “normal,” but with a man it is an “adventure” that often leaves him feeling bad. In his own words:

Well, with a woman I feel more identified, right? It's like I am in my environment … because I can, there can be besos con confianza [kisses with trust or intimacy], caresses, and oral sex, yes, I can perform it, or done on me, and at the end I'm left satisfied … very different … And with a man, well, it's not the same, because there cannot be any kisses, at least that's how I see it, no kisses and caresses, [I can't] treat him like a woman, right?, and so besides that, at the end I'm left with an uncomfortable feeling, I mean, I feel guilty at the end, I feel bad, and with a woman, no, with a woman I even feel better.

Still, Ezequiel was one of the many participants, both heterogendered and homoerotic, who believed that anal sex (generally practiced with a man) is more pleasurable than vaginal sex because it is tighter.

Sex with men is a “need” release

This widespread theme among heterogendered-practicing participants nicely captures the experiential difference of overall satisfaction with women versus physical enjoyment with men. Ronaldo remarks:

the difference with a woman is that you know you are with a woman, and she is a woman, and so one does it with more fervor, it's like you enjoy it more, with more strength … A woman, logically because she is a woman, turns you on more, makes you feel more, more comfortable, more aware, more positive …

Mauro, for instance, explains that he needs to use marihuana when he suddenly feels like having sex with a man:

So it's very different, it's more beautiful when I am with my steady partner, a woman. With the other [male partner], it's, well, a fantasy, it is a … I don't know what it could be. I don't even understand it myself. It's just that suddenly I feel this urge to be with a vato [dude] and … to be with a vato I have to smoke plenty of marijuana, to be able to have an encounter with a vato. Sometimes it [this desire] is born in me …

Alfredo finds it convenient to cruise gay men simply because he runs into them on the street. As he puts it: “yes, because when I head home … sometimes one feels aroused and horny … and so there is … that passion, [actually] not that passion but that need as a man, do you understand me?” In keeping with his heterogendered sexualities Alfredo does not feel threats to his masculinity by having casual sex with gay men on the street on his way home. On the contrary, he claims it is “that need as a man” that has to be sexually relieved, regardless of who does the relieving, in this case a gay man on the street. Finally, Claudio also articulates this theme:

What is different is that … since I am a man I enjoy a woman … I don't know who invented man with man, right? Woman and man are good for bed, because it is nice for a woman to have a man, make love, and for a man it is nice to have a woman … And when I make love to a man I don't feel too many things, I only go to desaciarme [satisfy or release a sexual need], finish, and with a woman I give more, I don't want the day to end, and with a man I just think … one hour, and I am out of here … there is quite a difference.

In contrast to the heterogendered-practicing men mentioned earlier, Claudio—who in his interview reports well-negotiated desires for both insertive and receptive anal roles—is one of the few homoerotic-practicing participants that expresses this interpretation that sex with men is a need release.

Sex with women is morally superior

For some participants their source of lesser enthusiasm with men compared to women was not so much about feeling less fervor but about feeling morally “bad” in reflexive ways after the act. Ironically, the participant who best articulated this discomfort in moral-religious terms was Gerardo, the only participant to actively participate in gay bars and clubs:

Morally I am referring to the fact that, for example, when I am with a woman I don't feel bad morally, as if I had done something wrong. When I am with a man I do feel that … When I am with a woman I do not feel bad … however, with a man I feel dirty, I feel like … as if I had done something forbidden, actually.

Asked to elaborate on what causes those feelings, Gerardo responded that:

perhaps the fact that morally or commonly people establish, or the church, or whatever, that the correct thing is a man and a woman, and not a man with another man. So probably that could be it [the reason].

Some participants expressed the belief that women, in contrast to men, have a special moral standing, and thus certain sexual behaviors are off limits or inappropriate with women. In this sense, women involve moral demands that men do not. For instance, Domingo, a 39-year-old homoerotic-practicing man from Mexico City who likes men and women equally, explains that he has more respect for women and that online chats are disrespectful to women:

The only [difference] I have regarding women is that I don't treat women in the same way I treat men … It's like I have much more respect for women … I am much more careful, I'm afraid to ask them to do things, or to do things the way I'd like them … With a man I feel at ease to tell him … [With a woman] I am afraid to offend her, not to do it right … A woman is of great value to me … I cannot talk sex to women in [online] chats … to a man, yes, not sure why … I'd rather go to a nightclub, dance, and meet [women] there … [online chats] are very disrespectful to them [women].

Asked about where this higher respect for women comes from, Domingo responded that he does not know but perhaps from his love for his mother and sisters, and that he projects his female family members onto his female partners.

Other participants also conveyed this women's special moral standing that comes with certain obligations. Narciso, for example, mentions that he and his friends back in Mexico never gossiped about their sex with women because women “deserve respect.” In contrast, they would laugh and joke about their sex with maricones [derogatory term for gay men] in the context of his heterogendered culture. Asked why they never joked about sex with women, Narciso remarks:

Oh, no, not with women … I have never liked to talk that way about a woman because I believe [a woman] is something worthy of respect, right? … that's my way of thinking … when I am with a woman I don't tell my friends what I did with her in bed, whether I made her get in a certain position, or this other, or that I tongued her there, those things I never tell my friends … [About maricones] I would at times tell [my friends] … it's like it's funny [giggles], so they would ask me and they have also experienced the same, that they have been with another person like that, and they tell me the other day this and that … that he gave me some mamadas [oral sex], and we laugh, but as I was telling you, whatever I do with women that, no … that I never tell any of them [friends] …

This vignette opens a window into heterogendered male cultures where disclosure among peers of same-sex acts (albeit in scripted ways) do not threaten and even reproduce hetero-masculine constructions. In a related vein, the patriarchal double standard of good/bad women was articulated by many participants. Some admired their wives or girlfriends for being “respectful homemakers” or “having fear of God.” Hernan, a 40-year-old man from a town in Michoacán, Mexico, praised her wife for being “very much of a woman … a homemaker, respectful, quehacerosa [devoted to housework], very tidy.” Ezequiel said that besides her girlfriend's pretty looks, what caught his attention was that she was a “family woman, a quiet woman, who has fear of God.” Finally, Julian met his girlfriend in church and was explicit that “when I like a girl, I don't know why, she has to be, like, I don't want no hooker hood rat [implying sexually available], or something like that, I want someone normal, you know …”

As a counterfactual to this double standard, however, at least two participants expressed respect for a woman's sexual agency and freedoms in any context. Ulises, for example, had an unusual positive evaluation of prostitution, respected his female sex-worker friend, and clearly stated that he would not mind marrying a sex worker. Teodoro had a liberal outlook on women's sexual freedoms and positively evaluated women with whom he engaged in casual sex: “So I see it [women having casual sex] like … it is like a man that also feels the urge, has that need … I mean, I do not see it wrong because we are not in the old days when only men …” Interestingly, even in the context of his liberal perspective, he held strong beauty-centered evaluations of women, by some interpretation objectifying. After sharing that he desires men and women equally, he remarked that he likes to go out with women because:

I also feel the need to … I like to be seen with a woman, even more so if she is a pretty woman, I like to lucirla [show her off], I like to presumirla [boast about her looks] … I also feel the need to be with her [sexually] … More so if she is a muñequita [cute little doll], I mean, who doesn't?

Note that those participants who valued women over men—erotic options, beautiful, divine, satisfying, moral standing—are mostly from the heterogendered group. One heterogendered-practicing man did report that though sensations were unique to each gender, there was not much of a difference in overall satisfaction. Although some homoerotic-practicing participants also valued women more—mainly on moral grounds—many expressed similar satisfaction and erotic desires for men and women. Moreover, as shown by Plutarco quoted earlier, a few homoerotic-practicing men felt strong emotional attachments to men. In this connection, it is worth emphasizing that we are not dealing with a single bisexuality type but with diverse bisexualities in the plural. For some, heteronormativity may strongly inform their interpretations of male partners as expendable conduits of pleasure, but for others, sex with men opens processes of heterodoxical desire decoupling from heteronormativity. Still others may simultaneously experience blendings of these dynamics according to context. To these complexities I now turn in the conclusion.

Conclusion

Across both homoerotic and heterogendered-practicing men of this study emerges the widespread finding that male sex partners belong in a sexual space that signifies “rougher” and physically unrestrained sexual pleasures—including “tighter” anal sex and readily available oral sex. For the homoerotic group in particular, sexualized spaces may involve playful mutual penetration, open intimate communication, and the full experience of masculine bodies. Moreover, men—in contrast to women—are perceived across both bisexual groups to require fewer interactional demands, including less impression management in relation to cruising rituals and less pressure to please sexually. Finally, male partners do not often require the same level of moral respect that women command and hence men are arguably less fragile symbolically and ritualistically.

In light of these findings, I contend that for these men sexual acts with women appear to be “burdened with an excess of significance” (Rubin, 1992 [1984]: 279) that is not experienced when they have sex with other men. Such burdens involve also the high-stake demands of hetero-masculine self-presentations vis-à-vis female partners (Fontdevila, 2006).⁷ Sexual practices with women—in contrast to men—involve performances that are interactionally more fragile and step-wise where “breaches” can occur at any juncture. This gender asymmetry regarding female moral, cruising, and sexual demands is the performative expression on the ground of discourses of “proper/improper” femininity and gender double standards that circulate unabated and are heavily regulated at the normative level.

In this context, same-sex practices for these bisexual men, I argue, constitute transgressive spaces where they experience stronger liminality than different-sex practices. These liminal spaces generate same-sex pleasures and desires that are less discursively regulated than their different-sex ones—from unrestrained “rougher” sex, anal and oral sex availability, to more relaxed intimate communication and emotional cathexis depending on context. They constitute temporary and relative anti-structures á la Victor Turner (1969) that ritually decouple agency from structure—heterosexual gender structure—and hence are experienced as intensely pleasurable and playful. If meaning-making is increasingly understood to rise from the interstices between boundaries, then navigating across gender boundaries produces liminal, in-between spaces that are highly meaningful to these men (Lamont and Molnar, 2002).⁸

In Foucauldian parlance (1990 [1978]), I consider these liminal spaces to be points of resistance. Not because they are outside power but because they are in the interstices of it. Sex with other men—like study participants discover and learn to perform⁹—attains a transgressive liminality that resists identity definition and is likely the reason for its productive pleasure and recurrent attraction. Following Beasley (2015a: 138), I contend that in seeking out fissures in the supposed monolith of their hetero-masculinity, many men of this study—homoerotic but heterogendered-practicing men as well—find “heterodoxical opportunities for pleasure and social change.” Rather than reinforcing heteronormativity, I argue that many bisexual men are resisting its hegemony and reframing it. In the process they generate unexpected and amplified pleasures of elusive categorization that expand and ultimately enrich their relationship to both genders. Even among heterogendered men who devalue sex with other men, same-sex practices open spaces to sexual pleasures unconstrained by the face-to-face demands of “doing gender” with women. In these non-heterosexual arenas, these men's masculine desires are not just reproducing heteronormativity but simultaneously expanding erotic self-discovery within the interstices of the modern binary.

Same-sex and different-sex practices have co-existed—in various degrees of institutional and semiotic signification—throughout history, emerging from diverse psychosexual etiologies across and within cultures (Herdt, 1997). According to Hacking (1999, 2002), our modern classifications of sexual orientation—homosexual, heterosexual—are not based on “causal histories” in the ontological sense and hence should not be conceptualized as “natural kinds.” Certainly these taxonomies are of the “interactive kind” in that they loop back on the classified individuals transforming them in the process. As he explains, “let a new way to classify human beings emerge, and let people become aware of how they are classified, then they will often behave differently … The truths about that category of people will change because the people have changed … that is, classifications interact with the classified” (Hacking, 2002: 104).

Nevertheless, I would add that “interactive” taxonomies never exhaust the range of sexual practice as lived experience. In as much as post-Victorian binary classifications may have interacted with the “classified” and shaped participants' interpretations, the phenomenologies of bisexual desires—the capacity to navigate genders and find enjoyment in both—experienced by the men of this study are still quite refractory to established taxonomies in significant ways. I here use the trope “phenomenologies of bisexual desires” to convey the understanding that many of these men experience not only subjective phenomena specific to their bisexual lifeworlds but also a sort of “phenomenological reduction” that partially suspends taken-for-granted heteronormative binary structures as they transgress into same-sex practices (Schutz, 1967 [1932]). Within such reduction, they experience deep layers of desire not fully shaped by the discursive presuppositions of contemporary heteronormative masculinity. In the process they temporarily unveil new experiences of pleasure and transform their selves while discovering that same-sex desire does not necessarily undermine their own masculinity.

In crossing boundaries these men generate pleasures that are of elusive categorization. Any attempt to analytically “erase” their desires as either “truly” homosexual or heterosexual—or reduce them to a newly self-contained political category of “bisexual identity”—will prove self-defeating and likely miss the richness and complexity of their everyday lived sexual experience, which includes explorations, contradictions, and resistances. The dangers of closed classificatory systems are that they refocus energies from pleasure to identity. I thus conclude with Foucault's (1996: 385) insights on the limits of identity for sexual life:

If identity becomes the problem of sexual existence, and if people think they have to ‘uncover’ their ‘own identity’ and that their own identity has to become the law, the principle, the code of their existence; if the perennial question they ask is ‘Does this thing conform to my identity?’ then, I think, they will turn back to a kind of ethics very close to the old heterosexual virility … [The] relationships we have to have with ourselves are not ones of identity, rather they must be relationships of differentiation, of creation, of innovation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to all the participants who made this study possible. The author wishes to acknowledge the organizations that provided support for this study, including the Health Promotion Research Institute at California State University, Fullerton, AIDS Services Foundation Orange County, Volunteer Center Orange County, Delhi Center Orange County, The Center Orange County, and Arco Iris Magazine. The author would also like to thank Héctor Carrillo, two anonymous reviewers, and the editor for their helpful comments.

Funding

This work was funded by the Health Promotion Research Institute in partnership with the Center for Internships and Community Engagement at California State University, Fullerton. Additional support was provided by a Special Fund for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity from the Office of Grants and Contracts, California State University, Fullerton. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the funding organizations.

Notes

Jorge Fontdevila is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Fullerton. He received a PhD in Sociology with distinction from Columbia University. He has conducted extensive socio-behavioral and prevention research among New York and Southern California populations disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. His current research explores stigma-related barriers and meanings attached to HIV biomedical interventions among Latino men who have sex with men. Dr Fontdevila has published widely in leading academic journals, including Sociological Theory, Sexualities, Poetics, REDES, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Social Theory & Health, Journal of Urban Health, Sex Roles, and AIDS and Behavior.

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Productive pleasures across binary regimes: Phenomenologies of bisexual desires among Latino men

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Methods

Finding sex in southern California

Same-sex practices of bisexual men

Homoerotic practices

Heterogendered practices

Situational practices

Phenomenologies of bisexual desires 6

Valuing sex with men

Sex with men is más bruto [rougher]

Anal sex is más rico [more enjoyable]

Men perform oral sex better

With men one enjoys both [anal] ways

With men one feels freer and relaxed

Valuing sex with women

Women provide more erotic options

Sex with men is a “need” release

Sex with women is morally superior

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Funding

Notes

References

Phenomenologies of bisexual desires⁶