Friendships between men across sexual orientation: The management of sexual difference through humour

Managing sexual difference within friendships between men across sexual orientation

Sexual identity categories are socially grounded historical products, centrally associated with temporally and spatially specific relations of inequality (Rubin, 1984; Weeks, 1981). Historical and anthropological evidence has consistently demonstrated radical diversity in the behaviours, meanings and methods of categorisation associated with sexuality (McIntosh, 1968; Sedgwick, 1985). Rather than reflecting an underlying, fixed essence lodged deep within an agent’s biological substratum, sexual identity categories reflect distinctive, regulatory logics that are grounded within specific historical and temporal contexts (Foucault, 1978; Simon and Gagnon, 1985). Within contemporary western societies, the consolidation of ‘heterosexuality’ as a stable, coherent and legitimated norm has been centrally related to the historical emergence of ‘homosexuality’ as a category designated to facilitate the regulation of ‘deviant’ others (Katz, 1995) through the enactment of various penalties and exclusions associated with the transgression of heterosexuality (Foucault, 1978; Weeks, 1981).

Despite persistent scholarly/popular inclinations that principally locate sexuality within the realm of the ‘private’ (Richardson, 2000: 120), sexual identity, desire and behaviour have historically been central to institutional distributions of privilege, opportunity and exclusion within Australia. Diane Richardson (2000), employing the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’, contends that patterns of sexual inequality traverse (and, indeed, undermine) divisions between public/private, unequally distributing opportunities for corporeal autonomy, the ‘self-realisation’ of differing gender/sexual identities, and the development of publicly recognised and supported relationships. These patterns of privilege/exclusion have been reproduced and regulated within the context of formalised social institutions, including the criminalisation of ‘deviant’ sexualities, the uneven implications of welfare policy, the non-recognition (or partial recognition) of particular relationships/household types, medicalised constructions of health and illness, and the moral legitimacy accorded to the homophobia of religious institutions (Berman, 2008; Willet, 1997).

Theorists within gender studies have commonly identified the pivotal role that gendered conflicts between heterosexuality/homosexuality play in the production of legitimated masculinities. Gregory Herek (1986: 563) boldly claims, ‘To be a man is to be a homophobe’; Michael Kimmel (2003) titled a book chapter ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’; while R.W. Connell (1995: 78) writes that ‘(g)ayness, in patriarchal ideology, is the repository of whatever is symbolically expelled from hegemonic masculinity’. Psychoanalytic theorists have contended that the desire to rigidly demarcate heterosexuality/homosexuality reflects not ‘an interval between polar and opposites’ but rather the sense in which ‘the other inhabits the self as its condition of possibility’ (Weber, cited in Dollimore, 1991: 255). In this sense, the production of heterosexual-masculinity is centrally and constitutionally bound up with the homosexual-feminine other that ‘haunts’ it (Butler, 1995). It is the intense proximity of heterosexual/homosexual identity that underpins homophobic productions of heterosexuality (Dollimore, 1991).

The production of heterosexuality through the expulsion of a homosexual ‘haunting’ other, as contended by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1985: 1–5), has historically had particular significance within the context of interpersonal relationships between men. Sedgwick distinguishes between homosociality, referring to the investments men have in gaining respect and esteem from other men, and homosexuality, referring to desires for the establishment of same-sex male sexual/romantic relationships. According to Sedgwick, the boundary between the homosocial and the homosexual is fluid and imprecise; it is a division that reflects a particular history of gendered and sexual relationships, rather than ‘naturally’ or ‘inevitably’ oppositional categories. Yet she notes that within the specific context of relationships between men, the boundary between homosocial/homosexual desire is often subject to intense and power-laden processes of regulation. The ephemeral frontier between these two forms of desire, Sedgwick (1985: 83–117) argues, is negotiated through a ‘homosexual panic’, whereby intimations of potentially homosexual desire are rigorously denied through ongoing expressions of a virulent homophobia within homosocial contexts, thereby attempting to secure interactions as definitively ‘non-sexual’, and defending/producing an impenetrable hetero-masculinity.

The psychic and social tensions associated with the production of male sexual identities have been well documented within the context of research examining the gendered nature of friendship relations. While this area of enquiry is complex and contested (O’Connor, 1992; Wright, 1988), the literature broadly affirms the following conclusions: women are more likely to describe their same-sex friendships as highly important, to spend more time engaging in dialogue, to be more self-disclosing, to orient interactions towards the revelation of personal experience, to offer and seek guidance and support, and to express verbal and physical affection (Hall, 2011; Nardi, 1999: 32–47). Same-sex male friendships, alternatively, are understood to involve large, impersonal social networks, to discourage expressions of affection, to orient interactions towards external activity, to be characterised by an ethic of competitiveness, and to involve a preference for dealing with problems individually, rather than seeking support (Hall, 2011; Seidler, 1992). These masculine patterns of sociality have often been related to the felt need among heterosexual men to avoid relationships that are ‘too close’, in order to maintain and affirm a heterosexual identity (Bank and Hansford, 2000; Seidler, 1992).

Following these arguments, we may expect friendships between gay and straight men to be especially anxiety-ridden, and characterised by intense patterns of physical, social and interpersonal differentiation. If the spectre of homosexuality exerts a strong influence within the context of heteronormative male interactions, its effects, arguably, should be exacerbated when one of the men openly identifies as same-sex desiring. Previous examinations of relationships between gay and straight men provide some support for this hypothesis. Anna Muraco (2005) has documented the existence of especially rigid interpersonal norms surrounding the suppression of bodily touch and affection within interactions between men across sexual orientation. Jammie Price (1999), in her qualitative study, found that approximately two-thirds of the gay–straight male friendship dyads examined reported anxiety, silence or conflict surrounding expressions of the gay participants’ sexual desires. She also notes that many heterosexual participants were concerned about outsiders (particularly family members and heterosexual male friends) questioning their sexual identification as a consequence of having a gay friend. Dwight Fee (2000: 53–5), similarly, found that his heterosexual participants regarded the complete absence of sexual desire as a prerequisite for the maintenance of friendship relations with gay men. These findings demonstrate the extent to which same-sex desiring men may be required to negotiate the heterosexist beliefs and anxieties of straight men within friendship relations. However, research examining friendships between gay and straight men continues to be scarce (Fee, 2000; Price, 1999), and may not, as yet, reflect (debatable) changes in the social ordering of gender and sexuality over the past decade.

Recent research conducted under the framework of ‘inclusive masculinity theory’ has sought to understand the implications of what the approach regards as declining levels of ‘cultural homophobia’ for relationships between men in contemporary western societies. The fear of being labelled ‘gay’ powerfully regulates gender non-conforming behaviour within ‘homohysteric’ contexts. Eric Anderson (2009), however, has contended that rapid declines in the level of culturally legitimated homophobia have substantial implications for the regulation of masculinities. A series of ethnographic studies conducted in both the United States and the United Kingdom (Anderson, 2008, 2009, 2011) have examined the de-stigmatisation of homosexuality among male youth in sporting and educational contexts. These studies found heterosexual participants willing to engage in historically feminising endeavours, such as inter-heterosexual male touching (McCormack and Anderson, 2010). Within such contexts, the framework of inclusive masculinity suggests the emergence of interpersonal styles, practices and values that transgress the boundaries previously imposed upon inter-male relationships by homophobia.

The arguable emergence of ‘inclusive masculinities’ needs to be situated against the persistence of state-sanctioned homophobias throughout much of the world, where associations between LGBTQ groups and a decadent liberalism and/or western imperialism have often motivated extreme patterns of violence and social exclusion (Lapina, 2013; Msibi, 2011). It is, further, important to recognise the somewhat ambivalent nature of data documenting levels of homophobia within countries such as Australia, where, for instance, the physical violence and verbal abuse reported by same-sex attracted and gender-questioning youth appears to be rising (Hillier et al., 2010: 39–48). A further problem may relate to conceptualisations of ‘homophobia’. As Stephen Tomsen (2006; see also Tomsen and Mason, 2001) notes, the usage of this term as a form of mental illness designed to capture intense, irrational forms of hatred, anger or fear directed towards homosexuality (Weinberg, 1972) may belie more routinised, everyday processes that contribute to social exclusion (Tomsen, 2009: 17–36).

A consideration of friendship relations between men across sexual orientation offers the opportunity to allow for engagement with the nature of sexual identity within a multi-layered historical context. Rather than reifying a homogeneous narrative about an overall ‘decline’ in homophobia, as suggested within the ‘inclusive masculinities’ literature, it may be better to recognise the existence of a social and temporal situation within Australia characterised by uneven and multiple trends that shift according to group membership, institutional context and interpersonal situation. Michael Flood and Clive Hamilton’s (2005) research, for instance, documents higher rates of homophobia among Australian men, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, those without tertiary educational qualifications, those who live in rural regions and older age groups. An examination of these friendships consequently allows for an engagement with a number of potentially instructive questions. To what extent, for instance, do friendship relations between men across sexual orientation continue to be problematised by the tense intersection between homosocial/homoerotic forms of desire? How are sexual identities produced and reproduced within these relationships, and do these processes amount to a ‘homosexual panic’? Finally, do these friendships destabilise the boundaries of sexual identity, or reify a division between platonic/sexual to ensure that the friendship is defined in ‘safe’ terms?

The research

Informants were asked to participate in the study as gay male/straight male friendship pairs and were recruited through university periodicals, online social forums and GLBTQ newsletters. Twelve individual participants engaged in two semi-structured qualitative interviews each; both a one-on-one interview, and an interview in which both members of the friendship pair were present. Research participants all possessed an undergraduate degree, all identified as middle class and all but one identified as ethnically ‘white’. Participants broadly fell into two age groups. Six of the twelve participants were aged in their mid-twenties (Craig/Tarquin, Ben/Heath and Zach/Carl); the remaining six were aged between 45 and 64 (Robert/Michael, David/Boris and Simon/Jeff). ¹ While age has been highlighted as a significant variable with regard to patterns of homophobia in Australia (Flood and Hamilton, 2005: 10–12), no clear or consistent differences between these two groups were identified in relation to the specific subject matter of this article. This may reflect the small sample size and the unstructured nature of data collection; further research examining the implications of age within friendships between men across sexual orientation may more fully interrogate this issue in future.

Interviews with two subjects simultaneously, ‘dyadic interviewing’ (Sohier, 1995), were deployed to facilitate an examination of social relationships, alongside the examination of individual people. Interviewing friends together offered several opportunities, allowing the researcher to see how they interacted, giving interviewees the ability to qualify or challenge claims made by their co-participant, and generally creating a more convivial atmosphere than in one-on-one interviews (Sohier, 1995). Interviews were analysed using the processes outlined by Hennie Boeije (2002), involving a dialectical movement between a focus on interviews as separate, holistic interpersonal events and coding procedures based on comparison between similarly themed segments of data. To maintain clarity, respondents are referred to as gay (G) or straight (S) throughout the paper on the basis of their self-identification.

Taking humour seriously

Humour has not, to the author’s knowledge, ever been substantially examined within the context of friendships between men across sexual orientation. Yet, for a number of reasons, joking behaviours have the potential to play a substantial role within these interpersonal relationships. Humour can create a sense of communion between subjects, establishing spaces for fun and creativity, can offer an avenue for the negotiation of potentially awkward or difficult encounters (Baxter, 1992; Coenuen-Huther, 1987) and, equally, can be complicit in processes of social regulation and/or condemnation (Jewell and Morrison, 2010; Sev’er and Ungar, 1997). The desire to critically examine joking behaviour within the friendships under study arose as a consequence of the importance ascribed to humour during interviews. The significance of this mode of communication was evident at three levels. First, humour was a strong element within the stated descriptions that research participants provided of their ideal friend. Tarquin (S), a student of engineering and science, for instance, highlights the importance he ascribes to the following traits:

A similar sense of humour, similar interests […] able to have serious conversations about big issues, as well as just being stupid sometimes.

Craig (G), who inhabits the same social circle as Tarquin and shares a strong interest in music, valorises similar characteristics:

Important elements like being comfortable to say what you’re thinking, generosity, humour and everything else that comes with it.

Second, research participants commonly represented their affinity for one another in terms of joking behaviour. Simon (G) and Jeff (S), a public servant and a stock manager at a bookstore respectively, who met at university, describe the encounter that initiated their friendship:

Finally, and as I will more thoroughly document below, joking behaviours frequently occurred within dyadic interviews. This was evident both within patterns of story-telling that recounted humorous events that had occurred previously, and humour that emerged organically within the context of the interview itself. Humour allowed for the demonstration of the comradely nature of the relationship, and may have had a stress-buffering effect (Martin, 2007: 19–20) to compensate for the anxieties associated with being interviewed. These joking behaviours, further, can be understood as playing a distinctive role in the delineation of boundaries between homosexuality and homosociality.

Desiring humour, humouring desire

Humour has been theorised in multiple, complex and often competing ways. Freud conceptualised humour as enabling the ostensibly benign expression of ‘uncivilised’ sexual or aggressive urges (Freud, 1976); critical theorists have examined the role of humour in the delineation of gendered/ethnic/classed/sexualised hierarchies (Jewell and Morrison, 2010; Sev’er and Ungar, 1997); linguists have articulated the formal language structures underpinning humour (Attardo, 2008); socio-psychologists have examined the function of humour as a social lubricant (Martin, 2007); and cultural theorists have interpreted humour as a literary device (Lewis, 1989). Humour is, itself, a diverse and complex topic potentially denoting a range of dynamics; as such, it is inevitably problematic to reduce it to a single analytic insight (Billig, 2002: 452). Yet, for the purposes of this article, one specific approach to humour, highlighting the role of ambiguity and contradiction, seems appropriate.

Michael Mulkay (1988) contends that discourse tends to occur within one of two interactional paradigms; the serious or the humorous. While the boundary between these two modes of interaction is porous, he suggests that discourse will tend to operate using the particular understandings of knowledge and reality that structure the logic of seriousness or the logic of humour. The ‘serious’ mode, according to Mulkay (1988: 22-38), is contingent upon a position of ontological realism and epistemological positivism, or, in other words, the existence of an objective reality that can be rationally accessed and described if approached using appropriate methods of enquiry. Discussions that occur within this mode are characterised by a desire for consensus, as relevant pieces of evidence and contention are pieced together to provide the single best account of a uniform and static reality. Yet, as Mulkay (1988: 7–21) notes, this desire for a stable, universal truth is almost invariably thwarted by the complexities of social reality, and the multiplicity of interpretive frameworks that can be applied to it. Seriousness, which pursues static uniformity, is counterposed with humour, which assumes the existence of a world that is fragmentary, diverse, and difficult to subsume within universalistic rationalisations. Humour, according to Mulkay (1988: 7–21), operates by exploiting ambiguity, acting to expand and multiply the conceptual devices and frameworks that could be meaningfully used to understand social reality. Others have made similar associations between humour, contradiction and ambiguity (Koestler, 1966; Lockyer and Pickering, 2008).

This article analyses a style of joking behaviour that outwardly played with ambiguities between homosocial and homoerotic desire within the friendships between men across sexual orientation under consideration. As noted earlier, previous theoretical and empirical work has highlighted the maintenance of boundaries between sexual and platonic forms of interpersonal interest as central features of same-sex male friendship. In particular, the stigmatisation of homosexuality has been regarded as central to the consolidation of a heterosexual identity, and the establishment of physical and personal boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual men (Bank and Hansford, 2000; Sedgwick, 1985). Yet deploying overt homophobia to establish and confirm sexual difference would be a substantial source of tension within friendships between men across sexual orientation, due to the strong normative relationship between friendship and the ideal of equality (Bruckner and Knaup, 1993: 249).

The friendships between men across sexual orientation under consideration commonly played with the boundaries between homosocial and homoerotic desire in a manner consistent with Mulkay’s (1988) theorisation of humour. This could occur in a number of different ways. First, participants sometimes play-acted a form of pseudo-courtship, within which an ongoing pattern of humour revolved around the gay male friend’s ‘desire’ for his co-participant, and the heterosexual friend’s attempts to maintain his ‘chastity’ in response to these flirtations. This pattern of interaction was particularly characteristic of the friendship between Robert (G) and Michael (S), who worked together professionally as architects over an extended period of time. Their joking behaviours re-articulated cultural prohibitions surrounding the expression of homosexual desire:

These patterns of interaction seemed to be a relatively structured component of the way Michael and Robert engaged with one another. An ongoing joke within the friendship revolved around Robert’s lamentations about the declining quality of Michael’s physical appearance as he grew older. After Michael had been asked what he liked about his co-participant, Robert reacted with surprise when he failed to mention physical appearance. Both participants seemed to regard these patterns of joking behaviour as a significant and valuable component of their friendship:

The humorous invocation of discourses and behaviours associated with flirtation and coquetry within Michael and Robert’s relationship proved to be somewhat unusual in their depth and continuity. Within most of the friendships under study, patterns of joking flirtation seemed less embedded within the structure of the relationship. For instance, referring to the interviews conducted with Michael and Robert, I asked Simon (G) and Jeff (S) whether sexual or romantic discourses were used as a source of humour within their friendship:

Yet, even where joking flirtation did not occupy a position of centrality within the relationships under study, gay–straight male friendship dyads continued to offer particular opportunities for play. Jeff and Simon, for instance, talked about the decision of the former to relocate interstate, and the role communication technologies have played in overcoming this distance. The desire for more frequent interaction is represented using the familial metaphor of the ‘old married couple’:

During another section of the interview, I attempted to discuss whether Jeff would feel comfortable attending social venues primarily frequented by gay men. Simon deliberately misinterprets the question:

Then later, while both are lamenting the fact that they are currently single:

David (G) and Boris (S), who met and developed their relationship initially within the context of a university where David worked and Boris studied, engage in a similar pattern of joking behaviour when asked to describe what they like about one another, again invoking the trope of heterosexual marriage to capture the perceived quality and depth of the friendship:

These patterns of joking behaviour operated by seemingly playing with the slippery boundaries between sexual and platonic forms of desire, humorously suggesting that the closeness within these friendships may be regarded as either sexual or romantic. Similar styles of humour could also revolve around the potential for outsider misinterpretation of the friendships under study. Outsiders to the relationship often had no clear evidence that they could draw upon to confirm whether the dyad represented a friendship or a romance. This was particularly an issue within the context of social settings associated with either courtship, or male homosexuality, and provided the basis for ongoing forms of humour. Ben (G) and Heath (S), who studied postgraduate physics together, for instance, talk about the use of romantic discourse within the context of a restaurant:

Robert (G) and Michael (S) also note the humorous possibilities these friendships create for patterns of sexual misidentification, recounting an experience within which both attended a bar mostly frequented by gay men:

Zach (G) and Carl (S) engage in a slightly different form of humour revolving less around the distinction between homosociality and homosexuality, than the inversion of stereotypes surrounding the relationship between heterosexuality/gender normativity and homosexuality/gender deviance. Carl contends on a number of occasions throughout data collection that he substantially departs from hegemonic understandings of the relationship between heterosexuality and masculinity. For instance, in an attempt to initiate a discussion about ‘sissyphobia’ (Bergling, 2001), I had asked Carl whether he would befriend a feminine man. To this question, he responds:

Oh no, like the thing is, I’m probably more flamboyant than all my gay friends, so that’s not really an issue.

This style of humour, which operated by highlighting Carl’s supposed inversion of associations between straightness and gender normativity, appeared to form a relatively ongoing joke within Zach and Carl’s broader friendship circle. They recalled the patterns of mock bullying that occurred within the group in an attempt to get Carl to ‘come out of the closet’:

The relationships under study consequently drew upon the ambiguities embedded within friendships between men across sexual orientation as a source of humour, seemingly playing with the boundaries between homosocial and homoerotic desire and the social identities of gay and straight. In contrast to previous research on friendships between men across sexual orientation that has highlighted the importance of maintaining rigid and impermeable boundaries between the identities of gay/straight and platonic/sexual forms of desire (Fee, 2000; Muraco, 2005; Price, 1999), participants in this study seemed to employ the humorous transgression of these categories as a valued form of play.

The serious business of sexual fixity

How should we interpret these patterns of humour? Earlier, I noted that theorisations of joking behaviour have often foregrounded this mode of communication’s conceptualisation of reality as multiple, fluid and contradictory (Koestler, 1966; Mulkay, 1988). The joke could, consequently, play some role in the deconstruction of the sexual and gender binaries that dominate western cultures. Queer theorists, in particular, have attempted to destabilise the dichotomies of male/female and heterosexual/homosexual, by questioning their tendency to categorise in terms of hierarchical, categorically exclusive oppositions, and for neglecting the complexity, overlap and ambiguity of gendered and sexual experience and identity (Fausto-Sterling, 1993). Queer theory and humour, as such, seem to possess a certain affinity.

Yet, while humorous patterns of misidentification, sexual ambiguity, and even flirting, seemed to be ritualised elements within many of the friendship pairs participating in this study, these joking behaviours existed alongside ‘official discourses’ of a ‘purity’ of sexual identity. Michael’s (S) response to Robert’s (G) flirting behaviour is instructive:

I’m not gay, and, so be it … but I just know, just as Robert knows that he is gay, I know I’m straight. So there’s really no, I don’t really have any concern with that.

Boris, another straight participant, recognises the existence of ambiguity in the relationship between sexual desire and sexual identity in general, yet concludes by reaffirming the incontrovertible purity of his own heterosexuality:

They say when it comes to straightness and gayness, people fall into three categories. You’ve got 10 per cent of the population who are irretrievably gay, 10 per cent who are irretrievably straight, and 80 per cent who’ll swing one way or the other depending on the incentive. That’s what I’m told. Now if that’s the case, I’m in the ‘oppressed’ 10 per cent of irretrievably straight people, and I know I can’t catch it, and it is just not an issue.

Gay research participants within the context of these friendships generally also affirmed the fixity of sexual identity categories. While a number of these interviewees had previously had romantic or sexual relationships with women, and may consequently have been aware of the ambiguities involved in the categories of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’, this knowledge was generally not transferred into the context of their relationships with heterosexual co-participants. Ben’s (G) comments are instructive in their similarity to those offered by the heterosexual interviewees cited above:

I know Heath is straight, and he knows that I’m gay, so, it would, I’m never going to pursue anything because it would damage the friendship and, it just, it’s not really part of the way our friendship works.

In many ways, humour associated with the transgression of boundaries between homosocial/homosexual desire and gay/straight social identities had the paradoxical effect of both relying upon, and reinforcing, this formally stated official discourse of fixed sexual difference. The sense of play associated with the joking behaviours encountered within this study implicitly depended upon the underlying fixity of sexual selves, positioning the possibility of sexual interaction within the realm of the ridiculous. As Victor Turner (1969) contends, paradox and absurdity often have precisely the effect of rendering ‘normal’ practice comparatively reasonable, reinforcing the very behaviours, categories and values that they seemingly disrupt. Previous theorisations of gay–straight male relationships have commonly identified the existence of a paranoid need to construct the dyad in strictly non-sexual terms. The joking behaviours discussed seemed to lack this paranoia and, at first glance, directly confounded emphases upon sexual fixity. The effects of this style of humour, however, arguably mirrored the function accorded to homophobia within previous studies of friendships between men across sexual orientation; rendering the possibility of the relationship becoming sexual ridiculous, or unthinkable. The joking behaviours under study, as such, reflect the conception of ‘ironic recuperation’ developed by Mark McCormack and Eric Anderson (2010: 846–7), within which the invocation of sexual fluidity is used to paradoxically reinforce the underlying ‘authenticity’ of one’s identity.

Conclusion

Contemporary Australia manifests an ambivalent, multi-faceted relation to homophobia, with evidence documenting both the persistence of violence and marginalisation (Hillier et al., 2010: 39–48), alongside a (seemingly) more permissive environment with regard to same-sex desire (Flood and Hamilton, 2005). The joking behaviours considered within this article could be interpreted as reflecting the historical ambivalence that gay/straight male friendships encountered. On the one hand, humorous re-articulations of the boundary between the homosocial and the homosexual offered participants the opportunity to demonstrate their cosmopolitan ‘tolerance’ by distancing themselves from historically dominant productions of homophobic masculinities; yet, this playfulness was carefully co-constructed to avoid ‘seriously’ challenging participants’ sexual identifications. While the joking behaviours considered ostensibly played with the fraught boundary between homosociality/homosexuality, they never lapsed into overtly graphic or ‘threatening’ forms of sexualised humour. In this sense, the friendships under study seemed dependent upon a deradicalised ‘homonormativity’ that was ‘safe’ and unthreatening in its playfulness, rather than interrogative of underlying sociocultural norms and categories (Duggan, 2002: 179).

The anxious expulsion of the homosexual-other from the constitutive structures of the heterosexual-self did not occur through the exaggerated, paranoid or violent over-reaction characteristic of Sedgwick’s ‘homosexual panic’ within the context of the friendships under consideration. Freud’s (1976) understanding of the joke has relevance here; humorous play with the boundaries of homosexual/homosocial desire allowed for the simultaneous displacement and expression of the ‘unsayable’ impulses underpinning investments in the production of an impenetrable, pristine hetero-masculinity. These jokes acted to both negate the possibility of homophobia, while simultaneously reinscribing sexual difference. This research consequently suggests the need to consider more thoroughly the complex and often hidden investments in sexual identity that characterise the experiences of seemingly progressive men, investments which may be rendered invisible if understandings of homophobia are limited to overt physical violence or verbal abuse (Tomsen, 2009: 17–36). It may be that as more formally institutionalised patterns of homophobia are deconstructed, these seemingly incidental and ‘harmless’ forms of sexual differentiation take on renewed significance (Riggs and Patterson, 2009).

There is potentially a problematic sense in which the production of binarised sexual identities discussed within this article could be a structured reflection of the research design. Individuals with more fluid sexual identities were potentially pre-emptively excluded from the research through the recruitment of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ male friends. Examining negotiations of sexual identity within the context of friendships for men who identify as queer, questioning or bisexual, or who refuse classification altogether, could be a fruitful topic for future inquiry. Yet, simultaneously, research has demonstrated that the congruence between identification as gay/straight, and patterns of both sexual desire and behaviour, is characteristically ‘imperfect’ (Dowsett, 1990; Kinsey et al., 1948). As both psychoanalytic and queer theory have demonstrated, sexual and gendered identities are by necessity multiple, layered, complex and tense (Butler, 1995); the desire to establish a unified, stable sexual/gender identity should consequently be regarded as the outcome of processes of social regulation rather than reflecting the expression of an innate ‘authenticity’. We might ask, then, not so much whether sexual identities ‘are’ fixed, but rather interrogate the particular psychic demands, interpersonal situations and historical conditions under which the fixity of sexual identity becomes a social requirement.

Finally, while the overriding aim of this article was to consider humour in the production of binarised sexual identities, it is necessary to recognise the ambiguous and multiple roles attached to these patterns of sociality. Even as it acted to differentiate and categorise, the humour under consideration simultaneously established and enacted substantial patterns of communion and affection. This article should also be read as suggesting the need for a proliferation of the narratives, both academic and popular, that exist around relationships between men across sexual orientation; to recognise both everyday patterns of affection and closeness, as well as the exclusions that can be produced through these (McCormack, 2012; Savin-Williams, 2005).