Heteronormatizing Musical Genres: The Case of Truck Driving Songs

Abstract

Based on a sample of 1,311 songs about long-haul truck driving released between 1939 and 2026, we analyze how lyrics normalize heterosexuality and reinforce the gender binary, which we call heteronormatizing a musical genre. We unpack two key contradictory narrative processes and their variations: (1) traditional heteronormatization refers to domesticated tales of men’s sacrificial breadwinning and women’s gendered servicing and (2) liberated heteronormatization refers to adventurous tales of uninhibited heterosexual selves and relations. Our analysis contributes to research on sexuality and music by conceptualizing and centering the process through which an entire genre is heteronormatized. We conclude by addressing the role of culture in systemic heteronormativity, exploring intersectional implications, and encouraging scholars to conceptualize heteronormativity as processual.

Keywords

heteronormativity culture music narratives truck driving

Introduction

Standing in front of two big rigs at the edge of The White House lawn, Donald Trump proclaimed, “Thank God for truckers” because they are the “lifeblood of our economy”—before announcing he weakened regulations so they could “be free to drive more hours” (White House Archives 2020). The industry employs over two million drivers—about 97 percent are men and 72 percent white—who deliver “over 20 billion tons of goods valued at over $22 trillion” (Scott and Davis-Sramik 2022:331). Industry challenges include deunionization, driver shortages, environmental impacts, technological displacement, and drivers’ high rates of divorce, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, hemorrhoids, and erectile dysfunction (see e.g., Crespo et al. 2024; Singer 2025; Torres-Nunez et al. 2024). Despite these challenges under a regime of deregulation (Belzer 2000; Viscelli 2016), researchers reveal that truckers downplay their exploitation by glorifying the work and lifestyle (Blake 1974; Ouellet 1994) and that “images of truckers” work in music and film mask the tedium and stigma drivers experience (Fleming 2018:92). In this article, we show how truck driving music’s centering of heterosexuality is a key cultural vehicle through which such glorification travels.

Typically sung by white men with southern accents, truck driving songs comprise a unique musical genre centered on a working-class occupation. Although recordings date back to the late 1930s, trucker music was popularized in the 1970s, as evidenced by its heavy rotation on country music radio stations and the increased production and consumption of “greatest hits” albums (Gibson 2011). Contributing factors likely include (1) the songs’ valorization of manhood aligned with the cultural backlash against the women’s movement (Faludi 1991) and (2) the rise of trucking as interstate highways developed and capitalism increasingly relied on transporting mass produced food and goods across the country. Although trucking songs originated in and are primarily produced in the style of country music, they sometimes resonate with other styles, including folk, rock, punk, and metal (Eastman, Danaher, and Schrock 2013). Dave Dudley is perhaps the most well-known singer in the genre, having recorded 40 years of trucker songs, including 33 country hits and the million-plus selling single, “Six Days on the Road.”

In this article, we analyze how truck driving songs lyrically heteronormatize a musical genre. Heteronormativity refers to how heterosexuality is constructed, normalized, and privileged over other sexual practices and identities in ways that simultaneously reproduce the gender binary (Warner 1991). Originating in queer theory, scholars brought the study of heteronormativity into diverse disciplines and published more articles invoking the concept during the past decade than in all previous years. According to Web of Science, about 80 percent of articles (1,863 of 2,336) invoking “heteronormativity” have been published since 2015. Within sociology, for example, heteronormativity found a place in the study of families (Stacey 2021), education (Myers and Raymond 2010), and work (Corlett et al. 2023). Although research often refers to heteronormativity as a cultural narrative that shapes feelings, beliefs, talk, interactions, and institutions, it is less common to center heteronormativity in studies of cultural products, especially song lyrics (but see Holmes 2020).

We contribute empirically and conceptually to this line of inquiry. More specifically, we analyze an entire musical genre rather than a small sample of songs or artists. We also introduce the concept of “heteronormatizing a musical genre,” which refers to how lyrical narratives construct heterosexuality as normal and superior and naturalize the gender binary. Moving beyond our lyrical analysis, we conclude by exploring how the songs more subtly convey heterosexual whiteness and, more generally, how and why sexualities scholars should explicitly conceptualize heteronormativity as processual.

Literature Review

Literary theorist Michael Warner (1991) defined heteronormativity as an ideology that frames heterosexuality as natural, normal, and superior to other sexualities and reinforces binary constructions of gender. As Rich (1980) taught us, heterosexuality is often “a beachhead of male dominance” (p. 633) sustained through not only socialization and politics but also “cultural propaganda” (p. 660). Rich explains how heterosexuality is often “compulsory,” and others suggest heterosexuality is a means to construct gender (Connell 1995; Goffman 1977; Ward 2022). Such cultural narratives constitute a “heterosexual imaginary” that is so taken-for-granted that it “conceals the operation of [and] normalizes heterosexuality” (Ingraham 1994:203–204). In addition to examining the marginalization of LGBTQ people, scholarship on heteronormativity also examines how heterosexual selves and privilege are reproduced, often under the rubric of “critical heterosexuality studies” (Fischer 2013). The concept of heteronormativity helped many scholars move from thinking of sexuality as just a variable or identity to a social system that disproportionately advantages heterosexuals as a social group.

Cutting across sociological subfields, sociologists typically study how people invoke, navigate, or challenge cultural notions of heteronormativity. Mothers (Martin 2009) and fathers (Solebello and Elliott 2010) often use cultural stories to impose heterosexuality onto their children, through both interpretive and regulatory processes. State policies and programs (Heath 2009) and institutional discourse (Ruiz-Cecilia, Guijarro-Ojeda, and Carmen Marin-Macias 2021) facilitate heteronormativity, in part through making queer people invisible (Murphy 2016). Straight people often discursively invoke cultural notions of heteronormativity, whether talking with professionals (Kitzinger 2005), friends (Myers and Raymond 2010), or “enemies” (Pascoe 2007). Queer people, in turn, navigate or subvert cultural heteronormativity as parents (Berkowitz and Ryan 2011; Kazyak and Park 2020), students (Cech and Waidzunas 2011), and workers (Cottingham et al. 2016; Ueno et al. 2023). Although such work significantly contributes to many subfields and shows how heteronormative narratives impact diverse social contexts, it has less to teach us about how heteronormativity is constructed on the cultural level.

As Collins (1990) taught us, media narratives often (re)produce cultural tropes of gender, race, class, and sexuality in ways that facilitate oppression. Cultural research on heteronormativity shows children’s movies often frame (1) heterosexual love as “powerful, transformative, and magical” and (2) the “sexiness of feminine characters” as grounded in “the gaze of masculine characters” (Martin and Kazyak 2009:332). Young women often use princess cultural scripts to make sense of and manage heterosexual selves (Koontz, Norman, and Okorie 2019). Movies, sitcoms, and reality shows are often produced and edited to create heteronormative “happily ever after” endings (Pellegrini 2023). Rather than traditional hetero romance, some films project men’s “heterosexual exploits” with women, who are portrayed as “thoroughly and continuously desiring” men and “constantly ready for sex” (Brook 2015:258). Heteronormative programming targets all ages, naturalizes heterosexual love, desire, and sex, and is constituted through intertwined binary constructions of “men” and “women.”

Although the sociology of music examines music subcultures, performers, genres, and lyrics (see e.g., Roy and Dowd 2010)—often addressing sexuality—explicitly invoking and centering the concept of heteronormativity is rare, leaving it undertheorized. Our Web of Science search of sociology journals for “music” and “heteronormativity” turned up three articles, none of which address song lyrics. Carmichael-Murphy (2023) analysis of one artist’s performance—rather than lyrics—does show how a singer’s self-presentation can subvert the gender binary and heteronormativity. Outside of sociology, anthropologist Nasrin Khandoker (2024) analyzes how the lyrics of women-centered Bangali folk songs and performance studies scholar Shanté Smalls (2011) examines how one woman rap artist’s lyrics subvert heteronormative discourse. In the only other article, we found that explicitly addresses and centers the concept of heteronormativity in an analysis of song lyrics, musicologist Jessica Holmes (2020) shows how one punk singer’s lyrics and self-presentation subvert heteronormativity. We build on this work by analyzing how an entire musical genre constructs (rather than subverts) heteronormativity, largely by projecting heterosexual selves onto the characters.

Explicitly gendered analyses of music are much more common, and related qualitative research often shows how sexuality is intertwined with gender construction—even if it does not explicitly invoke the term or theorize heteronormativity. For example, Schippers (2002) reveals how members of the 1990s Alternative Hard Rock subculture reinforced, renegotiated, and challenged cultural prescriptions of gender and heterosexuality. Oware (2016) finds that compared to Black rappers, white men rappers “deracialize” lyrics and focus more on degrading women and sexual minorities. Rens (2021) finds Afrobeat music lyrics and videos portray men as rich breadwinners and hypersexual players and women as sexual objects or domesticated subjects. Eastman and Schrock (2008) find southern rock singers lyrically construct white trash manhood in part by portraying women positively if sexually or domestically subservient and negatively if not. Edwards (2018:66) shows how Dolly Parton’s lyrics often (but not always) critique sexual double standards, whereby men are allowed but women are unfairly ostracized for heterosexual promiscuity. Viewed through the lens of heteronormativity, such work reveals how cultural imagery may align with or divert from heteronormativity and is not only gendered but also often raced and classed.

Quantitative content analyses of country music’s gendered lyrics also reveal implicit lessons about heteronormativity. Eastman and Pettijohn’s (2015) analysis of Billboard #1 country songs of the year from 1946 to 2008 show that women singing positive songs are more likely to top the charts during economic hard times, which they suggest may be because the genre’s largely working-class white consumers find comfort in the imagery of traditional (heterosexual) mothers and wives. Others find that compared to earlier decades, men country singers in the 2010s increasingly sexually objectified women (Rasmussen and Densley 2017) and emphasized women, sex, and alcohol (Densley and Rasmussen 2018:123), which they argue reinforces “a situational risk factor associated with [hetero]sexual assault.” Leap (2020:176) analyzes representations of rural masculinity in country music in the context of declining economic opportunities and finds a shift from heterosexual “breadwinning to hooking up.” Although such work does not unpack heteronormativity per se, it sensitizes to us to how it is intertwined with gender and how contextualizing findings in larger historical, cultural, and interpersonal processes may provide insight into broader sociological forces and implications.

We aim to contribute to these studies by centering heteronormativity and taking an interactionist approach to cultural narratives. Interactionists view cultural narratives as socially circulating stories that construct characters who are thinking, feeling, and acting in an unfolding story (Loseke 2007; Maines 1993). Aligned with cultural and critical interactionists (Jacobsen 2019; Schrock 2024), we see the creation and representation of selves as being intertwined with inequality dynamics. We are thus interested in not only how the song lyrics portray characters but also how such portrayals support heteronormativity, largely through the gendered normalization and valorization of heterosexuality. Because truck driving music is considered a genre, we frame our analysis as heteronormatizing a musical genre and aim to distill symbolic processes that scholars may find useful when studying other genres. In our discussion section, we address the role of culture in systemic heteronormativity, explore intersectional implications, and promote conceptualizing heteronormativity as processual.

Data, Analyses, and Conceptualization

Our data consist of 1,311 songs about long-haul trucking recorded between 1939 and 2026. We only included songs about commercial driving; excluding songs about personal travel (e.g., “King of the Road”), personal vehicles (e.g., “Pickup Man”), and songs re-recorded by the same artist (e.g., one singer re-recorded/re-released a song over 40 times). All but three of the songs are sung by whites, although whiteness was not explicitly referenced in the lyrics. Eastman began collecting the songs about 35 years ago as a child interested in his grandfather’s truck driving occupation, largely by scouring record stores. When digitization became possible, he “ripped” songs found on older technologies (e.g., eight tracks, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs) into MP3 format and created a spreadsheet to keep track of titles and artists. Over the last decade, we added to the database by reviewing the playlists of truck driving music-centered satellite and internet radio stations, examining trucking websites’ lists of songs, searching popular streaming services, and training the algorithm of online services to suggest new truck driving songs (by “liking” them). Almost all songs in our database are now available on streaming platforms. Because recent searches no longer turn up any new older songs, just new releases, we believe we are close to having a complete collection of songs in the genre, rather than a convenience or random sample. Lyrical transcripts were largely created by finding the lyrics online and checking/revising them while listening to the songs, although we transcribed many the old-fashioned way when we could not locate lyrics online.

Our analysis proceeded inductively, employing both ethnographic content analysis (Altheide 1987) and grounded theory (see Charmaz 2006). Whereas quantitative content analyses develop hypotheses, transform text into variables, test intercoder reliability, and present distributions and associations statistically (Rasmussen and Densley 2017), Altheide (1987) developed ethnographic content analysis as a reflexive process that focuses on discovery and typically presents findings narratively. Later rebranded qualitative media analysis or QMA (Altheide 1996), its protocol includes initially reading a sample of documents and listing themes, examining more documents and refining thematic categories, collecting descriptive examples and comparing them to further refine analyses, writing summaries of categories and themes, and then bringing this material into a draft that is gradually revised into a formal manuscript. Although some of these techniques overlap with grounded theory, QMA is more focused on descriptive accuracy than theoretical development (Schneider and Altheide 2025:82).

Before addressing our theoretical rendering, let us explain our own QMA process. We first separately read a sample of lyrics with a basic question in mind: “What are these songs about?” We then shared initial lists of themes (which included “born to drive” and “breadwinning”) and through conversations and memoing, we came to see how songs either focused on (1) the work of being a trucker or (2) or the work–family nexus. We then continued going through lyrics, separately, asking not only if they exemplified the dominant themes, but also if so, how? Such questions helped us compare examples and further develop a typology of variations. Data coded as “born to drive,” for example, became part of a typology for how the songs construct the occupation, whereas “breadwinning” became subsumed under the “work–family nexus.” We developed a four-tiered coding system in a spreadsheet that enabled the specification of major themes and variations. In the rare instances, a song fit more than one of the two major themes, we used the song title and repeated chorus to make a final categorical determination. We went through dozens more transcripts, working to uncover variations, and refine the typology. Together we then created a rough outline of the analysis, using our categories as subheadings filled in with song titles, lyric excerpts, and notes.

When we made it through about half of the transcripts, we already sorted enough data and examples into our outline to fill up the analysis sections of more than two standard length articles. This led us to ask another question: Is there not just an empirical, but also theoretical justification for dividing this material into two papers? The question led us to employ grounded theory’s methods of theoretical development (Charmaz 2006); that is, we sought to develop an empirically grounded conceptual rendering of our two main themes, which would ideally grow into “sensitizing concepts” (Blumer 1969) that could be applied and developed in other case studies. Using Howie Becker’s (1998) analytic “trick” of trying to conceptualize the themes without reference to the details of one’s case, comparing possible conceptualizations with the literature—which Charmaz’s (2006) version of grounded theory emphasizes (see also Timmermans and Tavory 2012)—and employing gerunds to label the emergent concepts to emphasize their processual nature (see Charmaz 2006) was key. This heuristic work led us to frame the first theme as “masculinizing an occupation” and reframe the second theme (originally “the work–family nexus”) as “heteronormatizing trucking” to include not only familial but also nonfamilial sexual stories. We focused first on the article about representing the occupation (Eastman et al. 2013).

When we returned to this article, we first added to our database of songs and reanalyzed the first then analyzed the second half of our sample for heteronormativity, following the aforementioned processes. In doing so we refined our categories and codes (Saldaña 2021). We grouped codes like “breadwinning,” “faithful partners,” “supportive wives” into a more general category of “Traditional Heteronormatization.” In addition, we grouped “polygamy,” “avoiding family life,” and “sex workers” into “Liberated Heteronormatization.” We also employed Becker and Charmaz’s advice on theoretical rendering to conceptually label subtypes of liberated and traditional heteronormatization. For example, songs initially coded as controlling temptation on the road, men driving home for love and sex, or women anticipating men’s return were grouped together under “monogamizing heterosexual selves,” which became one of three subprocesses of traditional heteronormatization. We did not find an evolution of lyrical themes surrounding heteronormativity; early songs established heteronormative themes as foundational in the genre and subsequent songs generally stayed within such parameters. We did, however, search for and found what grounded theorists call “negative cases” or examples that departed from the major themes, which included a few dozen songs about women truck drivers and nine songs with LGBT characters that we include in the analysis.

After coding, Eastman—who has more of a background in the sociology of music—took the lead in using song titles, summaries, and selective quotes to produce a detailed outline of our analysis section. Schrock—who has more of a background in sexuality studies—took the lead on writing and framing the paper. As we read, revised, and discussed each other’s work, we searched and could not find anyone using “heteronormatizing” in a similar fashion—although Web of Science turned up no publications using the term, Google Scholar turned up a few which used the term in passing and/or as an adjective in place of the term “heteronormative” (e.g., Steck and Perry (2018:233) write of “schools dominated by a heteronormatizing culture”). This exploration helped convince us that there was theoretical justification to introduce the concept of “heteronormatizing” and that it likely has utility far beyond the study of song lyrics, as we suggest in our conclusion.

At this time, we also went back to Becker’s advice on conceptualization and transformed “heteronormatizing trucking” to “heteronormatizing musical genres,” because the latter better reflects the type of social phenomena that trucking music is a case of. We then worked together to incorporate these insights while gradually revising our drafts into the present manuscript. When presenting our analysis, we avoid extensively quoting lyrics to abide by copyright law (we would have needed permission from each artist to do so). However, we found that referencing song titles, selective quoting, and summarizing lyrics enabled us to reveal key meanings. In addition, grouping a sample of similarly coded songs in each paragraph helped convey the breadth and variation of key symbolic processes. Although we do not include the referenced songs in our References section, we include them in a Supplemental Appendix. We’ve also created two publicly available Spotify playlists consisting of most of the songs referenced in our main analysis sections: “Trucking Songs: Traditional Heteronormatization” and “Trucking Songs: Liberated Heteronormatization.”

Traditional Heteronormatization

By traditional heteronormatization, we refer to narratively constructing stories centered on idealized notions of the heterosexual family. Heteronormatizing the musical genre along traditional lines occurs in three main ways: (1) portraying members of heterosexual couples as either breadwinners or helpmates, which we call gendering heterosexual selves; (2) constructing heterosexual desire as confined to monogamous relationships, which we call monogamizing heterosexual selves; and (3) invoking children in ways that construct characters as heterosexual parents, which we call parentifying heterosexual selves. As we show, these narrative processes involved constructing men and women as binarily distinct yet complimentary characters.

Gendering Heterosexual Selves

Whether focusing on men’s breadwinning, women’s helpmating, or working together in trucking, the song lyrics heteronormatize the genre in a traditional manner through the symbolic binarization of heterosexual gender roles. Gendering heterosexual selves often involves the singers—personified as trucker men—valorizing themselves as sacrificial breadwinners. Scott H. Biram sings of truck driving facilitating financial support for his wife in both “Draggin’ Down the Line” and “Eighteen Wheeler Fever.” Before dying in an accident due to blinding “Lights on the Hill,” Slim Dusty endures the hardships of the road to provide food and shelter for his future wife. In “Midnight Flyer,” R.C. Finnegan regrets being away from his wife for a month but claims he needs to make money for their retirement. Such songs portray the protagonists as sacrificing to financially provide for their wives, gendering characters’ heterosexual selves.

Harmonizing with songs portraying men as breadwinners are songs characterizing women as supportive helpmates, further gendering heterosexual selves in a traditionally sexist fashion. In “Sybil Writes,” Lawton Williams appreciates receiving letters twice daily from his caring, truck stop waitressing wife and in “I’d Rather Roll” Joey Holiday glorifies his wife as a navigator, even when she misdirects him in Alabama. Marcie Dickerson sings “I Want to be a Truck Driver’s Sweetheart” so she can bake, cook, and yodel trucker songs for him on his brief visits home. In Joe Maphis’ “Riding Down Old 99,” a woman sings she readies coffee, soup, and kisses for her trucking husband’s arrival. Kay Adam’s “Six Days A Waiting” centers a woman cleaning the house for her soon-to-be returning trucker. These musical narratives heteronormatize characters by representing women as paying their breadwinners back by cleaning, cooking, and providing emotional support, reinforcing the gender binary and traditional heterosexual marriage.

Lyrics about husband-wife truck driving teams subvert breadwinner tropes, but nonetheless heteronormatize songs via binarizing gender roles. Dave Dudley’s truck driving wife, “Texas Ruby,” helpfully serves as a “backdoor” (i.e., the last truck in a convoy) to alert him of approaching police. After raising their kids, Joey Trombley’s wife becomes his “Helping Hands” on the open road; similarly, the Drive-By Truckers’ only song that mentions an actual trucker expresses happiness when their mother finally joins her trucker boyfriend in his “Eighteen Wheels of Love.” After a truck driver stops to help a woman with a flat tire, Pat & Darrel become a trucking duo who find happiness in “Our Sleeper Cab Home.” Although portraying couples on the road together, such songs still binarize gender roles in traditional fashion while reinforcing myths that heterosexual love conquers all. In the only exception to framing a driving team as heteronormatively happy, comedy singer Tim Wilson is in a “Peterbilt Prison” when his controlling wife joins him after she caught him cheating on her.

Monogamizing Heterosexual Selves

Traditional heteronormatization includes narratives confining the expression of heterosexual desire to monogamous relationships. Many reflect what Schippers (2020) describes as “happiness scripts” that equate heterosexual monogamous relationships as essential to a good life. Monogamizing heterosexual selves includes stories about men avoiding temptation on the road, monogamous hetero desire fueling risky driving, and sharing sexual expectations with waiting wives. Stories about women expressing love for trucker husbands, cheating on trucker men as negative examples, and exemplary truck driving women who express desire only for their homebound husbands also monogamize heterosexual selves.

Conveying heterosexual temptation yet emphasizing monogamous commitment, Dave Dudley’s classic “Six Days on the Road” portrays a trucker traveling south from Pittsburgh who could but refrains from cheating. Bud Brewer sings “I’ve Come Awful Close,” but never cheated even after buying a woman a cup of coffee in Georgia and meeting a flirtatious waitress. Pete Harris keeps his “Eighteen Big Old Wheels” rolling toward home rather than stopping for many temptations. Earl Scott turns down women in Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas because he is saving it for his short-skirted woman in “New York City, New York.” These songs demonstrate how traditionally heteronormatizing the genre entails portraying men as desiring and being desired by women on the road yet nonetheless funneling their desire toward just one woman.

Monogamizing heterosexual selves also involves framing drivers’ desire for their sole women partners as fueling risk taking on the road. Dave Dudley bribes police and speedily navigates a dangerous two-lane road to get home to sleep with his Georgia lover in “South Bound and Down.” Joey Holiday sings about “Dead Heading Down Hammer Lane” with roses in hand to romance his beautiful fiancé, while Chris Knight describes “The Hammer Going Down” to get back to Louisville for love and a kiss. The “Midnight Hauler” Razzy Bailer drives all night through the desert while dodging authorities to join his sleeping wife in their Kansas bed. David Frizzell’s “Midnight Run to Dixie” implicitly references southern whiteness in a song about a trucker engaging in risky driving to return home quickly to a lover.

A notable variation of such monogamizing involves characterizing trucker men as expecting or informing their wives to be prepared to sexually service them upon their return. Interstate Cowboy, in “Bride of a Trucker,” expects sex during his short stay home because he is a man, not a boy. Austin, Texas music legend Dale Watson, who recorded two trucker theme albums, instructs his wife to call her boss to take off work and tell grandma to pick up their child because he plans on “Makin’ Up Time” when he returns. In “Movin’ On,” Kelley Butler suggests his wife take the phone off the hook so that they can be alone all night long. The women in these traditional heteronormative tales presumably defer or participate, although these male-centered songs do not reveal much about them.

Others sing of risking accidents and alluding the authorities to enjoy their wives’ domestic as well as sexual virtues. Leland Martin uses “Four Hundred Horses and Eighteen Wheels” on a trip from Chicago to “Dixie” and Johnny Dollar abstinently claims “No More Truck Stops” on a return trip from Baltimore because they desire their wives’ home-cooking and sex. Dave Dudley sings about going “Back Home” to his wife for some lovemaking and better food than what he usually eats at truck stops. The traditionally heteronormative symbolic thread in these narratives is that trucker men are driven by desire for their wives’ bodies and food.

Several songs sung by women convey their attraction to or love for their sole trucker men, valorizing women’s heterosexual selves. For example, Lee Ann Womack excitedly waits for her “Man with 18 Wheels” so they can recapture lost time and act like “lovesick kids.” Kathy Mattea sings about “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses” when her trucker husband retires. Kay Adams sings “The Reason We’re Together” is because she enjoys her husband’s attention when he’s in town. Despite flirting with other truckers while waitressing, Betty Amos saves her love for her trucker husband’s return via his “Eighteen Wheels.” The Dixie Bee Liners sing about their especially attractive trucker “Davy” in a song that lyrically intermixes sex and road metaphors and in “A Trucker’s Bride” Arigon Starr waits patiently for her husband to return so they can jump into bed. Traditional heteronormatizing thus characterizes women as possessing monogamous selves who desire and love their truck driving men—although the women singers are less demanding and express less lust than the men, thus maintaining gendered distinctions.

Lyrics about women truck drivers in relationships—most of which appear on Joey Holiday’s album “For Women in Trucking Only”—subvert stereotypes of gendered occupations yet still heteronormatize musical narratives via monogamizing desire. Holiday sings as a homebound man expressing desire for the return of “My Little Miss Eighteen Wheels” with big eyes, full lips, wide hips, and a skinny waist, croons that “My Truckin’ Lady” always comes home to start his engine, and objectifies his lover in “My Truck Drivin’ Girl.” Similarly, Sonny George sings about his attractive truck driving wife in “The Truck Stops Here”—meaning, with him despite her many suitors. A song centering a woman trucker’s perspective is Scooter Lee’s version of “Midnight Hauler,” in which she sings of driving all night to join her husband in Tennessee. Another is Rhonda Vincent’s “Ridin’ the Red Line,” in which she speeds to her southern home to make it back to the good-looking man she loves. Despite subverting male breadwinning tropes, such songs still heteronormatize the genre by characterizing men and women as possessing heterosexual selves that monogamously desire and love each other.

Parentifying Heterosexual Selves

Similar to how individuals invoke their children in everyday talk to convey heteronormativity (Kitzinger 2005), heteronormatizing songs in a traditional fashion also involves lyrically referencing children to convey parenthood—or parentifying heterosexual selves. Johnny Bond reminisces about his truck “Old Mack” enabling him to overcome danger to feed and clothe his kids. Johnny Russell explains “I’m a Trucker” who endures the hardships of the road to take care of his family, as does Dave Dudley in “One A.M. Alone” and Red Sovine in “Ten Days Out, Two Days In.” Others emphasize children’s perspectives, including Moore & Napier’s “I’m Waiting for Dad to Come Home” (although he tragically died in an accident) and Alabama’s hit “Roll On (Eighteen-Wheeler),” which describes a father rescued after an accident on a snowy mountainside. Referencing children in such ways paints the men as loving but absent traditional fathers.

Heteronormatizing musical narratives via traditional parentification also involves portraying women as supportive mothers. In “Daddy Drives a Big Truck,” Cliff Douglass valorizes his mother for holding down a job and taking care of him and his siblings while their father is on the road rolling south. Chris Sprague similarly praises his mother for not only raising five kids alone but teaching them to “Pray for Your Daddy (He’s a Trucker)” who unfortunately, did not survive a run to Shreveport. Joey Holiday’s “The Message” reveals how his wife hides her fear for her trucker husband’s safety to regulate their children’s fear in addition to thanking him for working so hard for the family. Nev Nichols glorifies his wife for taking care of their “Little Trucker,” which includes praying with the boy. In these heteronormatizing tales, women are valorized as managing children’s lives and emotions, often through Christianity.

A handful of comedic counterexamples present a reversal of traditional roles, which nevertheless heteronormatize the genre via symbolic parentification. Singing from a boy’s perspective, Joey Holiday says when “Mama’s Gone Truckin’” it drives his father crazy. Moe Brandy and Joe Stampley’s comedic song “Semi-Married Man” is about a Texas woman who, after an argument, steals her husbands’ truck and goes to work, leaving him home with the kids. In two unique songs using the same title, “My Momma Was a Truck Drivin’ Man,” Cajun singer Jamie Bergeron and parody singer Jethro Burns both recount how a mother takes to the road while a father raises the children. Rather than glorifying women truckers, these songs characterize them as deviants who irresponsibly leave children with incompetent stay-at-home fathers, bolstering traditional heteronormatization by framing such relationships as ridiculous.

Overall, our analysis of traditional heteronormatization resonates with previous literature and reveals symbolic processes that collectively heteronormatize the genre of truck driving music. In line with what we know about heteronormativity more generally, the songs binarily construct “men” and “women” as heterosexually linked even if they are working together or engaging in occupational role reversal. They also monogamize heterosexual desire, often framing it as fueling their romantic and work lives. We can also see how rhetorically using children heteronormatizes songs in a traditional fashion. Framing these processes in generic and processual ways—gendering, monogamizing, and parentifying heterosexual selves—may help others see and analyze traditional heteronormatization in other cultural narratives.

Liberated Heteronormatization

By liberated heteronormatization, we refer to representing heterosexual desire and sex as free from the traditional bounds of marriage. Heteronormatizing cultural narratives in this more liberated fashion occurs in three ways: (1) extolling trucker men who cheat on their wives, or adulterizing heterosexual selves; (2) portraying men and women as freeing themselves from marriage, or emancipating heterosexual selves; and (3) portraying presumably unmarried men and women as heterosexually licentious, which we refer to as uninhibitizing heterosexual selves.

Adulterizing Heterosexual Selves

Heteronormatizing the genre in a more “liberated” fashion often involves characterizing married trucker men as engaging in infidelity and characterizing women as mistresses and cuckqueans. In “A Trucker’s Life is the Life for Me,” The Nashville Country Singers claim trucking enables periodic freedom from their own wives so they can have sex with other men’s partners. Jake Brake describes being intimate with women before heading home to his sweetheart in “Last Time Turnaround.” Although married with children, Paul Click agrees to meet “Lonesome Lover” at a truck stop on the Bluegrass Parkway after she helps him evade authorities in “Smokey, Trucks & C.B. Radio.” Jack Barlow fears his infidelity will be revealed because his lovers (including one named “Dixie Lee”) keep dedicating songs to him on a Memphis-based “All Night Country Radio.” Shel Silverstein—the renowned author of The Giving Tree—sings “Somebody Stole My Rig” (and his little black book) while he was joyfully consorting with his mistress. Such songs symbolically adulterize men’s heterosexual selves in ways that positively frames them as liberated from the very same traditional marital commitments other trucker songs celebrate.

Portraying truck driving men as married to several women, unbeknownst to the women involved, is another way songs adulterize heterosexual truck driving men as liberated from traditional marriage. Red Sovine tells two wives at two different homes to give him “A Kiss and the Keys” when he leaves. Charlie Wiggs sings of the difficulty of being “In The Middle,” or keeping two wives and numerous children happy in Atlanta and Baltimore. In the “Old Pipeliner,” Red Simpson struggles to provide for his four plus partners while trying to save up to buy an airplane to more efficiently visit them. Jim Nesbitt is a “Truck Driving Cat with Nine Wives” who stays with a different one each night as he drives between Carolina and California. Not to be outdone, the Willis Brothers’ “Diesel Drivin’, Donut Dunkin’ Dan” is engaged to dozens of waitresses across the country. The implication of these songs is that secretly marrying multiple women derives from trucker men’s licentious heterosexual selves and should be celebrated.

In contrast to romanticizing married men’s philandering, songs about married women acting similarly are typically framed as unforgivable transgressions. Shel Silverstein sings about a truckers’ Alabama wife writing a song “Don’t Go Asleep on the Road,” which made her famous and enabled an affair, which foreshadowed her trucker cuckold becoming fatigued and dying in a crash. Red Simpson confronts his wife and her lover in “Don’t Touch My Hat.” R.C. Finnigan kills his wife and takes up drinking after catching her with his best friend in “Drinkin’ Man’s Blues.” In Garth Brooks’ “Papa Loved Mama,” a jealous trucker crashes his big rig into the hotel room where his wife was with another man—killing them both. Such songs thus villainize women’s infidelity to trucker husbands in ways that reinforce traditional marriage in contrast to the male-centered adultery narratives that typically valorize men as possessing heterosexual selves that cannot be contained by marital monogamy.

Emancipating Heterosexual Selves

Another form of liberated heteronormatization consists of portraying men and sometimes women as freeing themselves from marital traps, signifying emancipated heterosexual selves. One method of symbolically emancipating heterosexual selves involves men singing about preemptively avoiding marriage. In the punk/metal-inspired song “Take Your Stand, Trucker!,” The Waltons advocate against committing to women no matter how pretty they are. The Nashville Riders sing “I’m Riding High and Living Free” because women will never get them to settle down. Red Simpson solicits intimacy with a woman but avoids marriage because his home is the road in “Black Smoke a Blowin’ Over Eighteen Wheels.” Joe Sun warns men that falling in love with women is like “Fryin’ Bacon Naked”—both are dangers to avoid. In contrast to songs celebrating commitment to traditional marriage and family, these songs praise trucker men who remain “liberated” from marriage, despite women’s nefarious efforts to trap them.

Liberated heteronormatization also involves lyrically portraying women as trying to get men to trade trucking for marriage and men responding by valiantly emancipating themselves from marriage. In Jim Fagan’s “Eighteen Wheels Humming, Home Sweet Home,” recorded by eight others, a trucker declares love for his truck after a woman forces him to choose between her and his big rig. Red Simpson, aka the “Motivatin’ Man,” leaves his fiancé at the altar in Dallas because he thought she would ask him to quit and elsewhere sings that when a beautiful woman made him choose between marriage and his occupation, he “Just Kept on Trucking.” In these moral tales, trucking trumps marriage as men emancipate their heterosexual selves from women, who are characterized as controlling and threatening their trucking way of life.

In contrast, some songs position women as protagonists who emancipate themselves from abusive and inattentive truck driving men. A sample of these characterize women as finding freedom by becoming truckers themselves. The Dixie Bee-Liners sing of a woman who began driving “Eighteen Wheels” to escape a violent partner. Billy Joe Shaver sings of an Austin woman moving to Nashville and becoming a “Mother Trucker” to escape a short marriage to an aggressive alcoholic. Kenny Seratt sings of the “Queen of the Road,” a woman trucker who drives away from a tragic past and hooks up with many men—truckers and bikers—she meets as she crisscrosses the county. These cultural narratives symbolically liberate women’s heterosexual selves yet still normalize heterosexuality and the gender binary.

Uninhibitizing Heterosexual Selves

Many truck driving songs heteronormatize cultural narratives by portraying presumably unmarried truckers and the women they meet as being heterosexually uninhibited. A common trope is that life on the road provides men ample opportunities to gawk at and express desire for women—usually truck stop waitresses. Red Simpson objectifies the waitress “Mini-Skirt Minnie,” Ray Stevens thinks “Ethele the Truckstop Queen” is the best-looking woman, and Claud Gray—and four others who recorded the song—sing about “eyeballing” a waitress named Flo who seductively walks around while they talk about “How Fast Them Trucks Can Go.” The Willis Brothers’ “Soft Shoulders and Dangerous Curves” and Ray King’s “Curves and In-Betweens” use road metaphors for heterosexualized objectification. Emphasizing unrestrained desire, Alvin Lee sings that a woman in tight clothing makes him feel like a “Detroit Diesel” and The Waltons proclaim “My Motor” is running hot after hearing a woman’s sultry voice on the C.B. Such songs heteronormatize narratives in a liberated fashion by portraying men as inherently and uninhibitedly aroused by women, who in turn are characterized as enjoying trucker men’s attention.

Liberated heteronormatization is also constructed through tales of heterosexual hookups on the road, presumably fueled by both men and women’s uninhibited heterosexual selves. Numerous songs depict truckers using the C.B. radio to arrange sexual encounters with women, including The Legendary Shack Shakers’ “C.B. Song” (featured in a Geico commercial) and Dale Watson’s “Exit 109.” Others use trucking euphemisms to convey heterosexual interactions, including “Diesel Car Boogie” (R.C. Finnigan), “Let’s Get Drunk and Truck” (Chris Sprague), “Let’s Truck” (Deadbolt), and “She Loves My Peterbilt” (Joey Holiday). Songs about trucker men seducing (Larry Scott’s “Diesel Cecil’s”), pleasuring (Ray King’s “Big Wheel”), or being pleasured by (The Cowslingers’ “Queen of the Truckstop”) heterosexually liberated waitresses are common. Several others portray trucker men seducing police officers’ wives, including “Beaver on my Lap, Bear on my Tail,” in which Red Simpson sings of initially regretting picking up a woman when her sheriff husband pursues them, but subsequently enjoying each other’s affection when the husband runs out of gas. These songs all heteronormatize trucker men and the women they meet on the road as ready, willing, and able to enjoy hetero sex in an uninhibited fashion.

Heteronormatizing cultural narratives in a liberated fashion also portray men truckers as being able to satisfy multiple women who cannot resist them, characterizing both as possessing uninhibited heterosexual selves. Cledus Maggard employs C.B. lingo to describe sexual acts with numerous women in “Mercy Day.” A hungover Dave Dudley wakes up to the “Morning Sun” after spending the night with multiple women. Bob Newman sings about all his lovers’ different hair colors in “Haulin’ Freight.” Faffytunes’ “The Trucker’s Love Song” is about having sex with a string of women across the country. According to Bill Carlisle and the eight others who recorded the song, the “Big Wheel from Boston” slept with every woman in the city, and many more between there and Austin, Texas.

Liberated heteronormative narratives sometimes include women sex workers—often referred to as “lot lizards” in trucker slang. Lil’ Brother Trucker, in his signature song “Little Brother Trucker,” exclaims “Lizzie the lot lizard” is physically and personally undesirable but renowned for pleasuring men with her mouth. Sheb Wooley says waking up to large, ugly women retrieved from strip clubs is evidence he was “Born To Be a Trucker.” In The Bloodhound Gang’s “A Lap Dance is Better When the Stripper is Crying,” a stripper sells sex to a trucker so she can afford to buy food for her child. The implicit moral of such stories—all of which appear on punk or comedy albums—is that it is natural for men to pay for heterosexual gratification and for women to work in the so-called “oldest profession” out of desperation or enjoyment. Such songs characterize women and men’s heterosexual selves as uninhibited by traditional sexual morals.

Although truck driving music often portrays trucker men and some women they meet as liberated from traditional heterosexual norms, the genre does not promote liberation from heterosexuality. Although less than ten songs reference queer characters, they are typically portrayed in these songs as laughable and/or deserving of violence. For example, in “It’s My Dog,” Rod Hart declines a man’s invitation to dance and threatens violence. L’il Brother Trucker sings of escaping being raped at a gay truck stop (i.e., a “pickle park”) by assaulting and almost killing his attacker. Circus Bogus, in “C.B. Truck Drivin’ Man,” reluctantly has sex with men out of desperation before consorting with and killing a trans sex worker. Author Jim Goad who recorded an album of classic trucker songs, also wrote the book Trucker Fags in Denial, which is about two aging truckers killing gay truckers while they have sex with each other. Despite a few exceptions—including Willi Carlisle’s attraction to nonbinary “Big Butt Billy”—the musical genre sets limits to sexual liberation and heteronormatively others queer characters.

In contrast to traditional heteronormatization, heteronormatizing trucker songs in a liberated fashion valorizes characters with heterosexual selves that are not restrained by marriage or monogamy. Although such songs occasionally portray women as liberated from abusive men or possessing sexual agency, they typically marginalize women as duped cuckqueans, mate poachers, controlling nags, stimulating objects, and sexual receptacles. Typically, symbolizing men as binarily opposite protagonists, liberated heteronormatization glorifies men’s infidelity, avoidance of marriage, and womanizing. Despite notable exceptions, men are characterized as heroically expressing their heterosexual selves in ways that subvert both traditional morals and egalitarian ideals.

Discussion

Our study of truck driving music makes both empirical and conceptual contributions to scholarship on heteronormativity and music. Although methodologically diverse studies of music address how heterosexuality is part of gender construction (Edwards 2018; Leap 2020; Rasmussen and Densley 2017; Schippers 2002), we conceptually center heteronormativity. Our aim was to incorporate an understanding of heteronormativity as a system of power into our conceptualization, rather than center “heterosexuality” which is commonly psychologized as an individual’s identity or desire. We build on research that shows how an artist’s self-presentation or lyrics subvert (Holmes 2020) or reinforce (Rens 2021) heteronormativity by analyzing a near-complete population of songs in a musical genre. Using QMA, grounded theory, and an interactionist approach to cultural narratives, we unpacked empirical variations and developed the concept of heteronormatizing musical genres—defined as the symbolic process through which a genre normalizes heterosexuality and the gender binary. Moving beyond truck driving music, comparative research on other musical genres could further develop heteronormatizing musical genres as a sensitizing concept. More broadly, perhaps analysts of movies, television shows, theater productions, newspapers, social media, etc., may find the broader concept of heteronormatizing cultural narratives useful in their work.

Our findings surrounding the diversity and often contradictory nature of heteronormatized narratives resonates with previous analyses and provides a window into the power of heteronormativity. Most trucking songs about relationships conveyed one of two kinds of stories, which we termed traditional and liberated heteronormatization. Our findings roughly align with Ching’s (2001) delineation of “soft” country—which emphasizes faith and (hetero) family—and “hard” country—which emphasizes men’s womanizing, violence, rambling, and substance abuse. Similarly, our study harmonizes with research centering masculinity that finds Afrobeat (Rens 2021) and pop country (Leap 2020) lyrics portray hetero men as breadwinners or hypersexual players. Analyses of television and film also find women and men characterized as entering or in traditional heterosexual relationships and marriage (Pellegrini 2023) or licentiously desiring and hooking up with each other (Brook 2015). The cultural power of heteronormativity may lie not only in its dominance in a cultural field and its othering of LGBTQ people but also in its diverse and sometimes oppositional stories of heterosexuality. Within this context, individuals and groups may busy themselves aligning with or against these cultural variations of heterosexuality, leaving the system of heteronormativity itself unquestioned. The diversity of nuanced representations reinforces a myth of choice—albeit from a limited hetero-centered menu—and may aid in blotting out alternative sexual stories, at least in corporately owned “mainstream” cultural outlets.

Creating and sharing cultural stories, of course, is but one social process constituting what is sometimes called structural or systemic heteronormativity. Such metaphors enable framing heteronormativity, for example, as operating at various structural levels (e.g., micro, meso, macro). They also convey the vastness and omnirelevance of heteronormativity, such as framing heteronormativity as inherent or systemically embedded in institutions such as the family, work, religion, media, and the state. A complementary metaphor is process, a foundational principle in interactionism (Blumer 1969), which ideally sensitizes scholars to examine how people do things together in various locations at various times that arguably constitute such “levels” or “institutions.” Our intention in using the term “heteronormatizing” is to embed a processual metaphor into our conceptualization, which in our study was limited to (1) how narrative processes construct and normalize heterosexually gendered characters, relationships, plots, hierarchies, and ideology; and (2) how the dominance of such narratives in truck driving music constitute heteronormatizing the genre. We have neglected and others should pursue analyzing the collective processes through which such songs are created, recorded, promoted, disseminated, performed, and experienced.

Considering the omnirelevance of social processes, it may be useful to bring processual language into conceptualizing a wider range of heteronormative phenomena. Expanding on the notion of heteronormatizing cultural narratives, for example, one might examine heteronormatizing emotions, groups, policies, or schools. Schilt and Westbrook (2009) move in a processual direction with their use of “doing heteronormativity,” which emphasizes process but unfortunately does not demarcate what, exactly, is being heteronormatized and the “doing” language seems less applicable to or useful for describing some social processes (e.g., cultural production or policy making). Regardless of nomenclature, using processual language ideally eschews reifying heteronormativity into a static norm or variable or using it as an adjective modifying a reified noun (e.g., heteronormative attitude or organization). Building processual language into our conceptualizations arguably supports Jackson’s (2006) efforts to incorporate interactionism into theorizing heteronormativity, particularly her engagement with Mead’s (1934) notions of agency, meaning, subjectivity, and the processual nature of social life). Although more theoretical work and empirically grounded theorizing is warranted, another way forward may be to apply a critical interactionist lens to studies that explicitly or implicitly address heteronormativity with the aim of distilling generic processes through which it is reproduced or resisted (c.f., Schwalbe et al. 2000).

Although scholars increasingly invoke the notion of heteronormativity to address how LGBTQ people are othered and heterosexuality is normalized, a key insight of its early conceptualization—namely, that heterosexuality is a construct is interwoven with the gender binary in an intersectional fashion (Warner 1991)—is sometimes neglected or underdeveloped (Jackson 2006). Studies that address gendered aspects of heteronormativity sometimes invoke binary gender to compare LGBT men and women’s experiences (Ueno et al. 2023) or as a frame people use to interpret gender non/conformity as subverting or reinforcing heterosexuality (Kane 2006). We contribute to this line of work by showing how heterosexual selves are projected via narratively constructing binarily gendered people. Hypothetically, without binarily defined gender categories, heterosexuality would lose its meaning, perhaps enabling heteronormativity itself to collapse (Butler 1990).

Our findings also show how gender is not only categorically binarized but also hierarchized in a sexist fashion. Trucking songs typically construct men as breadwinners or sexual agents and women as men’s supportive helpers or sexual playthings. Our study empirically shows how heteronormativity is an intersectional concept linking representations of sexuality and gender inequality—a key insight of classic theorists (Rich 1980). As Ward (2022:22) argues, heteronormativity can be “patriarchal” when it “is about men’s control of women, but it is also about straight women’s and men’s shared romantic and erotic attachment to an unequal gender binary.” As revealed in our analysis, constructing heterosexual attraction and interaction via representations of unequal gendered characters was a dominant theme, regardless of if the narratives were “traditional” or “liberated.”

If we move beyond our analysis of lyrics—which explicitly referenced gender and sexuality—and acknowledge almost all the singers are whites singing in the first person about working-class life, we can draw out additional intersectional insights. Whiteness is regularly conveyed via images of singers on album covers and websites, and more subtly via the songs’ white dominated style of music (e.g., country), singer’s white southern accents, and occasional references to southern whiteness, such as to Dixie or the confederate flag. If we compare trucker songs to other racialized tropes, it sheds light on the implicit whiteness of musical heteronormatization. For example, whereas Black women are often culturally stereotyped as uncentered on their own children (Collins 2004), trucking songs emphasizing traditional heteronormativity place working-class white mothers on a proverbial pedestal. Likewise, in contrast to representing Black men as uninvolved parents and uncommitted to women partners, the trucker white men singers’ references to traditional fatherhood, monogamy, and their own absences as honorable sacrifice plausibly valorizes them. Regarding liberated heteronormatization, truck driving music glorifies white men’s philandering whereas our larger culture stigmatizes Black men as having uncontrollable heterosexual libidos (Collins 2004). Consistent with how poor white men’s hyper-heterosexuality and antimarriage stance is portrayed positively in southern rock music (Eastman 2017:83–8), liberated heteronormatization in truck driving music contradicts representations of middle-class heterosexuality as more refined. Although we do not know for certain if listeners interpret the genre as reflecting whiteness, we suggest interpretive scholars may similarly bring more intersectionality into studies of heteronormativity by situating the discourse they analyze into the larger cultural context.

Following the lead of music scholars who situate their analyses in social worlds to explore possible real-life implications (Densley and Rasmussen 2018), allow us to similarly exercise our sociological imagination, focusing on what defines our examined genre: the truck driving industry. Most drivers in the United States are white men, and the conditions of their work often lead to problems with marriages, physical health, and loneliness (Crespo et al. 2024; Singer 2025). Having a genre of music (and films, etc.) devoted to their occupation provides cultural valorization and bolsters morale (Fleming 2018). Symbolically speaking, our study suggests the songs offer truckers a bit of heterosexual compensation, which may have the consequence of reinforcing their economic exploitation in an era of deregulation, deunionization, and technological displacement. Further, because the genre glorifies white men singers as truck drivers, it arguably normalizes the numerical dominance of white men in the industry, which despite its shortcomings offers more financial rewards than most contemporary service jobs. Of course, interviewing truckers would enable a better understanding of how they listen to and make sense of the songs. Regardless, as capitalism increasingly needs long-haul truck drivers to transport mass-produced goods over long distances (Viscelli 2016), the genre’s musical heteronormatization arguably supports keeping white men in the drivers’ seats—at least until driverless trucks take over.

Although focusing on truck driving music or any genre of cultural products may seem limited regarding understanding the larger system of heteronormativity, it is important to remember that a cultural product or genre is arguably part of what Mead (1934) called a universe of discourse of shared meanings and understandings. Part of this universe are “socially circulating” cultural narratives that people use to make sense of themselves, others, and the social world (Loseke 2007). When most mass produced and distributed stories assume or valorize heterosexuality and the gender binary, cultural narratives are hegemonically heteronormatized—even if they are not overtly antiqueer. Collectively, such products normalize intersubjectively shared understandings that essentialize and hierarchize sexual selves, shaping how people not only make sense of but also act in the world, which has real consequences. As sociologists have shown in studies of families, education, work, politics, etc., people individually and collectively adopt, reinforce, use, and occasionally subvert such cultural narratives in the social contexts within which they live their lives. Heteronormatized cultural narratives are resources that people use in various contexts and communities to reproduce sexual inequalities. Cultural narratives are like the symbolic glue that holds systemic heteronormativity together.

Of course, counter heteronormative narratives, often emerging in queer communities and alternative media, occasionally break out of subcultural arenas and find their way into the mass media. But you will not likely hear contemporary queer folksinger Willie Carlisle (who gave us permission to quote his lyrics) joyfully singing the following about a nonbinary truck stop server on your local country station:

So fair with blue hair and that septum piercing

And a bone structure that I find mighty appealin’

What a callipygian angel sweet Jesus has gifted us!

I’m trying to tell you buddy, that ass was ridiculous

On Big Butt Billy

Big Butt Billy

Well, how’d ya ever get those tiny little britches on

Well good God almighty, hail Satan

I’ve never seen a finer they/them

Than Big Butt Billy

What if Carlisle’s song was heard widely? Those who internalized and are committed to heteronormativity may just discount it as a deviant exception or “woke” propaganda. For others, however, hearing Carlisle’s song could open a window into pro-queer culture or be a self-affirming experience. While it may be hard for some to imagine such cultural interventions have much impact, history teaches us that a world without them means heteronormativity is not only culturally hegemonic but also often legally mandated. Although the United States has in many ways become more inclusive in the past 50 years, recent setbacks including educational erasure and bodily disenfranchisement in some U.S. States is seriously troubling. We may have a rough road ahead, but if we have some songs that valorize our humanity and evoke joy and solidarity, perhaps we can create a world in which all of us, including Billy, can call home.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-sns-10.1177_30333717261453082 – Supplemental material for Heteronormatizing Musical Genres: The Case of Truck Driving Songs

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sns-10.1177_30333717261453082 for Heteronormatizing Musical Genres: The Case of Truck Driving Songs by Douglas P. Schrock and Jason T. Eastman in Sex & Sexualities

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Douglas P. Schrock

Ethical Considerations

There were no human participants in this study and informed consent is not required.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability

This data are not available in a public repository.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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