Keeping a Str8 Face: Gay Sex, Straight Men, and Hetero Performativity

The sexual fluidity of heterosexual white men is an infrequently discussed topic. In military barracks, high school dorm rooms, and college frat houses, straight white dudes are having sex sometimes identical to the sexual behavior of queer-identifying men. By analyzing the different sexual discourses that straight men use to recode gay sex acts as heteromasculine, this project reveals the ways in which homosexual sex is critical to the construction of heterosexual white identity. The 'not-gay' sex of straight white men is most visible in gay pornography, where queer men eroticize this sex and its discourses. This analysis reveals an even larger trend: gay men don't just understand that straight men have gay sex, but they are performing and eroticizing straightness as its own queer project. Straight men are not external to queer worlds, but partial members; their own gay erotic archetype, ready for queer consumption. This theorization of hetero performativity provides new exciting paths for queer politics, where gay men can eroticize and subvert the oppressive systems of heteronormativity.