Tristan S. Bridges

A Very “Gay” Straight? Hybrid Masculinities, Sexual Aesthetics, and the Changing Relationship between Masculinity and Homophobia

This article addresses a paradoxical stance taken by young straight men in three groups who identify aspects of themselves as “gay” to construct heterosexual masculine identities. By subjectively recognizing aspects of their identities as “gay,” these men discursively distance themselves from stereotypes of masculinity and privilege and/or frame themselves as politically progressive. Yet, both of these practices obscure the ways they benefit from and participate in gender and sexual inequality. I develop a theory of “sexual aesthetics” to account for their behavior and its consequences, contributing to a growing body of theory regarding the hybridization of contemporary masculinities and complicating theories of sexual practice.

Gender Capital and Male Bodybuilders

Cultural capital and hegemonic masculinity are two concepts that have received intense attention. While both have received serious consideration, critique and analysis, the context or field-specificity of each is sometimes ignored. They have been used in a diversity of ways. Using ethnographic and interview data from a US male bodybuilding community, this study highlights one useful employment. Hegemonic masculinity takes different shapes in different fields of interaction, acting as a form of cultural capital: gender capital. Inherent in this discussion are the cultural contradictions apparent among individuals striving for either physical or ideological embodiments of gender capital. Individuals can attempt to embody hegemonic idealizations, but bodies are not only inscribed with gender, inscriptions are read, and read differently by different social actors and in different settings. The capacity of gender capital to remain elusive is precisely what enables gender practices and projects like bodybuilding to retain passionate participation.

Men Just Weren’t Made To Do This Performances of Drag at “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” Marches

Though there is a vast literature on performances of drag, performances of gender and sexual transgressions outside of drag clubs are less studied. This case study of men’s marches protesting violence against women—“Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” marches— examines the politics of such transgressions. Cross-dressing to various degrees is strategically utilized at these events in an attempt to encourage men to become empathetic allies. This article suggests, however, that context is critical to the political potential of performances of drag. The author’s observations of the interactions at the marches suggest that drag at “Walk a Mile” marches often symbolically reproduces gender and sexual inequality despite good intentions. At these marches, feminism is gendered when performances of politics and protest are contextually framed as gender and/or sexual transgressions when “feminism” is understood as “feminine.”

Issues of Intimacy, Masculinity and Ethnography

Crafting a research identity is a difficult thing to do. Like the performance one puts on when teaching, a research identity is an important part of the research project. The primary goal is to invite participation, which necessitates paying close attention to the ways in which you (as the researcher) are understood and defined by others. It means asking questions such as: How will my research participants view me? How will I react if I find something meaningful for my research? Should I react? What should I do if I see something illegal happen? As ethnographers, it is integral to the research that we interact with others and participate in their lives meaningfully. It is through such participation that new findings emerge and feminist methodologists have long addressed questions related to researcher identity/ies and issues of gender relations in the field (Foster, 1994; Stanko, 1994; DeVault, 1999).

Marketing Manhood in a “Post-Feminist” Age

In “manvertising,” satirical masculinity is used to sell men on products they presumably avoid for fear of what it might say about their gender and sexual identities. The satire obscures the consequences of hybrid masculinities though they’re on full display.

Young Women of Color and Shifting Sexual Identities

Tristan Bridges and Mignon R. Moore on race, gender, and sexual identity.

#Callmecaitlyn and Contemporary Trans* Visibility

D’Lane Compton and Tristan Bridges on the difference between reality show awareness and real-life change.

Geisha of a Different Kind: Race and Sexuality in Gaysian America

Intersectionality is abstract, and there are many examples of attempts to put it into practice that fail because it is challenging to talk about how different categories of identity and systems of inequality overlap, infuse each other with meaning, and more. C. Winter Han’s Geisha of a Different Kind is not subject to this critique. Using an impressive collection of ethnographic observations, interviews, and content and discourse analysis of cultural depictions of gay Asian men, Han critically interrogates gay Asian men and the systems of inequality that shape their lives, identities, and interactions. Han shows how gay Asian men navigate complex intersectional terrain. As a group, gay Asian men may receive a great deal of gender privilege within their ethnic communities. But, as a result of western domination, colonization, and orientalist conceptualizations of Asian men as feminine within the context of the United States, gay Asian men navigate a complex set of dilemmas in the U.S. Han’s great brilliance in this book is to both tear apart the different categories that shape these men’s interactions and their experiences of identity and inequality and show how a consideration of any single category will always leave out important information. It is an impressive illustration of what great intersectional scholarship looks like in practice. The book starts off with an insightful history of the feminization of Asian men, connecting this with colonization, xenophobia, and orientalist conceptualizations of Asian men. Han documents this complex history of racial and ethnic conflict and colonization. But Han then goes on to illustrate how these historical relationships still frame depictions of Asian men in the United States today as well. Relying on interviews and ethnographic observations, Han shows that depictions of Asian men often work in ways that masculinize the West and continue a long tradition of feminizing the East. For instance, in studying drag shows in Seattle, Han is keen to note the pervasive notion among participants and audiences that ‘‘Asian men are just better at looking like real girls’’ (p. 22), as one Asian drag queen put it. Han dissects this belief system, shows how the ideology that supports it is also present among a wide variety of cultural artifacts depicting Asian men in the United States, and shows how racism within the gay community constructs gay Asian men’s identities and shapes their experiences. Han builds on this chapter with an interesting discourse and content analysis of depictions of gay Asian men in two mainstream gay men’s magazines over a fiveyear period. These magazines are an interesting data source and bolster Han’s argument that mainstream gay culture is also white. While few and far between, images of Asian men in these publications are often used in ways that construct gay white men as ‘‘masculine’’ and normative. Beyond a question of numbers (a notable finding was the relative invisibility of Asian men in these publications), Han unpacks the images and stories of gay Asian men that are present—all of which work to situate gay Asian men as effeminate foreigners whose complaints about racism within the community get lost alongside satirical presentations like ‘‘Gay or Asian?’’ features. Next, Han builds on his examination of racism as a structuring element of gay Asian men’s lives, identities, and interactions. He begins with a critique of the discourse of ‘‘preference’’ as it is used to justify racially exclusive sexual desires. Relying on interviews, field notes, and even data from social media websites like Grindr, Han shows how the discourse of ‘‘preference’’ conceals a great deal of racism that is institutionalized. While white gay men are often hesitant to label their preferences as ‘‘racist,’’ Han offers a great deal of evidence to suggest that they coincide with a great deal of racism toward Asian men regardless of how they are intended. Indeed, this is so much the case that one respondent claimed, ‘‘I feel more like a minority in the gay community than I do in the Asian community because I’m gay’’ (p. 95). Many of the men in Han’s study desired to either be Reviews 445

Rethinking Transnational Men: Beyond, Between and Within Nations

eugenic policy, the value of heteroand homozygosity, and the effects of nuclear-fallout-induced radiation (and thus the dangers of the nuclear state). The lack of a discussion of eugenics as a debate about the proliferation of ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ genes muddles her later analysis of BRCA tests, which she labels as embodying a eugenic logic. If the response to BRCA tests is oophorectomy, then perhaps so; but if it is to encourage young and multiple pregnancies (which Happe explains reduces cancer risk), then the trend will be precisely dysgenic in that more BRCA mutations will persist in the gene pool. A similar reduction of complexity occurs in the discussion of gene-environment interaction research into cancer-inducing pollution exposure. Happe argues that at the level of discourse the new ‘‘interactionism’’ is largely a Trojan horse for a gene-centric view of population health, and it normalizes the polluted world by individualizing and geneticizing ‘‘disease risk.’’ But as Sara Shostak (2013) has shown, this issue is not a hidden logic of genetic research, but rather the central dilemma that animates public health geneticists in this domain. They struggle to balance the pragmatism of genetics with the politics of environmental activism, are ambivalent about how genetics transforms authority and resources in their domain, and battle each other about the relationship between the heart of the science and the best way to improve health. To assert that the discursive logic of genetics determines the possibilities of this debate ignores or dismisses the complexity and institutional embeddedness of these professionals’ struggles, while asserting a totalizing and fatalistic politics of biogenetic knowledge. Throughout, Happe prefers certain scientific alternatives to mainstream genetics. She approvingly cites scientific critics of cancer genetics, social and environmental epidemiologists, environmental activist science, anti-racist geneticists, and developmentalist alternatives to genetic determinism. But given the discourse method, what is the basis of this approval? Are these approved discourses less political, less determined, less inscribed by pernicious social logics, or perhaps inscribed with politically preferable logics? A limitation of Happe’s discourse method is that it makes alternatives difficult to account for and begs the warrant for her preferences. It makes it difficult to see continuities between genetics and its alternatives or how possibilities might be cultivated for breaking with or shifting ideology within genetics. Misgivings about Happe’s approach to discourse should not eclipse appreciation of her considerable achievements. She has offered a detailed and nuanced analysis of sexist, racist, and pro-capitalism inscriptions in breast and ovarian cancer genetics. She is right to reassert the merits of the ideologycritique tradition and to challenge the overly sanguine, almost anti-critical implications of Rose and Rabinow’s version of biosociality. Her calls are well taken for a ‘‘biosociality without genes’’ animated by exposing the ideological underpinnings of current genetics. Even advanced undergraduates would find Happe’s book hard going, but graduate students and researchers at the intersection of science studies, medical sociology, and feminist, anti-racist, and Marxist theory will find much of benefit here.

Engaging Men in the United States: Soft Essentialism and the Obstacles to Coherent Initiatives in Education and Family Policy

In Sociology of Gender courses, one of the authors of this essay conducts a little experiment to clarify students’ values and to test their commitment to binary notions of gender difference. He presents students with two statements, asking them to rank their agreement with each. After the votes are tallied for each, students discuss the reasons for their positions.