Gay Masculinities (Sage Series on Men and Masculinity)

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't deliver what it promises
Review: I thought reading this book was a waste of time. It largely preoccupied with its overdone sex-and-gender research and sometimes becomes downright obscure eg. when the writer of the first chapter was just interested in the way certain "scripts" he believes to exist can be or not be found in the dating stories of some boys he interviewed. What's sad about this chapter is that he ignores the obvious dilemmas some of them were in. One told him that he wanted to try out anal intercourse in a public restroom in order to "find his identity" or something. The author does not comment on this glaring misconception of what sexual orientation is and is not about (eg your personal identity) and how anal intercourse or other sex techniques might be wrongly linked with same-sex attraction or a contrived "gay identity". Anyone interested in this particular problem should read the papers and essays of Chuck Tarver and Billy Weintraub (both are available on-line)!

In another chapter its writer concludes that some gay men actually think they basically don't differ from straight men just because of their difference in sexual orientation. Now that's something that should be emphasised, but the whole collection of essays seems to be rather about how gay men are somehow special or different while straight men are all the good old emotionless blokes.

Another funny thing was when in a chapter its writer complained that there are some gay men who object to a link of feminism and the gay rights movement or try to prove they are not chauvinistic when she thinks they obviously are. I thought that made the whole intentions of her article clear.

The only good chapter was the last one: its author researched drag queens and concludes that the gay men who do that kind of cross-dressing don't do it to actually become a woman, but just as straight men might try to make fun of certain feminine role-models. That was an interesting read.

Still, the only book I can wholeheartedly recommend on this subject is Bawer's A Place at the Table.

Rating:
Summary: gay masculinities
Review: This anthology asks and answers how gay men's sense of masculinity influences their actions and interactions among themselves and with others.

Unlike many other anthologies where a large chuck of the contributions are only tangential to the topic at hand, in every chapter here, masculinity is consistently brought up. I felt that this book was fairly accessible, but the academic and heavily sociological tone may turn off some readers.

This book tries hard to be inclusive. Though about gay men's masculinity, it brings up women, feminine gay men, and even straight men. Unlike much work that can only investigate one axis of identity, this book brings up age, class, and race well. It has impressive works on Latino and Asian-American gay men. However, I was disappointed that there was no chapter on black gay men. Some readers may be disappointed that bisexual men are not really covered here and that gay men are consistently contrasted with straight men as if the two categories were exhaustive. Chapters discussed populations in Spokane, Southern California, and Texas. With the exception of New York City, this book seemed very West Coast-focused. That's probably due to the editor's residence, but the point is that this book's conclusions might not be true all over the nation.

This book was a decent mix of men's studies, gay studies, and sociology.