Not Gay Quotes

“When straight-identified women have sex with women, the broader culture waits in anticipation for them to return to what is likely their natural, heterosexual state; when straight-identified men have sex with men, the culture waits in anticipation for them to admit that they are gay.”
― Jane Ward, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men

“The line between straight men having sex with men and "actual" homosexuality is under constant scrutiny, and for straight men, violence is a key element that imbues homosexuality with heterosexual meaning, or untangles hetero-erotic forms of homosexuality from the affective, political, and romantic associations with gay and lesbian life. Sometimes this violence takes the form of humiliation or physical force enacted by one straight man as he makes sexual contact with another; in other cases, it may take the form of two men fantasizing about sexual violence against women. In many cases, violence is a central part of the work of reframing homosexual sex as an act that men do to build one another's strength, or to build what I call "anal resilience," thereby inoculating one another against what they imagine are the sincere expressions of gay selfhood.”
― Jane Ward, Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men

“Explanations of straight men's homosexual behavior take the awkwardness, shame, and ambivalence attached to these encounters as evidence of discordance between self and behavior, forgetting that these affectations characterize the terrain of sexuality more broadly. For example, among the many costs of sexism is that sex is often utterly scripted and unsatisfying for straight women, and yet straight women's sexual dissatisfaction is rarely taken as evidence that they are acting out of accordance with their heterosexual orientation.”
― Jane Ward, Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men

“Within the circuits of heteromasculinity in the United States, violence and sex are mutually constituted, a fact most evident among adolescent boys, who hardly know how to think or talk about sex with girls without drawing on themes of abjection and violence. The language of heterosexual sex - banging, nailing, "hitting that," and so forth - is the language of violence.”
― Jane Ward, Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men

“[T]he belief in men’s inherent sexual rigidity results in a bizarre circular logic: Men’s sexuality is rigid, hence heterosexual men do not engage in the same kind of homosexual contact that is possible for women; and when they do engage in homosexual contact, it must not be “sexual” because... men’s sexuality is rigid!”
― Jane Ward, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men