Sexual Madness and confusion now reins thanks to LGBTQ agenda
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The men who populate Ritch C. Savin-Williams’s book Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity Among Men, released last month on Harvard University Press, are—honestly, truly—interested in women. They may lust for furtive, late-night sexual encounters with a “buddy” or find themselves intensely admiring a male porn star’s biceps, but this does not occlude their love for their wives and girlfriends, nor women in general.
“Mostly straight,” as a male sexual identity, hasn’t entered the public’s consciousness the way gay or bi identities have, though that seems to be changing. According to one trend forecasting agency, only 48 percent of Gen Z identifies as exclusively heterosexual, compared to 65 percent of millennials. And millennials, it bears mentioning, are no slouch when it comes to dismantling hard-line conceptions of sexuality; when an actor like Josh Hutcherson loudly declares himself to be “mostly straight” in the press, he goes a long way in dismantling stigma against sexual fluidity.
Hutcherson’s phrasing, as it happens, inspired the title of Savin-Williams’s book, in which he interviewed 40 mostly straight men to better understand their relationship to same-sex sexuality and how they parse their desires. To the eternal consternation of men who identify as gay, mostly straights aren’t usually interested in long-term same-sex relationships, Savin-Williams writes, but they’re also refreshingly shame-free about their desires, with many not only comfortable with gay culture but even “enchanted” by it.
Savin-Williams, who also works as the director of the Sex and Gender Lab at Cornell University, spoke with VICE about why gay men seem culturally obsessed with mostly straight guys, the need to embrace all the messy nuances of the Kinsey spectrum, and why you can’t assume every guy in the local gay choir is actually gay. VICE: What drew you to study “mostly straight” men?
Ritch C. Savin-Williams: Usually, straight guys are just very boring, but when I started interviewing them using the same protocol I used with gay guys, it appeared that some had same-sex attractions—and that these men were incredibly complex. At first I sort of dismissed these guys, but then I interviewed the main character of my book, Dylan, who was a hockey goalie, and he was so convincing that I realized there was something going on there. I reviewed everything we knew about “Kinsey ones,” men who deviate just a bit from exclusively straight guys on the spectrum. It was almost as if their status as mostly straight encouraged them to look at their development and realize, “Oh my God, that was a boy crush I had.” Or “I did make out with that boy, and it was kind of fun. I liked it.”
Do you think they’re more comfortable with their mostly straight identity because they’re part of the post-millennial generation, which is by many accounts queer as hell?
Yes, but I should add that historically, across generations, you’ll find individuals saying they’re “mostly” heterosexual on the Kinsey scale. The difference is that today it can be an identity, not just an orientation. It’s this increasing acceptance of sexual diversity that’s allowed these men to accept these parts of themselves. Even if they go back to a totally straight lifestyle, a lot of them would say, well, you just never know—maybe, in the future, my wife and I will invite a guy into the bed.
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And you theorize that as many as nine percent of the total male population could be “mostly straight.” How did you find those numbers?
That’s somewhat optimistic. We read every study we could find that assessed men via the Kinsey spectrum, and 8 to 9 percent was the largest we saw. This is from polling data or from the CDC or the National Institute of Mental Health, whom tend to use the Kinsey spectrum. Another very valuable source was the Add Health Data Set, which is a longitudinal study that began following a sample of adolescents in 1994.
Watch Broadly talk to Margaret Cho about power bottoms and what it's like to be an openly bisexual entertainer:
The men who populate Ritch C. Savin-Williams’s book Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity Among Men, released last month on Harvard University Press, are—honestly, truly—interested in women. They may lust for furtive, late-night sexual encounters with a “buddy” or find themselves intensely admiring a male porn star’s biceps, but this does not occlude their love for their wives and girlfriends, nor women in general.
“Mostly straight,” as a male sexual identity, hasn’t entered the public’s consciousness the way gay or bi identities have, though that seems to be changing. According to one trend forecasting agency, only 48 percent of Gen Z identifies as exclusively heterosexual, compared to 65 percent of millennials. And millennials, it bears mentioning, are no slouch when it comes to dismantling hard-line conceptions of sexuality; when an actor like Josh Hutcherson loudly declares himself to be “mostly straight” in the press, he goes a long way in dismantling stigma against sexual fluidity.
Hutcherson’s phrasing, as it happens, inspired the title of Savin-Williams’s book, in which he interviewed 40 mostly straight men to better understand their relationship to same-sex sexuality and how they parse their desires. To the eternal consternation of men who identify as gay, mostly straights aren’t usually interested in long-term same-sex relationships, Savin-Williams writes, but they’re also refreshingly shame-free about their desires, with many not only comfortable with gay culture but even “enchanted” by it.
Savin-Williams, who also works as the director of the Sex and Gender Lab at Cornell University, spoke with VICE about why gay men seem culturally obsessed with mostly straight guys, the need to embrace all the messy nuances of the Kinsey spectrum, and why you can’t assume every guy in the local gay choir is actually gay. VICE: What drew you to study “mostly straight” men?
Ritch C. Savin-Williams: Usually, straight guys are just very boring, but when I started interviewing them using the same protocol I used with gay guys, it appeared that some had same-sex attractions—and that these men were incredibly complex. At first I sort of dismissed these guys, but then I interviewed the main character of my book, Dylan, who was a hockey goalie, and he was so convincing that I realized there was something going on there. I reviewed everything we knew about “Kinsey ones,” men who deviate just a bit from exclusively straight guys on the spectrum. It was almost as if their status as mostly straight encouraged them to look at their development and realize, “Oh my God, that was a boy crush I had.” Or “I did make out with that boy, and it was kind of fun. I liked it.”
Do you think they’re more comfortable with their mostly straight identity because they’re part of the post-millennial generation, which is by many accounts queer as hell?
Yes, but I should add that historically, across generations, you’ll find individuals saying they’re “mostly” heterosexual on the Kinsey scale. The difference is that today it can be an identity, not just an orientation. It’s this increasing acceptance of sexual diversity that’s allowed these men to accept these parts of themselves. Even if they go back to a totally straight lifestyle, a lot of them would say, well, you just never know—maybe, in the future, my wife and I will invite a guy into the bed.
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And you theorize that as many as nine percent of the total male population could be “mostly straight.” How did you find those numbers?
That’s somewhat optimistic. We read every study we could find that assessed men via the Kinsey spectrum, and 8 to 9 percent was the largest we saw. This is from polling data or from the CDC or the National Institute of Mental Health, whom tend to use the Kinsey spectrum. Another very valuable source was the Add Health Data Set, which is a longitudinal study that began following a sample of adolescents in 1994.
Watch Broadly talk to Margaret Cho about power bottoms and what it's like to be an openly bisexual entertainer:
