Dyke Methods: A Meditation on Queer Studies and the Gay Men Who Hate It

• In Event: 232 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Paper Session. Feminist and Queer Methods

Abstract

In the summer of 2015, my book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (NYU Press) was released. Drawing on an eclectic archive of cultural materials and the tools of cultural sociology, Not Gay investigated cultural narratives about the homosexual activity of straight-identified white men. The book received an unusual amount of media attention and was read by a large non-academic audience; its first printing sold out within a few weeks and in the words of a Gawker reviewer, news of the book’s release “penetrated the internet.” Accompanying the media coverage of the book came a tidal wave of critical comments from readers, the majority of whom identified themselves as white gay men. This talk examines these responses—posted on various newspaper and magazine websites, as well as amazon.com and in email sent to the author—and the frequency with which they point to the illegitimacy of queer and feminist methods. Commenters described Not Gay as a prime example of dangerous and elitist pseudoscience at odds with the lived experiences of gay men, and as damaging and dangerous to the masses of LGBT people—as dangerous as the political rhetoric of religious right. Commenters also described a significant divide between “average gay men” and “Queer Theorists,” the latter of whom are repeatedly named as frivolous and out-of-touch feminists “obsessed with intersectionality.” The talk concludes with reflections on the context and implications of this critique of feminist and queer methods.

Author

• Jane Ward, Univ. of California-Riverside