A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity? This book looks deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For the author, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can, and do, have sex ... More

A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity? This book looks deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is a reality: there's fraternity and military hazing rituals; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For the author, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can, and do, have sex with other straight white men; in fact, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. The book illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. The book's analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality, not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege.