Yesterday, the Guardian sought to answer a question no one is asking: “Why can straight white men have sex with men without social consequences?”
“If I have learned anything in my life so far,” Zach Stafford writes, “[I]t’s that the only group of people more obsessed with touching a penis than gay men is straight ones. Promise.”
In order to prove his point that allegedly straight men are having gay sex, Stafford sexualizes his childhood playground roughhousing. He claims the grabs from his childhood “evolve[d]” into college sexual experimentation.
“And over time – especially once I got to my very white college – the grabs from straight men became caressing or kissing or, for the bold, sex,” Stafford details.
Stafford expresses despair, claiming, “And during all of this, these men, these straight men who were always my bully growing up or even in college classrooms, maintained their straightness while I was constantly reminded of how they despised my gayness even as I entertained their episodic gay-interests.”
In a quest to find out why these allegedly straight white men are having gay sex, Stafford spoke to Jane Ward, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
Ward concludes that although there is “incredibly cultural baggage” to homosexuality, she believes “homosexual desire and homosexual contact are staples of the human experience.”
In Ward’s latest book, “Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men,” she rationalizes straight men engage in gay sex in order to affirm they are straight. Apparently, this is “the height of white masculinity.”
Ward reportedly believes the ability of straight men to engage in gay sex is related to “white privilege, heteronormativety and male privilege.”
The ability of straight white men to have gay sex while continuing to identify as straight bothers Stafford—not because of its inconsistency, but because of privilege theory:
“I don’t have an issue with straight men having sex with other men and not calling it gay or having it change their identity. People can and should do whatever they desire as long as it’s consensual,” Stafford claims. “But what I find annoying is how this game called life is so unevenly stacked – with one group holding all the cards.”
“As a gay man, who has faced violence for being gay, to see evidence that shows the very men that perpetuate this violence are doing the same sexual acts as me to show just how ‘straight’ they are is absolutely gross - and homophobic at best.”
“I don’t want is to hear that white privilege not only lets straight men get paid more than me, face less violence than me, live longer than people like me, but also have sex with other men and not facing any of the violence people like me face – because that is incredibly infuriating.”