When two become one: sexuality studies and critical studies of men and masculinities

Abstract

Men think about sex … a lot. Is this a problem or is this a site for reformation? In this paper, we set out to think actively, deeply, about the question of sexuality, to penetrate the limits of men and masculinity studies, and to tease at a range of questions that it seems the field is not attending to for any number of reasons. When men’s studies scholars speak of sex, we often speak of rape culture, violent sex, ideas of entitlement to sex, sex workers and pornography. Many of these approaches would be framed and understood by many as ‘sex negative.’ This paper sets out to think about what a ‘sex positive’ vision of men’s studies might look like – and also to ask if a sex positive vision of the field is even possible, desirable or necessary. In this paper, we braid together sex positive feminist theory, queer theory and men’s studies to complicate the matter of sexuality, both as an actual site of the kinds of things we do, and as a site of psychic and affective possibility.

Keywords:

• Critical studies of men and masculinities
• sexuality studies
• men’s sexualities
• queer theory
• sex positive theory

Notes

1. Truth be told, an article waiting to be written would be a study of Men’s Lives and each of its editions. As authors and teachers, we are fascinated by which articles are added, removed over the course of the nine editions. For instance, the eighth edition included, ‘The Fraternal Bond as a Joking Relationship: A Case Study of the Role of Sexist Jokes in Male Group Bonding’ by Peter Lyman, but it is not included in the ninth edition. One wonders what happened between the eighth and the ninth edition to allow for its removal, and whether or not it will reappear in the tenth edition, especially after the 2016 American Election. Similarly, the 1st edition of the book could act as an important historical statement about the politics of men’s studies.

2. One of the persistent challenges in the study of men and masculinities has been ‘the invisible yet normative social location of whiteness’ (Leek and Gerke, p. 38). Additionally, and from the outset, we admit that much needs to be written on sexualities and geographies; one thinks here, for instance, of the work of Sylvia Tamale, in particular, African Sexualities: A Reader (2011), for which Tamale is editor, as well as the work of Rachel Spronk, notably, Ambiguous Pleasures: Sexuality and Middle Class Self-Perceptions in Nairobi (2012). What might it mean to reframe critical studies of men and masculinities outside of the ‘normative’ of the field and think alongside scholars working on development, for instance?

3. For an important discussion of men’s orgasms, see: ‘Masculinities and the phenomenology of men’s orgasms’ by Jorgen Lorentzen (2007), which is a theoretically rich article that draws on literary fictions to sustain its theories of men’s orgasm.

4. There has been a growing interest in the orgasm in queer theory, notably, Annamarie Jagose’s book, Orgasmology, which sought to theorize the orgasm. The scholarly journal, Feminist Formations (2016), ran a series of articles on Jagose’s book (2012), which included articles by Murat Aydemir, who previously wrote, Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning (2007), Jane Gallop, Heather Love, Benjamin Kahan, who recently wrote a book called Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (2013), which may well be an antithesis to this article, Kane Race, Robyn Wiegman, Kadji Amin, Pansy Duncan, Barbara Creed, Barry Reay, Valerie Traub, and a response by Annamarie Jagose.

5. The question takes from, and is a form of homage to, a statement James Baldwin is noted to have said about Richard Wright; that Wright’s work describes African Americans well, but that it does not necessarily explain (or leave room for) Wright himself.

6. There is likely much to be said about amateur pornographies and men’s sexualities, in terms of consumers of amateur pornographies, but also as actors in amateur pornographies. In these pornographies, though they may play with conventions of mainstream pornographies, there is an authenticity that the seemingly highly stylized pornographies lack. K. Pia Hofer (2014) has noted that, ‘rhetorics of “realness” […] serve as markers of distinction: amateurs and their pornographic productions are “real” when they manage to offer something that corporate pornography does not, or does so in distinctively different ways’ (306). This ‘realness,’ thus, becomes interesting for us to think about in terms of how critical studies of men and masculinities thinks about pornography.