Gendered Outcasts and Sexual Outlaws: Sexual Oppression and Gender Hierarchies in Queer Men's Lives »

A candid re-examination of what it means to be a gay man

Gendered Outcasts and Sexual Outlaws: Sexual Oppression and Gender Hierarchies in Queer Men’s Lives explores the impact and effects of sexual oppression and power relationships within the gay male community. This controversial book features thoughtful and provocative essays from authors, educators, and activists who challenge the stigmatization and issues of power they face as gay men who don’t fit the masculine mold formed by the gay porn industry and the media. Their poignant words reveal the sting of finding discrimination and alienation where least expected as the rise of sexualized hyper-masculinity, racism, and femiphobia among gay men has created a need to re-examine appropriate gay male identity and sexuality.

Editors Christopher Kendall and Wayne Martino, who have written about and researched the negative side of gay male pornography, the links between sexism and homophobia, gay male suicide, and the impact of masculinity and sexuality on gay men, divide the book’s powerful essays into two sections: “The Dynamics of Sex/Gender Oppression” and “When Gender Harms and Oppression Becomes the Norm.” The first section challenges the assumptions that form the basis of gay male identity. Relying on the work of radical feminists and cultural theorists, the authors explore the meaning of “gender” in a society that expects men to act according to a masculine ideal—and punishes them when they don’t. The book’s second section analyzes the reality of gender oppression caused by inequality and sexualized gender hierarchies. Contributors discuss what can happen when gay men take seriously the sexual role models that are offered and what happens if they dare to reject them.

Gendered Outcasts and Sexual Outlaws examines:

• effeminacy in gay men’s lives
  
• the idealization of the gay male body
  
• straight-acting masculinities and the rejection of the feminine
  
• narcissism, masculinity, and body absorption
  
• racialized masculinity
  
• the feminization of the Asian gay male in gay pornography
  
• gay male rape
  
• domestic violence
  
• and much more!

Gendered Outcasts and Sexual Outlaws is an eye-opening re-evaluation of what being “gay” means, why being gay is still considered socially unacceptable, and how the gay male community can respond to systemic stigmatization and hate.

	About the Editors
	Contributors
	Foreword
Part I	The Dynamics of Sex/Gender Oppression	1
Chapter 1	Introduction	5
Chapter 2	Brettles	17
Chapter 3	The Relevance of Radical Feminism for Gay Men	19
Chapter 4	Sissyphobia and Everything After	27
Chapter 5	Straight-Acting Masculinities: Normalization and Gender Hierarchies in Gay Men's Lives	35
Chapter 6	Stats Please: Gay Men As Mimics, Robots, and Commodities in Contemporary Cultural Spaces	61
Chapter 7	Narcissism, the Adonis Complex, and the Pursuit of the Ideal	79
Part II	When Gender Harms and Oppression Becomes the Norm	101
Chapter 8	Pornography, Hypermasculinity, and Gay Male Identity: Implications for Male Rape and Gay Male Domestic Violence	105
Chapter 9	Queer Men and Sexual Assault: What Being Raped Says About Being a Man	131
Chapter 10	HE and i [not equal] US	147
Chapter 11	Reading Racial Gaze: Western Gay Society and Pornographic Depictions of Asian Men	153
	Index	177