300 words essay and 100 words peer review

In this week's readings, I was drawn towards the overlapping themes that the analysis of “bicurious-ness” in Rupp & Taylor’s “Straight Girls Kissing” and str8 ads in Ward’s “Dude-Sex” contracted. Both sold similar narratives of the hyper-heterosexuality and embellishment of lesbian and gay sexualities. Through perverse discourse appropriated racial stereotypes into a white culture, Ward demonstrated that “‘gay’ as a chosen identity is not particularly linked to who is having sex...instead, being gay is about how sex is done” (Ward 2008; 420). The imagery of the black muscular man atop a changed scrawny white man bolsters the ingrained stereotypes and simultaneously renders the dominant-submissive dichotomy racially transposed. Additionally, race enters the scene again through the heightened use of African American vernacular in the attempt to appear hyper-heterosexual. Ward has shown links to the theory of invisible secret homosexuality in the black community as fetishized by “str8” white men. I believe this “secrecy” stereotype (another one!) coupled with the glamorized aggressive black man who sports a massive cock image enforces an inherent masculinity that becomes inseparable with heterosexuality, justifying the perverted language and racial appropriation abundant in these ads. In Rupp & Taylor’s interviews with students partying in Isla Vista, they touch upon this acceptability of residing in the “in-between”, as long as this “in-between” doesn’t result in homosexuality. Articulately put, “...while straight college students today can make out with women and call themselves “bicurious” without challenge to their heterosexual identity, the same kind of flexibility does not extend to lesbians” (Rupp & Taylor 2010: 31). In both readings, space is established to allow exploration without dissociation from the normative and comfortable folds of heterosexuality. In Rupp & Taylor, this space is described as involving alcohol, parties, and maybe a three-some with a man that acts “as an extension of the safe hereosexual space.” For str8 guys, this space has been constructed in hyper-heterosexualized homophobia. For both of these situations, the people that benefit are white and heterosexual, while blacks, lesbians, and gays are forced to surrender their property to, essentially, the heteronormative society.