Born This Way: Congenital Heterosexuals and the Making of Heteroflexibility

Abstract

In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsey stunned Americans by revealing that 37 per cent of his male subjects had had one or more homosexual experiences and that 46 per cent had ‘reacted sexually’ to men. American psychologists and sexologists, such as Kinsey, have long been interested in the homosexual practices of heterosexual men. However, in the late 2000s, following the release of the hit Hollywood film Brokeback Mountain,¹ and amid rising fears about men ‘on the down low’, it became clear that speculation and concern about the meaning of such practices was hardly limited to psychology journals. The homosexual practices of heterosexual men came under the scrutiny of the US news media and became the spectacular material of television and print media exposés. As I discuss below, the new visibility of straight men’s homosexual desire in turn produced a demand for ‘sex experts’ who could explain to the American public the psychological, cultural, homosocial and institutional causes behind the ‘down low phenomenon’.