Introduction

Abstract

I was born a member of Generation X. The prevailing “values” of the 1980s in America had a vast impact on cultural understandings of masculinity and sexuality, and thus a profound impact on my adolescence. Just as I grew to understand what hippies were, they had lost their cultural resonance; the anti-conformist beatniks were beaten by a fervently conservative Reagan-led social ideology. Although I questioned social conservatism, and looked upon organized religion with extreme suspicion, I was not entirely immune from the prevailing conservative culture. I was partially conditioned by it.