On the Enduring Ways Masculinity Structures Straight Men’s Sexual Lives

Abstract

Beth Montemurro’s newest book, Getting It, Having It, Keeping It Up: Straight Men’s Sexuality in Public and Private, is among the most nuanced treatments of the sexual lives of cisgender straight men in the United States with which I am familiar. In the project, Montemurro explores how this group of men navigates their sexual identities and interactions from young adulthood through older age. This enables Montemurro to chart shifts in cisgender straight men’s sexual lives and selves over the course of the five decades of the life course represented by the project. It is a remarkable book from which I learned a great deal; it contributes lots of new information and charts new directions in research on the ways gender inequality structures cisgender straight men’s sexual lives and identities alongside collections of diverse and intersectional consequences. The data the book summarizes and analyzes comprise 95 interviews with straight cisgender men between the ages of 20 and 68. The sample is pretty evenly spread by decade of men’s lives in her sample. And this is important, as Montemurro notes that a good deal of the work on cisgender straight men’s sexualities has concentrated on adolescent and college-aged boys and men on one end of the life course and elderly men on the other. The data also include a racially diverse group, and similar proportions of the sample were married and were fathers to those reported by the U.S. Census (which is a majority here). The data themselves are fascinating for so many reasons, but one that stood out for me was that these men were willing to speak so candidly with Montemurro and her research assistants. Montemurro is a practiced scholar of sexualities and sexual life, but this stands out as cisgender straight men in the U.S. are not a group that has a reputation for enjoying speaking openly and honestly about all the nuances of their sex lives. So these men’s stories of their sexual lives offer a great deal of new information, helping us better comprehend cisgender straight men’s understandings of their own sexual selves and lives over the life course and in different contexts. Montemurro’s overarching framework and argument in Getting It, Having It, Keeping It Up is that sex authenticates masculinity in ways that cause sexual interactions to be laden with opportunities for cisgender straight men to gain (and lose) gendered social status. This builds on previous research and theory on the ways gender inequalities and sexual identities and practices are deeply intertwined. Montemurro adds to this work, in particular, with her focus on a distinction she refers to as between public and private masculinities. As she writes, ‘‘I look at how context impacts the expression of masculinity by examining the notion of private masculinities—that is, the way men demonstrate masculinity in intimate situations, where they are less likely to be policed’’ (p. 16). Here, Montemurro argues, women are framed by men as having the capacity to affirm—or not—men’s gender identities because men are absent. The men in Montemurro’s study (across the life course, no less) Getting It, Having It, Keeping It Up: Straight Men’s Sexuality in Public and Private, by Beth Montemurro. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022. 274 pp. $120.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781978817838.