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“I Kiss Them Because I Love Them”: The Emergence of Heterosexual Men Kissing in British Institutes of Education

Abstract  

In this article, we combined data from 145 interviews and three ethnographic investigations of heterosexual male students
in the U.K. from multiple educational settings. Our results indicate that 89% have, at some point, kissed another male on
the lips which they reported as being non-sexual: a means of expressing platonic affection among heterosexual friends. Moreover,
37% also reported engaging in sustained same-sex kissing, something they construed as non-sexual and non-homosexual. Although
the students in our study understood that this type of kissing remains somewhat culturally symbolized as a taboo sexual behavior,
they nonetheless reconstructed it, making it compatible with heteromasculinity by recoding it as homosocial. We hypothesize
that both these types of kissing behaviors are increasingly permissible due to rapidly decreasing levels of cultural homophobia.
Furthermore, we argue that there has been a loosening of the restricted physical and emotional boundaries of traditional heteromasculinity
in these educational settings, something which may also gradually assist in the erosion of prevailing heterosexual hegemony.

  • Content Type Journal Article
  • DOI 10.1007/s10508-010-9678-0
  • Authors
    • Eric Anderson, Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY UK
    • Adi Adams, Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY UK
    • Ian Rivers, School of Sport and Education, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
    • Journal Archives of Sexual Behavior
    • Online ISSN 1573-2800
    • Print ISSN 0004-0002
Posted in: Journal Article Abstracts on 10/24/2010 | Link to this post on IFP |
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