"Friends and Non-Conventional Partnerships"
25-27 January 2002

"Fellow Families? Genres of Gay Male Intimacy and Kinship in a Global Metropolis"
Judith Stacey
(University of Southern California)

Worse even than the sexual perversions they practice, gay people's more damning threat to traditionalists is their claim to family parity, their claim to family life as a right. The Culture of Desire, Frank Browning

There is room for both monogamous gay couples and sex pigs in the same big tent of gay community. Dry Bones Breathe, Eric Rofes

Is there room in the same family tent for gay men? Why do so many wish to enter when social critics portray the family as an institution on the verge of collapse? Might gay men teach the rest of us some family camping skills they honed surviving in the wilderness beyond? I have begun a study that pursues such questions through ethnographic research on an ethnically and socially diverse selection of gay men and their kin in Los Angeles. Gay men residing in a city often caricatured as La-la-land or Tinsel Town scarcely conjure images of family fellows. Such men and the city more readily signify the anti-familial character generally associated with postmodernity. Both occupy an outpost frontier of what I have elsewhere termed the postmodern family condition-the world of familial endeavors after the modern nuclear family system eroded in which no single culturally mandated family pattern prevails, and all forms of intimacy contend with instability, reflexivity, cultural conflict, contradiction and experimentation (Stacey 1990). Yet from this unlikely location, gay men in L.A. have been redesigning kinship with creativity and verve, as well as trauma. From their triumphs and travails, we all have much to learn.

Anyone old enough to remember the counter-cultural ethos of early gay liberation should find it queer that struggles for same-sex marriage and parenting now enjoy political momentum around the globe. Rebelling against gender and sexua`l constraints imposed by the modern nuclear family, the Stonewall era gay movement, like the women's liberation movement at that time, garnered a reputation as anti-family. "We expose the institution of marriage as one of the most insidious and basic sustainers (sic) of the system," proclaimed the Gay Liberation Front in 1969. Yet by the 1980s, lesbians and gay men were insisting that "Love Makes a Family" and demanding rights for "families we choose." By the 1990s, it became a running joke amongst gay activists in the U.S. to quip that gays were the last people in America eager to join the army and get married. Not only in America, of course. Movements and gains for parity in family rights and status for lgbt individuals now pervade the globe, and have been achieving landmark victories, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands, at an accelerating pace.

Because gender culture and the biological capacity to propagate via donor insemination enable lesbians to form intentional families far more easily than gay men, most research in this area centers on lesbians. My study shifts the focus to gay men precisely because they face formidable barriers to family formation. They cannot rely on biological, cultural, institutional or legal resources through which kinship historically has been constituted, nor draw upon traditional principles of genealogy or gender. Necessarily, gay men forge their intimate ties in unusually reflexive and experimental modes that expose the pitfalls and promise of conditions with which all contemporary family projects must contend.

As males, gay men do not receive formal cultural socialization in the feminine labors of "love and ritual"--kin work, emotion work, domestic labor, childcare, nurturing. Yet as gay men, they cannot rely on women to perform these services for them. Not only do gay men, like lesbians, still lack the right to marry (at least outside of the Netherlands), they cannot expect women to furnish them ready access to parenthood. Because women are not the primary objects of their attractions or affections, gay men express masculine erotic desires unconstrained by women's wishes or concerns and without fear of reproductive consequences. Doing so, gay men more frequently than others engage in erotic, and perhaps emotional intimate encounters across social boundaries of race, age, education, income, nationality, language, and religion (Bell & Weinberg, 83; Browning, 23); . Moreover, the AIDS epidemic subjected gay male sexuality to extraordinary levels of collective scrutiny and debate, and it incited gay men to perform Sisyphean levels of caretaking outside default mode family forms.

Forging families without cultural blueprints, gay men experience in perhaps its purest form what Giddens (1992) terms the "pure relationship"of modernity-the pursuit of a relationship for the sake of intimacy alone. They confront its inherent contradictions in magnified scale-the incongruous, historically gendered demands of eros and domesticity, passion and commitment, the masculine world of "sexual sport" and the feminine world of "cards and holidays"(di Leonardo, 1987). How do gender and sexual identity shape the desire and ability to form relationships that provide nurturance and security? How do men whose primary attachments are to other men create or replace the family bonds that women characteristically sustain? Do gay men conceptualize or practice parenthood in distinctive ways? How does fatherhood affect gay sexual practices? How do race, ethnicity and social class inflect gay men's family goals and lives? Do some family patterns flourish or founder more than others? My ethnographic scrutiny of how gay men are choosing or refusing to create family relationships and values trains a spotlight on contemporary conditions producing "the normal chaos of love"(Bech and Bech-Gersheim, 1995).

Surprisingly few works trek the ethnographic trail blazed by Weston's theoretically astute book on chosen lesbian and gay kinship (Weston 1992). While queer theory and activism advocate resisting and subverting the normative principles and practices of heterosexual intimacy, most family research on gay men features couple relationships or gay fatherhood (and disproportionately among white, middle-class men in San Francisco or New York). Governed primarily by an assimilationist perspective, the dominant intellectual tendency of empirical social science and the strategy of mainstream gay family rights movements has been to stress the similarities between heterosexual and lesbigay relationships and families. "'Aside From One Little, Tiny Detail, We Are So Incredibly Normal," characteristically insists the title of a recently published article on lesbian step-families (Wright 2001). This echoes the dominant narrative of the social scientific discourse on lesbian and gay parenting that is now being challenged from various ends of the political spectrum (Wardle, 1997; Stacey and Biblarz, 2001; Kitzinger, 1995 ). Likewise, the empirical literature exhibits broad consensus that the dynamics and character of gay and lesbian couple relationships are primarily the same as for heterosexual couples. Here, however, scholars have noted a few important, if unsurprising differences. Most agree that compared with heterosexual couples, same-sex couples embrace greater levels of equality and autonomy, and (or perhaps therefore) their relationships are more prone to dissolve.(Kurdek; Schwartz & Blumstein; Gottman & Levenson; Weeks et al; although Carrington challenges the equality ideology).

Rather provocative new observational research by veteran U.S. marriage researchers (Gottman & Levenson, 2002), however, detects some intriguing differences by gender and sexual orientation in patterns of communication, affect, and satisfaction among couples. Many of their findings will infuse gay family pride. They found the gay and lesbian couples they studied to be generally more positive than heterosexual married couples in their interaction patterns overall and able to discuss areas of conflict more constructively. [can fill in some details later, including the gender vs. sex orientation differences.] Gottman and Levenson speculate that the gay relational advantages may derive not only from the stronger commitment to the equality principle such couples evince, but also from indirect effects of their seeming disadvantage. They conjecture that weaker barriers against exiting non-conjugal relationships may actually encourage members to restrain expressions of verbal and emotional negativity. Indeed, Gottman and Levensen go so far as to propose that straight couples might profitably emulate gay couples:

In light of mounting Anglo-American expressions of public lament over the putatively damaging social consequences of marital decline, these findings raise challenging questions about the benefits of marriage for heterosexuals and gay family rights activists alike. Marriage clearly confers double-edged effects on relationships. Beyond the weighty social privileges it bestows, participants enjoy greater levels of security that their relationship will endure. On the other hand, marriage appears also to accord its members license to indulge in more negative, less empathic interactions. Paradoxically, we cannot assess the extent to which these consequences derive from the institution itself or from the gender mix or match of the dyads unless marriage becomes equally available to all couples. In the interim, however, gay male relationships provide exceptionally fertile terrain for considering the relative contributions that gender and sexual orientation play in shaping prevailing kinship desires, strategies, behaviors, and snares.

Are gay male relationships non-conventional?

Consider, for example, the following assortment of conventional, indeed cliched, complaints that straight women routinely swap about the men in (and out of) our their lives sampled from a file to which I have given the "feminazi" title, "Men are Pigs":

1. "It was a nice distraction from having just been dumped by my boyfriend. Men are pigs, even the nice ones!"

2. "Lance can't get turned on by someone he respects and loves; he can only have sex with someone he's not emotionally committed to, or if he's drunk. I couldn't tolerate it, so I had to move out."

3. "When I got home from work the other night, Jake had been surfing the net for so long that he was like totally in heat. And we had sex. We didn't make love; we fucked!, and it's like I woke up the next morning, and it's like, I just feel so fuckin' shitty. Why did I do that? I said it was great, I got off, but I feel rotten. I have felt rotten the last 2 days."

4. "Carlos is great, but he always has to be right."

5. "let's face it. when you reach a certain age, men are either already taken or they're looking for someone younger and more beautiful. We all know how men are-Dogs. Absolute dogs."

The twist, of course, is that these are complaints by and about gay men that I have gathered during my field research. The same is true for flipside romantic narratives in my fieldnotes, such as this one:

I went out to a street fair with my neighbor and met a man called Rob and just fell like I don't know that I've fallen before. He knocks my socks off and is damn near everything I want in a man; he's kind, loving, compassionate, gives of himself to others and his community, and treats me like the princess that we all know I am.

Apart from the gender of the plaintiffs and the princess, little here would seem to qualify as "non-conventional" genres of partnership, intimacy or care. Nonetheless, the gender of the parties is no small or simple matter. In a gendered world, which is to say the world as we know it, gender can transmute apparently similar desires, utterances and behaviors into strikingly different matters and meanings.

Exploring these issues, I am focusing on a historically specific cohort of gay men and their kin in Los Angeles, a vanguard global mecca for sexual migrants among its throngs of dream-seekers. Arguably the paradigmatic metropolis of postmodernity, "El Lay" is an ideal site for this work. Los Angeles boasts the world's second largest, most multi-ethnic gay population. It is the birthplace of: West Hollywood--the only gay-governed municipality in the world; the Mattachine Society; the primarily white gay Metropolitan Community Church; the primarily Black gay Unity Fellowship Church; the gay Catholic group, "Dignity;" and of The One Institute. Organized groups of Gay Fathers, and of Gay Parents formed in the city as early as the mid-1970s, merging soon into "Gay and Lesbian Parents of Los Angeles. In 1985, Gay Fathers Coalition International held its annual national conference in L.A. where it decided to unite with lesbian parent groups. This was the genesis of Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International (GLPCI), which in 1998 changed its name to Family Pride, Incorporated" and is currently among the leading national grass roots organizations of its kind in the U.S (Miller, 2001:226-9). Los Angeles also houses Growing Generations, the world's first and perhaps still its only gay-owned and oriented surrogacy and assisted reproduction agency. Despite all of this and the fact that, as Kenny and Dawidoff (2001) have observed, "Gay L.A is more representative of the full spectrum of gay life than are San Francisco and New York," it is comparatively understudied.

In June 1999, I began conducting lengthy multi-session, family life history interviews with a multi-ethnic selection of gay men in Los Angeles who practice varied relational and residential options (single, open or closed couples, co-residing or parenting with friends, biological or adopted kin, children, etc). To contextualize these narratives, I began surveying the social geography of gay residential and social venues and family support resources--visiting bars, clubs, restaurants and commercial venues that cater to specific racial-ethnic groups of gay men; attending religious services at a black and a white gay church; interviewing personnel at local gay social service, support, and activist groups and organizations, including many of those mentioned above; and participating in protests against a statewide anti-gay marriage initiative that won approval by voters in February 2000. I am also sampling local magazines, radio programs, web sites, newsletters, commercial and social resources and events that are oriented toward gay intimacy concerns (such as an annual Fourth of July "At The Beach" event on the national black gay party circuit in 2000, and a recent mass domestic partnership registration ceremony at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center).

My research design projects interviewing 50-75 subjects (25 primary subjects and at least 25 members of their self-defined kin) and conducting ethnographic family case studies on from 4 to 6 modal genres of gay male intimacy and kinship. Primary subjects are self-identified gay men born between 1958 and 1973 who came of age and came out after the Stonewall era of gay liberation and after the AIDS crisis was widely recognized. Popular discourses about safe sex, the gayby boom, gay marriage, domestic partnerships and "families we choose" inform their sense of familial prospects. This is the first cohort of gay men young enough to be able to contemplate parenthood outside heterosexuality and mature enough to be in a position to choose or reject it. Most now in their 30's and 40's, these men also have experience with adult intimacy, domesticity, work and economic responsibilities.

Through fieldwork and reading, I am in the process of identifying and selecting ideal-typical genres of intimacy and kinship for ethnographic case study. Refining a fieldwork strategy I devised researching Brave New Families (Stacey, 1990), case studies include interviews with as many kin identified by a key informant as possible; participant-observation at family occasions and activities; recurrent visits, email and phone conversations; viewing family photos, documents, and artifacts (correspondence, videos, journals, gifts); sharing and discussing novels, magazines, films, TV programs, and topics proposed by subjects. L.A. is the primary field site, but when possible, I will travel to attend familial events and interview geographically dispersed relatives both in the US and internationally.

The following "family fellows" are among the case studies I am likely to pursue:

1) John and Jake are an interracial, bi-national, monogamous gay couple who have lived together five years in John's modest house in Silverlake, an ethnically diverse neighborhood popular with artists, students, activists and gays. John, a chef-caterer, is a sexual immigrant who fled his homophobic, working-class, natal family and life in Dublin at the age of nineteen. Jake, from an African-American middle-class, suburban background and trained as an engineer, has been managing John's catering service since he was laid off from his last engineering job. They depict themselves as a monogamous gay couple, and they blend Jake's natal kin with chosen kin, including one of John's former lovers, an Asian-Latino sexual immigrant from Mexico, and an older divorced Jewish heterosexual woman who works with John. They are struggling over issues of commitment and economic inequality, with Jake resisting the commitment ceremony that John dearly wants at the same time that he has become economically dependent upon John's business;

2) Michael, a single African-American, gay high school social studies teacher with an extraordinary Horatio Alger-like bildingsroman history of self-made upward class mobility, rents an apartment alone in a working-class Black neighborhood. Although he was semi-orphaned as an adolescent when his bisexual mother was imprisoned for shoplifting to support her drug addiction, Michael remains deeply embedded in and attached to his geographically dispersed, extended biological family. Since coming out as gay, Michael decided to restrict his sexual partners, but not all of his chosen kin ties, to members of his own race. A devoted, active participant in the lives of his eight nephews and nieces, Michael hopes to become a father himself whether or not he finds a mate;

3) Matthew is a white, museum archivist and self-described "sex pig" living in a twelve-year, loving, committed, but no longer sexual, "civil union" with Robert, an affluent, retired white business manager, twenty years older than Matthew. They reside in the comfortable, traditional, carefully furnished private house Robert owns in the sedate, affluent suburb of Los Angeles in which he grew up. Several years ago, Robert's sexual desires waned, and he granted Matthew permission to meet his sexual needs outside their relationship under a negotiated set of terms. The couple are close to most of their siblings, nieces and nephews, and extended kin. Among these is Matthew's recently-acquired gay brother-in-law who with his committed partner of five years formed a domestic/sexual triad by inviting a much younger, "gorgeous boy-toy" into their household;

4) A picture-perfect affluent nuclear family residing in an elegant, designer-chic home in the West Hollywood hills, Harry, Pierre and their infant son, represent an improbable, fairy-tale romance of gay love, marriage and the baby-carriage. A biracial and cross-class couple who have been together five years, they speak of falling in love at first sight on a Parisian street. There, Harry, an affluent, Jewish, ivy-league educated, successful screenwriter spotted and cruised Pierre, a gorgeous, younger, undereducated West Indian from an impoverished single-mother family who was serving in the French military. After conducting a transatlantic courtship for the year before Pierre's release from military service, Harry sponsored his beloved's immigration to the U.S. and financed the education Pierre has since pursued in both nursing and oil painting. Through Growing Generations, they employed a "traditional" surrogate who conceived baby Ari with Harry's sperm and has agreed to serve as surrogate for them again when they are ready to conceive a second child with Pierre's sperm. Harry is the family's primary breadwinner and Pierre currently the primary caretaker, and they are very close with Harry's sister, a divorced mother who lives nearby with her six-year old son;

5) Finally, Scott and Joaquin, another biracial, cross-class couple of far more modest means reside in a condo development in a quiet, remote community midway between their respective workplaces as well as midway between Los Angeles and a city 75 miles away where Sally, a day-care teacher, lives with her lesbian partner Elena, a gardener, and their toddler Gregg. Scott, a white gay social service director served as the sperm donor for his close friend Sally, and he and Joaquin, a Latino graphic designer, are starry-eyed co-fathers who spend at least half of every week-end with Gregg and contribute financially to his care. They plan to conceive another child with Sally and all four parents are discussing the racial and kinship implications of doing so this time with Joaquin's sperm or once again with Scott's. Sally, Elena, Scott and Joaquin all regard each other as chosen kin, and three of the four sets of potential grandparents recognize and dote on Gregg. Birthmother Sally, however, is estranged from her homophobic parents.

You Can Take the Fellow Out Of The Family, But...

What happens to gendered conventions of sexuality, kinship and care when men come out of the heteronormative family regime in so many different ways? Early in my fieldwork, I became intrigued by two somewhat paradoxical features I detected beneath the kaleidoscopic patterns of intimacy among gay men.

1. Perils and pleasures of the male gaze

It is not merely a cultural stereotype to observe that many gay men tend to be even more preoccupied than most straight women with their bodies, physical attractiveness, attire, adornment and self-presentation. Advertisements for every conceivable manner of corporeal beautification and modification flood the pages, airwaves, and websites of the gay male press: familiar and exotic cosmetic surgery and body sculpture procedures, including penile, buttock and pec implants; liposuction; laser resurfacing; hair removal or extensions; cosmetic dentisty; personal trainers and gym rat regimens; tattooing and tattoo removal; body piercing; hair coloring and styling; tinted contact lenses; manicures, pedicures and waxing; as well as color, style and fashion consultants and the commodified universe of couture, cosmetics, and personal grooming implements which they serve. No doubt, the tinseltown culture of L.A. is unusually extreme in this regard, but I am making a comparative observation about gay men, holding local cultural coordinates constant. Similarly, many gay men, like many straight women, but unlike most lesbians or straight men, suffer from eating disorders.[find citation]. Arguably, therefore, gay men are even more oppressed than heterosexual women by injurious effects of what feminists termed "sexual objectification" and of the ageism that accompanies an emphasis on visual criteria for intimacy.

Why, I began to wonder, would men impose this merciless regime on other men? why do men put up with it? and what does this imply about the power dynamics of gender and eros? Cliches from my "Men are Pigs" file above ignited my preliminary reflections on this puzzle. Recall: "We all know how men are-Dogs. Absolute dogs!" "Men are pigs, even the nice ones." Because gay men operate in a male sexual economy that grants them greater license to pursue animalistic passions, they subject each other to heightened levels of the tyranny (as well as the titillating and serendipitous pleasures) of the male gaze. In cruising culture, the gay male sexual sport arena, it's all in the gaze. Erotic attraction and connection occur (or fail) in the blink of an eye. Paradoxically, as a result, gay male access to the untrammeled field of masculine sexual pursuit that Levine depicts as "hyper-masculinity"(Levine 1998), converts male sexual subjects into a feminine status of hyper-sexual objects. Participants all are predators and prey at once, and it seems likely that this dual status fosters an internalization of the harsh discriminatory judgements of the gaze that can only intensify its effects. The extraordinary emphasis on the visual at the core of this dynamic imposes painful challenges for gay men seeking eros and intimacy who fall outside desirable standards of beauty and youth. Michael, for example, the Black gay single informant depicted above is not single by choice. Although he has a sunny, welcoming demeanor and an attractive face, he also stutters and is overweight, particularly when judged by predominant gay standards. A victim of the male gaze, Michael reports that women are much more likely to pursue him than men: "women seem to see me as open, friendly, and sensitive. I don't do too well in the gay bar scene."

On the other hand, cruising culture also fosters, or enables, some creative, expansive approaches to intimacy and kinship. Because gay men can more readily separate physical sex from social attachment, they enjoy greater latitude in which to negotiate diverse terms for meeting their sexual and social needs within and beyond dyadic couple arrangements. Not only do some gay men engage in triads, as noted above, more than a few of the committed gay couples I have interviewed allow themselves to indulge in extra-curricular cruising or "fuck-buddy" liasons under a variety of rules (in some cases jointly frequenting cruising bars, baths, or the internet). Recall the generous, asymmetrical form of open relationship that Robert negotiated with his younger, lifetime companion Matthew after his own sexual desires waned. Likewise, gay male culture rightfully prides itself on greater comfort with the fluidity and ambiguity of boundaries between lover and friend. Former lovers become integrated into chosen kin sets more readily than among heterosexuals, as happened with John's Latino-Asian ex-lover depicted above, and friends not infrequently become lovers, or sexual playmates. Although the greater capacity and license that gay men enjoy to separate physical from emotional forms of intimacy has obvious costs, it also facilitates creative departures from the heteronormative regime of conjugal monogamy. Some of these innovations mitigate stereotypical snares of loneliness, sexual frustration or incompatibility that many heterosexual singles and couples suffer. They can also have social mobility consequences, as I suggest below.

2. Learning not to labour

Understandably research on gay youth concentrates primarily on the heightened social hazards and risks they confront-hazing, bashing, isolation, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, isolation, depression, rejection by family and community, as well as suicide and homicide. Also understandably, the predominant view portrays these risks as particularly high for gay youth who must contend with the masculinity cultures of subordinate racial-ethnic, underclass, working-class and rural communities. [cite Stephen Russell et al] By no means would I want to minimize these hazards. At the same time, however, my field research has led me to speculate that many male youth from these environments who experience homoerotic desires may also garner unacknowledged, indirect social advantages from their subjective awareness of sexual difference.

I first arrived at this notion while viewing "Nuyorican Dream" at the annual gay Outfest film festival in Los Angeles with one of my research informants. A superb documentary, the film portrays the familial bonds and troubled lives of three generations of an underclass, single-mother, Puerto Rican family in Brooklyn, New York Robert Torres, a thirty-year-old gay high school teacher is the film's protagonist and narrator and the only one of his five siblings who escapes their impoverished ghetto environment to achieve educational and social mobility. Devoted to his mother and family, Robert struggles, with scant success, to rescue his siblings from the ubiquitous pitfalls of poverty and racism-the lure of drugs, crime, violence, truancy, and teen pregnancy. His strong familial commitment and unpredictable social mobility reminded me instantly of Michael, the Black "Horatio Alger" informant described above. Ruminating later, I realized that variations on this theme applied to the family histories of a startling number of my gay interviewees, including my immediate viewing companion at the time, a thirty-year-old white AIDS prevention worker from a midwestern, working-class family whose older brother served time in prison. Each achieved a social mobility trajectory against the odds and in contrast to the troubled trails that the rest of their siblings followed. Gay memoirs, biographies and fiction are rife with analogous narratives (fill in cites here; including from Bernstein & Reimann).

This raises a provocative, albeit challenging, empirical research question about the impact of homoerotic desire and gender on educational and social mobility. Although we do not yet possess adequate data to assess how gay youth fare when compared with their siblings, I believe it likely that there are significant differences that point in contradictory directions. I would predict a U-curve in which underprivileged homoerotically-inclined young males would evince both the downward pressures of the heightened risks they confront and the upward effects of greater exit routes available for those who don't succumb. I believe that youthful awareness of homoerotic desire unleashes push and pull factors that disproportionately draw adolescent boys out of depressed, lower-class environments. In direct contrast with the working-class "lads" who, by succeeding at adolescent, heterosexual, working-class norms of masculinity, were unwittingly "learning to labour" (Willis, 1977) in subordinated, working-class jobs, homoerotically-inclined boys are apt to fail at the harsh macho curriculum. However, those who survive the potentially lethal dangers of doing so, also less frequently learn to labor.

Gay-oriented youth have good cause to seek alternative routes to self-esteem and escape from the self-destructive, dangerous, "live fast and die young" culture of what Connell has called "protest masculinity": "a marginalized masculinity which picks up themes of hegemonic masculinity in the society at large but reworks them in a context of poverty" (Connell, 1995:114). Rather than learn to labor, gay youth are apt to feel more compelled than their brothers to pursue "feminine" strategies for cultural affirmation and social success. As feminist scholars have argued, working-class and middle-class identities are strongly gender-coded. Whereas images of blue-collar and working-class workers are decidedly masculine (Stacey, 1990; Bettie, ), femininity signals middle-class conformity and propriety (Ortner, Bettie).

Like Michael, Robert Torres, Pierre, and John, gay-inclined adolescent boys are more likely than their macho brothers to pursue educational and aesthetic sources of gratification. Moreover, they are more inclined to escape their homophobic natal communities, migrating in search of more gay-tolerant urban or progressive milieus. ( Cantu; G. Rubin). John, as we saw, became a chef and fled his repressive, hostile working-class Dublin origins. Michael pursued a college scholarship to escape semi-homelessness. Pierre migrated to France and enlisted in military service to secure vocational training. In their efforts not to learn to labor, gay males also can derive some of the gender benefits of male privilege. They avoid many of the social constraints and risks that confront their sisters irrespective of homoerotic desires. Sons shoulder fewer domestic responsibilities than daughters and enjoy greater sexual freedom (without the risk of pregnancy), personal autonomy and physical mobility. In addition, those males who do not learn to labor, enjoy far greater career and earnings opportunities than comparable females. In short, this appears to be a situation in which a subordinate sexual identity can intersect with gender privilege to promote upward social class, (and often racial) mobility along with sexual migration.

Non-conventional conclusions

Judged by the prevailing "contemporary community standards"of social and sexual mores in Anglo-American societies, much about the genres of intimacy and kinship depicted above certainly qualify as non-conventional, if not exotic. Matthew and Robert honestly faced their incompatible sexual desires and openly negotiated the turn to an asexual, but committed, loving civil union with asymmetrical extra-marital sexual opportunities. Matthew is titillated by his gay brother-in-law's domestic-erotic triad. Baby Gregg basks in (or perhaps will feel smothered by!) the loving devotion of four parents, six grandparents, and a widely-extended, multi-ethnic set of kin. John and Jake blend natal and chosen kin, including former lovers, who traverse a splendid range of demographic boundaries-race, nation, social class, education, age, gender, sexual identity, marital status.

At the same time, I also have sketched a host of familial desires, behaviors, patterns, and conflicts by no means unfamiliar to mainstream heterosexual culture: Pierre's romantic, hypergamous patriarchal bargain with Harry, as well as their "Ozzie and Harry" division of labor; John's struggles for commitment and greater economic responsibility from Jake; Michael's painful search for a man who cares more about personality, character, and convictions than about excess body mass. Although all of these patterns echo conventional features of heterosexual relationships, the gender difference (or similarity) of the usual suspects helps to illuminate, and perhaps to challenge, many otherwise naturalized conventions of gender and sexual practice. The gender twist involved when men complain of male piggery, trade sexual for cultural capital, or struggle over the domestic division of labor raises cultural curtains that allow us to inspect some of the backstage props and the cultural stage-sets in which we ordinarily enact our particular gender, sexual and familial scripts. These family fellows complicate and challenge conventional understandings of masculinity, femininity and sexuality and raise anew ancient questions about the sources and meanings of diverse desires and attachments.

Both the familiar and more exotic forms of intimacy forged by the gay family fellows I am studying suggest the inadequacy of continuing to regard them, or any other genre of contemporary family, as "non-conventional." Certainly, gay family fellows display a level of creativity, reflexivity, and challenge far greater than do most families generally considered to be conventional. This is so, I believe, precisely because they must self-consciously configure their intimate and kin relationships outside the conventions of the established family tent. Statistically speaking, however, there are no more normal families. Rather, under the postmodern family condition, every family is an alternative family. "Gay and lesbian families are here; all of our families are queer; let's get used to it," as I argued in the title of a book chapter on this theme(Stacey 1996). Gay male genres of intimacy and kinship represent more visible and experimental responses (and perhaps nowhere more so than in El Lay) to the irreversible postmodern family condition that beckons and bedevils us all. In my view, neither assimilation nor subversion of mainstream familial conventions adequately confronts the postmodern crisis of intimacy, eros, and care. Rather, we should be struggling to build cultural and material conditions sufficiently democratic and inclusive to render queer kinship unremarkably conventional. We need to make room for monogamous couples, sex pigs, parents, children, chosen and unchosen kin of every gender and sexual orientation in the same big tent of fellow families.

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