Odd Couples: Friendships at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Orientation

by Anna Muraco

Odd Couples examines friendships between gay men and straight women, and also between lesbians and straight men, and shows how these "intersectional" friendships serve as a barometer for shifting social norms, particularly regarding gender and sexual orientation. Based on author Anna Muraco's interviews, the work challenges two widespread assumptions: that men and women are fundamentally different and that men and women can only forge significant bonds within romantic relationships. Intersectional friendships challenge a variety of social norms, Muraco says, including the limited roles that men and women are expected to play in one another's lives. Each chapter uses these boundary-crossing relationships to highlight how key social constructs such as family, politics, gender, and sexuality shape everyday interactions. Friendship itself—whether intersectional or not—becomes the center of the analysis, taking its place as an important influence on the social behavior of adults.

Genres: Gender

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2012

Reviews

[Preethi Krishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because of the novelty of the topic. Platonic cross-sex friendships have always been a topic of great interest for me, primarily due to my own enriching experience of friendships with men. This book covers intersectional friendships (Sexual orientation and Gender) between straight women and gay men and straight men and gay/lesbian women. Most cross-sex friendships supposedly have the burden of sexual tension and of the social norm that presupposes that a man and a woman would have romantic inclinations. The author decides to study these cross sex friendships based on the assumption that they would be free from sexual tension and from the discomfort of their respective partners.

The findings are interesting. The main points that caught my attention are these. The friends often engage in gender policing i.e. they help maintain gender norms and sometimes even attribute features normative to their friend's sex. For instance many men saw their female friends as nurturing and motherly. At the same time, these friendships also allowed men and women to be free from gender normative expectations. In some sense, they had the freedom to be gender outlaws.

There was an interesting finding regarding sexuality. Although the men and women in the study had differing sexual orientation, there were cases where the friends had explored a sexual relationship. There were also cases where one friend continued to be romantically interested. There were other friends where there was no sexual exploration.Through this finding the author demonstrates the continuum of sexuality that exists in these friendships.

Yet another interesting chapter was the one on how people's political activism changed due to their interaction with their friend. The discrimination that gay men and women(both lesbian and straight) faced in society often made gay men and straight women to be more sensitized to the marginalization that their friend faced, be it sexism or heterosexism. Yet, there were examples of straight people distancing themselves from homosexuality.The author did not find (m)any straight men speak of their increased consciousness regarding sexism through their interaction with their female friends. This was my favorite chapter in the book.

I liked the book. The language is easy and ties together earlier sociological work. I also liked the methodology section in the appendix. The author takes genuine effort to maintain the confidentiality of the participants, because she did not want to jeopardize these friendships on any account. As someone who was part of such a friendship, the author shows a deep understanding of the value of these friends, many of whom was the family that they and their friends had chosen.

[Steph Mecham · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5