Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity among Men

by Ritch C. Savin-Williams

Most of us assume that sexuality is fixed: either you're straight, gay, or bisexual. Yet an increasing number of young men today say that those categories are too rigid. They are, they insist, "mostly straight." They're straight, but they feel a slight but enduring romantic or sexual desire for men. To the uninitiated, this may not make sense. How can a man be "mostly" straight? Ritch Savin-Williams introduces us to this new world by bringing us the stories of young men who consider themselves to be mostly straight or sexually fluid. By hearing about their lives, we discover a radically new way of understanding sexual and romantic development that upends what we thought we knew about men.

Today there are more mostly straight young men than there are gay and bisexual young men combined. Based on cutting-edge research, Savin-Williams explores the personal stories of forty young men to help us understand the biological and psychological factors that led them to become mostly straight and the cultural forces that are loosening the sexual bind that many boys and young men experience. These young men tell us how their lives have been influenced by their "drop of gayness," from their earliest sexual memories and crushes to their sexual behavior as teenagers and their relationships as young adults. Mostly Straight shows us how these young men are forging a new personal identity that confounds both traditional ideas and conventional scientific opinion.

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer, Sexuality

256 pages, Hardcover

Published November 13, 2017

Reviews

[Amantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 73%. This book manages to be neither truly anecdotal nor scientific. The synopsis claimed the author would explore "the stories of 40 mostly straight young men" which he kind of does but not really. Some of the stories are lumped together in a mish-mash of being sort of similar to each other. Very few chapters are dedicated to the actual subjects of the interviews, while most of the content of the book was about the author making suppositions and giving his own spin to what he thinks the interviewees mean by their responses. I had been looking forward to hearing first-hand accounts from mostly straight men about incidents or fantasies that belie their otherwise straight nature, since this is a subject that intrigues me. Straight-identifying people who fall in love or have sexual encounters with someone of the same gender is a subject worth exploring, but I would have loved to hear from the young men themselves instead of the author droning endlessly on and repeating himself every chapter.

[Shannyn Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps a better subtitle for this book would have been something like "Mostly Straight: Men Who Will RUIN YOUR FUCKING LIFE (!!!) If You Fall For Them, So Stay Away From Them, Gay Guys."

As evidenced by my opening sentence, this book brought back many painful memories of "mostly straight" guys who have broken my heart over the years. Given my personal biases here, I'm not sure how to rate this book. On the one hand, the author's main thesis isn't anything that I perceive as revelatory. Just about any gay guy can repeat the following joke and relate it to their real life experiences-- "What's the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy? .... 6 beers." That said, I do applaud the author for taking this difficult, ambiguous, paradoxical topic on.

[Bor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ik was op Dragvoll (de geesteswetenschappencampus) en dit boek lag zo prominent in de etalage van de boekhandel dat ik 'm niet kon laten liggen.

Dit boek is… Niet supergoed. De andere reviews vatten het eigenlijk prima samen: het is niet écht wetenschappelijk en ook niet écht anekdotisch, en als het één van die twee geweest was, was het waarschijnlijk beter leesbaar en interessanter geweest. Meest van alles lijkt de auteur het punt te willen bewijzen dat er mannen bestaan die 'mostly straight' zijn. Nou, dat wist ik al. Zoals een van de andere reviews op dit boek óók schrijft: Perhaps a better subtitle for this book would have been something like "Mostly Straight: Men Who Will RUIN YOUR FUCKING LIFE (!!!) If You Fall For Them, So Stay Away From Them, Gay Guys."'

Overigens denk ik wel dat dit, gezien de titel, een hilarisch boek is om mee gezien te worden in treinen, vliegtuigen en wachtkamers.

[Kathy Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book. Good science but quite engaging and readable. Super useful to me as research for a fictional character, but more than a little useful to our world right now. Particularly liked the the message of hope and acceptance directly expressed to the young reader.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this would have done well as the academic journal article it derived from. His thesis is that on the sexual orientation continuum there are individuals who truly are just a little gay. They are not closeted individuals, nor are they likely to become more gay in the future.

[Kel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kind of gave up on this a little over half way through. It's mostly anecdotal and it just gets very boring and repetitive. This could have been condensed into an interesting article--it's too much as a book.

[Rae · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't disagree with the author's somewhat bland conclusion (which is that there are men who are mostly straight, being on a sexual spectrum) but I would have liked a lot more science and a lot less anecdotal evidence. Mostly meh.

[Michael Fasano-McCarron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm mostly gay. That's my review.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Savin-Williams' "Mostly Straight" discusses a group that you don't hear about too often. Williams reminds us that on the Kinsey scale, 0 represents totally straight and 6 represents totally gay. We hear about gay people (Kinsey 6), straight people (Kinsey 0), and even bisexual people (Kinsey 3), all the time. However, one group that is not discussed or talked about at all is the Kinsey 1's, that is, people who are mostly straight, but not totally so.

In his book, Williams discusses the lives of young men who self-describe as mostly straight, and compares and contrasts their sexual and romantic lives with those of totally straight and totally gay people. It's actually a very interesting read to learn more about this group that typically flies under the radar and doesn't get much attention. An even more intriguing pattern that becomes apparent in the book is that traditional definitions of sex and love, straight and gay, are evolving quite quickly in America, led by the youngest adults. More and more people are saying "I'm not straight, I'm not gay, I'm just me". This is quite an eye-opening read, and I thank Williams for shining some light on this little-discussed segment of the sexual continuum.

[Brandon Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, a label-less world would be great. But we still need to talk this out for us, the ones before us, and the ones growing up. I'm far from mostly-straight, but have had friends and acquaintances I think would identify as such. We've had some great conversations about it--private ones I'd never share. Because the world isn't there yet for them. Imagine a world where it's totally okay for guys to be a little bit gay, where they wouldn't be labeled a closet-case, dirty opportunist, hesitant bisexual, or anything to demean, what if they were just self-identified men who had a firm identity, and integrity, and an openness to be? This book looks at some of these men, finds some answers, and poses a lot of questions.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Book could have been 20 pages long instead of 200 and I would have gotten the gist.

[Vincent Chunhao · Rating 1 out of 5]

Contrived and forced concept.

[Chris Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are only so many ways one can rephrase "it isn't gay if the balls don't touch"

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing read on an emerging concept, with personal stories that deepened my understanding of male sexuality.