ODD COUPLES

Friendships at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual OrientationBy ANNA MURACO

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2012 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5177-1

Contents

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………..ixIntroduction…………………………………………………………………..11 You’ve Got to Have Friends Vignette: Frank and Rebecca…………………………..132 Snapshots of the Intersectional Friendship Vignette: Ming and Ben…………………353 We Are Family Vignette: Brenda and Dan…………………………………………564 Gender Cops and Robbers Vignette: Mark and Cristina……………………………..785 What’s Sex Got to Do with It? Vignette: Justine and Antonio………………………1016 The Personal Is Political Vignette: Leyla and Ethan……………………………..1187 The Future of Intersectional Friendships………………………………………..145Appendix 1…………………………………………………………………….155Appendix 2…………………………………………………………………….157Appendix 3…………………………………………………………………….163Notes…………………………………………………………………………167References…………………………………………………………………….173Index…………………………………………………………………………187

Chapter One

YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE FRIENDS

[Gay/straight friendship] makes the straight person, I think, more of a whole person. Straight people can so easily, because they comprise 80–90 percent of the population, just erase the gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender people out of their lives, it’s not easy, but they could do it—I’m not breaking my own arm patting myself on the back, it’s just that for a straight person to accept, it forces you to become more open and if you become more open, you become, to me, a more human person. —Bob, a sixty-four-year-old straight white man

FRANK AND REBECCA

Frank and Rebecca’s friendship began inauspiciously when they were quite young. Frank explained:

When we were four years old, my sister was taking piano lessons [in the home of] one of our neighbors. We lived in a town of probably 300 people … at the time. So we were all neighbors, but it was the other side of town, and we’d gone over there for my sister’s piano lessons. I, of course, got bored and went outside to play. It was wintertime; there were mud puddles, so I was out playing in mud puddles, and I suddenly got a swift kick in the ass and went head first into the mud puddle. When I turned around, that’s when I met her. I said, “You got me all wet,” and she said, “Uh-huh. Wanna come over and play on my slide?” And I said, “Uh-huh.”

Since they lived in a small town, Frank and Rebecca were in all of the same classes in elementary school and spent afternoons and summer days together catching lizards and playing in creek beds. Rebecca seemed to need an alliance with Frank. She was the only child who was not white in her small town (she is half-Japanese) and endured a difficult home life. Time spent with Frank was an escape. While the children built a strong friendship, it also was a bond of intense competition. Frank and Rebecca tried to outdo each other in earning grades and academic accomplishments as children. Teachers separated them in junior high because they were so competitive with each other.

In high school, the friends ran in different social circles. Rebecca partly attributes their relative distance in high school to the fact that Frank disliked her boyfriend. Rebecca and Frank remember the details of his coming out as gay to her very differently. Rebecca noted that she was not surprised to learn the news, but Frank has an entirely different memory of the conversation. Frank remembers that Rebecca was very angry with him when she found out he was gay and that she was not the first person he had told. Rebecca noted that she and Frank often remember details from their past differently. Both recalled a night when they discussed whether or not they should have sex and try to be in a relationship together—this was before Frank had come out as gay. As children, they had pretended to have weddings, and many of the adults in their small town had assumed they would marry at some point because of their strong bond. They decided that having sex would be too weird to deal with afterward and decided against it. Frank acknowledges that his friendship with Rebecca confirmed for him that he is gay:

My friendship with Rebecca has pretty much convinced me of my sexual orientation because of the fact that, you know, by typical standards, she’s a freakin’ babe, she’s so hot, and I’ve never had the hots for her, and that more than anything has helped to convince me that, oh, yeah, I really am gay.

Frank and Rebecca are now in their mid-thirties and live several hundred miles away from each other but talk on the phone once a week. Rebecca is married, and her husband and Frank get along very well; this encouraged the longtime friends to commit to seeing each other more regularly. Recently, Frank traveled with Rebecca and her husband on a ski trip to Tahoe, and they were planning a mountain biking trip in the winter. Rebecca and Frank still talk to each other when they are making big life decisions; Frank stated that he would not have bought his house without Rebecca’s encouragement, and Rebecca said that when she needs to talk to someone about important issues, Frank is the person she calls.

FRIENDSHIP FULFILLS many roles in our lives. Friendship satisfies a desire for affiliation with those who are like us in some ways but unlike us in others. Not only do friends provide feelings of belonging; they also enhance our sense of self. A friendship bond brings meaning to an individual’s life and increases feelings of happiness (Bersheid et al. 1989; Fehr 1996; Larson and Bradney 1988), but often its significance is overshadowed by the intensity of familial or romantic relationships, which come with higher cultural expectations and obligations (Felmlee and Sprecher 2000; Rubin 1985). Friendship provides emotional benefits but can also lead to emotional pain, rejection, and annoyance (Duck and Wood 1995). Cited as bringing both joy and conflict to our lives (Argyle 1987; Duck and Wright 1993; Rose and Serafica 1986), friendship is one of the most significant, yet socially ignored, relationships.

Intersectional friendships face novel challenges compared with traditional within-group bonds. These dyadic friendships resist homosexual ghettoization, in which gay men and lesbians become socially segregated in their own communities in reaction to societal heterosexism and homophobia. Friendships between gay men and straight women and between lesbians and straight men enter uncharted relational territory by successfully (and voluntarily) uniting in the face of both homosexual segregation and the belief that friendships between men and women will always result in romance. Thus, intersectional friendships can provide an alternative model for male–female interaction. In so doing, the intersectional dyads create a unique friendship form that may allow expressions of atypical gender behavior and yet also abide by traditional gendered norms in terms of the activities performed in the dyads. In this chapter, I provide a foundation for the rest of the book by examining the prior research, both empirical and theoretical, that helps us to better understand intersectional friendships. The chapter provides an overview of the roles that friendships play in our everyday lives, starting with how we build friendships and common characteristics of friendships, according to the existing body of research. I also address the qualities of various friendship compositions. I start by discussing what we currently know about intersectional friendships between gay men and straight women and between lesbians and straight men, then move on to address friendships between and among gay men and straight women, as well as same- and cross-sex friendships for gay men, lesbians, and heterosexuals. The chapter concludes by highlighting the various theoretical perspectives that inform this study.

THE ROLES OF FRIENDSHIP IN OUR LIVES

People desire connection to others. According to Baumeister’s and Leary’s (1995) discussion of the belongingness hypothesis, humans have a desire to form and maintain a minimum quantity of positive, significant relationships. The desire to belong consists of frequent and emotionally pleasant interactions, combined with the stability of such relationships over time (Baumeister and Leary 1995). Friendships are significant bonds that provide many benefits. Friends meet material, cognitive, and social-emotional needs, such as providing love and esteem (Solano 1986), and create a bond where individuals may self-disclose and share activities (Adams, Blieszner, and de Vries 2000). Another benefit of friendship is the pleasure of companionship: people say they are happier when they are with friends than when they are alone or with family members (Larson and Bradney 1988). Friendship ties may benefit individuals’ overall health (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Myers 2000). Positive friendship ties are associated with lower mortality rates and a relatively long life (Rasulo, Christensen, and Tomassini 2005; Sabin 1993), as well as higher self-esteem and better overall mental health (Ueno 2005; Wright 1999).

Friendships are formed in a variety of manners and contexts. One element that influences friendship formation is similarity. We tend to form friendships with people who are similar to us with regard to demographic characteristics, social status, attitudes, and other factors, such as common interests and common educational levels (Brehm 1985; Verbrugge 1977; Weinstock 2000). In long-term friendships, a sense of shared history provides similarity, connection, and love (Shea, Thompson, and Blieszner 1988). Similarity alone is insufficient for the development of a significant friendship; another factor that promotes friendship formation is physical and geographical proximity, where people have regular exposure to each other (Fehr 2000; Hendrick 2003) as well as positive contact; the more positive interactions people have, the more they will like each other (Homans 1961). The principle of proximity explains how we form close bonds with those individuals who are roommates and neighbors. With changing technology, however, the issue of proximity has shifted so that people are now able to be in nearly constant communication with others, even when they are not in the same geographical location (McKenna, Green, and Gleason 2002; Morahan-Martin and Schumacher 2003). People stay in touch via email, text messaging, cell phones, and online videoconferencing and are likely to continue to do so as technology develops. As such, we expect that intimate friendships can thrive by putting effort into maintaining closeness and sense of involvement (Rubin 1985), despite a lack of physical or even geographical proximity.

Workplaces blend two of the necessary ingredients for friendship formation: proximity and similarity. Thus, it is not surprising that many friendships are formed on the job. According to Fine (1986: 190), in professional occupational settings, “the content of work affects friendships that are likely to develop, in part because of the people that an occupation attracts, and in part because of the nature of the work.” Workplace friendships typically reinforce class similarity, as individuals are more likely to interact with those who share a workplace status than with those at different levels of professional achievement (Cohen 1992), although one study found that cross-orientation friendships commonly occurred in the workplace (Rumens 2008). Whether friendships are formed in the workplace or in childhood, they mold and reflect aspects of individuals’ identities in relation to each other.

Bridging Friendships

While the tendency is toward friendship formation on the basis of similarity—also known as homophily (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001)—a number of recent studies have focused on friendship between people across different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic categories. One study showed that between 1985 and 2004, those reporting someone of another race being a “confidant” rose from 9 percent to 15 percent (McPherson, Brashears, and Smith-Lovin 2006). Yet others found that interracial friendships remained the exception rather than the norm (Kao and Joyner 2004). Best friendships most frequently occur between people from the same racial and ethnic group; these individuals are more likely to participate in shared activities, which lead to greater emotional intimacy (Kao and Joyner 2004). Moreover, interracial friendships are less likely to be reciprocal than intra-racial friendships, meaning that they are less likely to be emotionally intimate (Vaquera and Kao 2008). Studies point to miscommunications, a perceived lack of self-disclosure, and a perceived lack of responsiveness across racial or ethnic group to negatively affect the development of intimacy in friendships (Shelton, Trail, West, and Bergsieker 2010; Trail, Shelton, and West 2009).

Some studies have theorized that adolescents’ misconceptions about other races partly explain why interracial friendships are less common than same-race friendships (Fujino 1997; Kao and Joyner 2004). Even when racial barriers were broken in friendships, research showed they faced greater challenges than same-race friendships (Kao and Joyner 2004). Despite the challenges, interracial friendships provide valuable connections and have a strong effect on positive attitudes toward interracial marriage, an indicator that interracial friendship promotes greater racial equality (Johnson and Jacobson 2005) and may help lessen anxiety about intergroup interactions (Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, and Tropp 2008). A traditionally marginalized social status may affect the patterns of friendship formation. For instance, the social networks of sexual-minority adults reflect larger societal patterns of friendship in terms of race. One study found that white lesbians and gay men report having more same-race friends than other-race friends, with lesbians of color reporting more cross-race friends than any other group (Galupo 2007b).

Friendships that bridge socioeconomic status also can have a positive social influence. Ties that cross social boundaries can reduce inequality by providing access to information, mentoring, and other forms of social capital, according to one study (de Souza Briggs 2007). Yet researchers also find that class status may be reproduced throughout the life cycle. Vaquera’s and Kao’s (2008) study of reciprocity in adolescent friendships found that children from more advantaged socioeconomic levels make friends more easily because they are perceived as being more socially desirable, a pattern that likely continues throughout the life course. Moreover, according to these findings, children with greater socioeconomic class advantage were more likely to have reciprocal, emotionally intimate friendships (Vaquera and Kao 2008). More generally, individuals are most likely to form friendships with people who share a common socioeconomic status because they value similar social exchanges and are more likely to interact with each other as peers (Jackson 1977).

When taken together, socioeconomic status and race affect rates of friendship across categories such that bridging friendships are more likely to occur when neighborhoods are integrated, when one’s neighborhood of residence is in an urban area with a high degree of racial heterogeneity, and when one engages in a high frequency of socializing with co-workers (de Souza Briggs 2007). Studies of bridging friendships have provided evidence that affectionate ties across categories of difference, while less common than friendships between those from similar backgrounds, were beneficial in facilitating greater understanding across the racial (Johnson and Jacobson 2005), class (de Souza Briggs 2007), sex (Werking 1997), and sexual orientation categories (Tillmann-Healy 2001).

THE FRIEND RELATIONSHIP BY SEX AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION

When people think of friendships, they generally envision male buddies or best female friends—in other words, a same-sex pairing that fits our dominant cultural image (Rubin 1985; Werking 1997). This normative assumption stems, at least in part, from patterns of gender socialization and norms of compulsory heterosexuality, which Rich (1980) describes as the dominant cultural expectation that women will be innately sexually attracted to men and that men will be attracted to women. From early childhood, people are sex-segregated in play and activities, a practice that influences the friendship bonds they form with other children (Myers and Raymond 2010; Thorne 1986). Throughout the life cycle, men and women primarily maintain friendships with members of their own sex, even as boundaries between sexes have relaxed (Werking 1997). Other research shows that the majority of friendships are between people of similar sexual orientation (Galupo 2007b; Nardi 1999).

Same-Sex, Same-Orientation Friendships of Gay Men and Lesbians

Some argue that friendships generally play a more important role for gay men and lesbians than they do for straight people, especially those friendships between gay men and between lesbian women. Friendships may be especially important at midlife and beyond for lesbians and gay men (Grossman, D’Augelli, and Hershberger 2000; Quam and Whitford 1992); typically, friends provide more support for gay and lesbian individuals in need of caregiving compared with straight individuals (Dorfman, Walters, Burke, Hardin, Karanik, Raphael, and Silverstein 1995). Moreover, prior research finds that friendships are often the main source of support, affirmation, and love in the lives of gay men and lesbians (Stanley 1996), while straight individuals are assumed to have greater access to social support through normative family life (Nardi 1992).

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Excerpted from ODD COUPLESby ANNA MURACO Copyright © 2012 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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