Joe Kort on Male Sexual Fluidity – Smart Sex, Smart Love with Dr. Joe Kort

Why would straight identified men have sex with other men? Are they gay, bi or somewhere in between? Do you really understand what sexual fluidity is, or, even means?  This week Joe talks about his book, ‘Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?: A guide for women concerned about their men.’  Men are stigmatized for having one non-heterosexual thought, and women are fetishized for having one.  Joe addresses the concerns of worried women who suspect their men are not straight. Listen to Joe help make sense of a confusing situation, plus make sense of ways couples can have sexual health conversations around the topic of sexual interests that don’t match one’s sexual orientation, and remain married, even with a ‘happy ever after’….

Dr. Joe Kort:                       Hello and welcome to Smart Sex, Smart Love. I'm Dr. Joe Kort, and today we're going to be talking about male sexual fluidity, something that isn't really talked about in our culture very much. We're much more prone to talking about female sexual fluidity than we are males. So I decided to dedicate this entire episode to just talking about what happens for men, how do they behave in fluid ways, how does it work similarly to women, not similarly to women.

It's really based on my latest book, which is called Is My Husband Gay, Straight or Bi? A Guide for Women Concerned about Their Men. I wrote this book because women were calling me on a regular basis and coming in for sessions worried about finding their men looking at gay porn, looking at bisexual porn. They used to be on Craigslist when that was available. They may have had gone to a bath house and they were completely freaked out, understandably, and scared that their husband was actually gay, but it would turn out for the most part that they weren't.

And so you might be thinking, "Well, how can that be if they're having gay sex, or they're looking at gay porn, or they're having same sex interactions? How is that not at least bi, but instead is even gay?" Well, I'm going to argue that today, and I'm going to give you some different ways to think about it. You may or may not agree with me; some people don't agree with me at all. In fact, I've had some criticisms over the years where people accused me of bi erasure. Bi erasure is the idea that we're a binary sexual orientation. We're either gay or straight, I'm not binary at all. I'm not bi erasure. I do know that men are bisexual, as are women, but I also know that there are men that have sex with men that are not bi. They're absolutely straight, or they're mostly straight, and bisexuality or even pansexuality is not part of their identity.

How do I know this? Well, first of all, I'm going to give you a spoiler alert. I'm not a gay whisperer. Right? So if I was at gay whisperer, I would be so rich that I would be having dinner with Cher tonight, and spending the weekend with Oprah. I wouldn't be doing this podcast. Instead, I help men come to terms with themselves, what their own orientation is, which is all anyone can do. Their partners can't tell them, their therapists can't tell them. They have to be guided to go inside to tell themselves. So let me begin by talking about the fact that this conversation began inadvertently.

It didn't just originate up to be talking about male sexual fluidity, but I think it was 2006, or maybe 2005, where we started to learn about African American men going on the down low, and this was a book that was written by J.L. King and it was called On the Down Low. What he did was he exposed African American men going to spaces and being sexual with one another and not bringing protection. So what would happen is then they would pass on STIs, STDs, HIV that go back to their wives or girlfriends and pass on the STD or STI, and then some of these women became HIV positive and this became an Oprah show. On the Oprah show, I'll never forget this,