Practically every football game nowadays is chock full of excessive incidents of man love – orgiastic celebrations, tender caresses, ass slaps and the passionate locking of lips. I recently heard some talking head gesticulating on daytime TV that this kind of thing in sport has meant that heterosexual men can now get away with loads of things that used to be termed “gay” back in the day.
Can dudes now snog each other in the club without being called gay? Am I a homophobe to even question that? What the fuck is going on? I just don’t know. I figured an expert was needed to answer my questions, so I hunted down the most logical solution to my conundrum: the gay professor from Gilligan’s Island. Well, at least the man who played the gay professor from Gilligan’s Island on the reality version of the show, Eric Anderson. He actually is a gay professor and he gained his PhD by researching gay people in sport, so he’s the perfect guy to talk to here. We chatted about everything from Gilligan’s Island to when it doesn’t have to be gay to give another man a blowjob.
Vice: You were America’s first openly gay high school coach, right?
Dr. Anderson: This is true, yes. In 1993 I came out of the closet as an openly gay high school coach in the OC (Orange County) in Southern California. It was a very conservative period of time, and I was at a conservative school. It didn’t go over very well. My runners loved me, but we experienced extreme violence from the (American) football team. Eventually, one of my runners was brutally beaten. He was beaten so bad the football player broke his pallet. All because he ran for the gay coach. I wrote about this experience in an autobiography, Trailblazing: The True Story of America’s First Openly Gay High School Coach. And it was also this experience that sent me back to university to earn a PhD studying gay athletes.
You were on the Gilligan’s Island reality TV show in the US. How did they cast you in that?
Yes. The premise of the original programme was to show that people from various walks of life could learn to get along. One character was the professor. He was this smartly dressed man who could make or invent anything. Well, anything but a boat. He was always calm, well-spoken and smartly dressed – but he paid no attention to the beautiful women on the island. So clearly he was gay. Well, that’s the premise the producers of the reality TV version of it saw. So I became the gay professor in the reality TV show about it.
OK, so now I’m going to get on to the heavy hitting questions. In your opinion, how is masculinity changing? Is the meaning of the word “gay” changing before our very eyes?
It’s changing tremendously fast. And it’s changing for the better. Heterosexual men are much less afraid of doing things that were once highly feminised, and therefore stigmatised. Today, heterosexual men can share emotions, dress well, have gay friends, be tactile with their mates, and all of this can be done without raising suspicion that they are gay. This is in sharp contrast to the 1980s.
Could you perhaps give some examples, or offer me a list of things that heterosexual guys can now get away with that they never used to able to back in the heady days of heterosexual masculinity?
Yeah, sure, I can list a few. Today’s men can:
1) Wear pink.
2) Use facial products and encourage moisturising.
3) Use “man bags”, which over the years have gone from one-strap backpacks to basically purses.
4) Go on “man dates” where they go to dinner and a movie with a friend; they can now sit next to that friend too!
5) Men are allowed to cry.
6) They are allowed to actually say to each other, “I love you, man.”
7) In youth circles, they are allowed to kiss each other in the way I described.
8) They are allowed to do threesomes – two guys and a girl – where there is interaction between the guys. These are very common among university men.
Threesomes with two guys and one girl where the guys get it on?
Yeah, it is common among the younger generation that now goes to university. It is something that would have “made one gay” not too long ago.
And you mentioned that males are now allowed to kiss each other? Is it now acceptable for males to kiss and fondle in open without actually being gay?
Yes. Now many of your readers won’t believe this, but at least within university culture, heterosexual men kiss each other, on the lips, as a part of their bonding mechanisms. A same-sex kiss has become desexualised, and it’s a way to show a friend that he’s made it to your inner-circle. It started out in sport, primarily football, but it’s moved down into mainstream youth culture. It’s not a greeting kiss. It’s mostly a drunken embrace while clubbing or partying, but it certainly didn’t happen a few years ago, and it’s further proof of the decreasing nature of cultural homo-hysteria. What I mean by that is that we are less obsessed with coding things as gay and straight. Decreasing cultural homo-hysteria therefore gives heterosexual men (and women) much more gendered freedom – and of course it’s good for sexual minorities too. This has also helped gay athletes come out in slowly but steadily increasing numbers.
How far do you think this “desexualisation” of young people will go?
Well, I’m a sociologist, not a prophet. But I do think that as cultural homo-hysteria continues to decrease, it will give men the ability to identify however they want, sexually, regardless of their behaviours. I think this will make it easier for best male friends to be partners, while seeking casual sex with women, and that it will allow younger men to give each other blowjobs, without it necessarily homosexualising them.
Man-on-man blowjobs without being gay!?
Yes. As I said, I’m not a prophet, but I can see that happening.
Wow.
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