When Men Meet

Homosexuality and Modernity

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by Henning Bech,

Translated by Teresa Mesquit and Tim Davies

University of Chicago Press

Due/Published March 1997, 320 pages, paper

ISBN 0226040224

Chicago calls this a penetrating (tsk, tsk) scholarly analysis of the modern homosexual condition and an unflinching cultural vision of the masculine in transition. Bech is a sociologist for whom the male homosexual has become emblematic of the modern urban condition. Here he examines the distinctive relationship between urban modernism and the gay experience, and explores its growing ramifications for the cultural mainstream. Bech suggests that gay society has persevered, even flourished in a highly charged urban environment, sestheticizing and sexualizing the spaces where men meet, both public and private. Reflecting on sex, friendship, love and life as manifest in the homosexual form of existence, he demonstrates that, in the face of modern alienation, successful coping strategies developed by gay men are gradually being adopted by mainstream heterosexual society. Theses adaptations are often masked by what Bech calls an "absent homosexuality," in which sublimated themes of homosexuality and masculine love surface, only to be disavowed in expressions of social anxiety. This "absent homosexuality" acts as a kind of cultural filter, allowing key traits of hay life to be absorbed by the mainstream, while shielding heterosucual males from their own homophobic anxieties. Ultimately, he foresees a postmodern convergence of hetero-and homosexual forms of existence emergent from this urban landscape, and with it a new masculine synthesis. Hmmmmmm.