From e-mail on 5/5 from interdisciplinary sociologist Steven Dashiell, who pursues research on discourse in male-dominated subcultures (looking at military men, gamers, barbershop patrons, gay men, and more) and has built on a posting of mine on the trope of the pizza boy in gay pornography in a recent essay of his own:
I love your blog. I was introduced to the study of language in my doctoral program [at the University of Maryland Baltimore County], and I grew from a “social inequality sociologist” to a “sociologist of language who studies male-dominated spaces to understand inequality”. It’s been a wild ride, because the study of language goes in so many different directions. I’m glad to have some mentors who help me …
It’s a good day when admirable people like SD write me to tell me they love my blog — in this case, SD likes it because it’s linguistics linguistics linguistics and because it’s gay gay gay, and both of these things are important to SD. But now I’ve had some time to get acquainted with SD’s life history (that being one of my things) and the way he arranges his life now (that being another one of my things), and I can do a lightning survey of this landscape, to make a few general points. One of these being the extraordinary variety of homomasculinities.
Four cases: my own complex story, presented at great length in postings on this blog; Richard Vytniorgu’s story (one significant theme of which is his being a bottom, fem, and submissive — plus British and academic-literary); Troy Anderson’s story (whose life themes include his being a guy guy, a gigantic jock bear into leather, a corporate executive, and a Native American), and now Steven Dashiell’s story (another jock bear (not into leather), an academic, and Black). And this just scratches the surface; I’ve told other even more disparate stories. Take these stories to heart if you’re inclined to spout generalizations about what gay men are like (or worse, about what men are like).
But now to SD.
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