Research on language and masculinity has been imbued with a paradoxical juxtaposition of seeing White heterosexual men and their language as a ‘default’ and the paucity of empirical studies on what these men actually do in their everyday linguistic practices. This article examines the multivoicedness of masculinities in a specific local context. We analyze Hungarian male university students’ spontaneous conversations, recently recorded in the Budapest University Dormitory Corpus. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of voice, we argue that individual and social voices of masculinity, as well as the contrasts between them, are embedded in gendered and sexualized inequality relations. Even pro-feminist and ‘gay’ voices in the interactions are structured by social inequalities. The voicing of a homosexual figure does not only evoke negatively valued unmasculine behaviors, but also helps in creating homosocial (same-gender and non-sexualized) intimacy. It always happens as a stylized image of ‘another’s language’.

The article describes the specific gender and sexuality relations that emerged in a life story interview I conducted with a gay-identified man who desires both women and men. I provide a detailed description not only of the eroticization he performed in the interview, but also of my reactions: I felt vulnerable, attractive, attracted, and repulsed. My reflexive analysis frames these reactions in the context of the power dynamics between us, as well as in the context of his narrated experiences with women (including solidarity, desire, abuse and economic interests) – some of which my analysis would not have revealed without taking our interaction into account. I thus argue for the importance of processes of embodied learning, and specifically, for the theoretical significance of the bisexual gendered dynamics between researcher and respondent. Further, my account illuminates the ambiguity of bonding between queer women and men. I argue that owing to the theoretical productivity of the researcher’s reflexivity, the transactional erotic aspects of our own subjectivity are telling of the very meanings (of sex, gender, sexuality and other categories) we aim to interrogate.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract