Gay Men's Friendships: Invincible Communities

By Peter M. Nardi

Book Overview

Based on surveys and interviews of two hundred gay men, Peter Nardi's new study presents the first book-length examination of contemporary urban gay men's friendships. Expertly weaving historical and sociological research on friendship with firsthand information, Nardi argues that friendship is the central organizing element of gay men's lives. Through friendship, gay identities and communities are created, transformed, maintained, and reproduced.

Nardi explores the meaning of friends to some gay men, how friends often become a surrogate family, how sexual behavior and attraction affects these friendships, and how, for many, friends mean more and last longer than romantic relationships. While looking at the psychological joys and sorrows of friendship, he also considers the cultural constraints limiting gay men in contemporary urban America-especially those that deal with dominant images of masculinity and heterosexuality-and how they relate to friendship.

By listening to gay men talk about their interactions, Nardi offers a rare glimpse into the mechanisms of gay life. We learn how gay men meet their friends, what they typically do and talk about, and how these strong relationships contain the roots of larger cultural forces such as social movements and gay identities and neighborhoods. Nardi also points out the political and social consequences when friendships fail to provide support against oppression.

An intimate and informative look at gay life in urban America, Gay Men's Friendships ultimately shows how these relationships challenge the gender order of our society by questioning how masculinity is constructed and by offering a model for a more creative blending of gay and heterosexual masculinity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226568490
• ISBN13: 9780226568492
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

well written & thought provoking

This book is very nicely written. Like any very good book, it holds a mirror to one's own life, and provokes reflection on how one's own friendships happen or fade away.

Fascinating study

Great to read an intelligent, well-written book about gay people that actually says something. Learned a lot about my own friendships and it answered some questions I had about what others think about sex and friendships.

An important and interesting study.

I really learned a great deal from this book and would recommend it to anyone-- gay or straight-- who is interested in the topic of friendship. Nardi presents fascinating data from his study, and he is an astute social analyst.