ODD COUPLES ODD COUPLES Friendships at the Intersection of Gender and Sexual Orientation ANNA MURACO Duke University Press Durham & London 2012 ∫ 2012 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $ Designed by Nicole Hayward Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. In memory of my dad, Natali Anthony Muraco CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 You’ve Got to Have Friends 13 Vignette: Frank and Rebecca 2 Snapshots of the Intersectional Friendship 35 Vignette: Ming and Ben 3 We Are Family 56 Vignette: Brenda and Dan 4 Gender Cops and Robbers 78 Vignette: Mark and Cristina 5 What’s Sex Got to Do with It? 101 Vignette: Justine and Antonio 6 The Personal Is Political 118 Vignette: Leyla and Ethan 7 The Future of Intersectional Friendships 145 Appendix 1 155 Appendix 2 157 Appendix 3 163 Notes 167 References 173 Index 187 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS the efforts and generosity of many people have made the completion of this work possible. I want to start by thanking my committee members at the University of California (uc), Davis, for their academic and personal contribu- tions to this project: Diane Femlee, Lyn Lofland, Stephen T. Russell, and Laura Grindsta√. Diane Felmlee, provided support, encouragement, and mentorship, as well as time and e√ort, to my development as an academic. Lyn Lofland provided much guidance throughout the early versions of the manuscript; her apparent confidence in me and my work helped to bolster not only my own perception of the project, but also my abilities as an academic. Stephen T. Russell challenged my assumptions about family, friendship, and sexuality, which improved the quality of my thinking. He not only helped me with this work but also provided generous assistance with other projects and gave me steady employment while I attended graduate school. Laura Grindsta√ and the other faculty members in women’s and gender studies at uc Davis, especially those who taught in the Designated Emphasis in Feminist Theory and Re- search, helped me to nuance the feminist perspective that underlies the analyses in this book. The Consortium for Women and Research and the Sociology Department at uc Davis provided varied forms of funding while I was in gradu- ate school. I thank the editorial sta√ I worked with at Duke University Press: Courtney Berger, Christine Choi, Reynolds Smith, and Sharon Torian, as well as the three anonymous reviewers whose comments wholly improved the manuscript. Many thanks to the administrators of and participants in the University of Michigan Applied Issues in Aging Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (and nia Grant AG000117) for providing financial and academic support. In particular, Ruth Dunkle, Berit Ingersoll-Dayton, Karin Martin, and the pre- and post- doctoral fellowship participants contributed to this work and other projects in their various stages of development. Many thanks also to those who have provided me with meaningful profes- sional experiences. Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen has been a wonderful mentor and gracious collaborator. My development as an academic blossomed during my postdoctoral work with her and continues to grow through our work to- gether. Allen LeBlanc also has been an unwavering advocate and mentor. Many people at Loyola Marymount University (lmu) in Los Angeles have nurtured my work. The Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts (bcla), including Dean Mike Engh and Dean Paul Zeleza, funded my work through the bcla College Fellowship and bcla Summer Research Fellowships and provided in- formal forms of support. The faculty members of the Sociology Department at lmu—especially my dear friends Nadia Kim, Rebecca Sager, Rachel Washburn, and Stephanie Limoncelli—have been an excellent cheering section, indignant on my behalf when needed, and a vast source of humor. Carla Bittel, Adam Fingerhut, Diane Meyer, and Kirstin Noreen have been my sources of fun and stability in Los Angeles. Big thanks to all of my research assistants at lmu— Kiana Dyen, Ashley Narramore, Marisa Parker, Caitlin Pickering, and especially Nerissa Irizarry—for all of their hard work. Je√ Sweat and Clare Stacey, my uc Davis writing group, provided friendship, moral support, and careful feedback while this book was still a dissertation. Over the years that it took me to complete this manuscript, many people pro- vided places to stay (for nights, weeks, and sometimes months), kept me com- pany, recruited potential study participants, helped me move, cheered me on, and cared for me when I was very ill: Clare Stacey and Zach Schiller, Michael Flota, Joanna Conley-Flota, Jonathan Isler, Jennifer Gregson, Jennifer Hoofard, Magdi Vanya, Joan Meyers, Stephanie Wells and Scott Godfrey, Gordon Edgar, Brian Chao, David Hutson, Heather Worthley, Nate Fox, Heather Smith, Shira Richman, Tracy Goodsmith, Liz Jones, Susannah Kirby, and Erin MacDougall. Special thanks to Thomas Burr for his willingness to read a copy of this manu- script and provide comments when I most needed them. My thanks to all of my family: my parents, Nat Muraco and Kathy Muraco, as well as Pete Muraco, Marlene Muraco, Katie Muraco, Ashley Muraco, and Lexi Muraco, for feeding me, giving me hugs and kisses, providing a place to stay, and handing down frequent-flier miles and for all of your love and support. Thanks to Vicki, Ron, Aaron, and Dan Kleinman and to Charlene Biagi for continuously being interested in what I am doing and asking about my work at x acknowledgments family gatherings. Many thanks also to my sister, Christina Muraco, and Ben Durbin for keeping me company across hundreds of miles, spending hours on the phone and Skype with me, visiting me in all of the places I have lived, driving me up and down the West Coast, and bringing the delightful Vivian Calliope Muraco Durbin into this world. Christopher Duke, Elizabeth Coleman, Laurie Jones-Neighbors, and my roommate, friend, and colleague, Andreana Clay, cheered me on in my successes and supported me in harder moments. Buddy, the Angel Dog, as well as Jesse and Dessa also kept me great company over the years. A special thank you goes to my dad, Natali Anthony Muraco, who was always my biggest fan. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the publication of this book, but I know that he is very proud of this and all of my accomplishments. Two other people have been central to the completion of this project. Jennifer Reich has been a supportive friend, mentor, and colleague. She has read nearly every word of this manuscript and has helped me to clarify and organize my thoughts many times over. I could never have thought to ask for the kind of per- sonal and academic support she has given me. My successes are her successes. Michael Borgstrom inspired this work. Not only is Mike my best friend; he is also a superstar academic who challenges me to think beyond my assumptions, refuses to let me doubt my abilities, and makes me laugh almost every day. While I certainly value his intellectual attributes, I cherish Mike most for the everyday happiness and stability he brings to my life. Finally, I must thank all of the individuals who participated in this study for the candor and depth of what they were willing to share and for taking time out of their lives to talk to me. Their accounts convinced me that this work was not only worth undertaking, but also that their stories of friendship and love de- serve concerted attention. acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION in the late 1990s, Will and Grace, a television sitcom about a gay man and a straight woman who were best friends, was one of the most watched and awarded shows. I watched the show and compared it to my own twenty-plus- year friendship with Mike, a gay man (I am a straight woman) who is my best friend. I related to how Will and Grace made each other laugh and finished each other’s sentences. And whenever I was introduced to the few of Mike’s friends I had not met previously, they nearly always characterized me as his ‘‘Grace.’’ Through my casual conversations with friends and acquaintances, it seemed that ‘‘Wills’’ and ‘‘Graces’’ were everywhere. As both a scholar who studies relationships and interaction and someone with this kind of friendship, which I refer to as ‘‘intersectional,’’∞ I paid close attention to television and cinematic representations of relationships that looked similar to my friendship, at least on the surface. These friendships also were portrayed in such feature films as My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), The Object of My A√ection (1998), and The Next Best Thing (2000), just to name a few. Yet television and other media portrayals of these friendships were distorted and exaggerated in ways that seemed to mock the significance of these ties. They also focused on gay men and heterosexual women; there was a conspicuous absence of portrayals of friendships between lesbians and straight men. I knew that these relationships existed. At the time, my roommate was a lesbian with a best friend who was a straight man. Her girlfriend at the time also had a straight male friend whom she talked about in- cessantly. Yet none of us could recall a single depiction of the lesbian–straight man friendship on television. The more I thought about these di√erences, the more interesting the topic became. Why were friendships between gay men and straight women portrayed as ‘‘natural,’’ while a similar expectation was lacking for lesbians and straight men? Over time, my initial curiosity grew into a full- fledged sociological examination of these friendships.