Secret research

On a rainy Friday night, November 20th, 1987, 41 men decided to respond to a surprising ad placed in the Companions column of a major Canadian newspaper. Standing out from the other ads of the day, this one promised a good time with a young, muscular, heterosexual male full of sexual vigor. If you were a generous male interested in a fascinating experience, this could be the ad for you.

The ad was placed as an early social experiment by the Glasshouse Institute. Back in 1987, the Glasshouse Institute had already identified the concept of male exposed sexual arousal (the erection). The concept explains why so many men are secretly obsessed with other male bodies, and why this obsession results in shame. In contrast to this secret male obsession, females are free to engage in erotic play with other women without their sexual identity being questioned. Without an erection indicating arousal, women can experience any kind of arousal without having to disclose what they are truly feeling. The theory states that because the male body is forbidden fruit for other males, the men who do eventually decide to allow themselves experience with the male body, develop a fetish. In the late 1980’s, the internet was unavailable to investigate this thesis, hence the placement of the ad, the responses to which provide evidence supporting the thesis.

The ad was carefully constructed as it had to appear as being placed by a “heterosexual” male. The first word of all ads appeared in upper-case letters, making word choice very important. “MUSCULAR” was chosen because it was believed to be a male characteristic valued by most men, no matter what their self-identity. “Young” was required because it had already been recognized that in the eyes of most men youth enhances masculinity. “Generous” was included to bring some balance and make the ad appear real. By using “fascinating experience” the ad would allow each reader to create their own scene of what they wanted from this kind of relationship.

The cost for placing the ad in the Companions column was $32.76 CDN ($61.38 CDN in today’s currency) At the time, newspaper ads were placed via the telephone, thus making for an awkward situation with this particular ad. The surprising details had to be relayed to a newspaper employee who then was required to seek approval from a manager Although pricey for the time, a pleasant surprise covered a good part of the ad cost as one respondent included a $20 bill in his response to the “young man” placing the ad. This research proves remarkable as it wasn’t long after 1987 that this form of personal advertising in newspapers ended. With the advent of the Internet, people were now able to place ads with no human communication and respond to ads with great ease. In 1987, respondents actually had to put forth great effort, finding pen and paper, looking for an envelope, affixing the proper postage and lastly dropping the letter at the closest post office.

The response letters, both typed and hand written, vary from quick notes containing just a phone number and a name to very detailed descriptions of the respondents’ interpretation of what a fascinating experience means to them. Some describe overtly sexual fantasies but many of the respondents simply describe the need to be with another man in an intimate and loving setting that does not necessarily involve sex of any kind.

The demonstrated need for male intimacy was and still is not something we commonly witness outside of an openly gay relationship, as it presents a threat to the male sexual identity.

When questioning why this is, Academic Social Science has failed to explain why the need for male intimacy poses such a threat. The theoretical rabbit hole has explained important aspects of human behaviour in terms of socialization, drawing conclusions such as “Men are socialized to avoid intimacy”. We believe that the right approach to finding answers is to look beyond socialization and examine actual evidence of this need, no matter how shameful that evidence may be.

Our social experiment was inspired by the work of Laud Humphreys who in the mid 1960’s, conducted research on anonymous sex. He published his research in his landmark book Tearoom Trade: Impersonal sex in public places (1970). His book about anonymous sex is better known as a case study of ethical issues in social research. Around 1965 Laud Humphreys collected information about the behaviour of men engaged in anonymous sexual encounters with other men in a public bathroom of a park. He took notes of every detail he thought it may be important. He noticed the sexual roles which he called Insertee and Insertor, now called “bottom” and “top” respectively. His observations of men having sex in public bathrooms led him to define “Insertee” as what he calls the “base role”, or the role that most men eventually acquire. That was an extraordinary observation because that fact is now common knowledge among men who frequent anonymous sex places summarized by the phrase “Too many bottoms!”

What Humphreys did next was what caused the huge ethical controversy in social research. Part of his note-taking included the license plates of the cars parked outside the toilet in the park. With that information and with the help of a friend who worked at the licensing bureau Humpreys obtained the addresses which he later used to request participation in a research questionnaire, unrelated to anonymous sex. He was able to have two groups of men complete the questionnaire; one group who he knew frequented anonymous sex and another group of men from the general population. That way he was able to compare

Understanding human behavior which is viewed as shameful, such as anonymous sex and male homoeroticism requires unconventional forms of research. By placing this ad in 1987 and pretending to be a “muscular young male”, we were able to obtain information that was not available otherwise.

About the letters

Ideally, we would like to publish the 41 original response letters so that readers can fully appreciate the significance of this research. Despite the fact that 30 years have passed since the experiment was conducted, we still need to protect the identity of the respondents by redacting certain parts of the letters. Instead of publishing the letters in full, we will comment on each letter individually and show only a portion of the redacted original letters.

There is a lack of progress in understanding many areas of human behavior such as sexual abuse and violence. This lack of understanding is often justified with the notion that the human mind is very complex and difficult to understand. If this was true, then one could assume that cell technology; missions to Mars and Artificial Intelligence are fairly trivial projects! We know this is far from the truth. So why then, do we have planes flying in the sky but we still cannot explain why so many priests are driven to sexual abuse of boys.

Due to its relevance to this experiment, we will discuss the issue of male homosexuality focusing on the New Testament, Leviticus 20:13, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them."

More than 2000 years later, not only are there still social groups supporting the words of Leviticus still hold true but for many o “advanced” societies many aspects of homosexuality remains a mystery. These societies have rockets that fly to the moon, cell phones with a global span and many other technologies, but that one paragraph from the Bible continues to be controversial and full of unanswered questions. Why is it okay for two women to lie as they would lie with a man, but men cannot lie with each other in the same way? Is homosexuality genetic? Or is it social? If we were dealing with science and technology all those 2000 year-old questions would have been answered long ago.

The Impact of Shame

The content of the letters is evidence of a deep need that many men have for a “fascinating experience” with a muscular young male who is masculine and self-confident. What does this male need mean? Where is this need rooted? Traditional analysis of male homosexuality would simply label the 41 men as either homosexual or latent homosexual, and with that statement put an end to the analysis.

The letters reveal very personal needs and a deep shame about these needs expressed as requests for discretion. It would have been impossible to obtain this same information without the construction of a muscular young male offering a a fascinating experience. When we published an ad that read “Looking for men to describe their needs for male intimacy and sex” no responses were received.

Homoerotic intimacy or intimacy between women is quite common and women are free to choose the level of intimacy that suits their needs. Some women may feel outright uncomfortable with homoerotic intimacy but for some it may be expressed as sharing emotions or the exchange of clothing. Whatever expression a woman chooses will not threaten her identity.

The existence and social acceptance of female homoeroticism may suggest that men may also have a need for homoerotic intimacy and they want to experience it without their identity being threatened. These letters are proof of that because they describe the homoerotic need expressed in a number of ways along with the shame for having that need.

Unlike the Social Sciences, Science seldom finds itself in a situation where obtaining information is hindered by shame. Shame obstructs the gathering of accurate information, particularly regarding behaviors such as pedophilia or any other behaviour heavily affected by shame. Male homosexuality is another example.

The results of this research were crucial for the decision to publish The Reality of Men a year later. In that work the Glasshouse Institute presents for the first time their theories of masculinity.

The response letters

The text of the letters is available on request. All names and identifying information has been removed.

 

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