In my last post I talked about the LGBT community on Tumblr and how, from it, we can learn that all the communities within the all too common umbrella term actually have very different priorities. Today I’ll be looking at one such community. It has no letter in the LGBTQA+ initialism. Most people have never heard of it. It’s even arguable if this community is truly its own sexual orientation, or even a real community.
Since as far as my research could turn up, this community has yet to be named, I will give them an unofficial name for now. The JO Bros.
I first discovered the JO Bros while reading a highly entertaining BuzzFeed article (link NSFW). The article is a collection of Craigslist personal ads requesting discreet “JO” sessions (men getting together to jack off) posted by straight men looking for straight men. The humor of the article comes both from the absurd scenarios described (the crystal being my personal favorite) but also from the fact that these men are asking for what many would consider a homosexual act while simultaneously insisting they’re not gay, are not looking for gay men, or don’t want any “gay stuff”.
Upon further investigation, there were many more JO requests than just these eight. I was now intrigued. The JO Bros seemed not to fit into any of my preconceived notions of sexual orientation. I decided I needed to dig further.
As it turns out, there has been some scholarly research on this topic. Somewhat. There is a community of men, who are also quite active on Craigslist, who identify as “down-low”, or DL for short. Traditionally thought of as a concept within the African American community (though research has shown that white men and men of other races also identify this way), a DL guy is a man who identifies as straight, but has sex with men. There are several theories as to why this is a thing, but in general, the idea is that DL men don’t want to be labeled as feminine or otherwise lacking in masculinity, which often happens to those who come out as gay.
While the DL community and the JO Bros are not the same, their motives could be similar. It’s possible that the JO Bros are not necessarily closeted gay or bisexual, but are simply looking for a way to express their sexuality (which involves sexual acts with other men to some degree) without identifying as gay or bisexual and subjecting themselves to the cultural associations that come with those labels. The JO Bros regularly express a homophobic insistence on what they’re doing not being “gay”, but maybe this is because they’re trying to distance themselves not from physical homosexual acts, but from the culturally constructed idea of what it means to be gay. The JO Bros don’t want to be seen as gay because society tells them that to be gay means being emasculated. And from what I could find, the JO Bros hold masculinity in very high regard.
Either that, or there are just a lot of guys out there looking for some quality male bonding time through pleasuring themselves with other men.
But no gay stuff.
Bibliography
Brandon Andrew Robinson & Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (2013) Displacing the Dominant “Down Low” Discourse: Deviance, Same-Sex Desire, and Craigslist.org, Deviant Behavior, 34:3, 224-241, DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2012.726174
Sexuality And Internet Culture 