You Op To Know: Be a bromosexual, but don’t call yourself one
Welcome to You Op to Know, The Daily Orange Opinion section’s weekly podcast.
This week, The Daily Orange Opinion section brought on one of our gender and sexuality columnists Michael Sessa to discuss his column “Be a bromosexual, but don’t call yourself one”
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to submit a letter to the editor at opinion@dailyorange.com.
Check back next week to listen to a dialogue about the most viewed column.
WEIS: Hello everyone, I’m your host and co-producer Allison Weis and welcome to The Daily Orange’s opinion podcast You Op To Know. Tonight we have Gender and Sexuality columnist Michael Sessa on the show to discuss his column “Be a bromosexual, but don’t call yourself one”. Welcome Michael!
SESSA: Thanks for having me.
WEIS: So how did you get involved in the Daily Orange, and why did you want to write the gen + sex column?
SESSA: Well, I’ve been involved in journalism since my Sophomore of high school. I learned a lot from my high school paper. So it just seemed like a natural fit, studying Newspaper and Online Journalism. Gender and sexuality is something I’m interested in and it’s relevant right now in this political climate right now, these sort of discussions.
WEIS: True. Why did you choose to write this column specifically?
SESSA: I’ve always been really interested in the terms that we use to discuss anything sexual. Especially when you discuss sexual fluidity or the spectrum of people’s sexual behaviors. We have the idea that we need to categorize everything. We start at like a standard of the heterosexual and everything else is viewed in perspective to that You have males that are more comf showing feelings and being less masculine and upholding that standard. There’s an instant gut reaction to call it something which I thought was interesting and kind of points to the whole problem with the way we view gender and sexuality.
WEIS: You wrote that, “Bromosexuality is an emerging term which is cheekily used to describe a straight man who is comfortable forging meaningful relationships with his gay friends.” Is it limited to just forging meaningful relationships with gay friends or is bromosexuality an umbrella term?
SESSA: I think it definitely does have to do with a straight gay relationship, but it could be more general than that. I think the idea is that where previously the gay friend is either your wingman because he’s perceived to know things about what women like or that sort of thing. It’s just a more open relationship where you’re not their to serve a purpose.Your not some sort of tactical mechanism to achieve some sort of straight relationship for you friend when he’s actually there to have just a more open emotional bond with a straight person.
WEIS: Would the term still apply if two straight men were having a less hyper masculine relationship with each other? They’re being more open and talking about their feelings. Would that still go under the umbrella term of bromosexuality?
SESSA: I guess it could. I mean no one defining these terms there’s not some institute out there who’s like laying out ground work. I think it’s more of an urban dictionary type of idea.
WEIS: Beyond just the definition of bromosexuality, do you have any personal examples of what it looks like?
SESSA: Yeah so I think that a lot of times, the way relationships are promoted in the media and the way that filters down to our everyday lives, we have this tendency to call out anything anything we see as sexually unusual in terms of relationships or bonds between people of different sexes or people of the same sex. Then we want to call that something when really there’s no need to do that. When you have straight men who have a desire or emotional need to be able to talk freely or hug a guy or whatever there’s a societal tendency so think “well he must be gay or bisexual or somehow on the spectrum” when in reality he’s just comfortable with himself.
WEIS: Does Bromosexuality have to do with sexuality or does it have to do with hyper-masculine men feeling uncomfortable sharing their feelings?
SESSA: It definitely could sort of be a defense mechanism that hypermasculine men put up. One of my old english teachers saw my column and said he’d never heard the term but it makes perfect sense that masculine dude feel the need to say “well we’re not that. These people are bromosexuals they’re their own thing and the rest of us ‘real men’ aren’t doing that.”
WEIS: So, labeling it definitely puts them as the other
SESSA: It’s a commentary on the fact that people feel the need to call it anything at all is endorsing the idea that they don’t want to be associated with that kind of behavior.
WEIS: Does it seem like hyper-masculine ideals are on the decline? If so, in your opinion, would that be a good or bad thing?
SESSA: It would obviously be a good thing I think that a lot of men don’t get to understand their friends emotionally and forge meaningful relationships that aren’t just arbitrat relationships because they’re afraid to be emotional and share emotional thoughts. I’m a man I like books and poetry and I cry occasionally. I have no problem saying it and my friends have no problem knowing it about me. I don’t know if it shows a change in masculinity at large in society. I think maybe people are more aware of the fact that boundaries aren’t as strict and rigid as they were once thought to be. But I think it take a long time to break down that sort of thing and obviously men being men is still and masculinity is still held in high regard. It’s a cultural thing, it takes a while.
WEIS: Yeah, definitely. Was there anything you didn’t get to discuss in your column and wish you could go deeper on?
SESSA: I think if anything the fact that while experimentation is often something, you know like a term that people use to discuss this sort of behavior that people are exploring or trying new things, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that. you wanting to be intimate, emotionally intimate, with a friend of yours or straight friend of yours males whatever it’s not a precursor to saying I’m exploring my sexuality because I think I’m gay, bisexual or whatever. It could just mean that you actually just want to have a deep, meaningful relationship.
WEIS: So getting rid of the term experiment, But isn’t that two different things? Is there anywhere in the literature that it’s like experimenting with gay friends and having friendships with them is a real thing and not just having friendships with people.
SESSA: I think it’s that a relationship is purely that — a relationship. It’s genuine its meaningful. It’s not just something, a stepping stone to discovering something about yourself. maybe by means that relationship will show you things about yourself. You will discover things about yourself and uncover things about yourself or desires you didn’t know you had, and in that sense it’s an experimentation. But you don’t go into the relationship thinking, I’m going to be close and emotional with my friend because i want to use it as a tactic to find out more information. I think it just happens naturally.
WEIS: Thank you so much for joining us this week Michael!
SESSA: No problem, thanks for having me.
WEIS: Stay tuned for next week’s podcast where we will begin discussing some of our columns. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to submit a letter to the editor at opinion@dailyorange.com. We’ll talk to you next week!