The Homosocial Bounder: Matt Gaetz, and His Obsession with Other Men's Admiration

Gaetz allegedly showed off to other lawmakers photos and videos of nude women he said he had slept with, the sources told CNN, including while on the House floor. The sources, including two people directly shown the material, said Gaetz displayed the images of women on his phone and talked about having sex with them. One of the videos showed a naked woman with a hula hoop, according to one source.

"It was a point of pride," one of the sources said of Gaetz.

CNN, April 2, 2021

I do not know if Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is guilty of the charges made against him involving a sexual relationship with a 17 year-old.  I’m content, as we all should be, to let the investigation play out.

In the old days, when men’s groups were very much a thing, and I was the sort of fellow who ran them, we often posed a hypothetical question, designed to drive home a point about the relationship between sex and status. Participants chose between two options:

1.     You have lots of wonderful, inventive sex with many, many beautiful women.  They all adore you, praise you in private, can’t get enough of you in bed.  But except for these women, everyone else in your life thinks you’re a clumsy, inept virgin.  Men make fun of you.  You are the butt of jokes. You have low status with everyone except the women you sleep with, and they never speak of you.

2.      You are a virgin, and though you long for sexual intimacy, you can never have it.  However, everyone imagines you to be an accomplished and suave ladies’ man.  Guys tell you how much they envy you, and you have a reputation as a great lover.   Men come to you for advice.  Even other women are a little in awe, imagining something that is most certainly not true.

Men were asked to explain their choice.  For the younger men in particular, it was not an easy decision – and in my experience leading these groups, at least half would admit to choosing the second option.  This is anecdote, not evidence, but I suspect many of my readers will not be surprised at the results.

As any student of historical masculinity will tell you, in recent decades we have relied on one particular sociobiological explanation of male behavior. We assume that everything men (at least heterosexual men) do is for women’s approval: to attract mates.  We take it for granted that sex and reproduction are men’s primary ambitions, and that they drive both men’s heroism and their savagery. 

Historians of masculinity aren’t so sure. The great sociologist of American manhood, Michael Kimmel, coined the term “homosociality” to explain men’s profound need for recognition and approval from other men.  From the time they’re very young, American men are raised to be desperate for status, but the status that matters most is that conferred by other men, not women.  “Homosociality” describes the often unconscious primary hunger for other men’s admiration. Men don’t need to be sexually or romantically attracted to other men in order to be homosocial; homosociality has nothing to with homosexuality.  If they’re homosocial, their worldview is inextricably linked to the craving for male approval.  Homosociality teaches us that men want to be seen as having lots of sex primarily in order to impress other men, rather than for the sake of sex itself.  Women are props used as much for status as for sexual release. 

(Homosociality made obvious is two or more men sharing a single woman, something for which Gaetz paid often. Group sex can be, and often is, an erotic experience between a group of consenting adults who delight in each other.  It can also be an opportunity for young, homosocial men to grow close, using a woman’s body as a kind of glue to solidify their bond.  The “male-male-female” threesome is either exploitative or exquisite, and it hinges on how the two lads center – or don’t -- the woman’s experience.)

Young men, say in the armed forces or fraternities, are particularly susceptible to homosociality.  When they say, “Bros Before Hos,” they mean it viscerally.   Relationships with women must be subordinated to devotion to the (at least until recently, all-male) unit.   These young men are also given a time limit, particularly in middle-class white culture.  The bacchanal of college and shore leave must give way, sooner or later, to marriage.  “Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine,” goes the lament, but to the sociologist, that’s simply the prescribed shift from homosociality to domesticity.

Some men, however, prolong their adolescence indefinitely, as Mr. Gaetz has most evidently done.

In my childhood, my grandmother and great uncles had a word for men like Matt Gaetz: a “bounder.” It’s not quite the same as “cad.”  A “bounder” is a man who brags too much, and discloses the intimate details of his relationships with women in order to draw attention to himself.  A gentleman can be a womanizer – he just can’t embarrass any of his partners, even the ones he compensates.  A gentleman never uses his intimate knowledge of a woman to impress other men.  He smiles in deep pleasure at the thought of all he has done, but he betrays no confidences.  Any gentleman might delight in viewing photos of past lovers on his phone when in private; a homosocial bounder feels the greatest pleasure when he shows those same photos to others.

Mr. Gaetz is either not very bright, or he is very self-destructive.  I’m normally good at picking up on the latter; for obvious personal reasons, I can usually see when a promising young man is engaged in the business of blowing up his own life.  To put it mildly, I don’t see that here. Ockham’s razor says we should go with the “not very bright.”

I leave the Congressman to the attentions of the law, and I leave his clinical diagnosis to those qualified to give it.  I simply note the most pathetic and instantly recognizable pattern in Mr. Gaetz’s life: a compulsive, irresistible need for the approval of other men, and the willingness to treat women as nothing more than devices to gain that admiration.