The End of Gay: And the Death of Heterosexuality

by Bert Archer

Book Overview

At the crux of Sex Without Borders is the question: "Why do we persist in defining ourselves by our sexual behaviors?" Written by a young man for a new generation of readers--one with radically different formative experiences--this book will be popular and controversial for its answer, and for its commonsensical defense of polymorphous sexual desire. Featuring gay and lesbian publications, this intriguing debut from columnist and reviewer Bert Archer...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560256117
• ISBN13: 9781560256113
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

important thinking

In a world where gender is not two binary extremes but a series of gradations, and where sex, love, domesticity and romance often occupy different niches in the life of one individual, "gay" and "straight" as descriptors of someone's sex life don't work any more (if they ever did). Archer lucidly and intelligently proposes a new set of categories based on culture and community, not the innately fluid and shifting nature of sexual attraction. This book helped crystallize my thinking a great deal. Highly recommended.

A daring and revelatory book

Bert Archer treads on dangerous ground in this book. By laying bare the shaky and self-contradictory foundations upon which the modern gay and lesbian movements are laid, he threatens some very deeply-cherished and tightly-clung-to beliefs, such as the notion of homosexuality as a born and unchangeable trait, the necessity of dividing humanity into homosexual and heterosexual, and the importance of a gay culture. I find myself disturbed, though, by his reliance on sex as a -- if not the -- central facet of our beings. In this he almost resembles Freud. Even as he argues against using the choice of one's sexual partners as a defining factor of identity, he seems to have no room in his thinking for the idea that people who don't base their identity on sex might exist. In this he talks almost like the worst of the Sexual Revolutionists, converting sexual expression from a birthright (which I will agree it is) to a normative obligation (I won't accept this). That aside, though, I am proud that in a time that insists on rigid and rigouously patrolled boundaries between entrapping roles, Mr. Archer's voice has been raised to question those limitations. I call this book a must-read.

A punchy, entertaining eye-opener

In twenty years' time, Bert Archer, along with guys like the British writer Mark Simpson (who first coined the term "metrosexual"), will be remembered as the first popular mainstream proponents of a whole new era of sexuality. "The End of Gay" describes the history of today's rigid world of "gays" and "straights" in a fascinating, easy-to-read style... as well as proposing a much funkier, groovier attitude towards sex. If you've ever thought it's odd how football jocks shower together, oggle each other's nads, throw sexual innuendos at each other and then homophobically assert their absolute "straightness" (or if you've ever seen parallels between the hypocrisy/extremism of a gay pride parade, and that of an anti-gay family-values march) then this is the book to read. It's a social eye-opener that deconstructs and reconstructs the idea of the homosexual in a way that's funny, readable, and will make a damn lot of sense... whether you're gay, straight, or -- as this book would argue -- kinda neither.