Can you please tell us how old you were in 1950, what socio-cultural group you and your friends belonged to, where exactly they engaged in this behavior (parents’ house, car, outdoors, etc.), and what their later sexuality was. The context would be very helpful.
I am 89 years old.
Between 1950 and 1957 I participated in youth groups that were interested in natural science. This was in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco. I graduated from public school and attended San Francisco City college. I was drafted and chose the USAF. I was in pilot training until a post Korea rif made me an enlisted man. I learned and subsequently taught and maintained analogue computers. I was based in California, Arizona, Texas, Illinois and Nevada.
The statement is my recollection of what I observed at the time.
You don’t need to be gay to get AIDs.
Certainly it was talked about. In Scouts, there were constant rumors.
Definitely there were rumors. But rumors are not the truth.
For most straight guys in the 50s, male on male sex was repellent. This wasn’t always so (in the 19th century, it was considered a minor issue as long as you didn’t “play the woman”). In the 1920s, NYC and other big cities had thriving and relatively open gay communities. But the Depression led to a crackdown and a major effort to demonize gays. By the 50s, that effort had been successful and straight men would not consider sex with another man.
The statement is not valid. There is no data to quantify ‘most’ for New York let alone the entire US. It would be valid to say that ‘to some straight guys in the 50s, male on male sex was repellent’.
Also, your statement does not exclude mine. The act may or may not have been repellent to those who used it as a substitute for MF sex. It’s inclusive.
Circle Jerks are not really male on male sex. Each dude is jerking himself.
Mind you some rumors had it they were jerking the next guy over.
The Hite Report, above, seems to think they were not uncommon. I never attended one, so have no dog in this hunt. I can only attest to the rumors.
But back to the OP- if we are talking 1950’s and SF etc area, maybe the gay sex among “hetero” males was actually among closeted gay dudes?
It must have been tough for gays back then.
Did the Hite Report state that people admitted to participating in them, admitted to knowing about them, or both?
Why not read it?
Ward cites a 1981 report on male sexuality by sexologist Shere Hite, which suggested that nearly 20 percent of men had engaged in group masturbation during adolescence.
What page is the info on?
If this was a substitute for guys who couldn’t get dates, doesn’t that imply that if they HAD dates, they’s be getting all the sex they needed. My recollection it that women, in general, weren’t nearly so accommodating back in the '50s. The guys would be just as horny, or more so, after these dates.
That was also true in the 1980s. This movie, which aired a few times on Lifetime, was inspired by a guy I went to HS with who was murdered by a police officer and to this day, all kinds of information has been covered up, hence the movie’s title.
I never knew of his existence while he was alive, although I did know his sister. There’s a lot of other backstory, but in the end, it was discovered that while this young man lived in Des Moines, he was making multiple trips to Marshalltown, 40 miles away and the city where he died, because he had a secret boyfriend there.
Here’s more information.
I believe the movie was made for theatrical release, although AFAIK it never was, because the home decor and cars were very accurate to the early 1980s.
ISTR having seen it on PBS! I do remember it was quite interesting.
I’ve also heard that it was not unheard-of for gay men and lesbians who were good friends to get married, and live together, while quietly being with the people they really wanted to be with. Whenever they were asked about children, they would say, “Hasn’t happened yet, has it?”
Wasn’t there an episode of “Alice,” in the mid 1970s, that addressed the male homosexual/pedophile thing?
Pulp fiction, magazines of the 30’s-60’s were on the fringes yet avail to a wide audience.
Pulp fiction wouldn’t touch homosexuality with a ten-foot bug-eyed-monster. I don’t think they were even allowed as villains. The subject, as we keep saying, was unspeakable.
Society may have changed a bit by the late 60s, but the last pulp magazines had died in the early 1950s.
Weirdly, Wiki has a page called Gay pulp fiction, but it doesn’t mention pulps at all. It does note that a few paperbacks were published as early as 1952 but even the racy publishers waited until the late 60s to put homosexuality in over-the-counter novels.
Speaking of old TV and what wasn’t generally known about whom, a while back I saw an early episode of The Carol Burnett Show where Jim Nabors was interacting with Rock Hudson. I think Carol knew, but the home audience? No way.
But the very essence of a circle jerk is that it skirts the “sex with another man”, with plenty of deniability to self, if needed. No tab went near any slot, and most likely, no-one even touched you except you. Every straight male masturbates anyway, so it’s only a step to masturbate with your buddies etc.
There’s a broader meaning than just the magazines. Lesbian fiction was pretty well established in the 50s and 60s. Some literature, but also a fair number of pulp novels. They had a wider audience than the gay fiction.
Part of why they were tolerated is that there was a formula of an innocent, younger “straight” girl, who enters a misguided relationship with the older, predatory, usually butch, lesbian. But in the end, the younger “straight” girl usually finds the right man and gets married. Or dies. Or goes insane. The formula was that a character could not reach the end of the novel and be both happy and a lesbian. That would make it degenerate.
The Price of Salt was considered groundbreaking in 1952 as the first such (literary) lesbian novel with a “happy ending.” The older woman has lost everything, including even visitation with her child, but the lesbian couple are together at the end. The novel was rereleased a year or two later as a pulp novel.
there was a certain thing going on back in the 90s and 00s because there was a backlash against being bisexual or bi-curious because the way it was looked at was it meant you basically hetro and just saying you were into the same sex because it was easier to “play around” … I ran into this so much that I just said I wasn’t looking for anyone actively …
The Hite Report came out in 1981, not the 50s. Attitudes toward both homosexuality and masturbation had changed greatly over that time frame.
In the 50s, both were universally reviled. By 1981, people were more accepting.