Sociological Theory - 2008 - Green - The Social Organization of Desire The Sexual Fields Approach

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The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach*
ADAM ISAIAH GREEN

University of Toronto
Modern urban life is increasingly characterized by specialized erotic worlds designed

for sexual partnership and sexual sociality. In this article, I build on sociological
theory developed in areas other than the sociology of sexuality to formulate a frame-
work uniquely suited to the analysis of such modern erotic worlds—the sexual fields
framework. Coupling Goffman’s social psychological focus on situational negotiation
with a Bourdieusian model of routine practice, the sexual fields framework highlights
the relationship of interactional work to fields of objective relations wherein histor-
ically specific erotic schemas acquire a structural manifestation that erotic players
must navigate. In so doing, the sexual fields approach advances a set of sensitizing
concepts for identifying the structures of collective sexual life, and raises a set of
new lines of sociological inquiry, including the relationship of sexual fields to both
psychoanalytic and macro-level structures and processes.
In modernity, urbanization, mass communication, and the erosion of traditional,

institutional controls of sexuality have transformed the social organization of de-
sire, establishing the conditions for the rise of highly specialized sexual subcultures
(Chauncey 1994; D’Emilio 1983; Ellingson et al. 2004a). Indeed, to a degree perhaps
unseen in history, sexuality in the 20th and 21st centuries is the basis for commod-
ified lifestyle choices organized by semiautonomous erotic milieus in urban centers
throughout the Western world. Singles’ bars, bathhouses, S/M clubs, swingers’ re-
sorts, sex/circuit parties, and erotic chat rooms on the Internet operate as “erotic
oases” (Delph 1978)—sites of specialized erotic worlds that cater to a plurality of
desires, practices, and bodies. And yet, despite their democratic potential, these sites
are simultaneously arenas of sexual exploration and systematic stratification. This is
so because the structure of erotic worlds is constituted by eroticized schemas related
to race, class, gender, age, and nationality, among others—that is, the “commonsense
partitive logic of social ontology” (Hirschfeld 1998:20)—thus binding the “how, why,
and with whom” of interaction to the regularities of collective life.
Previous social constructionist research in the sociology of sexuality has linked sex-
ual identity and practice to sexual scripts (Laumann and Gagnon 1995; Levine 1992;
Simon and Gagnon 1986; Whittier and Melendez 2004), the world of work (Hearn
and Parkin 1987), family (Moraga and Hollibaugh 1983), bars, bathhouses, and tea-
rooms (Delph 1978; Fitzgerald 1986; Murray 1996; Tewksbury 2002; Weinberg and
Williams 1975a, 1975b), and a variety of sexual subcultures (Carillo 2002; Herdt 1992;
Prieur 1998), but does little to provide a systematic framework for conceiving erotic
∗ Address correspondence to: Adam Isaiah Green, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725
Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Tel.: (416) 978-8261. Fax: 416-978-3963. E-mail: AdamIsa-
iah.Green@UToronto.ca. Special thanks to Tim Hallett, Brian Powell, Jane McLeod, Elbert Almazan,
Tina Fetner Bonnie Erickson, and the reviewers of this article at Sociological Theory for their most help-
ful comments. Work on this article was supported by the Indiana University and National Institute of
Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellowship in Identity, Self, Role and Mental Health.
Sociological Theory 26:1 March 2008

C American Sociological Association. 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
26 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
worlds in their own right as a particular kind of social organization. For instance,
while the contribution of scripts in shaping sexual practice is now well received in
the sociological literature (Simon and Gagnon 1986; Whittier and Melendez 2004),
the scripting theory itself is not designed to capture the social organization of eroti-
cism and the structural manifestations of sexual schemas, 1 including the formation
of sexual status structures, the social settings in which these structures arise and are
transformed, the impact of sexual fields on sexual interaction, and the relationship
of social ontology to collective sexual life. In turn, the relationship of the social
organization of eroticism to individual sexual practice is also undertheorized.
By contrast, the recent work of Ellingson et al. (2004b), Ellingson and Schroeder
(2004), and Martin and George (2006) breaks new ground in advancing a system-
atic analysis of the organizational features of urban erotic worlds. While this work
diverges in its analytic approach to these milieux—with Ellingson et al. (2004b) and
Ellingson and Schroeder (2004) relying on a market approach and Martin and George
(2006) on a field approach—what these works share in common is the theorization of
highly structured systems of sexual stratification constituted by their own particular
internal logic and institutionalized status order. Paving the way for a new analytic pro-
gram in the sociology of sexuality, these scholars shift the focus from individual-level
problems related to sexual identity and practice to meso-level concerns of collective
erotic life, including the impact of demographic factors and external stakeholders
on the character of sex markets (Ellingson et al. 2004b), and the organization of
sexual fields as semiautonomous arenas of practical hegemony (Martin and George
2006).
Still, much work on the structure of collective erotic life remains to be done. For
instance, left unanswered are questions related to the relationship of sexual desire
to the social organization of erotic worlds, the relationship of the status structures
of erotic worlds to status structures in the broader social milieu, the relationship of
sexual fields to each other and to broader social forces, including gentrification and
globalization, and the relationship of psychodynamic structures to the structures of
collective erotic life. Indeed, sociologists of sexuality have only begun to explicate the
social contribution to sexuality—that most enigmatic of human practice.
In this article, I build on the work of Bourdieu (1977, 1980) and Martin and
George (2006) to formulate an approach uniquely suited to the analysis of modern
erotic worlds. 2 My approach—what I refer to as the sexual fields framework—couples
Goffman’s social psychological focus on situational negotiation and presentation of
self with a Bourdieusian model of routine practice, and advances a set of sensitizing
concepts for identifying the structures of collective sexual life. 3 This framework high-
lights the relationship of interactional work—including self-presentation and sexual
practice—to fields of objective relations wherein historically specific erotic schemas
acquire a structural manifestation that erotic players must navigate. In so doing,
the sexual fields approach advances a set of sensitizing concepts for identifying the
institutional dimensions of erotic worlds and the social organization of sexual strat-
ification.
1 Laumann and Gagnon (1995)—proponents of scripting theory—make a related point: “While social
interaction has an important place in scripting theory, it has not developed a well-articulated place for
considerations of social structure” (1995:191). It should be noted, however, that while scripting theory
does not capture the structural features of erotic worlds, it may provide important tools for capturing
how sexual practices take shape within them (see below).
2 See Stein (1989) for an earlier call to bring Bourdieu into the study of sexual desire.
3 For a related approach to organizational culture, see Tim Hallett (2003, 2007).
THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF DESIRE 27
Toward this end, the first section of this article draws on existing sociological liter-
atures to introduce the sexual fields framework and develop its conceptual subparts.
A second section draws from original field research on the experiences and routine
practices of a sample of middle-class black men who frequent the commercial gay
venues of New York City’s Chelsea and West Village. Here, I illustrate how the sex-
ual fields framework brings new insights to bear on an understudied sexual milieu of
particular import for the sociology of sexuality and public health. The black gay men
of this research encounter a highly structured complex of commercial gay sites orga-
nized by a racialized currency of erotic capital. 4 Taken together, these sites constitute
the spatial nodes of a sexual field wherein participants actively but unevenly seek its
rewards, including rights of sexual choice, social significance, and group membership.
In this context, black gay men engaged in a pattern of affective and behavioral ne-
gotiations, including emphasizing and deemphasizing racialized presentational styles
to gain a modicum of control in the field, (e.g., the “Mandingo man”), 5 and the
enactment of sexual practices to offset sexual marginality, or because alternative sex-
ual choices (e.g., protected anal intercourse) felt beyond their control. These cases
illustrate how a sexual field stratifies sexual actors by erotic capital, with important
implications for community attachment, sexual sociality, safer-sex practices, health,
and well-being.
This fieldwork is particularly instructive because even as I observed no net ad-
vantage accruing to black gay men in the erotic worlds of Chelsea and the West
Village, the social structure of the downtown sexual field was not a simple micro-
cosm of larger systems of social stratification—that is, the social standing of black
men was sharply skewed by physical and affective characteristics that were related,
but in no way reducible, to race. Their experiences suggest that analysis of sexual
fields requires attention to the social construction of erotic desire, and the ways in
which such desires simultaneously map onto and reconfigure power relations that
originate in other fields. That is, the present analysis draws attention to the peculiar
logic of eroticism and, in turn, collective sexual life, the latter that holds a relation-
ship to histories of subjectification and inequality for which we still have only a dim
understanding.
Having provided a preliminary outline of the sexual fields framework, and having
applied it to shed light on a particular empirical case, I offer a discussion of the
broader empirical and theoretical parameters of the framework in the third section of
this article, and suggest some important directions for future research. Building on a
tradition of sociological research of sexual life, I argue that a sexual fields approach
provides promising new lines of inquiry for capturing the social organization of
collective erotic life and, in turn, the structural underpinnings of sexual exchange
and their related processes as these arise in specialized erotic worlds.
The Anatomy of Erotic Worlds

Conceiving “Erotic Worlds”: Sites and Fields. Insofar as human eroticism is organized
by social schemata (Chodorow 1994; Epstein 1991), sexual desire must be considered
4 For an elaboration on the various species of capital, see Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992). My use of the
term “currency” signals that within the species of erotic capital, there exist a variety of sexual resources.
5 The term “Mandingo” refers to the people of western Africa near the upper Niger valley. In North
American parlance, however, the term is used to invoke the simultaneously erotic and demeaning image of
an oversexed African man with large genitals (see http://www.geocities.com/taylorsiluwe/nubian1.html).
in light of social structure, as individuals select on specific social objects, be they

types of bodies, types of bodily activities, types of affective displays, or types of
objects that represent types of bodies, bodily activities, or affective configurations.
Put another way, Greenberg (1995) writes that sexual pleasure is not reducible to the
workings of nerve endings, but must include an account of meaning.
Erotic worlds introduce an additional layer of complexity as they are both socially
constituted and socially constituting: they reflect the socially constituted desires of
erotic participants in an aggregated form, and they transpose these desires into a
socially stratified, institutionalized matrix of relations—that is, a sexual field. An-
chored to physical (and virtual) sites, such as bars, nightclubs, bathhouses, and chat
rooms, erotic worlds are, more importantly, social arenas, organized by “objective
historical relations between positions” that render the “playing field” of sexual so-
ciality inherently uneven (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). That is, whereas the sites
of sexual sociality constitute the observable spatial nodes of any given erotic world,
sexual fields represent the structure of relations that underpin these sites and consti-
tute their social organization. Accordingly, erotic worlds comprise two fundamental
elements: the spaces of sexual sociality (the site), and an attendant social structure
(the field).
Recently, one of the first explicit studies of the structures of collective sexual life
was undertaken by Laumann et al. (2004), for whom erotic worlds were conceived of
as markets. This approach put in high relief the presence of systems of sexual stratifi-
cation based in sexual competition, thereby initiating a critical shift in the sociological
literature from a concern with individual-level sexual decision-making processes to
an explication of the structural features of sexual sociality. And yet, while erotic
worlds may appear to have a “market-like” character (Martin and George 2006),
sexual fields are themselves not markets and are therefore not optimally served by
market analysis. On the contrary, a sexual fields approach draws attention to impor-
tant nonmarket dimensions associated with sexual sociality. As Martin and George
(2006) suggest, to the extent that the guiding logic of interaction in a sexual field
is not reducible to payment for an object, as bodies do not carry prices in sexual
sociality, so the abstract principles of market exchange hold limited analytic value—
that is, “[market] analysts cannot separate the price of an object, its utility for a
purchaser, its intrinsic value, and the object itself” (2006:114, emphasis in original).
Rather, collective sexual life requires an analysis of field-specific properties that dif-
ferentially constitute erotic value and wherein the logic of interaction is irreducible
to utility maximization (cf. Diaz 1998), or a “single calculating subjectivity” (Mar-
tin and George 2006:127). Moreover, whereas market goods do not have reflexive
capacities to negotiate their exchange value, human beings actively confront status
structures in an ongoing process of negotiation that bears directly on their location
within the field, the management of self, and health behaviors. Put another way, as I
demonstrate below, in some instances the mere fact of “the market” transforms the
very “goods” that are offered up for exchange—a vital process of sexual sociality im-
plicit to Bourdieu’s conception of actors’ negotiation of the field but obscured by the
market metaphor. 6 Hence, while sexual fields are surely anchored to the physical and
virtual sites of sexual competition, the sexual fields approach is itself not based in a
market analysis of the social organization of sexual life but, rather, in a Bourdieusian
analytic of fields. It is toward establishing the conceptual groundwork of the sexual
6 See Martin and George (2006) for an extensive refutation of the market approach.
fields approach that this article proceeds, beginning below with a consideration of
its founding concepts—the sexual field and erotic capital.
Conceiving “Sexual Field” and “Erotic Capital”

A sexual field is a particularly complex arena to capture because sexual desires are
often unpredictable and peculiar and may not “aggregate up” into a system of stable
relations or regulatory principles. As Lucretius (1998) wrote in a different context:
“What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.” In fact, a sexual field is organized
by desires and, in turn, resources that defy abstract formulation. 7 Nonetheless, while
the precise logic of status in any given field may be unclear and contested, the
highly specialized nature of modern sexual life is rather well suited to the term. For
example, consider the social and sexual specificity of a leather bar in San Francisco’s
Tenderloin, a gentleman’s club on Manhattan’s ritzy Upper-East Side, a cabaret in
Key West’s “Upper Duval,” a lesbian lounge on Fire Island’s Cherry Grove, or a
“man4man musclebear” Internet chat room. At these sites, participants with more or
less shared erotic appetites congregate in ways that put in high relief the structured
relations of social and sexual exchange constitutive of a sexual field. Indeed, the more
specialized a given erotic world becomes, the more standardized its erotic prize, the
more predictably ordered the relational patterns, and the more institutionalized the
currency of a given form of erotic capital.
Erotic capital can be conceived of as the quality and quantity of attributes that an
individual possesses, which elicit an erotic response in another. Conventional socio-
logical applications of the term “capital” typically refer to resources that are acquired
in a given social sphere (Becker 1975; Coleman 1988; Putnam 1993). However, to the
extent that sexual attraction involves the eroticization of the body or affect, a sexual
field has unique properties wherein capital may take a variety of novel forms, includ-
ing physical traits (e.g., the size of breasts, height, hair color), affective presentations
(e.g., butch, nebbishy, animalistic), and eroticized sociocultural styles (e.g., the blue-
collar construction worker, the Catholic schoolgirl). 8 Some of these characteristics
can be classified as “natural,” immutable attributes (e.g., height, skin shade), while
others can be acquired (e.g., body sculpting through breast augmentation surgery
and liposuction, enhanced musculature through bodybuilding, or a “makeover” of
wardrobe and hairstyle). In cases of bodily modification, actors are often aware of
the interconvertibility of capitals, whereby erotic capital is parlayed into financial,
social, or symbolic capital. 9 That body parts and presentational styles are regularly
manipulated and augmented in the contemporary historical period to maximize at-
tractiveness underscores that actors recognize the body, affect, and personal style as
a resource that stratifies players in a variety of fields, affording differential degrees
of power and social significance. 10
7 Even the rewards of a sexual field defy the simple formulation of sexual opportunity. Take, for instance,
the pleasures of the voyeur who would prefer to witness, rather than participate in, sexual interaction.
8 This is not to suggest that an attraction to a particular symbolic presentation (e.g., class) need be
erotic, in which case, a nonerotic interest in other forms of capital (e.g., cultural or symbolic) may be
operating.
9 Like all capitals, erotic capital is interrelated with, though not reducible to, other capitals. For instance,
plastic surgery requires financial means (economic capital): hence, to a certain degree, erotic capital can
be acquired via economic capital. Conversely, erotic capital is fungible insofar as it can be used by actors
to acquire financial and social capital.
10 One striking example of this is found among gay men in large urban centers who use anabolic steroids
to promote erotic capital. See, for example, Bolding et al. (2002).
While erotic capital confers differential degrees of power upon players in a sexual
field, there is no single hegemonic form of erotic capital across sexual fields. On the
contrary, currencies of erotic capital are quite variable, acquiring a hegemonic status
in relation to the erotic preferences of highly specialized audiences. For example,
a heterosexual man looking for a female partner in a Wall Street bar will likely
find that a Caucasian complexion and a corporate, manicured, and well-mannered
presentation will provide him with the optimal currency of erotic capital, whereas
the same man in a biker bar will find his erotic capital diminished. This variation in
erotic capital (and, in turn, status) occurs because a Wall Street bar and a biker bar
are physical sites organized by the logics of two very different sexual fields.
While sexual fields are highly variable, they nonetheless possess structural features
that hold across contexts. Below I offer an elaboration of three such structural fea-
tures by drawing on existing field work on male homosexual erotic worlds, though
the concepts are by no means limited to homoerotic settings. These features include:
structures of desire that combine the erotic habitus of sexual actors and its sexually
objectifying propensities (i.e., those aspects of “durable dispositions” that invest a
given object with erotic value and are themselves produced by systems of stratifica-
tion), the congealed history of the relations of these actors in the form of tiers of
desirability, and the distribution of erotic capital among the actors of a given physical
site of sexual sociality.
THREE STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF A SEXUAL FIELD
Structures of Desire
Erotic habitus, like the habitus more generally (Bourdieu 1977), is a socially con-
stituted complex of dispositions, appreciations, and inclinations arising from objec-
tive historical conditions wherein, via symbolic force, 11 the schemata of erotic pas-
sions are configured. Beneath the level of consciousness, the schemata of the erotic
habitus—eroticized typologies revolving around classifications of race, class, and sex,
for instance—represent the “embedding of social structures in bodies” (Bourdieu
1998:40), lending sexual fantasy its collective and historical character. Hence, erotic
habitus is a concept that relates the schemas of erotic fantasy to the social organi-
zation of society.
If erotic habitus is itself socially and historically constituted, it is at the same time
a socially constituting force—“a structured structuring structure” (Crossley 2001:84).
This is illustrated in a two-part process: First, human sexual desire is oriented to
the social world via historically specific erotic habitus, thereby coupling eroticized
meanings to particular social objects (while rendering neuter other social objects);
and, second, at the level of collective life, overlapping erotic habitus produce structures
of desire that establish a particular hegemonic currency of erotic capital in a given
sexual field. In turn, structures of desire are reflected in the “settings” (Goffman
1959) of sexual sites, including thematically organized “sign-equipment” (Goffman
1959), such as the name and décor of a given bar or nightclub, and the “fronts”
of patrons—the latter including fashion, posture, speech patterns, and the size and
11 “Symbolic force” (Bourdieu 1998:38) refers to the process whereby the content of social life—for exam-
ple, the relations between social strata, normative and symbolic forms, classifications of status groups—are
inscribed on the mind and body of the individual. Rather than through physical coercion, symbolic force
works via prolonged exposure to the structures of a given society.
look of the body (Goffman 1959). 12 Taken together, sign-equipment, such as décor
and personal fronts, convey a “definition” of the field to its players that represent
the institutionalization of a structure of desire. Once established, structures of desire
may exist partially independent of individual desires, as actors conform to and are
resocialized by the sexual field—a point I return to below. Put another way, sexual
actors may learn to like an erotic world as they develop its habitus through a process
of deliberate inculcation.
While structures of desire are not amenable to direct examination, there exist sex-
ual subcultures that express these via collectively eroticized representations, settings,
social types, and erotic repertoires. Modern urban nightlife, in particular, is conducive
to the rise of erotic niches that attract actors who share specialized erotic tastes and
dispositions that take the form of a structure of desire. In Manhattan’s gay West
Village during the 1970s, for instance, Levine (1998) observed a “clone” subculture
wherein gay men subscribed to an elaborate and well-defined code of masculinity. En
masse, these men exercised a collective erotic disposition—a structure of desire—that
made hegemonic a currency of erotic capital revolving around hypermasculinity. As
an erotic response to symbolic constructions of masculinity and femininity in the
second half of the 20th century, the erotic imaginary of the clones seized on gender
polarities and invested them with a historically specific, commercialized American
twist. Thus, in Levine’s (1998) description of the clones’ erotic sensibilities, one finds
a structure of desire reflected in bodily fronts.
By defining manly attributes as hot, this aesthetic made the type favored by
clones hypermasculine. Their erotic ideal resembled the Marlboro man or Tom
Selleck. Hot men for clones, were hung, built, and butch—young (early 20s or
so), ruggedly handsome, with a mustache or trim beard and short hair, a tight
well-toned body, round and firm buttocks, large genitals, and visibly distended
nipples. (1998:82)
Fashion sensibilities, too, communicated the clone structure of desire.
[Clones] . . . wore the sturdy utilitarian clothing associated with traditional macho
icons . . . The men favored the hood, athlete, and woodsman looks for everyday
leisure attire. They wore the Western, leather, military, laborer and uniform looks
for going out or partying. (1998:60)
Moreover, the clone structure of desire was reflected in the subculture’s décor, print
media, and the names of the sexual sites themselves.
Clone gathering places and apartment also manifested butch masculinity through
the use of stereotypically macho sign-vehicles in the décor . . . Clones used pri-
marily Western or leather sign-vehicles as furnishings or decorative elements in
12 Though Bourdieu’s “hexis” also includes affect, bodily carriage, and movement, I prefer to use Goff-
man’s notion of “fronts” in order to highlight the interactional and negotiated basis of the presentation
of self in the sexual field, as opposed to the notion of “hexis,” which has an unconscious source. In this
sense, hexis and fronts may be fruitfully linked in a relationship that mirrors unconscious and conscious
states, respectively: hexis is an inculcated unconscious bodily manifestation of social structure, upon which
appearances and affects follow, whereas fronts have the connotation of being more conscious and fluid in
the context of the presentation of self. Indeed, both terms may be fruitfully conceived to refer to somewhat
different aspects of bodily representation and form—that is, distinct yet related “moments” of hexis.
circuit bars or sex clubs. For example, the bar “Badlands” was furnished with
wagon wheels, corrals, and sawdust, and the bartenders wore cowboy boots,
shirts and hats. Another bar, the “Eagle”, contained biker posters, banners, and
trophies, and the bartenders wore black leather chaps, vests and caps. The names
of these establishments were also butch . . . convey[ing] either Western, leather or
industrial images. For example, the name of the bar “Boots and Saddles” evoked
cowboy masculinity, while the “Pipeline” evoked blue-collar workers. (1998:63)
Indeed, even sexual practice had a shared, decidedly masculine character that re-
flected the clone structure of desire (Levine 1998).
[C]lones practiced “deep throating,” “hard fucking,” and “heavy tit work.” In
the first activity, a man rammed the entire length of his penis down his partner’s
throat. If his partner had not learned how to overcome the gag reflex, this act
caused him to choke. In “hard fucking,” a man rapidly moved the entire length
of his penis in and out of his partner’s anus. While doing this, he often vigorously
hit his partner’s backside with his hands. In “heavy tit work,” the men forcefully
stimulated each other’s nipples by pinching, biting, or sucking them, often to
the point of pain. (1998:93)
Taken together, Levine’s empirical observations illustrate an institutionalized struc-

ture of desire that established the hegemonic currency of erotic capital in a particular
urban gay sexual field. Reflected in bodies, fashion, décor, local print media, sexual
practices, and sexual identities, structures of desire underpin sexual subculture and
are the source of a field’s currency of erotic capital and tiers of desirability.
Tiers of Desirability
Within any sexual field, a history of relations exists that prompts actors to assign
to themselves and others a categorical ranking, which corresponds—more or less
faithfully—to the prevailing currency of erotic capital. 13 The more highly specialized
a given sexual field, the less latitude actors have to evade ranked classification in
the process of “playing the game.” In turn, a hegemonic currency of erotic capital is
expressed in social relations that confer status upon sexual actors situated differen-
tially in the field’s erotic hierarchy—that is, the field’s tiers of desirability. 14 Among
Levine’s clones, for instance, men who failed to demonstrate a hypermasculine affect
and the style of dress occupied a low tier of desirability in the clone sexual field.
Thus, when the clones encountered a group of effeminate gay men visiting from sub-
urbia, the former regarded the latter as an inferior class of sexual actors with little
erotic appeal:
These men wore designer jeans, LaCoste shirts with the collars flipped up, and
reeked of cologne. They were obviously not clones. As they passed by, the man I
was chatting to nudged me and said, “Look at those trolls! They must be Tunnel
13 Of course, not all individuals will accurately assess their or other’s erotic capital in light of the field’s
particular structure of desire, especially when actors are otherwise unfamiliar with the field’s structure of
desire. Hence, the assessment of one’s erotic capital and the corresponding formation of tiers of desirability
should be regarded as an outcome of general, if imperfect, patterns of attribution. Indeed, like players in
any other field, some players in the sexual field never quite develop a “feel for the game.”
14 See Tewksbury (2002:109) for an example of “tiers” and “classes” of desirability in a bathhouse.
and Bridge. What are they doing here? Who let them in?” To the clones, these gay
men were anachronisms, throwbacks to another era of male homosexuality, of
blowdried bouffant hairdos, gold pinky rings, and fey demeanor. As my confident
implied, they impaired the “hotness” of the place. “They’re visual pollutants,”
he said, “disrupting the erotic beauty of a room full of hot men.” (1998:50–51)
Distinguishing themselves in this manner from the “Tunnel and Bridge” subur-
banites, the clones were aware of and responding to the structure of the clone sex-
ual field. Put another way, sexual actors occupy social space in a sexual field via
stratified positions—that is, via tiers of desirability. While in any given sexual field
there exists a continuous variation in erotic capital, collective sexual life promotes
attributions of erotic capital that revolve around classes of sexual actors who share
physical, affective, and stylistic features associated with erotic value. By inference,
actors are likely to adapt their appearance, behavior, or demeanor over time in or-
der to associate themselves with a particular class of actors, thereby elevating their
status within the field’s tiers of desirability. Below, I revisit this dynamic by bringing
Bourdieu’s theory of practice into dialogue with the concerns of a Goffmanian social
psychology.
Distribution of Erotic Capital

As an arena of institutionalized relations, sexual fields materialize in physical and
virtual sites that commonly include bars, nightclubs, and, more recently, erotic In-
ternet chat rooms. These sites are organized around the field’s structure of desire,
though each particular site will itself be populated by actors with more or less erotic
capital on any given occasion—in a sense, a substructure of relations. On any given
occasion in any given site, sexual sociality is shaped by the particular distribution of
erotic capital within the venue at the time of occupation, coupled with the perceived
erotic capital of the players themselves (i.e., individual assessments of the status of
one’s self and others within the field).
Tewksbury’s (2002) ethnographic study of a Midwest gay bathhouse, for instance,
illustrates the role of the distribution of erotic capital for the social organization of
the venue. Here, the age of patrons—a salient characteristic of erotic capital—was
differentially distributed by time of day, wherein older patrons evacuated “prime-
time” hours, to be replaced by younger men.
During the late mornings, afternoons, and early evenings, most men in the setting
are in their 30s and 40s; relatively few (perhaps 10–15%) bathhouse patrons
appear younger than 30, and only somewhat more common are men in their
50s or older. However, during late-night/early-morning hours (after 11:00 p.m.)
almost all older men leave and the mean age of patrons becomes significantly
younger (late 20s or early 30s). (2002:90)
Thus, in Tewksbury’s bathhouse, men in their 20s and early 30s vastly outnum-
bered older men during the late night and early hours, the latter of whom reserved
patronage for late mornings and afternoons when the distribution of erotic capital
provided less sexual competition and was thereby more favorable (2002:90). In short,
Tewksbury observes an instance of the changing distribution of erotic capital and its
temporal organization over the course of a given 24-hour period in a specific sexual
site. Generating a substructure of relations, shifting distributions of erotic capital
recalibrate the primary field’s tiers of desirability, reorganizing interactional patterns

in specific time-space coordinates.
Having provided a preliminary outline of the central concepts of the present frame-
work, I now turn to the particular case of black gay men in a white-dominated,
middle-class sexual field. The experiences of these men are grossly underexamined
in the sociological and public health literatures, and an analysis of these data can
stand alone as an important sociological contribution. Yet, as I demonstrate below, a
proper sociological analysis of their experiences demands explicit consideration of the
sexual social system they inhabit, underscoring the need for a framework designed to
capture the structure of erotic worlds in their own right. Hence, I offer this fieldwork
to highlight a case of particular import and to show how the sexual fields approach,
more generally, may be used to illuminate the structural manifestations and related
interactional processes of modern erotic worlds.
Black Gay Men Adapt to an Urban Sexual Field

Background. Between the years of 1994–2004, I conducted fieldwork and in-depth
interviews of 30 black gay men within Chelsea and the West Village—two of the
largest and most densely populated gay enclaves in New York City. Located in
downtown Manhattan, Chelsea and the West Village house gay sexual sites that
predominantly (though by no means entirely) comprise gay-identified, middle-class
white men (Hawkeswood 1996). During my fieldwork, I discovered that these settings
were arenas wherein classifications of race and ethnicity materialized in day-to-day
exchange—as guiding axes of sexual partnership, as objects of eroticization, and as
principles of exploitation or exclusion.
Previous research on black bisexual and homosexual men in white gay settings
has documented gay racism and racial marginality (Boykin 1996; Cochran and Mays
2001; DiPlacido 1998; Soares 1979), including exclusion from white gay sexual insti-
tutions (Boykin 1996; Luna 1989), and the incompatibility of black and gay identities
(Icard 1985; Johnson 1981; Peterson 1992). This literature presents a fairly uniform
portrait of the gay black male experience that mirrors more general analyses of
anti-black discrimination in the employment sector, residential housing, and pub-
lic accommodations. To be sure, black men do encounter race-based exclusionary
practices in commercial gay venues, such as racially targeted dress codes and “triple
carding” at the entrance of bars and nightclubs 15 (Boykin 1996; Laumann et al.
2004), and yet, in my field observations, race had complex phenomenological, inter-
personal, and organizational manifestations that pervaded the gay downtown erotic
world, exceeding the purview of even its most zealous gatekeepers.
The Sexual Fields of Chelsea and the West Village. Laumann et al. (2004) observe
that urban sexual arenas—like the erotic worlds of downtown Manhattan—are “dis-
tinct collective systems” with their own particular status hierarchies and “internal
processes” (2004:16). For black gay men who patronize the bars, bathhouses, and
nightclubs of Chelsea and the West Village, race introduces a structure of probabil-
ities for sexual partnership, right of sexual choice, and the establishment of sexual
status organized, in part, around racial difference and the meanings white (and, on
occasion, black) men attach to this historical distinction. That is, black gay men
15 “Triple carding” occurs when a door attendant prevents entrance without three forms of identification.
encounter a field of relations constituted by positions anchored to histories of

marginality and racialization. Hence, Manhattan’s gay downtown operates as a sexual
field, organized, in part, by a racialized logic and regulatory patterns. Nonetheless,
the social organization of the downtown sexual field is not entirely isomorphic with
larger systems of stratification, but is instead organized by a system of relations that
draws from but is irreducible to alternative fields. Within this system of relations,
black gay men “play the game” in patterned ways related to the structure of the field
and their positions within it.
Black Men “Doing Race”: Emphasizing and Deemphasizing Racial Difference. Sexual
fields are by their nature arenas of sociality, pleasure-seeking, and competition. In
downtown Manhattan, the spatial nodes of a middle-class gay sexual field are found
in its gay bars, nightclubs, and bathhouses, which provide both protected spaces for
gay sexual sociality and sites of competition, depersonalization, and objectification
(Bersani 1988; Levine 1998; Weinberg and William 1975b). Black gay men who fre-
quent the downtown do so for a variety of reasons, including proximity to their
residence or place of employment, an attraction to white men or white gay culture,
or links to white gay friendship networks. Yet, the white-dominated racial composi-
tion of these locales establishes a kind of social organization of which black men are
acutely aware. Thus, Derek—in his mid 20s—is immobilized in these settings, unable
to detach himself from the sidelines.
Generally I am very outgoing and extroverted. But when I went to that bar (a
predominantly white gay bar), it was like I was part of the furniture. I would
get on a spot on the wall, and I’d just stay there. Like wanting to be there, but
like afraid of the whole atmosphere . . . And even after I went a few times, I just
never allowed myself to loosen up and enjoy it.
Even those black men for whom race seems not to matter as a characteristic
of significance in the downtown, nevertheless reveal a deeper recognition of racial
difference in the particular way they negotiate their minority status. Thus, Joseph—
also in his mid 20s—highlights his role as “an infiltrator.”
Oh no. That (race) was never for me a problem. I know that for some people
it may have been so. I don’t deny the fact that I always was—I’m sort of, for
lack of a better term—an infiltrator. I’ll get in, and I’ll get to know people, and
they understand me and I trust them. In the places that I frequent, I guess I
know people at the doors. There was never a problem, never an issue, never a
question.
The disproportionate representation of white to black men in the downtown sexual

field is consequential not simply because it elicits a heightened awareness of racial
difference among black sexual actors, but because this demographic fact is asso-
ciated with the predominance of a structure of desire that reflects the fantasies of
middle-class, white gay men. Black men who participate in the downtown sexual field
discern a sexual status structure organized, in part, by a racialized currency of erotic
capital that stratifies particular kinds of black men. That is, in Chelsea and the West
Village, black gay men encounter a white structure of desire and concomitant tiers
of desirability organized around specific physical and affective characteristics that
incorporate a history of controlling images of black men (Hill-Collins 1990). These
characteristics possess an extensive representational pedigree rooted in the slave trade

and white supremacist ideologies—both of which exoticize the black male, attributing
to him an uncivilized, dangerous sexuality, and a primitive animalistic affect (Hooks
1992; West 1993). 16 Indeed, the history of race-based economic and social inequal-
ities in the United States may well solidify these constructions of black men in the
white imaginary (Boykin 1996)—affecting a “(mis)recognition” of the black subject
wherein the latter’s marginal social standing is understood as the manifestation of
an essential nature.
Once encountering the downtown white structure of desire, black men articulate a
range of strategic response patterns. One strategic response pattern is found among
those men who, in the process of interaction, actively negotiate racial difference from
white men, tailoring their self-presentations to correspond with their perceptions of
the field’s structure of desire and prevailing erotic currency. Goffman’s (1959) analysis
of self-presentation and impression management is especially helpful in conceiving the
representational strategies of these actors. According to Goffman, both individuals
and institutions attempt to define social situations through “fronts” that convey a
given image or impression. These fronts can be further divided into “sign-vehicles” of
which appearance and manner are critical. In the context of the downtown, middle-
class white sexual field, black men adapted by “doing race” (Best 2003; Jackson
2001)—that is, by manipulating sign-vehicles that either built race into the front as
an attribute to exploit, or minimized race in the front as an obstacle to overcome.
Dave—in his early 30s—does not need to actively “do race” though he is cognizant
of the ways in which his physical attributes do race for him. Dave is dark skinned
and stands at 6 3 . When queried if race enters into his sexual interactions with white
men, Dave discusses the tone of his skin, the size of his body, and their association
with the slave trade. Here, he confirms quite literally the historical specificity of
racialized constructions of black men and their sedimentation in the white homoerotic
imaginary.
Yes. I’ve been with white guys who are obsessed with my darkness, overly submis-
sive, want to be my 24/7 pussy boy . . . Some whites want a “big black buck”—a
term from slavery—a stallion, a breeder, virile and dominating. And I fit that
fantasy.
Some black men are cognizant of their racialized erotic capital but resent fetishiza-
tion. For instance, Ben, in his early 30s, recalls the controlling images of black men
captured by Mapplethorpe’s “Man in the Polyester Suit” when he describes the highly
objectifying approach of a white man:
I don’t have problems with white guys, but some of them say the most ridiculous
things to you and I guess that’s why a lot of black guys don’t bother with
them . . . Like this one guy was like, “I like black dick, you must be so hung.”
16 These historical constructions of black men appear in American artistic and literary productions,
perhaps captured best by Robert Mapplethorpe’s infamous “Man in the Polyester Suit,” which depicts a
suited black man with an open zipper and an enormous protruding penis. In “African-American Rep-
resentation of Masculinity,” Betty Brown takes a more self-consciously critical approach to black male
controlling images in an exhibition series that has traversed the United States, though the representations
of black men are quite similar.
What a turn off. In my opinion, I think when a white guy approaches you he
just wants a trophy. That’s how it always comes off.
Evan, in his mid 30s, articulates a variation on a similar erotic theme, though he is
more self-conscious than Dave or Ben in doing race in his front. Using racialization
to his erotic advantage, Evan strategically taps into the “Mandingo/ghetto” fantasy
of the white gay erotic habitus through a rough affect and a distinctly inner-city,
black presentational style.
White guys see me and they have some Mandingo/ghetto fantasy in mind. I’m
big, I’m edgy and white guys see this and are attracted to me for it. And I’ll
play into their fantasy and kind of get off on their worship. It’s like . . . I’m a
little dangerous. They love that danger—they assume I’m going to rape their
little white ass and make them into submissive boys.
By “playing up” a front that resonates with race- and class-based constructions
of the threatening black male, Evan is cognizant of the structure of desire within
Chelsea’s white, middle-class sexual field, aligning himself with a specific racialized
currency of erotic capital in order to attract white partners and gain field advantage. 17
Calvin—in his mid 30s—also emphasizes culturally specific constructions of racial
difference through strategic, linguistic “code-switching” (Gilyard 1991; Hurston
1978), wherein racialized speech acts are used to articulate a given currency of erotic
capital. Through his diction and subject matter in conversation, Calvin builds a class-
based, historical representation of race into his front (Miron and Inda 2000).
I do think I try to be a little more “home-boyish” around men that I’d judge
would be receptive to that. It’s about diction that you change or alter. It’s about
the choice of subject matter, Y’know, if I was being me, I’m much more about
“Hey, my name is Calvin. How are you? What kind of work are you in? Where
do you live?” Those are the subject matters I’d stay away from if I was trying
to “thug” it up a little bit—I’d just be more direct.
And Reese—in his late 20s—confirms the effectiveness of “doing race” for the
acquisition of erotic capital:
I’ve met a few guys who pretend to be thugs, but once you get to know them,
they’re big pussy cats. I think they do put on that act to attract men. And there
are certain white men—like my boyfriend—who dig thuggish men who have that
rough edge to them.
That black gay men in a white-dominated, middle-class sexual field would do race
in this manner as a technique to increase erotic capital and improve their standing
in the field’s tiers of desirability speaks to the ways in which objective historical
17 The experiences of men like Dave, Ben, and Evan suggest an important link between the erotic habitus
and sexual practice: To the extent that white gay men conceive of black men through an inculcated
racialized schema related to the historical position of black men as “big bucks” and “thugs,” so we might
expect white gay men to possess particular kinds of sexual scripts that eroticize this racialized history
in a variety of thematically consistent sexual repertoires and intersubjective scripting processes. For more
on the link between ethnoracial status and scripting, see Whittier and Melendez (2004) and Whittier and
Simon (2001).
relations take form, in part, in the structure of a sexual field. The themes they draw
upon when building race into the front have an extensive sociopolitical and cultural
history that at once transcends and rematerializes in the field, reflected both in homo-
erotic representations of the “thug” and “Mandingo Man,” and in the perceptions of
black men who perceive erotic capital differentials between types of black men. No-
tably, schematic constructions of the uncivilized, dangerous, “thuggish” black man—a
derogatory historical profile correlated with a status deficit in alternative fields (for
instance, in an economic, legal, or political field)—provide a status increase in the
form of erotic capital in the downtown sexual field. That is, the structure of a sexual
field may draw from but is not reducible to stratification in larger social systems,
following instead the peculiar logic of sexual desire.
Yet, if some black men acquire erotic capital by doing race in fronts that highlight
urban black sign-vehicles, other men acquire erotic capital because of their distinctly
un-African appearance or racially neutral fronts. Visible ambiguity in racial heritage
may arise as a simple function of immutable physical characteristics or as a self-
conscious strategy of racial deemphasis that undoes “blackness” in favor of “doing”
a different race. Troy, for instance, is a black gay man in his late 20s who remarks
that his unusual racial appearance garners increased erotic capital among white men
in the downtown sexual field.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten together with white guys and
heard, “I’ve never been with a black guy before but you’re hot.” There’s a heavy
Indian blood line, so I have high cheek bones. I don’t have prominent lips usually
associated with African features, like the wide, thick nose. My skin is fairer with
a hint of red. And my ears aren’t round and thick. You know, there’s a lot of
things that come with the traditional African look.
Whereas Troy gains status by dint of his “natural” non-African appearance, Glen—
in his mid 20s—provides a dramatic example of a strategic adaptation designed to
achieve the same end: straightened hair, green contact lenses, and a wardrobe of ur-
ban gay couture associated with upper middle-class white men in the fashion industry.
He describes himself as having “caramel colored skin”—an attribute that, combined
with his hair, eyes and fashion, allow him to pass (Goffman 1963) as Latino, thereby
increasing his erotic capital.
A lot of guys come up to me and think that I’m Latino. I have kind of light,
caramel colored skin—and some guys really like that. Don’t get me wrong,
some guys are really into like the dark-skinned top and strong black man, but
I notice that when I have gone out with black friends, I get hit on a lot more
than they do and I think that has to do with the lightness of my skin and
my look.
George—in his mid 20s—adds another dimension to Troy’s account, believing that
racial deemphasis is a strategy of assimilation among black men who desire more than
a sexual encounter with a white man. In this sense, then, the erotic capital mobilized
by men like Evan and Calvin may help to procure short-term sexual partnership, but
not long-term relationships.
In the Village, many connections are among white men with other white men.
And so, as a black man, you pretty much feel like, ok, if you really want the
other person to be interested in you more than just sexual, like maybe on a
relationship level, you might want a less black look.
If some black men seek to improve their status in the field’s tiers of desirability by
manipulating their fronts, other men feel unable or unwilling to do so. Consequently,
they may perceive themselves to hold low erotic capital. Devon—in his mid 30s—
believes that his race is categorically incompatible with the downtown field’s structure
of desire. In sharp contrast to his white friends, Devon feels invisible in the gay sites
of the downtown:
Being black makes your opportunities different. I don’t have the visibility to
have the opportunities. There are white guys who just don’t see you and don’t
want to see you.
Other men articulate low status in the field’s tiers of desirability, but perceive race
less as a categorical source of erotic capital deficit, than a schematic construction
that confers differential degrees of erotic capital between black men. For instance,
Randolph emphasizes the ways in which variations within race mediate the kinds
of erotic capital one may possess. Unlike Glen, who believes that his light skin and
eyes allow him to pass as Latino, Randolph’s fair complexion is not fair enough to
allow him to “pass,” and thus does not work to his erotic advantage. In his mid 30s,
Randolph finds that white gay men have a narrow scope of attraction to black men,
including dark skin and its association with large genitals. Thus, Randolph is not
“black enough”:
I’ve been to those bars where I feel used or shunned. Like, on the one hand, I
am invisible to white guys. Maybe because I’m black but I think also because
I’m not black enough . . . White guys want dark black guys because of the myth
of the big penis.
And for Alden—in his early 30s—it is his highly educated background and de-
meanor that diminish his erotic capital among white men looking for an “empty
fantasy”:
I find that white men rarely approach, which is fine with me because I prefer
black men. As a professional black man with multiple graduate degrees, I don’t
appeal to those looking for an empty fantasy and I’m certainly not about to
change or dumb-down in order to meet someone else’s fantasy.
The narratives of these men reveal a field of relations organized by a racialized

structure of desire and concomitant currencies of erotic capital and tiers of desir-
ability. Anchored in historical constructions of the African man, the field’s struc-
ture of desire incorporates the social position and controlling images of black men
in the United States, thereby reproducing an enduring history of racial inequality,
marginality, and exoticization (Boykin 1996; Mercer 1994). And yet, black men do
not occupy a uniformly depressed standing in the field’s tiers of desirability. Rather,
in these cases, status arises from the peculiar logic of sexual fantasy, which couples
the socially constituted schemata of the habitus (e.g., racial schemas derived from
historical systems of stratification), with the classic erotic preoccupation with power,
humiliation, dominance, and submission (Benjamin 1983; Dor 2001; Stoller 1985).
Thence, the historical construction of the black male as a dangerous, uncivilized

sexual predator—the “virile and dominating . . . big black buck”—articulates with the
erotic preoccupations of gay white men. Projected as an aggregate into the downtown
sexual field, the eroticized racial schemas of these men take the form of a structure
of desire that elevates and depresses the status of particular kinds of black men,
locating them within tiers of desirability over which they have limited control.
Consequently, black men in this study who possess physical characteristics that
articulate with this structure of desire acquire erotic capital in the downtown sex-
ual field and generate the desire of others. In other cases, black men proactively
“do” and “undo” race, strategically manipulating racialized fronts and speech acts
to correspond with downtown currencies of erotic capital and thereby obtain social
significance. These fronts can take a variety of forms—some that emphasize black-
white distinction, and others that deemphasize it, the latter that map players onto
a different currency of erotic capital, or signal an intention to develop more than a
simple sexual relationship with white men. In this sense, black gay men exhibit a keen
awareness of their self-presentation and concomitant erotic capital as this relates to
the field’s structure of desire. In turn, by developing a reflexive relationship to their
fronts, these men strategically manage the presentation of self in an attempt to nego-
tiate their field standing. Alternatively, black men who lack the relevant currency of
erotic capital, or who resist adjusting their fronts, experience field disadvantage and
a loss of social power. In these instances, diminished standing may be negotiated in
the course of sexual exchange—a topic considered below.
Negotiating Race Through Sexual Practice. In Chelsea and the West Village, bath-
houses and “sex clubs” have a long and important history as safe zones for male
homosexual activity (Levine 1998). To the extent that these venues are populated by
overlapping patronage networks with the downtown gay bars and nightclubs, they
operate within the same system of relations. In these sites, the structure of the sexual
field reveals itself in situational negotiation and the management of the body among
gay and bisexual men who convene for on-premise sexual exchange. Here, I observed
a suggestive process of sexual negotiation among black gay men wherein erotic cap-
ital was related to the exercise of control over partner choice and over the sexual
interaction itself. In short, field position was related to how sexual actors negotiated
sexual behavior—including the decision to engage in particular kinds of sexual acts
and the decision to use condoms (cf. Adam et al. 2003; Murray and Adam 2001).
For instance, Leonard—in his mid 30s—believes that race has no bearing on his
sexual practices except, perhaps, as a point of attraction for some white men. In
this sense, Leonard’s race is a source of erotic capital. As a fairly regular patron of
the bathhouses, Leonard insists on discussing condom use with potential partners.
Consequently, on some occasions, Leonard is passed over by patrons who prefer to
have unprotected intercourse:
I always talk about safe-sex even though I usually top, but some guys have
rejected me if I wanted to use a condom in a bathhouse . . . I mean, I’m all for
having a good time but its amazing that some guys are not willing to make
behavioral changes.
For men with an erotic capital deficit, however, the process of negotiating sex-
ual practice—including safer sex—is made more complex, materializing against the
backdrop of disadvantageous structural conditions of the sexual field. In my
fieldwork, the case of Calvin—mentioned above—represents a particularly power-

ful illustration of this process, whereby the field’s racialized tiers of desirability bear
on perceptions of status, sexual motivations, partner choice, and sexual practice.
Calvin’s Ivy League education and roots in white middle-class communities tie him
to middle-class urban gay white neighborhoods for sociality, within which he finds
a cultural and class affinity. On the whole, however, Calvin’s experience with white-
dominated, gay sexual fields leads him to conceive of tiers of desirability organized
around a social ontology whereby masculine white men occupy a superior status
relative to black men. Here, Calvin makes an implicit reference to a white-dominated
structure of desire, its relationship to erotic capital and, in turn, sexual sociality:
In New York City, Delaware and Philadelphia as well, there’s a hierarchy of gay
imagery and gay ideals . . . And mostly it’s the masculine white male at the top of
the pecking order. If he walks into a club, he’s the cock in the hen-house. He’s
strutting his stuff . . . Meaning that I would consider myself to be an attractive
person, and . . . as long as they’re white, you’re obtainable and they’re perfectly
within their rights to approach and pursue you. I remember this one [white] guy
who was very, very unattractive and it was sort of like off-putting that he would
think it was even OK to approach me. I mean, it wasn’t even like a “hey, how
are you doing?” It was like this totally seductive (in a smoky voice) “hey, what’s
up?”
Despite this perceived categorical difference in erotic capital between black and
white gay men, Calvin also perceives a more subtle, subcategorical status hierarchy
consistent with the observations of black men mentioned above. Though Calvin de-
scribes himself as handsome, he is also relatively short—standing at 5 4 . As a
consequence, Calvin is unable to tap into the downtown structure of desire and its
eroticized racial schemas, leaving him at a distinct disadvantage in relation to other
gay black men.
In my case, I’m not real tall, and for white guys that dig black men [they] are
into black men who are strapping and tall, and I’m not that . . . I can’t compete
with that.
To the extent that Calvin is attracted to white men, depressed erotic capital is the
occasion of a dilemma: stay in the downtown gay sexual field and participate with
low sexual status or move to other sexual fields wherein his erotic capital might be
improved but where there are fewer white men. Calvin chooses to stay, though his
perceived capital deficit leads him, on occasion, to forgo condom use in exchange
for sex with men from higher tiers of desirability.
A couple of times I might not use condoms in the bathhouse. It depended on the
attractiveness of the guy . . . I don’t get swept up in the moment, but if a really
hot guy came up to me and wanted to have sex without condoms, I’d probably
say I don’t want to jeopardize this so I’m not going to push the issue . . . In
general, the only reason why you would involve yourself in unsafe sex is because
maybe it feels good, but you’re also concerned about your partner—pleasing
your partner, and wanting to make sure that your partner has a good time.
And to the extent that race plays a part in that, y’know, I guess there are subtle
feelings of feeling, well, y’know, this guy is actually doing me a favor by sleeping
with me, and I should make sure [he is pleased], you know, that does play a
part.
But if an erotic capital deficit may on occasion lead Calvin to strategic unsafe sex
in a classic relation of exchange, other instances of unsafe sex are far less instrumental
in nature. For instance, below, Calvin narrates an instance when his need for “self-
validation” led him to seek out sex with a white man, though in this interaction,
with unfortunate consequences. His perceived low status within the field’s tiers of
desirability provides a structural backdrop against which Calvin is motivated to seek
out esteem through sex.
I don’t know how it happened . . . I went to “Spartika” (a popular gay bar in

Chelsea) and saw this guy there, who’s totally into me. For me I think it was
totally self-validation. And we talked and he was semi-attractive but I ended up
going to the bathhouse around 11:00 p.m., and I was only going to be there
for a short period of time and it turned out that this guy ended up showing
up . . . And he brought out this baby oil and put it on him. And I didn’t want
him to put a condom on because I knew the condom wasn’t going to work. I
mean I knew that the condom would break. And I thought that he would be
much more likely not to cum if the condom wasn’t on. I didn’t want him to
have the security of “oh, I’m putting a condom on therefore I can go through
the whole thing.” So I am thinking that if we go ahead and have sex without a
condom of course he’s not going to be an idiot and ejaculate inside me. And it
turns out he did.
By way of contrast, Dave—mentioned earlier—corroborates Calvin’s perceptions.

Dave perceives himself as an object of white men’s fantasies—tall, dark-skinned,
and a preference for giving anal intercourse. Subsequently, he reports little problem
meeting white partners and does not perceive his racial status to be a disadvantage,
benefiting as he does from eroticized racial constructions of the “big black buck.”
He also practices safer sex and reports no lapses in condom use. Peering down
from the top of the field’s tiers of desirability, Dave’s structural position within the
downtown sexual field leads him to see racial equity where others do not. Similarly,
Dave believes that black men who have unsafe intercourse with white men have an
individual psychological problem with race, not a systematic social problem in the
downtown arena:
I have never been to a gay bar in New York City where I was made to feel
unwelcome, nor do I think a white gay would devalue a black gay . . . If a black
guy is having sex with a white guy and not using condoms, it’s his personal
problem with self-esteem and being black.
And Patrick—in his early 30s—offers an explicit comparison of the erotic capital
of black and white gay men that reframes Dave’s account:
In a bathhouse where there are more white guys . . . a black guy stands out and
attracts white guys into black guys, assuming that he’s half-decent looking. But
on the other hand, it’s like I said before, I’ve seen plenty of white guys who
only want hung black men . . . because they would hook up and date a white
guy with a small dick, but only hook up with a hung black man. It’s like I was
just talking to a white guy recently who told me that he’s only interested in tall,
athletic, hung black men. I quote, “The kind that all white men want” (emphasis
added).
Patrick’s observations speak to and make intelligible the seemingly skewed status
of black gay men in this study. Whereas race does not uniformly disadvantage black
gay men, their erotic capital is contingent upon a narrow racialized construction of
sexual attractiveness—in Patrick’s words: “tall, athletic and hung . . . the kind that all
white men want.” Hence, black gay men whose bodies, presentational styles, and
sexual preferences articulate with the downtown structure of desire, find a regular
supply of white partners and are positioned within the field to exhibit greater sexual
control. By contrast, black men with bodies and fronts that fail to resonate with this
structure of desire and its racialized currency of erotic capital incur a capital deficit,
and encounter a significant structural disadvantage. In turn, these men may be more
vulnerable to assaults on self-esteem and sexual control. Thus Calvin is motivated to
seek out sex for self-validation, participate with reluctance in sex acts to maintain an
interaction, and engage in unprotected anal intercourse as strategic compensation for
low status or because of reduced power to set sexual limits on the exchange. 18 Taken
as a whole, these accounts shed light on how the social organization of erotic life
stratifies sexual actors with implications for community attachment, sexual sociality,
health, and well-being.
Toward an Analysis of Modern Erotic Worlds: The Sexual Fields Approach

In this article I couple Goffman’s social psychological focus on presentation of self
and situational negotiation with a Bourdieusian model of routine practice to develop
a framework for the analysis of erotic worlds. I argue that erotic worlds are fruitfully
analyzed as institutionalized arenas produced by historically specific erotic schemata
and overlapping erotic dispositions that, projected in social space, take the form of
structures of desire and concomitant currencies of erotic capital and tiers of desir-
ability. Thus, the objects of mental life obtain a structural manifestation in the form
of a matrix of relations—the sexual field.
Bars, nightclubs, and bathhouses are common physical sites that establish the spa-
tial nodes of a sexual field. 19 Modern urban erotic worlds are fertile territories for
the development of highly specialized sexual fields, as players with overlapping erotic
dispositions seek out and inhabit particular social spaces. But if erotic worlds in the
contemporary period cater to a plurality of erotic tastes, they by no means democ-
ratize the field of relations. Quite the contrary, what emerges are specialized sexual
18 This is not to imply that black gay men are the only men who participate in unsafe sex, nor that
black gay men who report unsafe sex always do so for reasons related to erotic capital.
19 The Internet, too, is a medium of sexual sociality highly amenable to a sexual fields approach. In
the case of interactive “chat rooms,” for instance, actors select particular kinds of virtual sexual sites and
concomitant sexual fields. Through the construction of personal profiles and the strategic use of photos,
these actors manipulate fronts to a degree unparalleled in more traditional, physical settings. Nonetheless,
while on the surface, cyber space appears as an arena prime for social construction, chat rooms and
dating sites are often highly organized in ways that require their users to makes sense of and articulate
with particular structures of desire, currencies of erotic capital, and tiers of desirability. Moreover, to
the extent that a particular erotic fantasy is stigmatized (e.g., fantasies involving intergenerational sex
or sadomasochism), erotically themed chat rooms may permit the articulation of these desires and their
elaboration in the form of uniquely intensified structures of desire in a process not unlike Fischer’s (1980)
concept of urban intensification. Like structures of desire anchored to “real-time” sexual sites, these cyber
structures of desire may themselves have implications for real-time practice, as the erotic habitus of sexual
actors’ shapes and is shaped by interaction in the virtual sexual field.
niches organized by social classifications related to race, ethnicity, age, and class,
among others (Laumann et al. 2004). In a sexual field, these classifications have
unique significance as sources of power, objectification, and marginality. Here, social
typologies and the socially constructed meanings attached to these obtain the form
of stable social positions. The relations of these positions, reflected in tiers of desir-
ability, exist independent of individual sexual actors and materialize in field-specific
patterns of sexual stratification.
And yet, though the organization of a sexual field reflects preexisting social ty-
pologies, the logic of eroticism—including (though in no way limited to) a preoccu-
pation with dominance, submission, and the like—lends the order of sexual fields a
distinctive twist. The experiences of black gay men in Manhattan’s gay downtown
provide a particularly instructive instance of this principle. Their narratives suggest
the presence of a middle-class, white gay structure of desire conferring power dif-
ferentially across kinds or classes of black participants. Whereas previous research
highlights the inhospitable conditions that black gay men face in white-dominated
gay enclaves (Boykin 1996; Cochran and Mays 2001; Ellingson and Schroeder 2004),
the present analysis underscores considerable variation in the social reception and
subsequent adaptations of black men to these arenas. In fact, the status hierarchy
within the downtown sexual field is not a simple extension of social inequality in the
United States, even as schematic constructions of race are anchored to this history.
For instance, while darker skin tone and highly racialized fronts have been shown to
diminish the socioeconomic standing of black men (Hill 2000; Thompson and Keith
2001), dark-skinned, “hyper-black,” “thuggish” men in this study received increased
sexual status in the gay downtown. This variation in erotic capital between black
men reveals a complex facet of sexual fields on the whole, which may be anchored
to histories of subjectification and inequality in ways neither easily anticipated nor
well understood.
So too, the relationship of desire to the organization of the sexual field is not
static but subject to change, and must be considered in light of structures of desire
that exist, in part, independent of the aggregation of individual desires. For example,
owners and managers of a given site of sexual sociality (e.g., a bar) may attempt
to artificially cultivate a particular structure of desire in order to maximize patron-
age. 20 Through the strategic use of sign-equipment, such entrepreneurs create an
erotic definition of the situation, which, though decoupled from the organic roots of
overlapping erotic habitus, nevertheless may produce the same effect, as actors with
similar erotic dispositions come to patronize the venue. 21 In a related vein, actors
can learn to acquire the erotic habitus of a given erotic world, and they may be
particularly inclined to do so if there are few alternative fields from which to choose,
or if the actors associated with a given field have other highly esteemed characteris-
tics. In these instances, actors will respond to the institutionalization of a structure
20 This was not at all uncommon in Manhattan during my fieldwork, as owners and managers of a
given establishment would regularly change the themes of a given night to try to capture a larger market
share, including advertisements that featured an eroticized age cohort (“frat night”), athletic propensity
(“jock night”), and ethnicity (“Italian night”).
21 This possibility should not be overstated, however. Erotic worlds are unlikely to exist if actors have
too little erotic affinity with a given structure of desire. As an example, while there are balloon fetishists,
it is unlikely that an erotic world revolving around the eroticism of balloons would have much commercial
success because there are simply too few balloon fetishists in a given locale to support the sites to which
a sexual field is anchored (though on the Internet this may not be the case given its freedom from the
constraints of time and territory). Conversely, it is also unlikely that the staple leather bar in most urban
gay centers would have as wide and enduring an appeal if it did not tap into an aspect of erotic habitus
that preexisted or had a significant affinity with desires that predate the field.
of desire in a process of deliberate inculcation. And finally, it is likely that erotic

worlds produce an intensification of desire by bringing together in a critical mass
individuals with overlapping erotic habitus (cf. Fischer 1980). Here, a given field’s
structure of desire will combine previously diffuse elements of an erotic theme into
an elaborated collective fantasy structure that exceeds and at the same time acts back
on individual desires, transforming these desires and the sexual practices they inspire.
In sum, the source of structures of desire are reducible neither to the aggregation of
previously constituted erotic habitus prior to exposure to the field (an “hysteresis”
of the erotic habitus), nor to a simple field effect (oversocialization) or deliberate in-
culcation. Rather, historically specific political, cultural, and commercial factors are
likely to shape the balance of the sources of structures of desire and their effects. 22
Having established the basic conceptual apparatus of the sexual fields framework
and applied it to a particular empirical case, I believe a concluding discussion of its
broader empirical and theoretical parameters is in order, including suggestions for
future lines of inquiry and development.
Future Directions. In this article, I argue that a sexual field is an institutionalized

matrix of relations that materializes as the overlapping erotic habitus of a given set
of actors are projected into (or strategically cultivated within) social space, produc-
ing a structure of desire and tiers of desirability reflected in thematically organized
sign-equipment, personal fronts, and the patterning of sociosexual interaction. 23 In
this formulation, I use Bourdieu’s (1980, 1994) theory of practice and his concept of
“field” to illuminate the social structural backdrop of erotic worlds, but Goffman’s
(1959, 1963) social psychology to provide the conceptual groundwork for capturing
micro-level interaction within these structured contexts, including patterns of expec-
tation, situational negotiation, the management of self, sexual selection, and even
perceptions of social equity and justice. Bringing Bourdieu and Goffman into con-
versation, the sexual fields framework highlights how actors negotiate the sexual field
by developing a reflexive relationship to their practices and to their hexis, and the cor-
responding erotic capital these provide. To “play the game,” actors strategically adjust
their self-presentation through manipulating fronts in an attempt to articulate with
the field’s structure of desire and corresponding tiers of desirability. They may also ne-
gotiate sexual practices in micro-level interactions organized around systematic power
differentials in the field as these dovetail with, compound, or produce individual-
level psychological needs and wants. Hence, the sexual fields framework brings
together the strategic reflexivity and role-distance of a Goffmanian dramaturgical
22 Kennedy and Davis’s (1993) historical study of a lesbian community in Buffalo provides an interesting
analysis of the differential impact of political conditions on structures of desires. They argue that butch
and fem roles were less rigidly institutionalized during the 1940s, prior to the social conservatism of
post World War II McCarthyism. Then, lesbians had greater latitude in constructing gendered roles and
expressing individual desires (i.e., there was greater horizontal differentiation of “types” of sexual actors).
By contrast, in the latter era, the lesbian community responded to harsh sociopolitical conditions through
increased internal pressure toward gender dichotomy, including the production of hyper-masculine women
who would “announce” their sexual identities through a defiant masculinity. Hence, in the earlier period,
a structure of desire existed with a more tightly linked relationship to aggregated individual desires that
were shaped prior to entrance into the lesbian community. Lesbians in the 1950s, by contrast, encountered
a structure of desire shaped more explicitly by the threatening political climate, somewhat irrespective of
individual desires.
23 The analyst of sexual fields should be aware that “two-sided” fields, such as a heterosexual field, will
introduce an additional layer of complexity as the sexual field will be organized around (at minimum)
two distinct, if thematically related, structures of desire and distinct, if thematically related, currencies
of erotic capital. The relationship of these field features poses a range of fascinating questions that will
require future investigation.
analysis with the structural backdrop of practical hegemony in a Bourdieusian anal-

ysis of the field.
In the future, development of the sexual fields framework will profit from a fur-
ther investigation of the relationship of the structural features of sexual fields and
the micro-level interactional order of erotic worlds. For instance, the staple urban
gay leather bar—with its enduring representational character, clientele base, and spe-
cialized fantasy structure—provides the optimal conditions for the emergence of a
densely structured sexual field that actors must negotiate. Thus, patrons of the leather
bar find themselves inserted into an arena of relations with a highly specified currency
of erotic capital and intractable tiers of desirability—field features that materialize
with an external facticity comparable to any other social structure. These features
are communicated via a structure of desire revolving around leather attire, a rough,
blue-collar masculinity, and sadomasochism, and reflected in advertisements of the
leather bar in local magazines and newspapers, in the signs/emblems on the exterior
of the venue, in the SM leather videos playing inside the bar, in the bar’s decor,
its name, the contests it features (e.g., best leather daddy), the particular fashion
and gear choices of patrons who inhabit the leather bar, in the bodily fronts of its
patrons (rugged, masculine, aggressive), in the age distribution of patrons (typically
older than the “twink” bar next door), and in the interactions between patrons,
which include observable patterns in who garners sexual attention from whom (i.e,
who gets “cruised”), and who approaches whom and how. As a consequence, when
compared to more diffusely organized sexual fields, a densely structured sexual field
like the leather bar is characterized by high vertical differentiation of players in well-
defined tiers of desirability, and low horizontal differentiation of “types” of players
and currencies of erotic capital.
The reverse is also true. The more heterogeneous the erotic habitus of a given set
of players located in a given site of sociality, the more diffuse the structure of desire,
the more varied the currencies of erotic capital, and the less crystallized the tiers of
desirability. This means that the abstract structure of relations of a sexual field will
materialize and dematerialize in social space as patterns in patronage, and the sym-
bolic settings of sexual sociality, vary. As an example, when the leather venue above
advertises a “bottomless beer draft” promotion each Wednesday evening, attracting a
markedly more heterogeneous clientele, including more diversified age-graded patron-
age networks, local men with less specialized erotic interests, and a gay tour group in
town for the week, so the formerly institutionalized structure of relations dissipates
or is suspended altogether. Thus, patrons of the leather bar on Wednesday evenings
will encounter a less densely structured sexual field with less vertical differentiation
of players and greater horizontal dispersion of social “types” and attendant erotic
capitals. Similarly, the coffee house across the street from the leather bar and the
cruising park just down the road may be frequented by sexual actors who, en masse,
do not share erotic habitus—thus democratizing the field of relations with a plurality
of erotic preferences that fail to “aggregate up” into a structure of desire, or that
produce multiple, co-present structures of desire, or weaker, more diffuse structures
of desire.
In these instances, a series of empirical questions logically follow, including in-
quiries into the political, social, cultural, and commercial conditions under which
structures of desire take form, the conditions under which they vary, and the con-
ditions under which actors adapt to or opt out of a given sexual field. Moreover,
it will be necessary to examine how more and less densely structured sexual fields
relate to one another, why some erotic players prefer one kind of sexual field over
another, how these choices are structured by race, class, ethnicity, age, ability, and
affective characteristics, among others, and how different kinds of erotic worlds re-
late to the urban landscape more generally. From this vantage point, one may begin
to consider a still broader set of questions, including how the structure of relations
within a given sector of sexual sociality constitutes a social system whereby multiple
erotic worlds of varying character and density configure the sociosexual landscape of
a given neighborhood or community. These sexual sectors themselves will be embed-
ded in still broader social, political, and economic processes and structures, including
local and federal policies related to sexual regulation and sexual citizenship, patterns
of immigration, gentrification and urban renewal, the rise and fall of sexually trans-
mitted infections, and historical transformations in the “commonsense partitive logic
of social ontology” (Hirschfeld 1998: 20), to name only a few. Indeed, by virtue of its
structural and historical orientation, the sexual fields framework is primed to analyze
sexual fields in their own right, but also to connect these fields with the meso- and
macro-level concerns of sociology.
Finally, there is another stream of inquiry suggested by the sexual fields
framework—one only briefly touched on in the present analysis. As Epstein (1991)
has noted, while the prevailing social constructionist perspective in the sociology
of sexuality provides an important conceptual advance over former approaches that
“naturalize” sexual practice, there has at the same time been a dearth of attention
paid to psychoanalytic processes and their role in shaping sexual desire, identity, and
subjectivity. From the vantage point of collective sexual life, one could take Epstein’s
criticism one step further: not only do the canonized social constructionist perspec-
tives undertheorize psychodynamic processes in shaping individual desire, they also
undertheorize the role of unconscious processes in shaping the erotic structures of
collective life. But if the sexual fields framework orients the researcher of modern
erotic worlds to the relationship of micro-level interaction and macro-level structures
and processes, it also provides a sensitizing conceptual apparatus that bridges uncon-
scious processes associated with sexual desire to a sociology of sexuality concerned
with the social organization of erotic life. As Widick (2003) notes of Bourdieu’s theory
of practice, the concept of “habitus” is implicitly a “cultural unconscious” (2003:685)
constituted by the sedimentation of the social order and its somatic manifestation at
the level of the body itself.
[I]n Bourdieu’s theory, the body itself is an ideological unconscious; with its
deep-seated and socially trained cognitive structures, its inculcated classifications,
perceptual schemata, and categorical dispositions—the socialized body decenters
the subject. (Widick 2003:683)
While spatial considerations for this article have permitted only a passing reference
to the erotic habitus and its relationship to sexual life, the sexual fields framework
is premised on the desiring subject and his or her historical location within those
fields of relations that transmit the dispositions and inclinations of erotic imagina-
tion. Implicit to this formulation is a nascent object-relations theory that identifies
the introjection of “objects” and “part objects” as constitutive of the development
of a social and sexual self (Epstein 1991). There is every reason to believe that vari-
ations in subject position by race, ethnicity, class, and sex, to name only a few, will
structure the character of these introjections and one’s relationship—psychological
and sexual—to a society’s social cosmology (Chodorow 1994; Epstein 1991; Moraga
and Hollibaugh 1983; Whittier and Melendez 2004). For instance, in their study of
sexual fantasy, Whittier and Melendez (2004) observe the ways in which race, class,
and gender “create sexual desire” and structure the scripts of sexual fantasy among
a sample of gay-identified men (2004:15). This is the territory of the erotic habitus—
the social basis of individual fantasy and, in collective life, sexual stratification. This
is not to suggest a reductive isomorphism between a given field’s structure of desire
and the unconscious but, rather, to identify in a preliminary theoretical formulation
a relationship of unconscious processes to the erotic structures of collective life. To
the extent that the sociology of sexuality lacks a serious incorporation of psycho-
dynamic processes (Epstein 1991), the sexual fields framework provides a point of
entry for these considerations. It may also provide, through the concept of erotic
habitus, a conceptual bridge that links social structure to individual processes of sex-
ual scripting (Simon and Gagnon 1986) and sexual intersubjectivity (Whittier and
Simon 2001; Whittier and Melendez 2004). In this regard, it will be important for
researchers to consider further the extent to which macrostratification transfers to
microsituations, both in terms of the composition of the erotic habitus (the habitus,
according to Bourdieu, which represents precisely this “transference” but at the level
of the unconscious), and in the context of sexual sociality. To be sure, the depth and
direction of these insights remain to be developed in future applications of the sexual
fields framework.
To conclude, there are reasons to believe that the sexual fields framework will
have increasing relevance as sociologists turn their attention toward the structures of
collective sexual life. This theoretical direction is especially well suited to the current
historical period as increasing urbanization and the erosion of traditional institu-
tional controls of sexuality establish conditions conducive to the rise of specialized
erotic worlds throughout the Western world. Still, as I have argued here, we would
be wrong to equate these epochal transformations with an unfettered democratiza-
tion of sexual relations—with the utopian “bodies and pleasures” once aspired to
by Foucault (1980). Quite the contrary, as a discipline trained on capturing the or-
ganization of collective life, sociology would do well to redouble its commitment to
the study of sexuality, for it is here, in the domain of desire and erotic life, that the
sedimentation of “the social” in human affairs may reveal itself in its most striking
and insidious forms.
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ADAM ISAIAH GREEN

Modern urban life is increasingly characterized by specialized erotic worlds designed

In modernity, urbanization, mass communication, and the erosion of traditional,

Sociological Theory 26:1 March 2008

The Anatomy of Erotic Worlds

in light of social structure, as individuals select on specific social objects, be they

Conceiving “Sexual Field” and “Erotic Capital”

THREE STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF A SEXUAL FIELD

Fashion sensibilities, too, communicated the clone structure of desire.

Taken together, Levine’s empirical observations illustrate an institutionalized struc-

Distribution of Erotic Capital

recalibrate the primary field’s tiers of desirability, reorganizing interactional patterns

Black Gay Men Adapt to an Urban Sexual Field

encounter a field of relations constituted by positions anchored to histories of

The disproportionate representation of white to black men in the downtown sexual

characteristics possess an extensive representational pedigree rooted in the slave trade

The narratives of these men reveal a field of relations organized by a racialized

Thence, the historical construction of the black male as a dangerous, uncivilized

fieldwork, the case of Calvin—mentioned above—represents a particularly power-

I don’t know how it happened . . . I went to “Spartika” (a popular gay bar in

By way of contrast, Dave—mentioned earlier—corroborates Calvin’s perceptions.

Toward an Analysis of Modern Erotic Worlds: The Sexual Fields Approach

of desire in a process of deliberate inculcation. And finally, it is likely that erotic

Future Directions. In this article, I argue that a sexual field is an institutionalized

analysis with the structural backdrop of practical hegemony in a Bourdieusian anal-

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