A British filmmaker has coined a pithy new term for what some people have called “dude sex” and what others have deemed “bromosexuality.”
Louis Theroux — the documentarian behind such films as My Scientology Movie and Mothers on the Edge and a cousin of Justin Theroux — discussed “situational homosexuality” in reference to his time at Westminster School in central London in a Radio 4 interview on Sunday, May 12.
Related: This straight actor just opened up about fooling around ‘with dudes’
“There’s something about a lot of males in a confined space,” he said. “Something about the improvised physical fabric, which is all higgledy-piggledy. And then — I hesitate to say this — a certain level of situational homosexuality, which I think — I hope I’m not scandalizing anyone — is relatively common in prison and to all-male boarding schools.”
I have a dog-pelgänger! pic.twitter.com/DXw6XGarju
— Louis Theroux (@louistheroux) December 13, 2018
Related: Straight dudes confess the gayest things they’ve done in private
In a 2015 Queerty interview, researcher Jane Ward — author of Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men — weighed in on the “bro job” phenomenon. She said:
“A lot of people have conducted research on sex between straight-identified men, but often they are looking at one particular context. Like prisons, for instance. Often what those researchers conclude is: These are straight-identified men who are engaging in temporary homosexual sex acts under very unique circumstances. In prison, no women are sexually available and so straight men are doing this out of deprivation.
“What I argue in the book is that straight men actually manufacture opportunities to have sexual contact with one another all the time in pretty much any environment, whether it’s constrained or not, whether women are available or not.”
