Bent on Men

A Memoir on Taboo Feelings, Fraternal Curiosity, and Faith

De: Harrison Bly

Narrado por: Harrison Bly

This taboo memoir eavesdrops into the unguarded mind of a Christian husband and father who came of age attracted to men. As a boy, Harrison Bly craved male affection and camaraderie but never found his footing in the world of boys.

Secretly gay in a conservative Christian world, Harrison compromised authenticity only to find shallow acceptance. On the crooked path to manhood, Harrison fumbled in the dark between ideologies on faith and homosexuality that failed to acknowledge his deepest wounds and longings. But through unplanned and unlikely relationships, Harrison discovered the transforming power of male love that reframed his obsessions, cravings, and curiosities, challenging everything he had come to accept about his masculinity and sexuality.

This book is not a theological primer on homosexuality. Rather, this memoir is a story about what happens in the mind and body of a man who fought to find himself in the place he belonged.

©2021 Harrison Bly (P)2024 Harrison Bly

Vulnerable Recollection of a Little Known Path

Harrison Bly’s vulnerable recollection of the emergence of his sexuality, experiences of shame and longing for masculinity, and paths of integration and healing highlights a little known path among Christian men. The raw descriptions of his embodied experience and of the power of male intimacy leave readers with images that drive home the challenges of living a life in which one is “too gay to be Christian” yet “too Christian to be gay,” and the places where one may find brothers. As one of the few (or at least the only to this reviewer’s knowledge) book on mixed orientation marriage written from the male perspective in Christianity, Bly’s account also provides representation for unseen men within churches who can point to someone who gives voice to their lived experience. This book is a must read for readers desiring greater understanding of (and blunt honesty about) what a minority experience of sexuality can look like for a Christian man growing up who enters the mystery of marital union with a woman.

The voice and the honesty.

A beautiful story of God doing a great work in this man’s life. It’s made more poignant by the fact that the author of the book is the narrator, and I loved that.

An Emotionally Layered Treasure Hunt

I first read Bent on Men in 2021 and found it inspiring and uplifting. Having revisited the book by listening to the audiobook, it struck me in a new way. Some literary works reveal everything they have in a single reading, but this one continues to unfold with each encounter. Perhaps it’s hearing Harrison narrate the story, but I’m discovering—or possibly rediscovering—nuances that highlight the deep emotional effort behind its creation. This book is a true blessing. Please read, listen, or both, and thank yourself later.

An Unconvincing Performance of Masculinity

This is a sad story about a same-sex-attracted man who wants to change, who desperately wants to fit into the other-sex-attracted mold. The book could be classified as Ex-Gay literature, except it is not really like the many bad autobiographies in that genre. For 'Harrison Bly' is a fictional character, not a real person. His voice is a literary creation, stylish and richly imaginative, way beyond the mawkish sincerity found in come-to-Jesus autobiographies.
Now the mold of masculinity 'H B' wants to fit into is dictated by a relatively backwoods form of Christianity that essentially teaches sadness and submission. His spirit has been broken by a religion that makes the Adam-and-Eve mythos into a moral commandment enjoining marriage and family. This causes the sensitive boy 'H' to continually strain to be a "real man'. It never occurs to him to question or to modify this model of masculinity and, well . . . just try to be himself. Further, 'H' has to justify the god that has imposed this stress and strain upon him, imposed great burdens upon him by the mere accidents of his upbringing. 'H' defends his god with various theological fantasies. In this way the author -- who never drops the mask of autobiography -- shows how superstitious a man becomes when he is too weak to wrestle with his god.
Hence the overall lesson seems to be: this is what results when a person never really ventures to live his own life. It is like he has to perform in a role assigned by a bad Casting Director. What does it mean not to live one's own life, trapped in stereotypes of gender? A very 21st century tragedy, exhibiting a victim of our Pro / Anti-LGBTQ controversies.
In fact, 'H B's' life might be understood as the perfect dialectical antithesis of the modern gay life-choice. Here, a hapless bloke exchanges what might have been a devotion to another man, (granted) a projection of his incomplete masculinity, for a devotion to the commands of Jesus as he misunderstands them, a projection of the voice of God because of his deafness to that Voice within.