THE MAN2MAN ALLIANCE Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution

This section of the site contains a number of articles I've written analyzing the cultural domination of anal sex and the historical significance of the Frot Movement; it also includes our Man2Man Alliance policy papers, and essays by other Alliance members.

The title essay, Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution is a download of the Viewpoint article I wrote for GayToday, the online zine with 40,000 page views and 200,000 hits a week, which ran from 11/6-11/12/00. This opinion piece was the first shot fired in the national gay press in our club's battle to get recognition and validation for our sexual choices, and to spark a debate about the future of gay male sex life. If you didn't catch it online, take a peek here -- it just may help you feel better about your future.

Interview: Cockrub Warrior Bill Weintraub is a download of the follow-up interview conducted by GayToday's famed editor Jack Nichols in response to intense reader interest in Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution. Nichols, a long-time Gay Liberationist, author of five books on gay male life and sexuality, and winner of the 1998 Public Service Award of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, poses a series ofincisive and perceptive questions as we discuss the history of gay male sex, the true nature of frot, the failure of the AIDS community to understand the significance of the cultural domination of anal sex, and what the sexual future for gay men will look like. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the meaning of the frot movement and the cultural changes it portends.

And The Buttfuck Dictatorship is a somewhat longer version of Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution, exploring the roots of that present-day tyranny and what the future of that particular illusion just might be. Personally, I think those aggravatin analists have ruled the roost long enough, and I'm certain that we Frot Men and Cockrub Warriors have a bright future ahead of us. Find out why.

Our Definitions page is a compendium of terms readers frequently encounter in the various articles, essays, and message board posts on our Man2Man Alliance, Frot Men, and Heroic Homosex sites.
An Introduction to Frot and The Man2Man Alliance is the charter statement of the beliefs and goals of the Alliance, "a coalition of gay, bi, and straight-identified men who practice Frot: phallus-on-phallus sex; who reject anal penetration, promiscuity, and effeminacy; and who put forth the truth that one man can love another without any surrender of either's masculinity."
In addition to these articles and Hyacinthine Love, my first, ground-breaking essay about Frot and the cultural tyranny of anal penetration, three articles are key to understanding the policy positions of the Alliance:

What Sex Is
This very popular ADULT photo essay examines the question of what makes sex sexual: penetration or genital contact?
Unlike most of the other articles on this section of the site, What Sex Is is X-RATED. It's highly informative, but should not be read by those visitors offended by graphic depictions of homo and hetero sexuality.

An Anus Is Not a Vagina
Warning: some adult content.
This Man2Man Alliance policy paper, which is in three parts, discusses three aspects of anal penetration:
Part 1. The Biology of Anal Penetration, examines the anatomy and physiology of the anus and rectum, with particular attention paid to the various diseases and mechanical problems they're subject to when penetrated;
Part 2. The Psychology of Anal Penetration, looks at the question of pleasure and pain in anal penetration, and asks what it is that anally-receptive men actually experience during penetration; and
Part 3. The Ideology of Anal Penetration, analyzes the belief systems which underlie and support this fringe sexuality.
An Anus Is Not a Vagina is essential reading for those who wish to understand the reality and the role of anal penetration in gay male life today.

Why Be Faithful? is a major new Man2Man Alliance policy paper which looks at at the health and psychological risks of sexual promiscuity, and examines the benefits of Fidelity.
Here are some highlights:
In Part I, we examine in depth the many concurrent epidemics of STD affecting men who have sex with men, and although we of course endorse Frot as a very low risk activity, we also note that
no sexual behavior outside of Fidelity to one uninfected lifetime partner can confer absolute protection from STD.
And we warn Frot men explicitly, as we've done countless times before, that they cannot combine Frot and promiscuity:
Men who are promiscuous, even in low-risk activities, still run the risk not only of acquiring an STD, but of being part of a process of disease creation which will, ultimately, affect everyone in the community.
In Part II, we talk about the many benefits of stable, loving, long term relationships, paying particular attention to the norm of warrior altrusim.
We also address "open relationships" by asking, "Can there be committment without fidelity?"; and respond:
Only a sexually exclusive relationship can protect male lovers from the dangers not just of STDs, but of emotional infidelity.
and we add:
Men who have sex with men, like the rest of humanity, do best in relationships when their sexual and emotional energies are focused upon each other exclusively.
We also look at abstinence both among older gay men:
For a Frot Man to choose abstinence rather than take part in a form of sex he dislikes and which is dangerous as well, is good -- it's a response which protects both his integrity and his health, and gives him time to look for a long term relationship with another Frot guy -- which is what he needs;
and among young people:
Delaying sexual onset -- abstinence -- is just as important for gay young people as for other teens.
Gay teens and gay men are not members of some alien species.
We're human beings, and we have the same needs for purity and security in our emotional and sexual relationships as heterosexual people.
And the best way for you as a young gay person to achieve those goals is to abstain from sex until you're sure you've met the man with whom you will spend the rest of your life.
We ask whether biology is destiny, and look at the phenomenon of gay male promiscuity in the modern world:
Only among gay men in the post-industrialized world, has a culture of absolute promiscuity, with no effective restraints upon individual behavior, developed.
That development is, as we shall see, though supported by an ideology and subcultural norms, very recent.
Indeed, this sort of unbridled promiscuity is so new that we may reasonably regard it as a social experiment -- and one which has, by any reasonable measures, including the physical and psychological health of its participants, and their happiness, failed.
We then look closely at the ideology of multipartnered pansexualism and the implications of the beliefs of the pansexualists.
And finally, we come back to the benefits of Fidelity and Heroic Love.

Why Be Faithful? is one of our most important policy papers to date.
So we hope you'll take the time to read Why Be Faithful?
You'll be glad you did.

Sex Between Men: An Activity, not a Condition is a key Man2Man Alliance policy paper which examines the difference between sex between Men as an activity -- and as a condition.
The paper looks in depth at such important terms as heterosexualization, and then analyzes the real-life experience of two straight-identified guys who moved from threeways with a woman to Frot two-ways with each other.
An examination of the ancient Greek past as well as our global present, Sex Between Men: An Activity, not a Condition is essential reading for those who wish to understand why the Alliance rejects the categories of sexual orientation, and what our Alliance vision is for the Future of Men.

Sex Between Men: An Activity, not a Condition is a key policy paper and important reading for all members of The Man2Man Alliance -- as well as the general public.

Also noteworthy:
Walter Odets, the sex police, and the big lie. Who are the agents of social and sexual control in the gay male community today? And is it homophobic to be critical of anal penetration? This essay by Alliance founder Bill Weintraub is a hard-hitting look at the realities of analist oppression.
Ignorance is strength: Protective stupidity and the debasement of language under analism. Are Frot and anal equally valid choices? And are "men into anal" correct in claiming that anal is not inherently disease-spreading, unnatural, and degrading? In this essay, I examine the ways in which analism uses the sort of totalitarian thought-processes described by George Orwell in 1984, debasing language in order to prevent, censor, and distort debate about the realities of anal penetration.
Lavishly illustrated and not to be missed.
Multipartnered Pansexualism or Heroic Love? In this Man2Man Alliance policy paper, posted in February of 2004, we look at some of the historical forces which gave rise to the dominant culture of anal penetration described in the first three articles listed above; and we then examine ten representative messages generated by proponents of the dominant culture of anal "sex," including documents from AIDS Service Organizations, pornographers, academics, safer sex educators, gay sex advice columnists, personal ads, and major media; analyze how they support the culture of anal penetration and promiscuity among gay men; and describe our goals for a new m2m culture.

In April 2004 we presented four essays on the nature of Men who Love Men.
The first is our Man2Man Alliance policy paper, Are Men Who Have Sex With Men Intergendered?
The question is an important one, because until men understand the truth about male sexuality -- that it's normal and normative for men to have sex with men -- they will remain vulnerable to attacks designed to confuse and frighten them, attacks coming from both the analist left and the religious right.
And because in my experience those attacks are so destructive of the lives of men, I've included as an accompanying article a powerful editorial titled Awash in Lies.
This is a strong personal statement about the reality of men who have sex with men.
In addition, we welcome a new essayist to the cultural section of the site, long-time Alliance contributor Robert Loring, Th.D., Ph.D., who presents, in A Case of Rape, a telling tale of analist rape and its aftermath;
and his own very moving and persuasive meditation on masculinity and loyalty, Brothers of the Heart.
All four essays are excellent and highly recommended.
Also recommended is an op-ed I wrote for the Washington (DC) Blade in October 2003:
Rethinking Gay Sex, which makes the case for a re-examination of gay male sexual behavior and mores in the light of the continuing epidemics of anally-vectored diseases among gay men.
Not All Gay Men Are Sodomites, first published in GayToday, is my response to the US Supreme Court's welcome overturn of the sodomy laws, which had the unfortunate if predictable side-effect of reinforcing the public association between gay men and anal penetration.

In addition, there are a number of other articles in this section of Frot Men about anal, frot and AIDS.
The first, Letters to POZ, concerns the controversy that erupted over barebacking activist Stephen Gendin's infection of his lover Kyle McDowell, and the failure of POZ to take note of the cultural factors involved.
The second, The Anal Sex Debate at GayToday, contains an exchange of letters, only some of which GayToday would publish, between me and analist Teddy Snyder. And there's a letter from philosopher and Gay Lib pioneer Arthur Evans -- also unpublished -- there as well.
Next comes Plato's Cave, journalist Chuck Tarver's witty and very effective look at Buttfuck Culture.
Is Gay Sex Trying Too Hard to be Straight? is an op-ed I wrote for the Canadian online paper 365Gay.com following a public outcry after its publisher deleted all message board posts from guys into frot, and then deleted the message board itself. It's a common practice for gay websites to delete posts critical of anal; but in this case, the "editorial board" of 365Gay, people who to this day are anonymous and remain unknown to me, proved susceptible to public pressure.
I was allowed to write one more op-ed for 365Gay, titled Do Gay Men Have to be Promiscuous?, but when I submitted a third titled Risk Reduction or Cultural Change?, more openly critical of the safer-sex establishment and anal sex, the nameless and faceless "editorial board" at 365Gay simply stopped responding to my emails.
So, what the reader can see here is three newspapers -- GayToday, POZ, and 365Gay.com -- which bill themselves as community news sources, routinely censoring articles, letters, and posts critical of the ongoing cultural domination of anal sex.
It's instructive to compare that editorial behavior to the continuing widespread reporting on the views and activities of those who believe that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Of course, if HIV isn't the cause of AIDS, anal, and, indeed, barebacking, isn't a problem -- so it's apparently okay to give exhaustive coverage to those ideas and their proponents, no matter how absurd and ultimately dangerous they may be.
And speaking of dangerous, in February 2003 Rolling Stone featured an article on "Bug-chasers," HIV negative-men who seek to sero-convert through unprotected anal sex. As usual, though, the piece completely ignored the cultural context of this deadly behavior.
In response, I wrote Biological Imperative or Cultural Dictate? Bug-chasing, Barebacking, and the Safer-Sex Establishment, an examination of the safer-sex establishment's complicity in the ongoing culture of anal penetration.
Do Condoms Work? In this Man2Man Alliance Policy Paper, we look at current research on the efficacy and failure rates of condoms, and explain why, when it comes to HIV and other STD prevention, we support Primary Behavior Change -- as in, stop doing anal, start doing Frot -- rather than condom campaigns.
If you're still doing anal penetration, you owe it to yourself to read this paper, and particularly the abstract from the world-respected Cochrane Institute showing a condom failure rate of 20% in *vaginal* intercourse.
Understanding the truth about condoms and HIV could save your life, so ck it out.
As could understanding the mechanisms and realities of date rape. In Is Unwanted Anal Penetration Date Rape?, a Man2Man Alliance Policy Paper, we examine the ways in which participants in mainstream gay male anal culture pressure and coerce men into frot so as to penetrate them anally, and suggest ways men can avoid becoming the victims of what is in fact analist date rape.
Anal penetration is uniquely dangerous. It's important for men living in analist culture to learn the signs of date rape and how to stop it.
And it's important for men to understand that anal penetration does not only pose a threat to their physical health.
In The Ultimate Defeat, Robert Loring, author of the very popular Brothers of the Heart, examines the highly destructive psychological and spiritual effects of anal penetration.
The Ultimate Defeat is essential reading.
Media Watch brings together ten articles from the mainstream press which purposefully or unwittingly expose the failure of traditional AIDS prevention programs based on condom campaigns.
This discussion is relevant to our work because of course there's another solution to an anally-transmitted epidemic, and that's to help men avoid anal penetration.
In addition to writing by me, Chuck Tarver, and Robert Loring, there are essays by other warriors in this section of the site:
In Sodomy Laws: their impact on the formation of 'Gay male' attitudes to anal sex, British writer and CockToCock Activist Martin Finn examines the effect of the fight to de-criminalize sodomy on analist attitudes, and calls for a re-examination of our thinking about M2M sex. This is a beautifully written and closely reasoned essay by the author of STUDS and COCKTOCOCK, to which I've added an After Word.
Also by Mart is Cultural Polarisation, an essay dense with ideas about the cause of and potential cure for the growing cultural gulf among the communities of men who like to have sex with men. Mart is particularly acute in his understanding of how commerical interests underwrite and control gay identity, and why many men reject a subculture self-consciously modeled on Sodom. This is powerful writing from an astute observer of the male-male scene.
Equally powerful is Eric Lupin's Labels ARE Meaningless, which, presented as more and more straight-identified men come onto the site, looks at the way men who have sex with men have been mis-led by society's arbitrary division into gay, bi, and straight.
Come Back to the Middle, by Ian Drew, is a strong article and excellent exposition of our views which first appeared in the Ft. Lauderdale Express.
The Anal Sex Myth: A Frottage Manifesto, by Logan McClintock, is a very popular article which both attacks anal and makes a strong case for Frot.
Warriors Lead the Way is a stirring call to action from Farmboy Warrior, who asks each of us to consider our role in the fight to free our brothers from deadly confines and soul-destroying prejudices both str8 and gay.
And finally there is A Somber Day, a brief essay about AIDS, anal, and frot, that I wrote for the club's Personal Stories message board on June 5, 2001, the 20th anniversary of the first report of AIDS.
I encourage you to read them all. These articles and letters, taken together, constitute my and our club's clearest expression of the goals and theory of Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution.
bill

Cockrub Warriors Rule!
Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution

By Bill Weintraub

Frotage For 25 years, ever since gay male culture took a turn to the right in 1975, anal sex has dominated both the gay male psyche and gay men's sex lives. Whereas previously sex had been a smorgasbord, with oral sex, JO, frottage, and anal sex seen as essentially equal, a new and rigorous definition of good gay sex appeared in the mid-70s, in which the first three were considered foreplay, and only the last regarded as the culminating, and therefore essential, gay sexual act.

(This new model of gay male sexuality mirrored, of course, heterosexuality, in which foreplay leads to penetration, and for which the psychiatric establishment of the time had a term: "full genital maturity." The parallel was stark: For straights, cocks and cunts. For that newly emerging ethnic group called gays, cocks and butts. Tops and bottoms, dominants and submissives -- you see, we could say, we're not that different after all.)

Gay men who didn't like anal intercourse rapidly found themselves put into a category that just a few years earlier had been reserved for all homosexuals: adolescent and immature. Their sexual choices were stridently belittled, and they were often told that they themselves were not truly gay.

A few, like myself, who perhaps remembered the bad old days before gay liberation and believed that the essence of sexual liberation was the freedom to practice one's own authentic sexuality, stuck stubbornly to their non-anal ways. (See "Hyacinthine Love" at www.whitecranejournal.com/wc01080.htm or on the Cockrub Warriors site for my autobiographical view of that era.)

But many found that the peer pressure was too great, and simply concealed their sexual preferences as best they could, having anal sex when it seemed necessary to placate their partners.

And so it's gone ever since. Today, anal sex dominates gay male lives, both in thought and deed.

Its hegemony would be the envy of tyrants anywhere. Anal sex dominates pornography, which remains the principal way sex is modeled for gay men, dominates gay literature, theater, legitimate cinema, art, and the gay press, dominates discussions of gay male relationships, in which the question is invariably asked "Who's the top?", dominates cyberspace and the chat rooms, and of course dominates our sex lives themselves.

The cultural deathgrip that anal sex has on gay male life is so thorough that it's equal to the stranglehold that heterosex once had on all sexuality in America. Thirty years after Gay Lib first took on that smug, complacent group of social arbiters and moralists it called the Heterosexual Dictatorship, gay life is controlled by a Buttfuck Dictatorship.

Physically, of course, this particular despotism has been a disaster. We're still counting the bodies, but my guess is that to date (and allowing for under reporting) about 500,000 gay and bi American men have died of AIDS, most of whom acquired HIV through anal intercourse.

And there's no end in sight. No vaccine, no cure. The failure of HAART and the barebacking debacle, epitomized this summer by the death of barebacking activist Stephen Gendin, who had infected his previously negative lover about a year earlier, sounded a clarion call that there was no safe way to return to unprotected anal sex, even while rising infection rates tell us that more and more are doing so.

Psychologically, the cultural emphasis on anal sex has been, I maintain, devastating also. The division of gay men into tops and bottoms means, inevitably, that a large proportion of gay men, probably the majority, internalize a submissive, feminized role that at best is a parody of the way women themselves actually behave and which has been rejected by most heterosexuals. (The incorporation of this female caricature, which is most clearly seen in the buxom burlesques of drag, should not be confused with the psychologically desirable male goal of coming to terms with the feminine, or intuitive, side of one's nature.)

Related Articles from the GayToday Archive:
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As gay men we experience the results of this internalized self-hate everyday in the bitchiness, the attitude, the hissy fits, and the denigrating use of she, her, and girl to refer to other gay men which, along with alcoholism, drug abuse and compulsive promiscuity, are among the worst aspects of gay male life.

And although we can't be absolutely certain of what goes on in private, we know that chat rooms are full of men asking to be fucked while being called pussy, cunt, and bitch. Put simply, the division of gay men into tops and bottoms has strengthened internalized homophobia, the single greatest destructive force in gay male life.

And spiritually, the denial of equality in sexual relations ties gay male sexual practice and gay men into the false dualities of the intensely homophobic Judeo-Christian-Islamic worldview, which in contrast to the other great religions, denies the essential oneness of creation, and falsely posits instead a universe divided into creator and created, good and evil, male and female, top and bottom.

Despite its disastrous effects upon the health, emotions, and spirit of gay men, the Buttfuck Dictatorship remains comfortably in power. Like the heterosexual dictatorship which preceded it, its primary weapons are the scorn and ridicule it lets fall on gay men who dare to deviate from its norms, and its ironclad control of the avenues of debate.

But it's axiomatic among students of revolution that where there's oppression, there's resistance. And the resistance to anal sex has been building among gay men for years.

Three years ago I wrote an essay called "Some Thoughts on Cock-rubbing and the Cultural Tyranny of Butt-fucking." In it I explored some of the cultural and historical forces I've discussed in this article, and described at some length how I had a long and passionate sexual life with my lover which centered around cockrubbing, and in which anal sex played no part.

gaycoup8.jpg - 19.95 K Despite my article being closely reasoned and passionately written, no one would print it. After two years of putting it out there, I found one editor, Toby Johnson at White Crane Journal, who was willing to run it, but even he was uncomfortable with the term butt-fucking in the title and insisted that I add the somewhat opaque hyacinthine love to its name.

Then I found that no one would publicize it, or carry for that matter any other criticisms of anal sex. When, for example, I suggested to the publisher and editor of POZ that the failings of safer-sex campaigns and the urge to bareback needed to be explored in a cultural, rather than simply moral sense, they refused to even run a letter from me.

Even after Larry Kramer himself intervened via email to urge that they do so. It was a stunning example of an entrenched AIDS/anal establishment simply digging in it heels and saying, fuck you fella, we control the debate and you're not going to be heard. (Of course there may have been other motives as well, since POZ had hardly been an innocent bystander to barebacking, having editorially puffed up Gendin and the barebacking movement as the natural heirs to Michael Callen, ACT/UP and the PWA coalition. We'll never know how many people died or were infected as a result of POZ' flirtation with pseudo-revolutionary sexual politics.)

So I turned to the internet, and there I discovered a rapidly growing movement of men into frot (the new, hip term that's short for frottage), cockrubbing, and wrestling who refuse to knuckle under to the anal establishment, and who are increasingly vocal and organized in their opposition. I've spent most of a year now publicizing my article among them, have gotten tons of email responses from grateful readers, and now have my own online frot community Cockrub Warriors

This growing movement of men into frot who disown anal sex is not simply a matter of sexual taste. It goes farther than that, for it's a rejection of the overly and unhealthily feminized self-image of gay men that has dominated our lives for generations. As such it is, I believe, like other masculinist impulses among the gay masses, a manifestation of the collective unconscious correcting a psychic phenomenon that has lingered too long in one direction.

So it's no accident that men into frot reject almost every aspect of the anal sex worldview, embracing equality and masculinity as the essence of a gay male sexual experience, and often, though not always, seeking involvement in such traditional male contact sports as wrestling and boxing. To the frot boys, the buttfuck emperor has no clothes -- his proclamations of superiority and sexual fulfillment ring hollow, and much of the time, guys into frot like myself just don't get it.

Why, we ask for example, is it better to dominate (or be dominated by) your partner? Doesn't make sense for guys into frot. What we value is the intense and complete equality we feel with our buds and lovers, the face to face, heart to heart, cock to cock contact, in which neither partner is controlling the other. What we seek, as I've said often in my own writing, is the union (or contest) of two equally strong and noble beings, not a master and slave. If that's romantic, so be it. For many of us, frot is the ultimate expression of romance.

Why is there so little touching? In porn fuck scenes, it's common for the only contact between the partners to be anus and penis. What about the rest of the body? What happened to the back, the chest, the arms, the legs, the face, the ass cheeks themselves? Where'd they go? In frot, we relish the full body contact, the touching of as much of the two bodies as possible for as long as possible. That's one reason that guys into frot are so often into wrestling, and vice versa. We want to feel all of the other guy's body, not just his fuck hole.

What about sensation? Cocks and balls are, in arousal, exquisitely sensitive. Anuses are not -- they are not, and will never be, organs of sexual pleasure. Every guy into frot has heard the claims made for the prostate. We don't buy them. We think that anal sex is, for the bottom, largely a mental trip, a getting off on the domination and the pain.

What about the parallels with heterosex? Whenever we frot guys bring them up, we're accused in effect of disloyalty -- why? Are the butt-fuckers that insecure? I maintain that anal sex is popular among gay men for the same reason that Jews used to shorten their noses and African-Americans straighten their hair -- it yields a sense of conformity with the majority culture. Yet would any Jewish leader advocate plastic surgery, any Black leader endorse Afro-sheen? I don't think so.

So there now exist two very different views of sex in the gay male world. The older is characterized by inequality, the feminization of one partner, and limited physical contact. The newer values equality and masculinity, and seeks sex that is prolonged and sensual.

What is emerging is a Kulturkampf. And unless the analists become far more tolerant of their gay frot brothers, over time the conflict and distance between the two camps will inevitably grow.

But those of us into frot are not really concerned by the widening gulf. We have stood apart from the great anal sex frenzy of the last 25 years that consumed an entire generation, and from that experience we have gained a certain clarity. It's clear to us that anal sex is physically dangerous and culturally outmoded, and we will continue to say so. No doubt the proponents of buttfucking will mount a vigorous defense. But they won't succeed. There are currents and tides to human affairs and anal sex, with its emphasis on feminization, hierarchy, and penetration no matter how great the risk, belongs to the past and is about to be washed away.

For frot belongs to that emerging world in which all people will be free, dominated not by the state or the group or the corporation or a husband or a boyfriend, but free to make their own choices and determine their own destinies.

It was the democratic and homosexed Greeks who first had that vision of humanity, which they gave to the world. We in frot are promoting that vision sexually. We frot boys and cockrub dudes are confident that the days of the buttfuck dictatorship are numbered, and we are certain that the future is ours.