It's been more than five years since White Crane Journal published my first, ground-breaking critique of anal penetration and discussion of the Phallus-on-Phallus "frottage" alternative:
Hyacinthine Love, or Some Thoughts on Cock-rubbing and the Cultural Tyranny of Butt-fucking.

Since that time, my work and that of those who agree with me has been consistently censored by the gay press.

While, by a conservative estimate, 20,000 gay and bi men in America alone have been infected with HIV each and every year.

More than 100,000 in five years.

What is it we advocates of direct phallus-on-phallus frottage, which we call Frot, have said which, in the face of an ongoing catastrophe, has earned us such unrelenting censorship?

That fundamentally, sex is genital rubbing -- the rubbing of erectile tissue against erectile tissue.

When a man penetrates another man or a woman anally, the person penetrated, the so-called anally-receptive partner, experiences no direct genital stimulation, because there is no genital or erectile tissue in the anus or rectum to be stimulated.

Claims about the proximity of the ano-rectal area to the genitals or the prostate are meaningless in the face of that one fact: that there is no direct genital stimulation for the receptive partner in anal sex.

The only way the receptive partner can be stimulated genitally is if he or she masturbates while being penetrated.

And indeed, in gay male porn, particularly porn made before the advent of Viagra, the anally-receptive partner is rarely erect.

Invariably, the insertive partner or "top" penetrates him, and after some vigorous male thrusting, achieves orgasm; the camera then cuts away, and when it returns the receptive partner or "bottom" masturbates himself to erection and orgasm.

That's the reality.

What's ironic is that "men who have sex with men" (MSM) have a genital-genital option, which again we call "Frot" -- direct phallus on phallus sex, sex which is mutually and simultaneously genital and thus highly pleasurable -- and which is universally recognized to be safer sex and very low risk for all STD, but especially HIV.

That's not true for heterosexuals.

Penile-vaginal sexual intercourse is significantly more risky than Frot -- for HIV, and for all other STD.

That's one reason among many that our work alarms the religious right.

The religious right needs "gay sex" to be dangerous and deadly, and of course more dangerous and deadlier than vaginal sex.

The plain fact that there's a way for men to love other men which is very pleasurable and very low risk destroys their argument that God inevitably punishes homosexual behavior with deadly disease.

Of course, it is in theory possible to contract two of the more mild STIs, herpes and HPV, through Frot practiced promiscuously.

But not only is the risk of contracting these STI very low, they do not begin to compare in severity with the anally-transmitted scourges of our age: HIV, hepatitis B and C, secondary and tertiary syphilis, gonorrhea, giardiasis, chylamidia, LGV, etc.

Despite these plain facts: that direct genital-genital stimulation is both by definition and in reality far more pleasurable than any other sort of "sex"; and that for men who have sex with men, such stimulation is far safer than any other form of MSM sex, but most especially oral and anal penetration --

Despite these plain facts, the gay male media refuse to discuss in any meaningful or substantive way the question of what sex actually is.

Nor will the media question why anal penetration has the grip that it does on gay male life.

Which in our view is because it mimics, as is common in minority cultures, the majority: it creates a penetrative paradigm of top and bottom, butch and femme, man and pseudo-woman.

For an oppressed minority to ape its oppressor is both dysfunctional and dangerous; and for a minority media to refuse to discuss the possibility that such is at core of the minority's life is professionally and ethically negligent.

Similarly, the AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) and their safer-sex educators, while mentioning "frottage" in passing, make no effort that we can see to actually put Frot forward for what it is: a far more pleasurable and very low risk way for men to have sex with men.

Instead, the ASOs treat anal as a sort of sacred cow.

If men want to do anal, they say, we must help them to do so.

We cannot question the act itself.

Why not?

Gabriel Rotello has demonstrated, and gay men who were active prior to 1975 know, that anal used not to be at the center of gay male life.

That it's only been there for the last 30 years, which coincide, not by happenstance, with the most unhealthy and indeed deadly three decades which gay men have endured.

Not even the Nazi assault on homosexuals killed as many as gay men as we have killed ourselves through anal penetration.

Which is why AIDS activist Larry Kramer, in his November 2004 speech at New York City's Cooper Union, spoke of men murdering other men through anal penetration.

Furthermore, public health authorities and the ASOs are now warning that the development of increasingly drug-resistant and lethal strains of HIV is an inevitability.

Fact is, the anatomy and the physiology of the anus are such that it will always be extraordinarily vulnerable to disease.

The mucosal lining of the anus is only one-cell thick; damage that lining, which penetration inevitably does, and you're up against vascular tissue: blood.

So that anything on the penis, ejaculated by the penis, or on a finger, fist, or sex toy, gains immediate entrance to the blood supply of the receptive partner.

And, because one of the functions of the anus and rectum, which are at the terminus of the colon, is to absorb water, the anus is extraordinarily effective at trapping STDs.

In short, the ano-rectal tissues are flimsy and easily traumatized; during anal penetration they are bathed in a mix of blood, fecal pathogens, and semen, which they do their best to absorb.

Those facts are not open to debate, nor can they be changed.

An anus is not a vagina, it's not genital tissue, it has no erectile tissue, and it's extraordinarily vulnerable to pathogens.

Defeat one STD, and another will find a way to be anally-transmitted.

The anus is simply too easy and too tempting a target.

Whereas the penis is genital tissue, built to give men extraordinary pleasure.

And when circumcised, the skin of the penis, though still exquisitely sensitive, becomes armor-like: almost impossible to injure or infect.

All these issues must be brought into the open and discussed.

Throwing billions of condoms at gay men is not a substitute for sound public policy.

And it will never work.

Men will never use condoms consistently, because they markedly decrease genital pleasure.

Which is the reason 99% of the world's people engage in sex: for the intense and unique pleasure of unalloyed genital stimulation.

You cannot forever deprive men of that feeling.

They won't play along.

Yet we're told that an effective AIDS vaccine is many years away.

If so, the logic of condom campaigns is fatally flawed.

It assumes that you can persuade men to accept a substitute for genital pleasure indefinitely -- very possibly for the rest of their lives.

Men will not do that.

Those who think they will are self-delusional.

The only solution to the concurrent and concomitant epidemics of deadly sexually transmitted diseases which afflict the gay male community, is to remove anal penetration from the center of gay male practice, and replace it with Frot, which is far less risky and far more pleasurable.

While of course emphasizing Fidelity.

What's appalling about the unrelenting and unreasoning opposition to that proposal is that such a cultural shift would benefit gay men and other MSM in every way.

There'd be no decrease in male-male pleasure.

There'd be no decrease in the incidence of homosexuality.

Arguably the opposite would occur, once straight-identified men understood that they didn't have to submit to anal penetration to enjoy sex with another man.

Without question, replacing anal with Frot would increase both male-male pleasure and the incidence of male-male sex, while decreasing the prevalence of STD among men who have sex with men.

The refusal of the gay male community to consider such a shift is self-defeating and self-loathing.

And over time, those who oppose it will be exposed as such.

Bill Weintraub

February 18, 2005