Bill Weintraub

About Promiscuity, Str8 guys, Boytoys, and Men Who Love Men

8-02-2002

Recently someone posted on this board in glowing and boastful terms about a three-way he'd had with his lover and a chance acquaintance, saying to the reader, if you haven't had a three-way like this, "try it, just try it."

He then made a second boastful post about sex he was having with yet another partner, this time a young, straight, married man, who he said had "a bubblebutt and hair in all the right places," and gloated at the end of the post that his friend's wife hated him but she didn't know why.

Well, maybe she does and maybe she doesn't, but I took both posts down because they couldn't be more contrary to both the spirit and the letter of this site.

I have said repeatedly on this site that we don't endorse or support promiscuity among men who have sex with men -- let alone push it -- and I'll talk more about promiscuity later in this post.

But I want first to address the question of men who identify as "gay" and men who identify as "str8" and what may happen between them.

One of the purposes of this site is to say to guys who identify as str8 but want to have sex with other guys, that there's a way they can do so without surrendering their masculinity or otherwise taking on aspects of a gay identity (such as effeminacy, anal penetration, and promiscuity) which are alien and repugnant to them; and without exposing themselves and their wives or girlfriends to deadly diseases like HIV and hepatitis.

It is NOT the purpose of the site to say to such men that if they have sexual interests in other men they're not really str8; nor to subject them to gay male predatory promiscuity.

Because those are two of the things they fear: losing their masculinity (and their health), both of which they very sensibly wish to keep; and becoming just another boytoy to be ground up in the great gay meat market.

Blk Warrior spoke very eloquently about those fears and his dreams in his Warriors Speak post titled MAKE LOVE -- not fuck, and that post is worth rereading.

So, as I've said before, I don't think it's important how a man self-identifies -- and besides, only he knows how he feels about the other men and women in his life -- I don't, and neither does anyone else.

Further, this site does not encourage anyone, regardless of their "sexual orientation," to become involved in extracurricular sex that endangers their or anyone else's relationships. Not remotely.

Relationships are more important than sex, and no one should be involved in damaging a relationship, be it male-male or male-female, in pursuit of a purely sexual goal.

So -- we're not here to try to "turn" str8 guys, and then boast about it. Not at all. We're here to offer all men who are having or want to have sex with other men a way to do so that's hot, masculine, meaningful, and safe.

Whether they choose to act on that information is up to them and their judgment of the impact such acts will have on their own lives and on the lives of the people they love.

Regarding promiscuity:

Heroic Homosex does not endorse promiscuity.

To the contrary -- we endorse Fidelity.

Let's talk about why.

Everyone knows about the health risks from promiscuity.

But what about the emotional risks?

Let's take two guys in a relationship -- an open relationship.

Although the men involved may have opened their relationship with the best of loving intentions toward each other, what happens very frequently, if not inevitably, is that sooner or later one partner develops strong feelings for -- that is, falls in love with -- a playmate, someone who was only meant to be a casual fling.

Sometimes that emotional involvement of one partner with an outside individual destroys the relationship, and sometimes the relationship survives, but it's never the same -- because there's been an expression of emotional disloyalty which is very hard on the other partner and impacts both partners' view of their committment to each other.

That's simply not desirable, and, ultimately, memories of the sexual pleasure gained by the infidelity are lost in the mire of bad feelings which come in its train.

In the past, social movements like Gay Lib and feminism have tended to look at strictures against promiscuity as tools of social control, in particular the control of sexuality and of women.

But it's not so simple as that -- there are other reasons that societies value fidelity, and, as men who love men, we need to consider what the benefits of fidelity are.

Primarily, and besides the health benefit, what fidelity confers is the certainty of an unquestioned physical, emotional, and spiritual committment between two men.

That's important.

Because that certainty is what sees the couple through the innumerable life problems which they're bound to encounter.

Of course there was a time, in the early 70s, when promiscuity was experienced as liberating by many of those who took part in it.

But that's no longer true today.

Instead, promiscuity has become compulsive and is deeply tied to the reduction of the male body to a consumer object and its use in commerce -- to sell things.

Because of the pervasiveness of the objectification of men's bodies, we can never be fully sure why we want what -- or whom -- we want:

Because he's desirable in and of himself?

Or because he fits some template -- like having "a bubblebutt and hair in all the right places" -- of desirability?

So -- this site, unlike any other gay or m2m site I know, does not celebrate promiscuity.

Quite the opposite -- we here encourage men who love men to be faithful.

And for that reason, I have articles posted on the site about the ancient Greeks and others which talk about the power of the exclusive m2m bond.

The Greeks were NOT promiscuous -- they were faithful to a striking degree, and their all-male institutions and even their religious myths were set up to encourage and support Fidelity.

We need to do the same, and that's what this site is about -- changing our sexual culture from one of men who have sex with men to one of men who love men.

Changing that culture -- not simply adding another sexual technique to the repetoire and making it easier for gay guys to collect str8 sexual scalps.

This site will never be part of that.

That old culture of predatory promiscuity and treating str8 men like trophies is tired and out of date, and it has no place in the lives of men who love men.

So I'm determined that there will be sites on the internet and a world-wide political and cultural movement for M2M men who are masculine, martial, and monogamous, who honor phallus, and who express their love for each other cock2cock and dick2dick.