Also by Warrior Doug aka Thor

married cockbonding needs

Bill Weintraub

Re: married and the coming of OUT

3-18-10

I thank Doug for his post and for his kind words.

At the same time I admit to feeling more than a little frustrated with Doug, as I have with most of you throughout the years.

Doug's problems are cultural problems.

But I don't think he sees them that way -- nor do most of you.

Nevertheless, that's what they are.

So: the first step is to read Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not A Condition.

And to understand that our *culture* -- our *culture* -- treats sex in general and sex between men in particular -- as something which it isn't.

That is, as a condition, rather than an activity.

And that is the root of the problem.

Doug says of his wife that "she freaked."

Would an ancient Greek wife have freaked if she'd learned that her husband was having sex with another guy?

NO.

Why not?

Was she genetically different from women today?

NO.

What's different is the culture.

So -- in Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not A Condition, I talk about the eminent classicist KJ Dover's discussion of what he called "Greek Homosexuality."

Now -- Dover, writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, used the nonsense words "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality," "homosexual" and "heterosexual," in referring to various Greek acts and activities.

Was he right to do that?

No, because such words are anachronistic, to put it mildly, when referring to the Greeks.

But for Dover they were convenient -- because they were not only "understood" but taken for granted by the readers of his day.

Here's some of what he said:

Wherever and whenever the homosexual [sic] ethos of the Greek world originated, the simple answer to the question 'Why were the Athenians of Plato's time so fond of homosexual [sic] relations?' is "Because their fathers and grandfathers were'.

In other words, the Greek fondness for "homosexual relations" was cultural.

Not genetic, not a function of a shortage of women -- but cultural.

And if you don't understand that, you need to read Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not A Condition.

Right now.

Don't read another word on this page.

Read Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not A Condition.

Now.

Here's something else Dover said:

[The Greeks] did not consider homosexual [sic] relations incompatible with concurrent heterosexual [sic] relations or with marriage...

Well, let's get rid of Dover's nonsense words, his condition-words, and substitute for them words which are accurate and appropriate and descriptive:

First quote:

Wherever and whenever the emphasis on same-sex love -- that is, Eros -- in the Greek world originated, the simple answer to the question 'Why were the Athenians of Plato's time so fond of male-male relations?' is 'Because their fathers and grandfathers were'.

Do you get it?

Guys were into male-male because their fathers and grandfathers had been.

And their fathers and grandfathers before them.

It was a culturally-sanctioned behavior.

Cultural.

The culture said -- Do it!

And the guys said -- You bet!

Second quote:

[The Greeks] did not consider male-male relations incompatible with concurrent male-female relations or with marriage...

Doug -- and everybody else, especially the straight-identified guys -- did ya hear that??????

Did ya?????

I wonder.

Here it is again:

[The Greeks] did not consider male-male relations incompatible with concurrent male-female relations or with marriage...

Male-male relations were not considered incompatible with CONCURRENT male-female relations or with male-female marriage.

Translation -- there was no problem.

Look -- here's a picture:

Zeus and his wife Hera on Olympos
Zeus' lover Ganymedes stands between them

There it is:

Zeus and his wife and Zeus' male lover Ganymedes in all his nude male glory.

Zeus and his wife Hera on Olympos
Ganymedes stands between them

I repeat: Zeus and his wife and Zeus' male lover Ganymedes in all his nude male glory.

All together.

Just one big happy Olympian family.

Happy.

Everyone's smiling, and why not?

They're the Immortals, the Blessed, as they were called.

Even Ganymedes is immortal.

He started life as a mortal boy, but Zeus, King of the Gods and very very powerful, is so in love with him that he made him immortal.

Which means that Hera will have to put up with him not just for a weekend, but for all eternity.

That's a long time.

Does Hera look unhappy?

No.

Is she tearing her hair, is she contemplating killing herself, is she about to strangle Ganymedes or Zeus or anyone else?

NO.

Hera, Zeus' wife, is clearly okay with whatever's going down between Zeus and Ganymedes.

Yet -- Doug's wife -- FREAKED.

Why?

Because her culture -- her CULTURE -- HER CULTURE HER CULTURE HER CULTURE HER CULTURE -- DOES consider male-male relations to be incompatible with marriage.

Doug's wife is married.

To Doug.

And Doug's doing something -- fooling around with guys -- which Doug's wife has been *told* ALL HER LIFE is INCOMPATIBLE with marriage.

THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE FOOLING AROUND.

THE PROBLEM IS WHAT THE CULTURE HAS TOLD DOUG'S WIFE -- AND DOUG -- AND EVERYBODY ELSE.

Look -- let's turn Dover's statements around and, using Bill Weintraub's non-conditional language, apply them to women and wives:

Wherever and whenever the emphasis on same-sex love -- that is, Eros -- in the Greek world originated, the simple answer to the question 'Why did the Athenian women of Plato's time accept their husbands' male-male relations?' is "Because their mothers and grandmothers did'.

Athenian women did not consider male-male relations incompatible with concurrent male-female relations or with marriage...

That's the truth guys.

Now -- it's also true that Athenian women didn't have a lot of freedom or autonomy.

And you may say, Bill, they didn't object because they couldn't object.

To which I say, Fine -- but that wasn't the case in Sparta.

Spartan women were, to the Athenians, notoriously free.

Unconscionably liberated.

Yet we know that in Sparta too women tolerated their husbands' same-sex affairs.

Same set of questions:

'Why were the Spartan men of Xenophon's time so fond of male-male relations?'

'Because their fathers and grandfathers were'.

'Why did the Spartan women of Xenophon's time accept their husbands' male-male relations?'

'Because their mothers and grandmothers did'.

Spartan women did not consider male-male relations incompatible with concurrent male-female relations or with marriage...

And that's the truth.

There's not a scintilla of evidence from that era of wives objecting to their husbands' same-sex love affairs.

How could that be?

Well, think it through.

Dover said that same-sex love affairs were engaged in by guy's fathers and grandfathers.

To which I added, and their fathers and grandfathers before them.

This was something which had gone on for many, many generations.

So -- a Greek woman and a Greek wife did not "freak" because she would have grown up in a culture in which male-male love affairs were a fact of life.

A simple, plain, fact of life, which you could see on pottery

and in statues

and reliefs

and hear about in poetry and song and the disquisitions of the most learned philosophers and the most eloquent politicians.

And of course in your own father's behavior.

And your uncle's and brother's and so forth.

Male-Male was a FACT OF LIFE.

Just as Herms -- statues of the God Hermes with an erection -- at every major crossroads were a fact of life.

Male-Male was a given.

Phallus was a given.

That was life.

And a woman wouldn't object to it not only because it was life but because it in no way reflected upon her.

It had nothing to do with women.

It's something which happened in a masculine sphere of life.

Of course women too, in some places, like Sparta, were free to have same-sex affairs.

And that too was not objected to by the opposite sex because it had nothing to do with them.

Affairs between women were in the feminine sphere of life.

And that was the end of the discusssion.

Whereas, the message in our culture is -- there's something wrong with a woman as a woman -- if her husband desires another man.

Not only that -- but -- there's something wrong with the man as a man -- if he desires another man.

And there's something wrong with the marriage too.

Because, as Redd has remarked, in our culture, man and wife are supposed to be each other's "everything."

And isn't that crazy?

Stephanie Coontz, who's an eminent -- I like that word -- historian of marriage has said it is.

Right in The NY Times.

Right on the pages of our great American Republic's paper of record, she said that it was not realistic, and not what other eras had expected, to think that husbands and wives would be each other's entire world.

Yet that's what our culture does expect.

No wonder Doug's wife has freaked out.

Wouldn't you?

Says Doug -- "Many tears some laughter and much rage"

And doesn't that sound like fun?

No -- it doesn't.

But it's not surprising.

And I know it's what many of you fear.

That your own marriages will go down that hellish road.

Sadly, and as you can see, that's not an unreasonable fear.

But it keeps you locked in your own private hell of, as Doug says, "guilt and shame."

Not good.

What you all need to realize is that those hells you inhabit are *culturally-dictated* hells.

You're there because the culture dictates that you should be there.

In a different culture, you'd be somewhere else.

If the culture were that of ancient Greece, your normal and natural same-sex needs and desires would not affect your marriage.

The two spheres of life, as I put it, would never truly intersect.

And there would be no hell.

Of course life wasn't perfect in ancient Greece.

You might be killed in battle or die of what is today a treatable disease or at worst be sold into slavery.

But when it came to this question of man's normal and natural same-sex needs and desires -- and male-female marriage -- ancient Greece was far far far far better than what you have today.

And far far far far Freer.

In ancient Greece, a Man was Free to be a Man.

And Men were Free to be Men.

Now -- I said I get impatient with Doug -- as I do with most of you.

Doug's first post on this board was way back in 2005.

That's five big fat night-and-day filled years ago.

And Doug says, as he did then -- five years ago: "love to hear from others who feel same way" -- and Now:

I would love to hear from men of any age who can relate to this journey in some way - I think it helps - me and the others as we get back to origins and throw off the shackles of our own minds.

Doug says, "I think it helps."

And I think it does too.

But, see, what that sort of help reminds me of was when my late lover Brett was dying of AIDS --

and I used to go to a "caregiver support group."

And it was "helpful."

But wouldn't it have been a lot lot lot lot better -- if Brett hadn't been dying????????????

Then I wouldn't have needed the help.

It's the same deal here.

Doug would be so much better off if he didn't need your help.

Because his wife hadn't freaked.

And because he hadn't freaked.

Because he'd been following his heart's desires vis-a-vis other guys -- since he'd been old enough to have those desires.

Guiltlessly.

That's an important part of it too.

But right now, my sense from Doug is that a big part of the issue is the marriage.

And that's a cultural issue.

As I've more than demonstrated to you.

Which means it wouldn't be an issue at all -- if the culture changed.

I've been trying to change the culture for the last ten years.

I've asked your help in doing that.

You haven't helped.

So the culture hasn't changed.

Doug says he's sent a donation.

That's fine -- some donation is better than no donation.

But he needs me.

He's waited till he needs me to donate.

No.

What he really needed to do -- and what you all need to do -- is donate each and every month.

So that we can begin to change the culture.

We cannot the way we are now.

Because you're all -- to a male -- too stupid and too stingy and too short-sighted.

It's fine by me if you write to Doug.

But Doug would have been infinitely better off if his wife hadn't freaked --

because she understood that his sexual interest in men -- had nothing to do with her --

or with their marriage --

or with Doug himself.

If she understood that guys have sex with guys, that it's something that guys do, that it's important to guys -- but that it has NO implications for anything or anyone else.

A Greek woman understood that.

Even if -- indeed, especially if -- no one had ever spelled it out for her, she could see, from the time she was a child, that men valued their same-sex affairs, but that those affairs didn't affect any other part of their lives.

It was just something they did.

Doug says he's spent years agonizing and miserable about his natural and normal same-sex needs and desires.

That's sad.

And it's also a function of his culture.

That cultural view of same-sex is changing, without a doubt --

and it's changing because of ACTIVISM.

Something you're not willing to undertake.

As a consequence, the gay chauvinist point of view, in which, as NY Times columnist Frank Rich recently said, "gay" is an "immutable identity" -- is all that's heard.

Yet it's clearly not true.

I used to consider myself "gay"; I don't any longer.

Which means the identity is NOT immutable.

Patrick, my husband, used to consider himself "straight."

He doesn't any longer.

"Gay" and "straight" are NOT immutable identities.

Yet Frank Rich says they are, and his sort of thinking is really, like I said, all that's heard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the religious right's out there, but it's increasingly marginalized and so hypocritical and nutty about sex that fewer and fewer are paying attention.

The voice which dominates is "gay," and not just "gay," but ANALIST.

And that's really and truly bad for you.

When will you figure that out?

I don't know.

I guess I'll know the day you start donating.

Till you do, nothing will change, and five years from now Doug or someone else -- probably you -- will be writing me with the same sad story.

Bill Weintraub

March 18, 2010

© All material Copyright 2010 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Related articles:

Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not a Condition

straight, but...

Warriorhood and Male Intimacy

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The Right to Fight

Doug

Re: married and the coming of OUT

3-20-10

im with you on the separation of activity vs condition - been trying to straighten that out in my mind for some time now - have been getting back from a few sources that its a huge issue - which is a relief as i struggle to get the vocabulary to deal with all this - have been reading and rereading some of the postings on the site - the whole anal breakdown - top/bottom - seems absurd to me - also amazed at how rigidly that defines so many guys - yours in phallic bond - doug

Bill Weintraub

Re: married and the coming of OUT

3-21-10

Hey Doug,

Let's take a look:

- im with you on the separation of activity vs condition -

Yes, that's very important.

There's no point to going from a straight box to a gay box.

Makes no sense.

You're a Man.

A guy.

Guys have sex with guys.

It's something that guys do.

It has nothing to do with the women in their lives.

As I said in my first reply, it takes place in a separate sphere of life.

Totally separate.

While, and at the same time, actually, many of our guys report that having sex with a guy makes them more active sexually with their wives.

So we know the one doesn't take away from the other.

But we also know that for some men, male-male may improve male-female.

That's why Dover says -- in my version -- "[The Greeks] did not consider male-male relations incompatible with concurrent male-female relations or with marriage."

All Dover's doing is reporting what's in the literature.

For example, Pindar speaks of Hera belonging to Zeus "for joyous acts of love"

And then he'll talk about Ganymedes.

So from the very top down in Greek thought, there was concurrency -- marriage plus a male partner.

- been trying to straighten that out in my mind for some time now

Yes, again, that's very important, for both you and your wife.

It's one thing to say to her that you're "gay," or for her to think of you as "gay";

It's quite another to say to her, I'm a Man, and this is something that Men do because they need to --

But which in no way detracts from my love for you.

So it really matters how both you and she conceptualize what's going on.

That too is why I put that quote from Stephanie Coontz in at the bottom of the post:

"men need deep emotional connections with other men, not just their wives"

Doug, you might want to show your wife Coontz' article.

Which is very mainstream -- it's NY Times after all.

But, and at the same time, one wouldn't want to be so naive as to think that one article is going to do it.

It's the WHOLE CULTURE which needs to change.

- have been getting back from a few sources that its a huge issue -

Yes, it is a huge issue.

which is a relief as i struggle to get the vocabulary to deal with all this -

Right.

We have the vocabulary.

Sex between Men is an ACTIVITY, not a condition.

And you're a Man.

If you have sex with another Man, that sex is an activity.

Not a condition.

It does not in any way define you.

You're a Man -- before, during, and after the Man2Man sex.

You're a Man.

have been reading and rereading some of the postings on the site - the whole anal breakdown - top/bottom - seems absurd to me -

Yes, it is -- it's both absurd and very damaging.

As many concepts and norms in human culture are.

also amazed at how rigidly that defines so many guys

Yes -- and like I say, you don't want to go from the straight box to the gay box.

Because all you're doing is changing cells.

You're still in the heterosexualized prison.

The idea is to get out of jail entirely.

And be a free, self-actualized human being.

Not a slave to cultural forces and their truly dopey ideas about sexuality.

Because that's what you've been all your life.

Most of us have.

In one way or another.

But now you don't have to be.

It's like Plato's cave.

What you've been seeing are shadows.

But now you have a chance to turn around, and ascend into the light.

And see things as they really are.

Bill Weintraub

March 21, 2010

© All material Copyright 2010 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Doug

Re: married and the coming of OUT

3-21-10

as i struggle to develop the vocabulary for my self about my identity and sexuality, i have consistently refused to accept labels like gay or bi to define my energy and my view of myself - told by therapists and gay friendly friends to just accept that i am gay, my response has been - no - those labels dont work any better for me than hetero did - i am now finding not only you but other sources supporting and developing the thoughts that i struggle with - yes, i enjoy, seek, need the sex with men as part of a deeply satisfying nuturing bond with the Masculine. It works for me, doesnt threaten the bond i feel with my wife - though it certainly does for her. Until recently I have felt alone in this - but as i wake up to my needs, and i look around, the voices of others are there - from the african american communities "down low" to your quotes on the man2man alliance site - the re definition of my homosexual energy as a series of actions versus the "condition" as it's so well put - frees me to move away from the pathological inference, the separateness from self - to the reclamation of self - doug

Bill Weintraub

Re: married and the coming of OUT

3-21-10

Hi Doug

- the re definition of my homosexual energy as a series of actions versus the "condition" as it's so well put - frees me to move away from the pathological inference, the separateness from self - to the reclamation of self -

That's essentially right.

But the energy is not "homosexual".

You can call it same-sex, or male-male, or man2man, or just Man.

"Homosexuality" is a pathology -- it's a disease, a condition.

You don't have a disease or a condition.

You're just a guy -- that's all you are.

Your situation is neither more nor less profound than that.

So we can just re-do your statement like this:

- the re definition of my man2man energy as a series of actions versus the "condition" as it's so well put - frees me to move away from the pathological inference, the separateness from self - to the reclamation of self -

And then it's exactly right.

The redefinition of your Man2Man energy as a series of actions rather than a condition frees you and ALL MEN to move away from the pathological inference -- which is completely false -- and the separation from self --

to the reclamation of self.

And then you're home.

You're a Man again.

Which is what God and Nature intended you to be.

Not anything else.

Just -- a Man.

Bill Weintraub

March 21, 2010

© All material Copyright 2010 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Brian Hulme

Re: marriage and the coming of OUT

3-21-10

Hi Bill and Doug,

I know a guy who is married (who because of this, would like to remain nameless) but he still likes to have sex with me, but feels guilty afterwards (so is it for him worth it?)

As you say it is our culture that has imposed this and we need to fix this.

Now I know myself and I have broken FREE -- you should see the pictures here -- some are of naked men, some are wrestling, others showing affection in a hug -- and when this guy visited my home a while ago he came in to this room and commented on the pictures "I see you have a lot of pictures of naked men." I pointed out that they were nonsexual (the sexual ones are in my bedroom, at my mum's insistence) but made it clear that I am a Man into Men.

Bill, before finding the Alliance in November 2007 I would not have THOUGHT of putting up such images.

Our culture made me keep, and want to go on keeping, that side of me a dirty, dark secret.

Now though I don't mind who knows, you and The Alliance have liberated me.

With Warrior Love,

Brian

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