Spike

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-25-2003

I don't think I can reconcile my gut feelings with gay culture, so I stay away from it.

I just have no interest in it. I feel like I have nothing to prove to the gay majority, and they don't have anything to offer me.

It's ironic that, since I moved into this apartment complex, the whole place has "queerified". It's even been nicknamed "Gayrose Place". Har har. I'm the only "gay" man here who doesn't identify himself a top/bottom/versitile. We're all friendly with each other, but we just don't have any common ground.

I box; they drink. I write music; they bitch at each other. I wait for love; they hasten for sex. ... I'm not trying to make myself sound "better" or anything, it's just the way we are. We're walking two very different paths. Sometimes I don't have fun at their parties, if I go.

A mutual friend of everyone's, Dan, stayed in one of the apartments for a few weeks and started forging a relationship with another guy, who also came over to visit. Dan came out comparatively late in life, and was one of those rare types who had more questions than answers.

One day, Dan confessed to me that he wished there was "some other way to have a relationship" that didn't include promiscuity. He wished there was some way to form a tighter bond with someone.

He really didn't know it was possible. After all, no one around him was behaving any differently. Breaks my heart...

spike

David McQuarrie

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-25-2003

Spike, thanks a lot for your posting. I think we can all relate. We sometimes feel like we're all alone, adrift in a sea of promiscuity and meaningless sex.. The good thing though Spike is we're not alone. More and more guys are coming across this site and seeing that to be a gay man in today's society, doesn't mean we have to fit into a preconceived role or life style. I can totally relate to what you're saying Spike. It's hard to be part of a society that doesn't represent who you are as a man and a gay man at that.

All I can suggest Spike is to support Dan all you can emotionally and stay the course and be true to yourself, love will find Dan, perhaps when he least expects it!

Thank God he has a friend like you!

Please feel free to email me if you’d like.

Thanks again.

David McQuarrie

ranman

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-27-2003

There is almost nothing for viewers of this website to relate to in the current gay culture. I just saw a show on NBC about gay men changing a straight guys life around. I watched about 15 minutes and was just angry that a lot of gay men destroytheir masculinity. I try to be open minded and say that these men are just being themselves, but then I think about my cultural anthropology class. We talked about how many people in our society attach themselves to stereotypes in order to have an identity. Many gay men take on the effiminate, top/bottom identity because it's how they define being gay. That sucks. So many people in our country latch on to stereotypes instead of just being themselves. I think that's what most of us warriors found in this website. Instead of conforming to cultural defintion of being gay, we remained ourselves (which was very hard at times) and rejoiced when we found this website and others who were similar. Of the few people that i've come out to, they asked me "are you sure" because they also attach being gay to some stereotype. If there is a gay man who fits the stereotype and is happy in life, then who am I to judge. I just hope people stop feeding into the current gay culture.

Randy

David McQuarrie

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-27-2003

I couldn't agree more Randy. I also wish that guys young and old alike would disregard what they see in the media, str8 and gay, and simply be who we are, MEN.

I'm sick of seeing men treat other men as nothing more then "today’s f"k". We're so much more then that. We all have a lot to give and share as men. Least of all in my mind is using a heterosexual role model for man to man love making, and I stress the word LOVE.

Anal sex KILLS. Why would I want to kill a part of myself in submitting to this denigrating act, it's certainly not masculine love making in my mind or in many old and new cultures alike. Anal sex among two men was and is considered a shameful act in many cultures. I hope we in North America and in the Western World help to change that paradigm.

There's nothing more equal and masculine then to love your partner with respect and as a man!

David McQuarrie

ManSense

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-31-2003

It's really as simple as this: I don't relate to that culture. I'm in the world, but I don't have to be of it. I can be - and am - my own person.

All minority groups have to find the confidence within themselves to be their own role model, without demonising the majority around them.

Sometimes the choice seems like it's either be one of them, or be opposed to them. But that's a trap. 'Us vs Them' doesn't change things for the better. Be in the world, but not of it.

I know some guys here do anal as well as frot. Some do promiscuity and frot. Others do frot in a long-term, exclusive partnership. Each person chooses for themselves how they live, and that's how it should be. As long as the choice is a genuine choice, and not a persuasion by the media, or the culture around us, or peer pressure from our mates, then it's all good. Because at the end of the day we live life on our own terms, or we are not really living.

But how many of us are really choosing for ourselves? We tend to think we are, but are we really? It's difficult to know for sure. But if we are really honest with ourselves, listening deep inside our hearts, are we really making genuine choices? Or are we going with the flow of the crowd?

Bill Weintraub

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-31-2003

thanks guys

as usual, David has gotten folks talking and thinking

i want to respond to some of what James aka Mansense said because i strongly disagree with him

i held this post back because i didn't want to chastise James

but Harvey Fierstein had an op-ed in today's NY Times saying we've been too tolerant of the culture of disease in the gay community

Harvey's right

in his post, James is tolerant -- too tolerant

of men doing anal, of men being promiscuous, of the analist gay mainstream itself

James is wrong

his brand of tolerance is what's gotten us into this deadly mess

and the way out does not lie in more tolerance of anal and promiscuity

i think some of this has to do with one's experience of AIDS

those of us -- Chuck Tarver, myself, Harvey -- who've seen AIDS up close and personal understand that there are some things in life which cannot be tolerated

because they are evil

by any measure

evil

let's look at this piece by piece

1. about moral / cultural relativism and opposing evil

James writes

" 'Us vs Them' doesn't change things for the better. Be in the world, but not of it."

He's wrong.

History, and particularly Western history, is replete with examples of us vs them changing the world for the better.

For instance:

WW II

It's a good thing that someone didn't tell the guys who fought the Nazis and the Japanese Empire that "us vs them" doesn't change things for the better.

The status quo when that little bit of "us vs them" began for the US was the Nazi occupation of Europe and attempted enslavement of the rest of the world.

Patrick's father was a soldier in that war.

He was a sniper.

He patiently stalked, targeted and killed German officers -- one after the other.

Would the world today be a better place if Patrick's father had stayed safely at home?

Didn't his being both in the world and of it change things for the better?

Should we go back and ask the people at Dachau whom Patrick's father helped liberate if "us vs them" isn't valid?

Or if liberation wasn't a change for the better?

Which would you prefer -- rule by the EU parliament -- or rule by the Nazi Party in Berlin?

As I said, the history of the West is full of such examples.

From Epaminondas marching through Lakonia to Sherman marching through Georgia, lives have been improved by the actions of moral men opposing tyrannies.

Believe it or not, some people make bad choices, and some people do bad things, and some people seek to impose those bad choices and those bad things on others.

And when that happens it's up to those other people to oppose them -- as in "us vs them."

So if I call a fascist a fascist -- that's not demonizing him -- that's calling him what he is.

And if I call an analist an analist -- that's not demonizing him either -- that's calling him precisely what he is.

And the reason I call the supporters and proponents of mainstream gay male culture analists is that for 30 years they have exalted and romanticized anal penetration, dismissed health concerns and buried the hierarchy of risk under a mound of shitty, leaky, scuzzy condoms, pressured and coerced other men into being penetrated anally, and derided and denigrated men who won't be penetrated, all the while preaching "honor diversity."

Kinda like Hitler telling the world that the Jews were making war on the German people.

While he was busily killing all the Jews.

The dominant, mainstream, majority gay male culture of anal sex is oppressive, it's self-hating, and it's dangerous to the health of all men who have sex with men.

That culture is not sacrosanct, and it's most certainly not above criticism.

Indeed, to the degree that we don't attack that culture, which has through its sexual practices killed hundreds of thousands of men in the US alone -- we are morally remiss.

2. James also says

"as long as the choice is a genuine choice ... it's all good"

I don't agree -- not even close.

"It's all good" is like "honor diversity."

It's a phrase which effectively strips us of our ability to be critical and make moral choices.

Those are abilities which I and most other thinking people value and which I'm not going to give up.

Indeed, I know from bitter experience that it's a terrible mistake to assume that "it's all good."

In the 70s, we believed that "all sex is good."

That's not true.

Sometimes sex is wonderful.

And sometimes sex is awful.

Rape is a good example of the latter.

In the 70s, gender feminists and their friends re-defined rape as violence rather than sex -- so as to preserve the idea that "all sex is good" and people who are critical of sex in any form are ipso facto "erotophobes."

Problem: studies of rapists show that most rapists rape for sex -- yes they use violence or the threat of violence to get the sex, but for most of them sex is the end, violence the means.

So rape is sex -- but it's not good sex.

You can see the problem with "all sex is good," by putting it in a couple of syllogisms:

All sex is good.

Rape is sex.

Rape is good.

Doesn't work, does it?

OR

All sex is good.

Anal is sex.

Anal is good.

That doesn't work either.

Reality -- rape is awful, terrible, bad sex.

Reality -- anal is dangerous, dirty, and degrading sex.

Sadly, in the 70s, many of us looked at the anal sex frenzy and said -- it's sex, so it's good.

We were wrong.

It was bad sex, it was dangerous sex, it was fatal sex.

And a lot of guys died because they surrendered their moral and critical faculties to the idea that "it's all good."

Of course you can argue, as I frequently do, that anal penetration isn't sex, because for the receptive partner it isn't genital.

And when most people -- except analists -- talk about sex, they're talking genitalia and genital pleasure.

Nevertheless, to the extent that you define anal as "sex," it's bad sex.

James also says that it matters whether a sexual act is the result of "a genuine choice" or peer / cultural pressure.

While I'm sympathetic to that line of reasoning, the truth is that certain acts are bad, unhealthy, or evil in and of themselves, and it doesn't matter whether the actor is making choices "from within" or "from without."

For example:

Bug-chasers will tell you that their's is, per James, "a genuine choice."

I don't agree -- I think bug-chasing is a response to the dominant culture of anal.

But let's pretend for a moment that it's not -- that rather it is "a genuine choice."

Would it being a genuine choice make it "good?"

No.

It doesn't matter whether you're chasing bugs -- or doing any other sort of anal -- because someone told you to or because you think you genuinely want to.

Anal is a social evil -- no matter why it's being expressed.

In part for reasons that are biological -- not moral.

Anal is *always* destructive.

Firstly because the anus was not meant to be penetrated, and it gets torn and injured in the process.

Every time.

But also because ejaculate itself is a complex chemical mix designed specifically to get sperm through the relatively hostile environment of the vagina and into the womb.

The enzymes and other chemical components of cum are destructive of the delicate mucousal lining of the anus.

That's why guys get sick.

That's why they get cancer.

That's why they begin to leak.

That's what I call AIDS 101: the universe is an unforgiving place.

You can make what you consider to be a genuine choice.

But if it's the wrong choice -- you'll die.

3. about David McQuarrie

When David first joined the site two years ago, he put up a post titled: "Anal Sex -- IT KILLS"

The first time I read that, I thought it was extreme.

But that was before HPV appeared.

Before superbugs and other killer mutants arrived on the scene.

Before I started working with Dr. Edward Green of Harvard and saw the literature on condom failure rates.

Before I read USAID staffer Daniel Halperin's meta-analysis of the role of anal sex in *hetero* transmission of HIV.

(Hint -- it's a lot higher than the buttfuck boyz will tell ya.)

And Richens' statistical analysis, aptly titled Sex and Death, on why men who use condoms have HIGHER HIV infection rates than men who don't.

Before I started reading the material on AIDS Service Organization websites like GMHC's and knowHIVAIDS.org -- material and advice which pimps for anal sex and makes explicit, totally bogus equations between anal and vaginal intercourse.

And before I entered in debate with some of the anthropologists running or advocating for American condom campaigns in Africa and heard them say it was more important to protect "mutipartnering and sexual experimentation as cultural values" -- even though they're Western and indeed Western gay male cultural values -- than to save African lives.

David's right.

Anal KILLS.

It's a social evil and it's dangerous.

It's not a necessity of life, it's not an entitlement, and it most certainly is not sex.

To repeat: anal penetration is a social evil.

I was born just after the Holocaust and was fortunate to be mentored by two Holocaust survivors.

And I was raised in a border state during Jim Crow.

It was from those people and in that place that I learned you don't compromise with evil.

You cannot.

Every writer on segregation, slavery, and genocide says the same thing.

You can't compromise with evil.

The first time you agree to do something which is morally abhorrent to you in order to get along with a tyranny -- you've lost, and chances are you're going to die.

I've been out for more than 30 years.

I've watched as the lives of gay men were eaten by two evils: heterosexism, and the tyranny of anal sex.

Foolishly, under pressure from my peers and because I wanted a lover, in the 1970s, like a lot of other men, I compromised with the evil of anal.

I was lucky -- I'm still alive.

But that same compromise, that live and let live which James is recommending, killed my lover -- very slowly and very gruesomely.

And hundreds of thousands of other gay and bi men in the US and Europe, while unleashing an epidemic which has killed millions in the rest of the world.

When are gay men going to figure out what all those deaths mean?

David's figured it out. Spike figured it out. Randy's figured it out. Patrick's figured it out. I've figured it out. Boomer figured it out. Chuck Tarver figured it out. So did Gabriel Rotello.

Most of the men on this site figured it out a long time ago.

Anal Sex -- IT KILLS.

4. James says there are men on this site into anal and promiscuity, and appears to be supportive of them

Unreal.

I'm not.

If you're on this site and you're into anal, LEAVE.

This is a site for men who DO NOT DO ANAL SEX.

So if you're into anal -- LEAVE.

If you know that there are men posted in Frot Club who are looking for anal sex, you have an obligation to tell me who they are -- so that I can eject them.

Because: Men come onto this site and specifically into Frot Club to avoid anal sex.

This is the one place on the web where, in theory, they're able to do that.

If you know there are men into anal lurking in Frot Club -- and you do nothing about it --

That's really shitty.

I've repeatedly asked men into anal to leave.

They don't.

Instead, they lurk in Frot Club and hit on men who don't want anal.

Those men then complain to me.

And they're right.

Guess what?

I don't demonize men into anal.

I don't have to.

The bad, authentically shitty behavior of men into anal speaks and reeks for itself.

I could play the tolerance game too:

The easiest thing for me to do would be to run a website for guys into anal, oral, and some frot -- as foreplay only of course -- with lots of pix of number one, plus the ever-popular group sex, and references to Miss Mary and drag and "str8-acting" and cutesie remarks about jock straps and "you're going to put what where?"

That's not what the site is about.

But if you like that sort of site -- you're in luck!

There's no shortage of them ELSEWHERE on the web.

So all you need do is LEAVE and look elsewhere.

If you wanna stick around --

Then you play by our rules:

If you're doing frot and anal -- stop doing anal.

If you're doing frot promiscuously, stop being promiscuous.

First of all, I've had a warning up on Frot Club from the beginning that "if men into frot become as promiscuous as men into anal have been, frot will lose its innocence and joy and become a vector for disease."

So far, that last bit has not happened.

I know, because I keep looking for credible evidence of STD transmission through frot and I haven't found it.

But that doesn't mean it won't happen.

If enough men are promiscuously practicing frot, they will create an ecological niche and some pathogen will attempt to occupy it.

So men into frot who are behaving promiscuously are hurting the community and should be cast out of the community.

Because they will, if they keep at it long enough, louse things up for everyone.

Secondly, what happens when you're promiscuous is that you dilute the meaning and power of sex.

So that if you do find the guy who really matters to you -- and it's much harder to and far less likely that you'll find that guy if you're promiscuous -- you will discover that your promiscuity has diminished the value of the sex you do have.

Because once you've lost your purity and innocence -- they cannot be regained.

It's unfortunate that homophobic bigots have seized control of the concepts of abstinence and fidelity and are marketing them as heterosexual.

But those are not the exlusive property of heterosexuals, or evangelical heterosexuals.

As I keep telling you, the Greeks, among other peoples, valued fidelity and frot too.

They were supposed to have only one male lover, whom they won through a process of intense courtship.

They didn't cruise a guy at the palestra and then take him home and fuck him.

Of course many of these men had access to prostitutes and slaves.

Nevertheless, in their love relationships with other males, romance and fidelity ruled.

So: this site is about building a new culture among men who have sex with men.

One in which there's no place for anal or promiscuity.

I know that the promiscuity part is difficult for many gay men -- they've bought in to the nonsense that their self-worth is dependent upon the number of sexual partners they have.

But that it's difficult for you to stop being promiscuous does NOT mean that I or anyone else should support you in your promiscuity.

Quite the contrary.

I'm the one person on the net who will tell you not to be promiscuous.

And by doing that give you the chance to save your life and your ability to love.

That's what the site's about -- fidelity and frot.

People who support fidelity and frot are welcome to stay here, to find, in a small way, a home here, and I believe to ready themselves to find a life-partner / lover / best bud as well.

We're here for men into frot fidelity, for men opposed to anal promiscuity, for men who understand that anal kills.

Body, mind, spirit.

When the history of the 20th century is written, it will be clear that the frenzied embrace of anal and of a heterosexual penetrative model by a sexual minority calling itself "gay men" was one of the great acts of madness of history.

Those who opposed it will be honored.

Those who abetted it will be shamed.

sigis

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

6-27-2004

i am a european man that suffered a lot with the gay vision that should exist top/bottom relationship between men. Only americans have freedom enough to think as u do and it's that exactly that make u a great nation.

Best regards

sigis

David McQuarrie

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

6-27-2004

Sigis, you do have the power to change your life as it is. Despite what obstacles you may have in your way; the way you live your life, as a gay man, is a testament to your own character.

NEVER feel pressured into performing anal, just say no!

Best wishes to you.

David

sabres

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

6-30-2004

Hi David! Great post! You are right, the gay media is practically obsessed with "top/bottom", "butch/fem". I hate stereotypes, but a lot of it is true.

I recently went to a large gay pride festival in Durham, NC. It was everything that is wrong with the gay community....drag queens, condoms (which promote anal sex), etc. Just go into any chat room online, like the gay ones at Gay.com or Yahoo.com, and you'll see that everyone is so caught up in the whole "top/bottom" thing...it's absolutely absurd! Even if you DO have anal sex, why should you decide if you are a top or bottom!???

One question that really boggles my mind, however, is why so many gay men act feminine (the whole stereotype of the "limp wrist, talk with a lisp, sway you hips when you walk"). I really DO hate stereotypes, and all gay men do not act this way, but a large majority of gay men do seem to act this way. Why?? What about the young gay boy in elementary school that hates sports and likes dolls...and the gay teenager that loves drama/theater? Is it biological to act feminine and be gay, is it a learned behavoir...what is it!??

ANDY

Bill Weintraub

Re: It's our time NOW, are you ready?

7-1-2004

Hey Andy

Good question.

The answer is that effeminacy is learned behavior.

This is something you can think through for yourself.

You're gay, but you're not effeminate.

If effeminacy were a biological or genetic trait linked to homosexuality, all gay men would be effeminate.

Since they're not, it's reasonable to assume that effeminacy is a learned behavior that's cultural in origin.

Why would homosexual men in our society be effeminate?

Because of our deep-seated societal belief that men who have sex men aren't real men.

That instead, they're a species of pseudo-woman.

Of course that's not true.

As I discuss in our Man2Man Alliance policy paper, Are Men Who Have Sex With Men Intergendered?, men have had sex with men since the beginning of time, and in most cultures and throughout history, those men have not been promiscuous, effeminate, or into anal sex.

Rather, they've been masculine, monogamous, and into genital sex.

Nonetheless in our culture, which is in many ways aberrant, gay men are expected to behave like women -- and not just any women, but sexually "depraved" women: sluts and whores.

That's why gay men who are older, like myself, so often witnessed young men who were masculine in demeanor "come out" or be "turned out" into gay male culture, and then saw them take on a constellation of effeminate traits.

Those men were and are not born effeminate.

Rather, effeminacy among them is what I call a "cultural overlay," a set of culturally-mandated behaviors which lie atop their natural and inborn masculinity.

As I often point out, although most people accept that culture plays the major role in shaping human behavior in areas such as food, clothing, shelter, religion, and so forth, many people have trouble understanding that culture affects the expression of sexual character as well.

But it does.

When it comes to sexual behavior, and particularly behavior in same-sex settings, we get what the culture says we'll get.

Thus, in our culture, the expectation is that "Men who have Sex with Men" -- that's a social sciences term used by anthropologists, sexologists, and epidemiologists among others, and abbreviated MSM -- the expectation is that most MSM will be effeminate and promiscuous, and engage in anal sex.

And that's how most behave.

Other cultures have had different expectations and seen different results.

For example, among the ancient Greeks, the expectation was that MSM would be masculine, monogamous, and martial -- that is, that MSM relationships would be part of a soldier or warrior's life -- and they were.

So you get what the culture says you'll get, and that's why it really matters whether we succeed in changing the culture.

Unfortunately, as public awareness of homosexuality has grown, and as access to information about homosexuality has become more and more available on the internet, young people are absorbing societal expectations at an increasingly early age.

Most gay kids, for example, begin to realize they're gay at the onset of puberty.

When that happened to me, circa 1959, my access to information was very limited.

While I did eventually get the idea that gay men were supposed to be effeminate -- the two major stereotypes of gay men in that era were the hairdresser and the interior decorator -- I had little or no idea of anal sex until I went to college.

And even in college I had very little sense of gay male promiscuity.

Gay men were invisible -- if they were having lots of sex, I had no way of knowing it.

Now, however, a kid who realizes he's gay can go to the internet and see images and accounts galore of anal sex, group sex, other forms of promiscuity, and effeminacy.

It's not surprising then, that kids are adopting those behaviors when they're quite young.

But that does not make them innate.

So Andy, these are issues which you, as I said at the beginning, can think through for yourself.

If you're gay -- that is, have a more or less exclusive sexual interest in other guys -- and *you* aren't effeminate, that strongly suggests that effeminacy isn't "biological."

Because if effeminacy were biological or genetic, you'd be effeminate too.

The same is true of anal sex.

If anal sex were inherently pleasurable -- that is, if the anus were some sort of pseudo-vagina -- all men would find it to be so.

But they don't.

If, as is the case, large numbers of men have experimented with anal penetration and found they don't like it, it cannot be, unlike genital sex, inherently pleasurable.

Rather, it has to be a *learned* behavior and, at best, an acquired taste.

The same is true of effeminacy: it's a learned behavior which can be un-learned.

And as gay men are increasingly integrated into mainstream culture, we can expect to see effeminacy become less common.

Because the cultural expectation will change, and gay men will behave like other men -- bi and straight-identified men.

They'll be masculine.