So this guy attributes his need for male "touch, affection, and closeness" to the death of his father.

Other guys have told me that psychiatrists have told them the same -- that the absence of a father "causes" "homosexuality."

Like I say, I'm surprised that people are still putting forth that thoroughly discredited theory.

The theory being that "poor parenting," and specifically an absent or weak father combined with a dominating or smothering mother -- would make a boy "homosexual."

And the reason I'm surprised is that that theory was dis-owned by the pyschiatric establishment in the United States -- way back in 1973.

A full thirty-six years -- more than a generation -- ago.

So -- the idea was that "homosexuality" was a developmental problem and a manifestation of what the neo-Freudians called a "psychosexual block."

In the neo-Freudian scheme of things, people who were "psychosexually blocked" were "neurotic" -- that is, mentally ill.

Even though Freud himself -- who was married and who admitted to having same-sex feelings as well -- had said that "homosexuality" was NOT evidence of mental illness -- and could not be treated.

The neo-Freudians -- who essentially emerged after Freud's death in 1939 -- persisted nevertheless in trying to treat -- that is, cure -- "homosexuality."

And by cure, I do mean cure.

Their "therapeutic goal" was to eliminate not just same-sex sexual activity, but same-sex sexual desire itself, and replace both with opposite-sex activity and desire.

And for a very long time the neo-Freudians ruled the psychiatric roost and effectively dictated public policy regarding "homosexuality."

By the early 1970s, however, their efforts had been by and large discredited, and their theory of "homosexuality" as mental illness was rejected by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1973.

What the APA did specifically in that year was remove "homosexuality" from its list of "personality disorders" in what's known as the "DSM" -- The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is issued by the APA, and is supposed to guide American psychiatrists in their work.

The DSM is tremendously powerful.

First off, a psychiatrist who ignores the DSM and treats something as a mental illness that isn't in there -- risks losing his licence, and also risks getting sued for malpractice.

And second off, insurance companies won't pay for treatments that are not de facto authorized by the DSM.

Which means in practice that:

If, in 1967, I went to a psychiatrist and said I'm a homosexual and I want you to cure me -- he could say, Sure thing, that's possible, and I'd be glad to undertake to do so.

He could say that, as indeed my psychiatrist, who was very establishment, did, because "homosexuality" was in the DSM.

But if, in 1974, I went to the same psychiatrist and said, I'm a homosexual and I want you to cure me -- he was supposed to respond that homosexuality wasn't a mental illness and that therefore he couldn't treat it.

So -- the idea that "homosexuality" is a mental illness is something that was started in 1869, and finished in 1973.

It had a run of only about a hundred years.

It did immense damage in those hundred years, and that damage persists.

But -- the idea of "homosexuality" as illness is "the medical model of homosexuality" that you often hear me refer to, and that model or paradigm shifted in 1973.

That's why I, and any other historian of science and culture, can speak of dominant paradigms and paradigm shifts.

Because paradigms shift -- all the time.

At one time, for example, the paradigm was that only white men could be elected president.

And then there was a paradigm shift -- and all of a sudden, black men can be elected president.

So: cultures CHANGE.

And you need to understand that.

And you need to understand that change can be swift.

How many people in November 2007 could have predicted that a black man would win the presidential election in November 2008?

Very few.

Cultures CHANGE.

And the change, to repeat, can be rapid.

At one time anal was a denigrated and minority act among males who identified as "homosexual" or "gay."

In 1975 there was a paradigm shift and it became the majority act among those males.

Some people put the shift to anal about a decade earlier.

BUT -- I lived that history, I was a witness to and a participant in that history, and I saw what happened, just as I witnessed the paradigm shift in 1973.

The shift to anal occurred in or about 1975.

Had it occurred earlier, HIV would have taken off earlier.

Because HIV had been present in America for at least decades, and maybe a century or more.

It's true that bathhouses proliferated in the 1970s.

And that bathhouses are particularly efficient in spreading disease, which is why they should not exist anywhere in the West.

However, given how promiscuous gay-identified males were even before the bathhouses became so numerous -- and most major cities had at least one bathhouse or the equivalent prior to 1970 -- if anal were commonplace in 1965, we would have seen many many cases of AIDS in 1970.

That didn't happen.

The first cases of what eventually came to be known as "AIDS" were reported in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports in June of 1981.

It takes about six years, on average, for HIV infection to progress to frank AIDS.

1981 - 6 = 1975

Anal took off in 1975.

That was a paradigm shift, and the paradigm shift which enabled AIDS and so many other disasters in the lives of Men.

Paradigms shift, cultural models change.

"Homosexuality" was removed from the APA's DSM in 1973.

That too was a paradigm shift.

So -- in the US, at least, a psychiatrist can no longer tell you that "homosexuality" per se is a mental illness.

And if, in the US, he tries to "treat" you for a mental illness called "homosexuality," he leaves himself open to being sued and/or forced out of practice; and an insurance company need not compensƒate him.

So: there is NO RELATIONSHIP between family structure and same-sex needs and desires.

NONE.

ZERO.

ZIP.

Both my late lover Brett, who was gay-identified, and my present husband Patrick, who is bi-identified, came from families with strong, present, hands-on dads.

And both Brett and Patrick are attracted to and have sex with Men.

Me, specifically.

End of discussion.

Or it should be.

I was discussing this with someone a few months back, and he sent me a passage from Mary Renault's The Nature of Alexander, which is on the reading list.

And I'm glad that he's doing the reading -- so should you all.

But -- in that passage, Renault, who was writing in the 1960s, in effect attributes Alexander's feelings for Hephaistion and other Men to Alexander's mother, Olympias.

Well, it's true that Olympias was, by the standards of her day, a very strong person and personality.

But she was also a 4th century BC semi-barbarian queen -- and I mean both barbarian and queen in their actual sense.

To compare her to an early 20th century Viennese hausfrau, or a 1950s American mother, is really goofy.

But it's not surprising that Renault, as fine a writer as she is, indulges in that sort of goofiness.

Like I say, she was writing in the 1960s, the same era when I sought out my psychiatrist, and the same era when the medical model held absolute sway -- not just in psychiatry, law, and penology, but throughout the culture, including the arts, high and low.

There were, to their credit, a handful of folks who rejected the model -- including writers like Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsberg, and James Baldwin -- and activists like Jack Nichols.

But most writers and other artists, including middle-brow artists like film-maker Alfred Hitchcock and high-brow artists like choreographer Martha Graham -- not to mention all the dime novelists -- routinely incorporated neo-Freudian ideas about the "etiology" of "homosexuality" into their work.

The absent or emasculated father and dominating or emasculating mother were very very common.

That's because "the medical model of homosexuality" was a dominant paradigm, and like any and all dominant paradigms, it dominated all discussion of its subject.

Just as analism does today.

But just as the medical model was toppled, SO WILL BE ANALISM.

That's inevitable.

No culture lasts forever.

And analism will be no exception.

Now, I should add that in Renault's book, when faced with the blatant "homosexuality" of Alexander's father, Philip II, who was notorious for his many love-affairs with both males and females, and who was assassinated, tellingly, by a jilted boyfriend -- Renault attributes Philip's behavior to his having been a hostage in the Greek city-state of Thebes -- home of the Sacred Band of Thebes -- in his youth.

Actually, of course, that's a tad closer to the mark.

But what Renault's doing there is simply using a second theory of "homosexuality" -- known as "situational homosexuality" -- to account for something which did not and DOES NOT need accounting for.

Both Philip and Alexander lived in a time and place when it was common, and normal, and indeed expected, that guys would have passionate romantic and sexual relationships with other guys.

And they did -- with great gusto.

What makes Philip unusual is that he didn't follow the Greek model of Fidelity -- instead, he played the field.

And, not surprisingly, it cost him his life.

Because -- you weren't supposed to do that.

And in the ancient world, if you did something you weren't supposed to do -- I'm talking sexually, and I'm talking both anal and infidelity -- it could easily get you killed.

So -- Alexander, in his attachment to Hephaistion, was actually a rather ordinary Greek man -- except that in Alexander's case he was a Macedonian who'd been educated by a Greek -- Aristotle -- and had grown up in a semi-Greek culture -- which may or may not have had Dorian Greek -- the Spartans were Dorian Greeks -- roots.

Translation: the Dorian roots of Macedonia are debated.

Second part of translation: be that as it may, it was among the Dorians, according to Jaeger, that same-sex love was most openly and joyously celebrated and indeed exalted.

So: culturally, Alexander was in large measure a Greek -- maybe even a Dorian Greek.

(And I have to say, just parenthetically, that to me Alexander looks Dorian -- he looks like one of the Dorian athletes Pindar describes about a century before Alexander was born.

But -- I don't know whether Alexander's contemporaries thought he looked Dorian.

For one thing, given the resentment the Greeks naturally felt towards their Macedonian conquerors, what we might call "the Macedonian-Dorian question" would have been controversial then too.)

Clearly, however, Alexander thought of himself as Greek.

And he behaved that way with Hephaistion.

For example, he kept a copy of the Iliad under his pillow, and when he started his campaign against the Persians, he had his ships land at the ancient site of Troy, and he and Hephaistion ran nude around the alleged tomb of Achilles.

The Lion Hunt
This pebble mosaic was found at Pella, Alexander's capital
Some people believe the figure on the right is Hephaistion

We can think of Alexander and Hephaistion running nude around Achilles' tomb as a grand gesture.

And of course Alexander was famous for such gestures.

For example, when the Persian Queen Mother mistakenly prostrated herself before Hephaistion, thinking him to be Alexander, Alexander said to her, in essence, Not to worry, and then added, gesturing towards, or perhaps laying an arm upon, Hephaistion, "This too is Alexander."

That's both a grand gesture and lovely statement of devotion; but I have to say I don't think such were rare or unusual among same-sex lovers in ancient Greece.

They were expected to, and they did, look out for each other, often in very grand ways.

So -- while Alexander was an extraordinary man, his devotion to Hephaistion was not, in the ancient Greek context, extraordinary.

It was what was expected.

Alexander, in that respect, was an average member of his culture.

A culture in which guys -- openly and often extravagantly -- loved other guys.

So: Olympias did not "make" Alexander "a homosexual."

First of all, of course, because he wasn't "a homosexual" -- he married twice and had at least one son.

But secondly because it wasn't in her power to do that.

Indeed, in the early days of Gay Lib a joke used to go the rounds:

First woman: My mother made me a lesbian.

Second woman: If I ask her, will she make me one?

That joke had staying power because it sent up the neo-Freudian establishment in two ways -- it belittled the power of mothers to affect same-sex desire, and it celebrated that desire.

So: neither mothers nor fathers have the power to make their children into "lesbians" or "gay men."

That's not what happens.

Men and Women have same-sex needs and desires by virtue of being born -- and they choose to act on them.

And of course, as we've discussed at length, it's not just Men and Women.

Same-sex love, affection, intimacy, and sex are found throughout the animal kingdom, and are particularly common among mammals.

For example, more than 55% of sexual contacts among bison, we're now told, are same-sex -- which means they have more same-sex contacts than mixed-sex contacts.

Do all bison have dominating mothers?

Giraffes, bonobos, dolphins, whales, manatees, walrus etc etc etc

Same-sex needs and desires are common in the animal kingdom, which includes, ultimately, human beings.

This was something the ancients well understood.

The great classicist Robert Graves said, regarding the Freudian notion of the Oedipus complex, on which the neo-Freudians had based their "medical model of homosexuality", that:

The Freudian theory that the 'Oedipus complex' is an instinct common to all men was suggested by this perverted anecdote [the tale of Oedipus, who by accident murders his father and marries his mother]; and while Plutarch records (On Isis and Osiris 32) that the hippopotamus "murdered his sire and forced his dam", he would never have suggested that every man had a hippopotamus complex.

Why would Plutarch not have suggested that?

The answer is simple and plain:

In Plutarch's culture and time same-sex affection, intimacy, sex, and love were so commonplace, so ordinary and unremarkable, that no one sought to explain them.

Again: Such behaviors were part of the warp and woof of ancient culture, so common that they didn't merit an explanation.

And of course such same-sex behaviors had, at least for men, divine sanction and approval: Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo -- the three most important male gods -- all had boyfriends -- as had lesser deities like Herakles.

So this was not something which needed explanation.

Now, ancient authors did commonly debate the merits of same-sex vs opposite-sex love, and same-sex love, as we've seen, via Boswell, usually won the debate:

Most ancient writers -- in striking opposition to their modern counterparts -- generally entertained higher expectations of the fidelity and permanence of homosexual passions than of heterosexual feelings.

Plutarch adduces with evident disapproval cases of husbands who allowed their wives to be unfaithful to gain some advantage, and then notes, "By contrast, of all the many [same-sex] lovers there were and have been, do you know of a single one who surrendered his beloved, even to gain favor from Zeus? I do not." (Erotikos 760B).

The proponent of same-sex passion in the Hellenistic Affairs of the Heart says that wisdom and experience teach that love between males is the most stable of loves. This prejudice [sic] was doubtless influenced by the Symposium of Plato, in which heterosexual relationships and feelings are characterized as "vulgar," and their same-sex equivalents as "heavenly."

This contrast exercised wide influence on subsequent discussions of love.

~ Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in PreModern Europe, 74.

Of course, it wasn't just that same-sex lovers were more faithful;

they were also seen as being more MARTIAL -- more War-Like -- having more Fighting Spirit -- attributes which mattered mightily to MEN -- and Women too -- in the ancient world.

Here's more Boswell -- and yes, I repeat this material a lot because I want it to sink so deeply into your skulls that it becomes reflexive for the way you think of same-sex, Manly, Love:

Doubtless the most surprising and counter-intuitive aspect of same-sex eroticism was not its frequency or duration, but its long and hallowed relationship to democracy and military valor, which modern military officials tend to find improbable or even unbelievable.

Boswell goes on to note that in Plato's Symposium, the character named

Phaedrus argued that no one's behavior is better than that of those [same-sex] couples who are in love, because they would rather behave badly in sight of father or comrade than in view of those they love. He even advanced the idea that:

if we could somehow contrive to have a city or an army composed of lovers and those they loved, they could not be better citizens of their country than by thus refraining from all that is base in a mutual rivalry for honor; and such men as these, when fighting side by side, one might almost consider able to make a little band victorious over all the world. For a man in love would surely choose to have all the rest of the host rather than the one he loves see him forsaking his station, or flinging away his arms; sooner than this, he would prefer to die many deaths: while, as for leaving the one he loves in the lurch, or not succoring him in peril, no man is such a craven that the influence of Love [Eros] cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born; and without doubt what Homer calls a "fury inspired" by a god in certain heroes is the effect produced on lovers by Love's peculiar power. Moreover, only such as are in love will consent to die for others.

~ Symposium 179

So -- our present-day insistence that same-sex love is in some way deviant -- and make no mistake, the idea of sexual orientation carries within it the notion of deviancy --

sexual orientation is, as I often say, "homosexuality's evil twin" --

our present notion that same-sex love is deviant is WRONG.

It was not shared by the founders of the Western world, it's not seen among other animals, who, to quote one authority, "don't do sexual identity, they just do sex" --

and over time, there will be another PARADIGM SHIFT -- and the idea of sexual orientation will disappear.

As will the primacy of anal, which is a heterosexualized model of sex between males.

So: over time, both the idea of sexual orientation and the primacy of anal -- will inevitably disappear.

It's our task -- YOUR task -- to help that process along.

If you can find the Courage to do so.

In his last reply to Frot & Army, Alliance Warrior and former Soviet soldier Viktor Marchenko said

Men in West need to tough up and am not afraid to say this! There is too much comfort in Western world. Maybe need hard times to make men in West less comfortable. Maybe would be good thing and make men in West change to be better all over. Am not saying this to be asshole or mean. Am saying this for own good to Western men. Look at men of Roman Empire! Roman men came to have too much comfort and they became weak and fearful and not full of courage. Romans had to recruit foreign men for army to defend Empire because Roman men were too comfortable and would not do this. They grew weak and afraid and SAME thing is happening in West to men! In end Romans lost everything and will be same in West if nothing changes soon.

Viktor says, "In end Romans lost everything and will be same in West if nothing changes soon."

Fact is, while most of you still have your creature-comforts -- as Men -- you've *already* LOST EVERYTHING.

You can't LIVE as you wish and you can't LOVE as you wish.

You may have a wide-screen TV and an SUV -- and multiple pairs of Nikes too.

But you CANNOT LIVE LIKE A MAN.

In that regard, you're more enslaved -- and in your own mind too -- than the lowest ancient slave.

And your creature comforts, and your fear of losing them, which the present economic crisis has heightened almost beyond belief -- are what control your lives.

You are NOT men.

At best you're males and enslaved males at that.

And until you defeat your fear -- you'll not be Men.

Won't happen.

And yet --

You'll either find your courage and use it -- or you'll have no courage left to use.

Right now, Courage calls upon you to Donate.

Why?

Because of the economic crisis, donations have all but vanished.

Why?

Because you're scared -- you're frightened -- you think you might lose everything.

I have news for you, and like I just said -- you've ALREADY lost everything.

That you don't donate tells me just how profound your loss has been.

The one thing you haven't lost is your cowardice.

That's not surprising, since, as Viktor points out, your cowardice is being propped up and supported by your comfort.

Nevertheless, your cowardice in the face of this emergency is not lost -- upon me.

Find your courage -- look high and low for it and don't stop till you've found it -- and Donate.

If you don't, it'll tell me all I need to know -- about you.

Donate.

For far too long two messages, the one analist -- "if it's not anal it's not really gay" --

and the other heterosexist -- "real men don't love other men" --

have dominated our culture and YOUR lives.

Those two stupid inane messages, whether you understand it or not, are KILLING YOU.

They're stupid, they're inane, they're childish, they're dumb --

but because you won't raise a hand or your voice against them --

they're DEADLY.

They are ruling your lives, they are running your lives, they are ruining your lives, and they are KILLING YOU.

What you gonna do bro?

Same old same old?

Keep that up, and before you know it -- you'll be DEAD.

And you'll deserve it --

because you weren't willing to LIVE.

FIGHT BACK.

Bill Weintraub

March 30, 2009

© All material Copyright 2009 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

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Sex Between Men: An Activity Not A Condition