Greg Milliken

Re: Not a fetish

9-8-2005

Dave,

Thanks for your post and I wish you the best of luck on your second "coming out."

There are a few things I wish to add to your post.

Not only is anal a fetish in the literal sense, you'll find that most guys don't receive anal penetration for the sake of their own sexual gratification.

Often it is an issue of trust or appeasement so that the partner can be sexually satisfied.

You don't need to have anal sex to trust your partner. In fact, if your partner demands anal sex so that he can trust you when you dislike it, that will undermine the relationship.

And you won't find very often that the reason is for sexual gratification.

For example, I remember when I lost my "anal virginity" several years ago, I thought to myself, "Why do people get so excited over sex?"

It genuinely didn't feel that good to me.

So sexual gratification isn't the goal for those being anally penetrated.

This makes sense, because anal isn't required for men to be gratified sexually. There are many alternatives to anal available to gay men, all of which are sexually satisfying.

Yet most gay men choose anal anyway.

Despite the extreme risk of catching not only fatal, but horribly debilitating diseases from the act.

Anyone whose goal is sexual gratification, and can reach this goal any number of ways, would do so by means of the least risky method available.

Frot.

Yet when we tell people about frot, they raise all kinds of objections to it.

Despite the fact that everyone I've told about it who has actually tried it has enjoyed it immensely.

So if anal = disease and death, then somehow the equation below must be fulfilled.

Anal = ? > health and life

In other words, something about anal, in the minds of people who practice it is greater than health and life.

Personally, I consider life to be an end of itself and not a means to some other end.

Because the only other end is death.

So if you aren't enjoying life, you're rushing toward death.

I also find that I am happier when I am healthy than when I am sick.

So anyone giving up anal, and the prerequisite diseases therein would likely find the same enjoyment restored to their own lives.

And if you are enjoying your life it makes sense that you would want to avoid things that might cut it short.

Things like HIV and Hepatitis.

I'm not talking about some elusive bus that may come along and hit you tomorrow; I'm talking about a set of diseases that have ALREADY INFECTED more than half the gay population.

And in certain areas of this country, HIV itself has infected more than HALF the population.

Places like the area I live, among others.

And what's worse is a third or more of the people infected with the disease don't even know it.

So even if you are practicing anal penetration with someone who thinks he is HIV-, he still may end up being positive and infecting you.

In fact, the odds are in favor of that very course of events with anal.

HIV is not a bus.

Likewise, you would go out of your way to avoid being hit by said bus. You would do so by performing such actions as looking both ways before you cross a street, staying on the crosswalks, waiting for pedestrian traffic signals to alert you to the safety of crossing.

Practicing anal receptiveness is akin to trying to cross a highway blindfolded in the middle of rush-hour traffic.

Not getting mysteriously waylaid by some elusive bus.

At best you're going to get your toes run over.

At worst...

So the ? that fills in the equation above doesn't exist. There is no value that can be added to anal penetration that can replace your health and life, and still meet the prerequisite of being greater than life and health themselves.

I think it is this mystery which causes so many men to become psychologically dependent on anal penetration. After all, would it be any mystery why so many gay men perform sodomy on each other if it genuinely felt good?

Not at all. The fact that it doesn't feel good leaves one wondering what secret they are missing which would fill in the blank and suddenly unlock the secret pleasure of anal penetration. This in turn makes them want to do it more often. Maybe this is the most pathetic aspect of anal sex, that people try so hard to get it right, when in reality they'd be doing themselves a huge favor by simply not doing it at all.

Surely the gay population must be very strong willed in order to accommodate such a form of sex. A weak willed person would give up immediately after realizing how much pain, discomfort, disease, and other health problems are associated with the practice. Gay men, on the other hand, have long years defying an oppressive populace that would like for men who love men to simply disappear altogether. This is both a good thing, because they will be resilient in defense of their lifestyles, and a bad thing, because they will be resilient in defense of their lifestyles.

Unfortunately, will and intention doesn't add up to good lifestyle choices. When presented with a veritable buffet of sexual choices, choosing the dirtiest, filthiest leftovers from the dumpster out back will never be a good choice.

Yet if all you've ever been allowed to have is the filthy remains, how do you know that the food inside is better or not? For this reason, there will always be those who choose to eat out of the dumpster.

I don't think anyone as a child said to himself, "I want to live my life pursuing a form of sex that is genuinely painful and in general not pleasurable." Yet that is what gay culture forces people to accept. A lifetime of dumpster sex that couldn't compare to vanilla if it tried.

By any means, subjective or objective, anal fails to meet the barest definition of sex: that it be sexually gratifying. If it can't even do that, it's no stretch at all to call it a fetish. In fact, calling it anything more than a fetish is like trying to build a castle in a marsh. Without any foundation to rest upon, that castle will simply sink into the water and disappear.

Interesting how realistic that comparison is. 500,000 and counting.

Bill Weintraub

Re: Not a fetish

9-15-2005

Hey Dave and Greg

Two great and really important posts.

Dave says that some of his analist "friends" have been telling him that Frot is "an imitation of straight sex."

All that's going on there Dave is these buttboyz, who've had their heads up their asses so long that they're not capable of original thought, are simply parroting something we say about anal -- that it's a poor and pale imitation of straight sex.

That's accurate -- about anal.

But it's not true of Frot.

Frot's not an imitation of anything.

Frot's sui generis.

It is true that Frot, like penile-vaginal sexual intercourse, is mutually and simultaneously genital for both partners.

But that's the end of its resemblance to penile-vaginal.

Penile-penile aka cocktocock dick2dick cockrub Frot is very different from penile-vaginal.

Ask any bi guy.

Just as men are different from women, so penile-penile is different from vaginal, while remaining true and authentic genital-genital sex.

It's male-male genital-genital sex, it is, as Dave says, "something that can only be done between two men, and is thus to me a uniquely homosexual act."

That's the beauty of it.

It's uniquely male, and it's uniquely ours.

Anal penetration by contrast is NOT uniquely male -- straight people do anal too -- and most importantly, it's NOT true sex.

Anal, unlike Frot, does imitate and mimic straight sex:

it mimics straight sex through penetration and the imposition of dom-sub male-female top-bottom roles.

What's essential to understand is that mimicry does not confer authenticity.

To repeat: Mimicry does not confer authenticity.

A guy can get down on all fours, sniff the floor, and bark.

But that doesn't make him a dog.

He's just a guy who's mimicking a dog.

I often use the word "ersatz" to describe anal, which is inauthentic, artificial or phoney "sex."

"Ersatz" is a German word which originally meant "replacement," and it came into widespread use during World War II, when the Germans ran out of many basic goods and had to "replace" them.

So there was for example ersatz coffee, and ersatz chocolate, and ersatz flour, and so forth.

The point is that something which replaces is not the equal of the original.

Is ersatz chocolate, chocolate?

No.

It's a bad imitation of chocolate, and over time, the word "ersatz" came to mean not just "replacement," but artificial and phoney and inferior.

Webster's: "being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation, for example, ersatz flour made from potatoes."

And that's what anal penetration is -- ersatz sex.

Not true sex, but a replacement, a bad imitation of, and an inferior substitute for, true sex.

In anal, the anus becomes an ersatz vagina, the rectum an ersatz uterus, the bottom an ersatz woman, and so forth.

So just as ersatz chocolate looked like chocolate, but of course didn't taste like chocolate, didn't have the bioflavinids found in chocolate, etc., so anal penetration looks like vaginal sex; but it isn't.

Frot is true genital-genital sex.

Anal isn't -- it's a fetish, an obsessive sexual interest in a non-genital body part.

What's interesting to me is just how many Frot men still believe that Frot is a fetish.

For example, I recently had an email from a guy who used to have a frottage group on yahoo, and he of all people referred to frot as a fetish.

It's not.

Like I said, Frot is genital-genital sex, which is true sex.

But it's not surprising that many guys into Frot still think of Frot as a fetish, because these sorts of beliefs tend to hang on even when they've been decisively disproven.

For example, in the 1960s homosexuality was, according to the American Psychiatric Association's authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), a mental illness -- specifically, a personality disorder -- and psychiatrists could, therefore, legally treat patients for homosexuality.

In 1973, however, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM; and homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.

Nevertheless, my guess is that most gay men throughout the 70s and well into the 80s continued to believe that they were, on some level, mentally ill, and that their homosexuality was the result of a dysfunctional family structure.

Over time, that belief dissipated, and nowadays, few gay men or lesbians would attribute their sexual orientation to family structure.

But -- IT TAKES TIME TO CHANGE A CULTURE.

It doesn't happen overnight.

And in that vein, the same man who wrote to me about Frot as a fetish also said that "straight guys" who "limit themselves" to cock2cock aren't really bi, because they haven't "gone all the way."

Of course that's not true.

I don't care if a man who has sex with men considers himself "a straight guy who likes to rub cocks with a bud every now and then."

But the reality is that cockrub dick2dick bone on bone Frot, is same-sex sex -- homosex -- and if you're a guy who sleeps with women and also does dick2dick with a friend, you are, by definition, bisexual.

Penile-vaginal sex between a man and a woman is "hetero" sex.

And penile-penile sex between a man and a man is "homo" sex.

Homosex is homosex; heterosex is heterosex.

And if you participate in both, you are, to some degree, bisexual.

Now, you may say, your primary erotic interest is in women, and so you consider yourself straight.

Just as a gay man who occasionally has sex with a woman may still consider himself gay.

And that's fine, so long as you recognize that both the straight-identified guy in this example and the gay-identified guy are also, to some degree, bisexual.

Like most men.

What's crucial is that you understand that doing anal penetration is NOT going "all the way."

Doing anal does not make you either "gayer" or "straighter."

The only thing it makes you is -- "dumber."

Anal isn't going all the way, it's going out of your way to do something stupid, going somewhere you shouldn't ever go and where you needn't ever go.

Again, even a guy who once ran a frottage group, has these misperceptions.

And the only way those misperceptions will change is for guys like Dave and Greg to speak out forcefully against them.

So Dave's doing the most important thing he can, which is to "come out" as a Frot man.

It's difficult to do that, and I would never understate those difficulties.

But it's also the only way to move forward both with your life as an individual and with the sort of social change we seek to bring about.

It can't be done from the closet.

Dave writes:

Frottage is something that can only be done between two men, and is thus to me a uniquely homosexual act. It is endlessly frustrating to get the sense of bewilderment that tends to occur whenever I 'come out' to other gay men when I tell them I only like frottage. This is doubtlessly why I don't do this often. I know what people will tell me, that I am just scared of sex and overanalyzing, that I need to try new things, that if I just try it I would like it, I'm just trying to be masculine but I'm really not (despite the fact that I AM a man) bla bla bla...

I understand Dave's sense of endless frustration.

That's much what it was like to come out in the 1970s.

Not only did straight people not understand, but the overwhelming majority of gay men also thought that coming out was crazy.

And it was, to use Dave's phrase, "endlessly frustrating" dealing with those guys.

Because coming out was not easy, and they were constantly undercutting your efforts, telling you that you were better off in the closet, refusing to come out themselves, and maintaining that a sex life of secrets and subterfuge was best.

It was not and it is not.

But it was very difficult dealing with those men, and after a while I stopped, and limited my social contacts to the handful of other out gay men in Boston at the time.

That too was difficult, because there were very few of those guys.

But the alternative was hanging out with these miserably closeted men who were undercutting my efforts to live a decent and open life, and thus improve the lives of all MLM.

It couldn't be done.

But I do need to tell people more often. I need to be clear about it. If coming out has taught me anything, standing up for what I want in life is a good thing. By asserting myself more, I gain confidence, and hopefully the respect of others. It may be that I will soon have to "come out" a second time, and this time may actually be much harder than the last time.

Dave is right: standing up for what one wants in life is a good thing, and, eventually, results in both self-confidence and the respect of others.

And yes, coming out this second time may be harder.

Because, thanks to the efforts of guys like myself, who came out as a gay men when it was NOT easy to do so, it's far easier for guys today to come out as ordinary gay guys.

But eventually, thanks to guys like Dave and Greg, it will be easier for Frot men to come out.

The point is that someone has to do it.

None of us choose the time in which we're born.

If I'd been able to choose, I certainly would not have chosen the very homophobic 20th century, but would rather have opted for the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.

But I wasn't given that choice, and instead found myself fighting homophobia throughout my life.

Frot guys will, I have no question, find the going a lot easier in a decade or so.

But it's fallen on guys like Dave and Greg, just by virtue of when they were born, to do a lot of the donkey work.

That work will have its rewards too though.

Eventually.

Now, Greg too makes some great points:

Not only is anal a fetish in the literal sense, you'll find that mos t guys don't receive anal penetration for the sake of their own sexual gratification.

Often it is an issue of trust or appeasement so that the partner can be sexually satisfied.

That's correct.

Guys get penetrated anally to please their partners.

There's no g-spot in the anus, there's no genital or erectile tissue, there's nothing there which can give them pleasure.

So they're doing it to please someone else.

This is how the anonymous author of the post titled smells like shit, looks like shit, is shit put it:

I keep on hearing about this prostate gland / Male G spot. Nonsense. The prostate gland is not a sexual organ, it's a gland smaller than a ping pong ball. I don't know about you but my G-spot is my dick, simple as that. The way it feels when people rub it the right way, I don't need any other G-spot in my body. Not only that, the prostate is located a couple inches in and down toward your dick. And 2 inches, not 6, 7, or 12 inches for all you size queens. Because of its position, it's easier to reach it with your finger than with a dick. Sex with penetration "CAN" be applied to men you say, but "SHOULD" it be? Maybe it shouldn't.

That's correct.

And what does applying digital pressure to the prostate have to do with sex?

Answer: NOTHING.

Years ago, when I was a young man, I had sex with a doctor, also a young guy, who "massaged my prostate" during sex.

He was a doctor, and he certainly knew what he was doing.

Yet to this day, I have no idea what that pressure on my prostate had to do with sex.

What he did, though it happened during sex, was not sex.

Like rimming, finger-fucking has nothing to do with sex.

It's just another dopey analist idea of something you can do with your shithole in the name of sex.

But it's not sex.

Massaging the prostate is massaging the prostate.

And sticking your finger in a hole full of shit -- is sticking your finger in a hole full of shit.

It's not sex.

Plus if being a bottom is so great than why is it in pornos when the bottom is getting fucked he barely has an erection (the universal sign of male sexual PLEASURE). It's either Half-Mast, flopping around, or a cold water dick. The directors in porn films try to hide this by letting the bottom "Cup" his dick in his hand or pretend he's jacking off, with the whole of his dick in his fist. When there is a that rare full salute it's usually because the bottom is jackin like a maniac to keep it from going down. The rest is usually clever editing to hide the fact that the man below isn't really getting pleasure. I really wanna know how many of you "Bottoms" can maintain a full erection while you're being fucked. Because it's already tough enough for you tops to maintain one with your dick stuffed in a hole full of feces.

Greg picks up on the dysphoria inherent in anal when he says:

Maybe this is the most pathetic aspect of anal sex, that people try so hard to get it right, when in reality they'd be doing themselves a huge favor by simply not doing it at all.

Wow! That is the truth.

Surely the gay population must be very strong willed in order to accommodate such a form of sex. A weak willed person would give up immediately after realizing how much pain, discomfort, disease, and other health problems are associated with the practice. Gay men, on the other hand, have long years defying an oppressive populace that would like for men who love men to simply disappear altogether. This is both a good thing, because they will be resilient in defense of their lifestyles, and a bad thing, because they will be resilient in defense of their lifestyles.

Again, this is a point well taken.

It's axiomatic among activists like myself, that "wherever there's oppression, there's resistance."

That doesn't mean however that the resistance is effective or rational.

For it's often the case that the resistance takes dysfunctional forms.

For example, the embrace of drag by gay men was in part a response to the cultural message that "gay men aren't really men."

A certain segment of the gay population responded to that by saying, in effect, "If we're not really men, we're going to act like men who aren't really men, donning the most outrageous and obnoxious drag we can come up with."

So: drag is a form of resistance to the straight oppressor, but it also internalizes the oppressor's message.

It's not, in my view, an effective form of resistance, but as someone who lived through an era when the only visible homosexuals were men in drag, I understand that it was a form of defiance.

Not effective defiance and in my view, very damaging.

But it was defiance.

And so is a lot of sodomy.

You have guys out there who say to the religious right -- you accuse us of being sodomites -- fine, we are sodomites, and we're proud of it.

But again, this is a dysfunctional defiance.

Because it buys into the oppressor's lie: that all gay men do anal, they're all promiscuous and diseased and effeminate and evil.

It's both far better and more honest to say, very simply and directly, I'm not a sodomite and I don't do anal, I'm just a guy who likes to have sex with guys, and who wants, like most people, to live a decent, happy, and honorable life.

That clearly is a better form of resistance than one which, in infantile fashion, absorbs the oppressor's message.

Unfortunately, will and intention doesn't add up to good lifestyle choices.

Greg is correct.

Defiance does not necessarily equal good choices.

When presented with a veritable buffet of sexual choices, choosing the dirtiest, filthiest leftovers from the dumpster out back will never be a good choice.

Yet if all you've ever been allowed to have is the filthy remains, how do you know that the food inside is better or not? For this reason, there will always be those who choose to eat out of the dumpster.

I don't think anyone as a child said to himself, "I want to live my life pursuing a form of sex that is genuinely painful and in general not pleasurable." Yet that is what gay culture forces people to accept. A lifetime of dumpster sex that couldn't compare to vanilla if it tried.

By any means, subjective or objective, anal fails to meet the barest definition of sex: that it be sexually gratifying. If it can't even do that, it's no stretch at all to call it a fetish. In fact, calling it anything more than a fetish is like trying to build a castle in a marsh. Without any foundation to rest upon, that castle will simply sink into the water and disappear.

Interesting how realistic that comparison is. 500,000 and counting.

Yep.

500,000 and counting is correct.

500,000 dead in America alone.

And 500,000 American MSM currently infected.

And 95% of those men, we now know, are also infected with HPV, which causes anal cancer.

One has to wonder what else they're infected with.

The number of new infections will decrease only when we collectively find the courage to come out and to tell the world the truth about anal, about ourselves, and about Frot.

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Surrounded on all sides