The Man2Man Alliance, in response to requests from individual Frot Men, has begun the process of organizing real-time, real-life regional chapters.

Called simply "Frot Men [Name of city or region]" -- for example, "Frot Men Portland" -- these chapters are our latest organizing tool in our ongoing battle to defeat analism and radically improve the lives of Men who Love Men.

This page:

1. discusses the challenge of Cultural Inertia faced by the Alliance and our regional coordinators;

2. sets forth the Requirements for opening a regional chapter;

3. explains how the regional chapters Relate to The Man2Man Alliance worldwide; and,

4. lists the Regional Chapters.

In short, to give them support for living their own, true, warrior lives.

And the second -- which can't really be separated from the first -- is to overthrow the tyranny of anal penetration, and to return anal to what it was just three decades ago: a denigrated, fringe, practice.

In pursuit of these goals you'll soon be aware of the resistance of people to change, a resistance which is actually cultural in origin, and which we can think of as cultural inertia.

The reality is that it's very difficult to change a culture.

It takes years.

Actually, decades.

In a Personal Stories post titled Never Give Up I talked about the abolition of slavery.

It took 51 years to abolish slavery in the UK and its possessions.

Then another 25, and of course a civil war, to abolish slavery in the US.

Followed by a hundred years of Jim Crow.

We now have a more-or-less integrated society.

But the struggle to achieve that has occupied all of our history as a nation.

Cultures do not change quickly.

Once a culture has found a stasis, once it's in a groove, it stays in that groove, and it takes a lot of energy to redirect it.

Because people don't like too much change, they don't like flux, they don't like uncertainty.

So that every period of cultural change is followed by a period of cultural consolidation and conservatism.

A Dominant Culture

Individuals taking on the task of regional coordinator for The Man2Man Alliance / Frot Men need to be realistic about cultural inertia, and about where we stand historically.

There's a reason I compare the dominant culture of anal penetration -- aka the ButtFuck Dictatorship -- to the Heterosexual Dictatorship which prevailed when I came out in the early 1970s:

The culture of analism is extremely entrenched.

Startlingly so to someone who remembers what gay life was like pre-analism.

When in the mid-70s analism emerged as the dominant culture among gay men, both the gay and straight communities had been through a period of intense change running from about 1965 to 1975.

Some people found the pace of change exhilirating.

Most longed for the re-establishment of order, of cultural boundaries.

Thus analism.

There are a number of factors supporting analism, most of which I've examined in articles such as Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution; and Multipartnered Pansexualism or Heroic Love.

These include:

1. The gay male need to mimic heterosexual behavior.

This became very pronounced and very apparent with the rise of analism in 1975, and the subsequent and extremely widespread use of male-female surrogate language, such as "top-bottom" and "butch-femme," to describe the actors in anal.

It's common for oppressed minorities to ape the behavior of the majority, and difficult to defeat so long as that minority buys into the stereotypes the majority culture puts forth.

In this case, the most common stereotype is that men who have sex with men aren't "real" men, but are actually a species of pseudo-woman.

Thus men who are "anally receptive."

These men believe that because they're gay, and despite the high risk and absence of genital pleasure, they must play a "feminine" role during sex.

This belief is pervasive, and must be opposed wherever it occurs.

And that's why we do not tolerate effeminate behavior.

Because effeminate behavior re-inforces the very destructive idea that men who love men are not truly men.

2. Certain aspects of gender feminism, and the consequent effeminization and emasculation of men in popular culture.

Gender feminism tends to view traditional masculinity with distrust if not outright disgust, seeing it as violent, aggressive, and oppressive -- particularly of women; and to prefer that its men shed the older masculine virtues.

This aspect of popular culture plays into and supports analism by encouraging men to "get in touch with their feminine side," which, in the case of gay men, means being penetrated anally.

3. The ideology of "multipartnered pansexualism."

In our Man2Man Alliance policy paper Why Be Faithful?, we looked at the ideology which underlies gay male promiscuity, the secular belief system known to academics as "multipartnered pansexualism," and to the gay man-in-the-street as "promiscuous, anything goes sex."

This system views the combination of promiscuity and "sexual experimentation" -- that is, participation in a wide variety of acts defined as "sexual," even though most have nothing to do with genital sex -- as a social good, and encourages people, and particularly men who have sex with men (MSM), to have a wide range of sexual partners and experiences.

These experiences, which are sometimes and variously called raunch, kink, and sleaze in the gay male community, include such fringe practices as anal penetration, fellatio, oral-anal contact, the insertion of fists, dildoes, and other objects into the anus and rectum, the use of urine and feces during "sexual play," and various sado-masochistic activities, including the binding and beating of sexual partners.

And, as in any dominant culture , there are an enormous number and variety of cultural messages found in gay male culture which support these activities.

Two of the most important are these gay male by-words: "Honor Diversity," and "It's all sex and it's all good."

Within this ideology, anal penetration occupies a special and indeed exalted place.

It's widely viewed as at once both the core and the most oppositional "queer" act, the homosexual behavior which defines the term sodomy, and which therefore best characterizes and is essential to this community of "sexual outlaws."

In reality, anal penetration mimics heterosexual behavior, while robbing half of its participants of sexual pleasure.

Moreover, anal penetration is not unique to gay men; it's found among heterosexuals as well.

Nevertheless, anal penetration continues to play the central sexual role in gay male sexual life, with most gay men believing that an encounter which does not culminate in anal is deficient or lacking; and that true intimacy between men can only be achieved through the penetration of one partner by the other.

Thus the act is incessantly romanticized, elevated above all others, and marketed: presented as the highest and truest form of gay "sex," anal is discussed endlessly in newspaper and magazine articles, both in print and online; in sex manuals and other self-help books; and in low-, middle-, and high-brow gay male art, including novels, plays, television shows, legitimate cinema, and autobiography; and it is omnipresent, usually in sanitized and often romanticized form, in gay male graphic arts such as painting, in video pornography, and in literally millions of jpeg, gif, and bitmap images now available on the world wide web.

4. AIDS and the rise of "safer-sex."

Paradoxically, the response to AIDS, which among MSM is an anally-transmitted illness, has been an ever escalating and ubiquitous series of exhortations to "use a condom every time you have vaginal or anal sex";

That slogan makes it appear, of course, that anal penetration is comparable to penile-vaginal sexual intercourse;

And among gay men the catchphrase has become abbreviated into "use a condom every time you have sex," thus making "sex" and "anal sex" synonymous.

We've now had more than 20 years of incessant "safer-sex" education among gay and bi men.

Put forth by some of the most sophisticated ad men and women on this earth.

To undo that message -- that gay sex = anal sex -- would be difficult in the best of times.

And these are not the best of times.

The continued strident opposition of the religious right, and impending changes to the Supreme Court, will maintain the siege mentality in the American gay community for the foreseeable future.

Change is stressful

Cultures do not change readily or easily.

In part because change is very stressful.

What we're asking gay and bi men to do is encapsulated in the title of one of my op-eds: Rethinking Gay Sex.

It's not easy to rethink sex; particularly not when you're gay, and your sexual enterprise has been so long in such public dispute.

Here's how Oscar Vallejo put it in a recent post:

I think for a lot of gay men it will be very hard to accept our message because it will always be easier to remain the same although miserable than to change in order to improve.

Oscar's right: it's easier to remain the same although miserable than to change in order to improve.

Change requires energy; and to challenge the prevailing cultural norms and change them requires enormous amounts of energy.

Which the culture resists.

Cultural Amnesia

There's also Cultural Amnesia, which is the tendency of most folks to forget how they got where they are.

That's very common among gay men, most of whom have little knowledge of the history of the gay struggle.

When you take on the task, then, of Regional Co-ordinator for The Man2Man Alliance / Frot Men, you'll be fighting both that inertia and that amnesia.

And that's not an easy thing to do on a day-to-day basis.

It requires perseverance, and a relatively thick skin.

You'll often be tempted to quit.

Don't.

If you quit, the analists win.

The Truth

What you'll have on your side is truth -- and there's no ally more powerful than truth.

Truth: an anus is not a vagina.

Truth: sex is about genitals, not anuses.

Truth: men are men, not women.

Truth: Fidelity works; promiscuity doesn't.

You start with those truths and you speak those truths.

And eventually, you'll have other men fighting beside you.

But it may take a long time to get your first ally, and then your second, and then your third.

Persevere.

The race is to the strong.

The race is to he who endures.

A Case Study in Cultural Inertia
The Gay Rights Movement 1970-85

Now, let's talk about time, using the history of the gay rights movement since Stonewall -- that is, since 1969 -- as a reference.

The first post-Stonewall organizations, Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), organized in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the "Stonewall Rebellion" of 1969 with a protest march.

Soon these organizations, of which GAA is generally thought to have been the more effective, were involved in a variety of actions to improve gay visibility and fight bigotry and stereotypes.

Core to the programs of GAA, GLF, and the many groups like them which appeared in the cities and towns of America in the early 1970s was the idea of "coming out."

We knew that gay men and women were far more diverse and far more prevalent in society than the prejudices of the day would admit.

And we felt that if those people would come out -- that is, acknowledge to their friends, their family, their church, and their employers that they were gay -- the weight of social prejudice could not stand.

In the long run, we were right.

But what we didn't factor in, in the early 70s, was how extremely resistant most gay men and lesbians would be to "coming out"; nor did we anticipate the rapid organization and rise of the religious right, which countered our every legislative success with an electoral reversal.

Consequently, it took us a lot longer to change the culture than we'd anticipated.

Nor did the culture change in exactly the ways we thought it would.

For while of course in some ways lesbians and gay men became a lot freer, in others they found themselves bound by new chains, chains of their own devising.

But in 1970, such concerns were far in the future.

The fact is that from 1970 to 1985, very few gay men and women came out.

And although we managed to create many organizations, political, social, and cultural -- all from scratch -- their impact, prior to 85, was negligible.

I could give you lots of facts and figures to back up what I'm saying, but here are just two:

In 1981, when my late lover Brett Averill took over as editor of the NYC gay paper, its publisher was printing 3,000 copies every other week.

That's in New York City, with a population of 8,000,000, of whom easily 500,000 were gay -- probably more than that.

But fact was that most of those gay people were afraid to even have a gay newspaper in their home or apartment.

Let alone be seen reading it on the street or in the subway.

That's how closeted they were.

Similarly, in 1981, after eleven years of organizing, our largest national organization, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, had 9,000 (nine thousand) dues paying members.

After eleven years of organizing, 9,000 -- that's about 800 people a year.

That's why Ronald Reagan didn't feel the need to say the word "AIDS," let alone fund AIDS research -- there was no constituency for it.

So we weren't doing so great.

What changed that was AIDS.

Because AIDS was a fiercely disfiguring and swift but not immediately fatal illness, it forced literally hundreds of thousands of gay and bi men out of the closet.

And for the first time, Americans could see that what we'd been saying was true: that gay and bi men were not some alien species, but were rather their husbands and sons and nephews and brothers and fathers and cousins and teammates and fellow parishioners and congregants and co-workers, that they were in every line of work from priest to teacher to cop to physician to attorney to athlete to laborer and mason and mechanic and carpenter.

That we were indeed everywhere.

And, as we had predicted, that realization, which took some time to hit home, eventually destroyed most of the more common forms of anti-gay discrimination and prejudice.

But absent AIDS, I don't know how long it would have taken us to achieve our goals.

Because people did not want to come out.

Truth is, that at the rate of 800 per year, we'd have less than 30,000 openly gay people in the US today.

It's difficult to change a culture.

Frot Men and Cultural Inertia

What's that have to do with Frot men?

A lot.

Because in terms of organizing, we're back in 1970.

Most Frot men are not out.

Look at our boards -- almost no one uses a real name on those message boards.

Look at the profiles on the big gay dating sites like OutInAmerica or gay.com -- almost no one says he's into Frot.

That's a big problem.

And it indicates how far we have to go.

Frot men, whether they are gay, bi, or straight-identified, are closeted today for the same reason homosexual men were closeted 30 years ago: they see no advantage to coming out, and a lot of problems if they do.

If they're gay-identified, they know that coming out as a Frot man will mean taking on and fighting their own subculture.

Very few people have the stomach for that -- not without support.

And if they're straight-identified, coming out means taking on the prejudices of straight society, which believes that biseuxality is weird and that most bisexual men are actually gay.

Not to mention, of course, the risks they run of ruining their marriages and losing their children.

These are very big problems, and anyone seeking to organize Frot guys needs to recognize them as such.

But there is a flip side to coming out, as there always has been.

Which is that coming out enables you to meet other men like yourself, Frot men, and, by working with them, create supportive communities.

And, properly presented and properly used, that's a big carrot.

Because those communities -- Frot Men communities, Frot Warrior communities -- will greatly improve your lives.

As regional coordinator, it will be your job to create those regional communities -- as best you can, with the people you have to work with.

I can tell you as an organizer of more than three decades experience that while a few of those people will be awful, most will be wonderful.

Without question some of the finest people you'll have ever known.

And it's those wonderful folks who'll count.

So if you're thinking of taking on the job of regional co-ordinator, you need to understand that it will be hard work and often frustrating.

But that you'll meet great guys.

And that it's also the best chance you have to make a difference:

To fight back;

And save your life.

Bill Weintraub

February 9, 2005.

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II

REQUIREMENTS

for opening a chapter

To be affiliated with The Man2Man Alliance Frot Men and be granted permission to use our name, chapters must agree to support the three pillars of our Man2Man Alliance Frot Men program:

not
anal

---

not
promiscuity

---

not
effeminacy

---

1. FROT

All members must be Frot Men:

Men with a strong masculine identification whose primary m2m erotic practice is FROT and who do not participate in anal penetration.

Men who are still doing anal are NOT Frot men.

Our Man2Man Alliance Frot Men chapters are for Frot men only.

2. FIDELITY

All members must support our goal of Fidelity between men who love men; and the local chapter may not do ANYTHING which undercuts that goal, including sponsoring any sort of sex party.

Social gatherings, such as potluck suppers, are fine.

Sex parties are not.

Moreover, individuals who solicit promiscuity and/or who seek to disrupt the vows of a phallically bonded warrior pair will be expelled from the chapter immediately and with no exceptions.

This is not an "Honor Diversity" exercise.

The point is to support guys who want to be monogamous.

That cannot be done by winking at promiscuity.

3. MASCULINITY

Frot men are comfortable with and proud of their masculinity.

For that reason:

• Chapters will have zero tolerance for effeminacy and effeminizing behavior among members.

• Chapters will also make clear to their members that men who have sex with men are not intergendered.

  They are not some exotic mix of male and female.

  They are men.

  Men have had sex with men since the beginning of time.

  Wanting to do the same in the 21st century does not make a man unusual or unique.

  There's nothing odd or unnatural or strange about a man having sex with a man.

  It's a normal and natural male behavior.

  Men who have sex with men are -- MEN.

• In addition, chapters are strongly encouraged to undertake group training in martial arts or other combat sports, such as wrestling and boxing.

  For example, Cockrub Warrior Naked Wrestler, who's an olympic wrestler, is in the process of creating his own wrestling school in Seattle.

  Once the school is open, Frot Men / Seattle chapter might train at Naked Wrestler's school.

  Or the Frot men in the Portland regional chapter could select a local martial arts school and agree to train there two nights a week.

  Sensei Patrick will be available to help guide chapters and/or individuals through the process of selecting a school.

  Group participation in martial arts training greatly benefits individual Frot men while forging strong bonds within the chapter and is highly recommended.

In Sum

Part of what the regional chapters will be doing is helping "men into Frot" become Frot Men.

Because many of these men will have been acculturated into analism and will have a hard time leaving aspects of analist culture behind.

• Some will still be doing anal.

  They will come to understand that they should and need not.

• Some will want to be promiscuous.

  They will come to understand that promiscuity is a bad choice.

• Some will think effeminacy is amusing.

  They will come to understand that effeminacy is oppressive.

So members will be supported in behavior which is phallic, masculine, and faithful, while being strongly encouraged to give up behavior which is the opposite -- anal, effeminate, and promiscuous.

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Regional coordinators are expected to have a strong working knowledge and understanding of, and be in agreement with, basic Alliance tenets and cultural analysis as put forth in such articles as Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution; What Sex Is; Multipartnered Pansexualism or Heroic Love; and Why Be Faithful.

Coordinators should also consult the Alliance FAQs page and especially the Definitions page.

While individual chapter members may not have as thorough a knowledge of the core writings of the Alliance as chapter coordinators, they are to be encouraged to read as deeply on our Alliance sites as possible.

In addition, Bill Weintraub is available to answer questions from all chapter members via email and phone.

2. Programmatic.

The primary goals of Frot Men / The Man2Man Alliance are to empower men into Frot and to bring the good news about Fidelity and Frot to all men who love men.

The way those goals are achieved will be largely left to the discretion of the regional memberships, though occasionally the direction of the Alliance may request that regional chapters participate in some action, such as a letter-writing campaign.

Some chapters may be more politically oriented, and some more socially oriented.

What's paramount, however, is that regional chapters act to help those members who are seeking to further Alliance goals.

For example, one member may have a strong drive towards group martial arts training.

Another may suggest putting on a theater piece about resisting pressure and coercion to do anal.

A third may wish to distribute leaflets or other printed material at local bars, or outside gay churches.

Ideally, the chapter will function in such ways as to encourage and aid all three men.

In addition, the international leadership of the Alliance may suggest certain activities.

For example:

• Having an information booth at the local gay pride festival.

• Persuading the local gay, mainstream, or alternative press to do a story about the chapter.

• Working with the local AIDS Service Organization to make sure that Frot is adequately and forcefully presented as an option in their various media and by their safer sex educators.

• Picketing the local bath-house or other businesses which encourage promiscuity for financial gain.

  PLEASE NOTE: Regarding picketing and other forms of political "direct action":

  We are opposed to a culture, which we call the dominant culture of anal penetration, and a set of cultural beliefs and messages, which we refer to as "analism."

  In any dominant culture, individual members of that culture may act as spokespeople for the culture, seeking to re-inforce cultural norms.

  Although we are at times critical of certain individuals, whom we may refer to as analists, at no time are chapter members to engage in any sort of threatening or harassing behavior towards individuals.

  Picketing and other sorts of non-violent protest are permissible provided they are carried out within the confines of the law.

  Verbal or physical threats, stalking, and other forms of harassment are not.

  Not only are they illegal, they are counter-productive.

  One reason AIDS professionals are so leery of people who disagree with them is that at times in the past, some of those people have resorted to completely inappropriate and illegal behavior towards them.

  No member of any chapter of The Man2Man Alliance / Frot Men may do that.

  Members who harass, threaten, stalk, or otherwise seek to physically intimidate those with whom we disagree will be expelled by the chapter immediately.

3. Financial.

Any monies needed to pay for local activities must be raised by the local chapter.

In addition, although at this time we do not plan to levy dues upon regional chapters, we reserve the right to do so in future; and The Man2Man Alliance Worldwide expects regional chapters to assist in the maintenance of our global internet presence by donating to our sites whenever possible.

4. Use of intellectual property.

Use of The Man2Man Alliance / Frot Men name, distinctive logos, and other of Bill Weintraub's intellectual property is by permission from Bill Weintraub and The Man2Man Alliance only.

The co-ordinators of the regional chapters will, upon request, sign, have notarized, and return to the Alliance headquarters letters of intent stipulating their willingness to conform to our goals and procedures.

They will also undertake not to use our names, logos, and terminology without permission.

And they will specifically agree that should they decide to set up a group or groups outside the aegis of the Alliance, they will take pains, in the way they name the group, and in other ways such as explanations to group members and to the public, to make very clear that such is not affiliated with Frot Men / The Man2Man Alliance.

So: if at some point and for whatever reason, you want to go off on your own, it must be clear through the name of the group and through your public actions, that the new group is not affiliated with Frot Men / The Man2Man Alliance, or any other of our groups such as Frot Club, Cockrub Warriors, and Heroes.

Specific terms including Frot Men, The Man2Man Alliance, Heroic Homosex, Cockrub Warriors, and Frot Club are all the intellectual property of Bill Weintraub and may not be used without his permission.

Nor may they be altered in such a way as to deceive or intentionally confuse the public.

Which means that naming a splinter group Frot Alliance or The Man2Man Frot Club will not be allowed.

If you wish to start a new group which will operate independent of The Man2Man Alliance / Frot Men, you must come up with a name for it which does not confuse the public.

Why?

In the gay community, and elsewhere, a lot of damage has been done by people who've stolen the work of others, including organizational names, because they want to gain the cachet conferred by the name and the work and are too lazy and/or stupid to create an authentically new group of their own.

For example, the San Francisco chapter of the AIDS protest organization ACT/UP, which was created by Larry Kramer, was seized by anti-HIV activists (people who insist HIV is not the cause of AIDS).

ACT/UP had to then form a separate chapter in SF called ACT/UP Golden Gate.

Needless to say, most people couldn't tell them apart, or couldn't remember which was which.

Which means that an anti-HIV group effectively stole the name ACT/UP to lend legitimacy to their anything but legitimate views.

Something similar happened to GLF in New York City, so much so that the founders of GLF held a very public funeral for the organization to try to get across to the public that it no longer existed.

And that those using its name had no legitimacy.

So it's important for me, as creator of The Man2Man Alliance, Frot Men, Heoric Homosex, Frot Club, Cockrub Warriors, and Heroes, to make sure that those names are not misused.

Because those who do misuse them are never to be trusted.

That said, so long as the regional chapters remain committed to the three crucial points of our program -- FROT, FIDELITY, MASCULINITY -- they'll remain part of the Alliance, and those chapters will be basically what you guys make of them.

They can be purely social, or, they can be purely political, or a mix of both.

So long as you remain responsive to the needs of the membership, you'll enjoy a wide latitude of action.

Just remember: you'll get as much out of the group as you put into it.

If you're interested in taking on the job of regional co-ordinator, contact me:

bill@man2manalliance.org

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IV

CONTACTS

Oregon: Frot Men Portland

Contact: Beagle Jones

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