Saturday 14 February 2009

Tough Love

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

To Bum or not to Bum?

I remember a rather surreal conversation I had face to face once, at the home of a guy I met off Recon. As we sat watching TV, drinking coffee for the pre-coital getting-to-know-you bit, he put on a film in which one guy sticks a funnel up the other guy's arse then pisses into it, takes out the funnel, and then the first guy squirts the piss out of his arse into a third guy's mouth.

As I sat there with, in actual fact, not the merest hint of any arousal, my host said "It's interesting the way drugs have changed the way gay men have sex. Fisting and watersports and stuff is a lot more common these days."

Needless to say, that particular session didn't last very long!

Some people have funny ideas about what constitutes "sex". Some have very cosy assumptions. It's true that not all gay guys are into anal, and not always because they're so trashed they can't get it up. There can be many reasons, the simplest one being that they just don't like it. A huge number of gay men are not, despite the popular notion that homosexuality and anal penetration are the same thing.

There can also be other reasons - bad experiences, medical conditions, fear of disease, etc., all of them perfectly valid for the individual concerned. And very often such a person will find himself confronted with the perplexing attitude that there is something wrong with him for not wanting to do the back alley shuffle. The onus is on him to explain why he does NOT want it, rather than on those who like anal to explain why it should be taken for granted that it is the norm.

Everyone's individual choices about their sexual preferences should of course be respected... especially by gay people who really ought to know better than to be narrow-minded and/or judgemental on sexual matters!

That's not the end of the story, though. Negative attitudes and ideas about anal sex persist for plenty of spurious reasons. Something we hear often from people, particularly certain heterosexuals, is the objection that it is not clean. This shows up a very simplistic understanding of the human body: the rectum does not always contain faeces, just as the vagina does not always contain blood. Both these body fluids can be dangerous, and both can be avoided during sex.

Now and again someone will say "The arse wasn't designed to have things shoved up it!" which begs the question WHO designed it? If you believe in a Supreme Being, can you ask him why he designed the reproductive bits right next to the waste elimination bits? A woman's sexual parts are inbetween her pee hole and her poop chute. God - What were you thinking??? Did you have a hangover that day?!

Oral sex must be universally wrong by the same argument, as the mouth was designed for one thing, eating. Oh, sorry, two things, eating and speaking. Kissing? You're just being difficult now, aren't you!?

There are those who take a skewered view: taking it up the rear is unmanly, but giving it is OK. This attitude is particularly prevalent in socities where homosexuality is publically condemned, but privately popular. A macho man can fuck another guy and still hold onto his masculinity, especially if the passive partner is effeminate / camp / a cross-dresser. In reality, of course, the assumptions about rigid roles are just as baseless as those about sexual orientation. Many a butch bloke likes it up the backside, and the one giving it to him doesn't always have to be masculine. Or even male...

As if anal hadn't had enough bashing already, in the 1980s we had political correctness coming along to tell us that penetrative sex was inherently oppressive to women. And it wasn't only lesbian separatists that told us this, but some of their gay brothers-in-spirit-of-emulation, who decided that men fucking each other was also sort of oppressive as it was an echo of straight sex. All of it undermined terribly, of course, by the great fun had by less politically aware, more relaxed lesbians using various penetrative sex toys on each other, vaginally and anally, with great enthusiasm... SM dykes were the REAL black sheep of the sisterhood back in the day!

It's not everyone's cup of tea and I'm not saying it should be, but the choice for or against should be based on clear facts and not on myths or dodgy reasoning. It can be more than pleasure, it can be a very significant part of lovemaking. A New Age-type spiritual guy I once met told me that - from the right man - it can be very healing.

Sometimes among BDSM guys I get the impression that a good old bonk is considered unfashionable. Why stick your willy up someone's bum when your hand will do, or an ergonomically-designed latex prothesis costing a week's wages from Regulation (The Art Of Control)? OK, some guys genuinely do like ONLY the kinky stuff and not the vanilla, but I can't help feeling how well the two go together. My first tentative forays into bondage were all about the excitement of restraining a guy so I could shag him while he couldn't move, and although I also like the aesthetic side of rope as well these days, that initial thrill is still a big part of the attraction. The pain-pleasure mix of penetration isn't exactly a million miles away from SM. Indeed, there are vanilla folk who are convinced that bumlove IS a distinctly sadomasochistic activity. Yet all too often a cute or horny BDSM guy will take the attitude that fucking is far too ordinary to be of interest, which can be a real shame...

One truly tragic development in all this is that there IS one arena in which fucking is revered in all its glory - barebacking. I've seen some really hot BB porn, and it isn't the lack of rubber that I like, but the fact that the sex is real, not acted, and grittily authentic - sometimes the tops actually cum INSIDE the bottoms - just like in a REAL fuck! For porn this is nothing short of revolutionary. If only this energy was more prevalent elsewhere.

When kink takes itself too seriously, or becomes an obssession, and party drugs cripple the body's ability to respond in a normal sexual way, ye olde screw is often the first casualty.

I think we need to get back to basics. Guys, you look great in all the leather and rubber and waders and vaccuum-sealed body bags, but never forget your roots. You are queers. Do it up the bum, the way nature intended (God gave you a prostate for a REASON!), with pride, joy and gay abandon.



RopeTop.com