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Photos Courtesy: Badpuppy
The Anal Sex Debate
Moves to the End Zone
I appreciate Teddy Snyder taking the time to respond to my letter regarding the hidden dangers to the gay male community posed by a potential AIDS vaccine and a return to promiscuous unprotected anal sex.
However, Mr. Snyder chose, somewhat misleadingly, to focus on the medical aspect of my letter, and to ignore that part which dealt specifically with the non-medical but equally destructive effects of the cultural domination of anal sex in the gay male community, making instead the sort of statements for the supremacy of anal sex that are typical of gay men seeking to defend anal's cultural dominance. In doing so, I feel, he muddied the waters and even obscured some things he had to say about what anal means to him that are quite valuable, and worth listening to.
So let me try to clarify:
As I understand Mr. Snyder's letter, there are three separate issues he seeks to address.
The first is disease. Mr. Snyder asserts that anal sex carries no more risk than many human activities, including, for example, kissing or breathing. That's demonstrably false. While it may be true that there are airborne diseases that are occasionally lethal, none that I know of, unlike HIV, kill 95% of the people they infect. And while there are of course safe ways to have anal sex, the fact is that in the last 30 years we have seen epidemics of syphilis, gonorrhea, genital herpes, intestinal parasites, hepatitis B, and finally HIV break over the gay male community. Although some of these can be transmitted orally or through genital-oral contact as well, the primary mode of transmission for the last three is unprotected anal sex. And it is also the last three which have been, without question, the most serious and most damaging.
I believe we have to learn from this history. Clearly anal sex, which involves blood, feces, semen, and the mucousal linings of the distal urethra and the rectum, is a vector for disease, and to say, as Mr. Snyder does, for example, that the alveoli are more vulnerable than the anus is to seriously beg the issue. My concern is that once there is a cure and/or a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, we will see a return to the frenzied unprotected anal promiscuity that characterized the late 1970s and early 80s in the gay male community, and that made a strident comeback during the barebacking debacle. Such an episode of unrestrained anal sex would provide an opportunity for yet another pathogen or pathogens to enter and devastate our community.
Of course we may be lucky. The pathogens that appear may be less lethal than HIV or more easily dealt with by medical science. But they may not be. We may encounter instead diseases that make HIV look like a head cold. That's why in my letter I urged the community to proceed thoughtfully and cautiously, and to make its watchwords “Never Again.” If we don't do that, if we forget our history, sooner or later we will be forced to relive it – a truism, but one to which we are not immune.
The second issue that Mr. Snyder takes on is the question of the intrinsic value of anal sex itself. In doing so, he makes some strong and I am sure valid statements about the beauties and joys anal sex holds for him.
Unfortunately, however, and this is the crux of the matter, he prefaces them by claiming for them a universality which they do not have. Specifically, he says that “Anal sex, in my view, is and has always been the ultimate expression of gay male sexuality … I strongly feel that anal sex is ...the truest and most powerful expression of male 2 male sex.”
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That anal sex is the ultimate, truest, and most powerful expression of male2male sex is an idea that at present dominates the psyches of the overwhelming majority of American gay men, which is not surprising, since they have been immersed in a gay male culture that has inculcated that message for more than 25 years.
And so that belief is at the core of the cultural tyranny of anal sex.
But that does not make it true.
For it's one thing after all for an individual to say that for him personally anal sex is most meaningful. But when one says that anal sex has always been the ultimate expression of gay male sexuality (for, presumably, everybody) one is flying in the face of ample historical and cultural, including contemporary, evidence to the contrary, and is simply espousing the views of a dominant gay male culture which, I believe, derives in turn its core beliefs from the patriarchy in which we all live.
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Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
Is Anal Sex Really the Villain?
Cockrub Warriors Rule!
Frot: The Next Sexual Revolution
Cockrub Warrior:
Bill Weintraub
Related Sites:
Barebacking & HIV Disclosure: What's the Law
Safer Barebacking Considerations
Badpuppy
GayToday does not endorse related sites.
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The fact is that the dominant anal sex culture oppresses m2m men who don't like anal sex. It denigrates and belittles their sexual choices. It forces some – I suspect many – into having forms of sex that they don't want and that are foreign to them. It is, I have argued elsewhere, psychologically destructive to many. And it seriously distorts the view that gay teens, young gay men, and nongay people have of gay male life, by making it appear that anal sex is the be-all and end-all of every gay man's existence.
But it is not.
Finally, Mr. Snyder suggests that I, like others who don't treasure anal sex, have “hang-ups.” Once again, it's common for men who are into anal to say this, just as 30 years ago it was common for heterosexuals to accuse all gay men of having “hang-ups” about vaginal sex – both are expressions of a cultural hegemony. The heterosexual version says that men who are gay are afraid to penetrate women. The homosexual version says that men who are gay but who don't like anal are afraid of being penetrated.
Neither is true.
As I have written, and as have other men on my website, it's not that I fear anal invasion or anal sex. It's that it doesn't interest me, it doesn't me turn me on, it leaves me cold. In order to please my partners, I have been, at various times in my life, fucked - a fair amount. It didn't frighten me. It simply bored me, and so I faked it – that is, the enjoyment of it. When it was over, I was unfulfilled, and I still wanted to rub cocks. The fact is that on my own I never think about anal sex, and I never fantasize about it. The only time the matter comes up, and unfortunately it happens a lot, is when someone like Mr. Snyder starts telling me about how superior and ultimate a sexual choice anal sex is. So I ask Mr. Snyder to hear what I'm saying. I don't like anal sex. I never have. It has nothing to do with fearing it, any more than my disinterest in women is a cover for fear of the vagina. It is simply that anal sex doesn't turn me on. It's meaningless to me. What I love and adore and have always believed to be my erotic destiny is cockrubbing, bone on bone frottage. Cockrubbing is at the core of my sexuality and is essential to my being.
I have called for a debate in the gay male community about the future of sex. I welcome Mr. Snyder's voice and participation in this debate. I hear what he is saying about the value anal sex holds for him personally. I ask him in return to hear what men who are not and have never been interested in anal sex and instead value frottage and other forms of phallus-to-phallus sex have to say. To us, our form of sex is as true, as pure, as powerful, and as ultimate an expression of m2m sex as anal is for him. What we are seeking to create is a gay male community in which choices are equally honored, and in which no one is denigrated for doing what they love. We ask Mr. Snyder to join us in that quest.
Bill Weintraub
Teddy Snyder Responds:
I am responding to Mr. Weintraub's call for a debate on the anal-sex
issue with one important caveat -- I do not think an arena such as Gay
Today's "Pen Points" is an appropriate venue for such debate. As a
member of the editorial board of a major mainstream suburban daily, I
joined with the rest of that board in upholding a blanket ban on
"replies to replies" on the Letters page. Allowing an open-ended
debate turns a forum for public opinion into a private hissy-fit for the
few parties interested, and that is not the purpose of an opinion forum.
Having that out of the way, let me begin by stating that I have had all
kinds of sex with men, and I have had oral and vaginal sex with a
couple of women. Mr. Weintraub charges that I am a defender of
"...anal's cultural dominance." Not at all. I am defending the right to
have an opinion on anal sex which differs from Weintraub's, and which
moreover is the opinion of the majority or it would not be, by his own
admission, culturally dominant.
Or are we to believe, instead, that secret ambassadors of the
clandestine Ass Fucking League are whispering their anal propaganda
in the ears of gay youth? That there is some covert mission to elevate
anal sex to dominance, against the will of the majority?
The truism of Occam's Razor needs to be applied to this debate -- the
simplest explanation is inevitably the correct explanation. And the
simple explanation for Weintraub's anti-anal stance? By his own
admission, he doesn't like it personally: "...it doesn't turn me on, it
leaves me cold," he writes.
If a crusader went around declaring the "cultural tyranny" of serving
cake instead of pie at birthday celebrations, based upon his own
distaste for cake, we would all have a hearty laugh at such lunacy and
then move on.
But when a glib writer elevates a matter of individual preference to the
status of an oppressive offense against the gay community, we accord
him the respect of hearing his views and responding to them on the
merits. The results came in long ago: so sorry you don't like cake, Mr.
Weintraub, but the vast majority of the rest of us do, and we're going to
go right on serving it up happily at birthdays. That is not an oppressive
decision; it's simply a majority view. You go right ahead and eat pie,
instead, and we'll all be happy -- until you start insisting that because
YOU don't like cake, WE must give it up to avoid "oppressing" you.
Weintraub is entitled to hold a minority opinion, and no one including
myself would argue against his right to hold that opinion.
Disagreement is not oppression. No one is going to force Mr.
Weintraub to have anal sex if he doesn't want to. He, however, wants
the majority of gay men, who do enjoy anal sex, to reject it. And he
uses various arguments, some utterly specious and others highly
questionable, to force the majority to accept his view. Exactly who is
doing the oppressing here?
I empathize easily with Weintraub's dilemma. I have never enjoyed
sucking cock, an admission that is likely to get my Gay Card revoked.
And I have always been a bit annoyed that cocksucking plays such a
large role in gay sex, because I don't much like it. But I am hardly
going on a mission to free gay men from the cultural tyranny of
cocksucking simply because I don't care for it! I do what everyone
else does, and Mr. Weintraub should be doing -- enjoying the form of
sexual expression he personally likes, and leaving others free to do
the same.
Anal sex is not culturally dominant because of gay men being
"...immersed in a gay male culture that has inculcated that message
for more than 25 years," as Weintraub writes. No one has, or needs, to
propagandize an activity which the vast majority finds highly
pleasurable. Pleasure does not require a salesman.
Arguing against pleasure -- especially against specific expressions of
pleasure on the spurious assertion of oppression, psychological
damage, and danger to public health -- emphatically DOES need a
salesman. Temperance leader Carrie Nation, for example, and her
cohorts who helped bring about the miserable experiment we call
Prohibition. The Pilgrim fathers who deemed only male-dominant,
heterosexual vaginal sex within the confines of wedlock to be
acceptable pleasure -- and who hanged, whipped, branded, or
imprisoned those who broke that rule. The homophobic psychiatric
community of yesteryear which subjected gay men to brutal
electroshock therapy and massive doses of psychotropic drugs, in an
attempt to "cure" them of indulging in a specific expression of
pleasure. Some sales pitch, huh?
The world would be a lovely place if we could each order it according
to our personal wants and desires. But we can't. We can and should
make decisions for ourselves. We cannot and should not force our
individual tastes on others. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Weintraub
wants to do, and we are supposed to calmly acquiesce to his demands
because he claims to be a victim of our oppression.
If Weintraub thinks frottage, or "cockrubbing" as he terms it, is the
most marvelous expression of gay sexuality in existence, then by all
means he should practice it. I, and the overwhelming majority of other
gay men, have a different opinion and are as entitled to our view as Mr.
Weintraub is to his. How I express my sexuality, and what I consider
to be the most-fulfilling expression of sexuality, is no one's business
but my own. And if I want a self-appointed savior to direct my life and
the conduct thereof, I can already choose from any number of
oppressive televangelists who want to free me from the cultural
tyranny of thinking for oneself. I do not need to add Mr. Weintraub,
whose conduct and tactics are identical with the televangelists, to
that already-lengthy list.
If you don't like taking it up the ass, don't do it. It's that simple. But
please, Mr. Weintraub, kindly cease preaching that as an oppressed
victim of the cultural tyranny of anal sex, you are right and the rest of
us are wrong. You aren't entitled to make that decision for anyone but
yourself.
And now, having had my say, I am going into the bedroom to be fucked
up the ass by my partner of sixteen years -- all this talk of anal sex has
my butthole just itchin' for a good romp!
Teddy Snyder
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Pen Points
