August 25th, 2006
Sexual Outlaws: ‘gay For Pay’ Paratroopers
![\ad1 Sexual Outlaws: Gay For Pay Paratroopers\](http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/ad1.jpg "\ad1 Photo\")
This month’s Details magazine carries a letter, which Details strangely neglected to show to me, by veteran gay writer John Rechy, author of the cult 60s hustler novels ‘City of Night’ and ‘Numbers’, and the 70s plea for homo tolerance ‘The Sexual Outlaw’ (books I enjoyed as teenager in the 80s) which takes issue with my recent story on the gay porn scandal involving the 82nd Airborne.
After agreeing that it was wrong for the young enlisted paratroopers to be punished so severely by the mighty US Army for what they did in their own time and with their own bodies – literally out of uniform – he gets to the main business of his letter:
‘…he [Simpson is entirely naive when he upholds the absurdity that “straight men who perform – for pay or otherwise – consensual gay sex are still straight, despite being aroused to the point of orgasm. This is strictly a lure by the cunning operators of these sites to their gullible clients who want to believe the fantasy. Those seven paratroopers should not have been prosecuted, but they should not claim to be “straight either. By doing so, they compound the dishonesty of the whole situation.’
In other words, they shouldn’t be punished for appearing in a gay video – but they deserve to be horsewhipped in the letters pages for their ‘dishonesty’.
I’m grateful to Rechy for clarifying matters. For years I’ve laboured under the naive and absurd delusion that I was homo because I preferred males. Now I realise my dishonesty: how can I be homo? I’ve had sex with women! ‘To the point of orgasm’. And I wasn’t filmed. Or even paid.
It is perhaps too easy to make fun of his argument. Many people have difficulty today accepting the idea that when two males have sex with another this does not necessarily mean that, before the spilled semen has even had time to cool, they have to book their own float at Pride. Once upon a Kinseyian time, probably most male-on-male sex involved men who were otherwise heterosexual. In the 1940s Dr Sex famously found that 37% of his interviewees admitted to sex ‘to orgasm’ with other males. (Though he was of course attacked for this finding by those who claimed he was entirely naive and hadn’t interviewed enough ‘normal’ men.) As recently as the 1960s, a paniced British Navy called off an investigation into homosexuality on Her Majesty’s ships because it was found that at least ‘50% of the fleet have sinned homosexually.’ The authorities decided they would rather have a fleet than kick out every man who had ever engaged in spot of sodomy, with or without the lash.
Obviously a proportion of Dink’s ActiveDuty models must be gay or bisexual. After all, I appeared in an ActiveDuty video. (And in fact not all of them are presented as straight.) A certain amount of scepticism is understandable, advisable even. But most of them are probably otherwise heterosexual. I can’t of course prove this, and perhaps it really is my gullible fantasy – but then neither can Rechy prove they’re not. And the onus of proof is with the prosecution.
Homosex is not some magical, irresistible juju that robs hetero men of their preference for pussy should they ever experience it. Even when it’s me they have sex with (I like to think my dick is magical, but nonetheless…). For quite a few straight men, especially those who aren’t schooled in bourgeois niceties, like the country boys who become paratroopers, homosex is much less of a deal than it is for many gays. It’s just a naughty giggle. Or a quick way of earning some cash. Something Rechy should know from his hustler novels - though as I recall they were usually about hustlers who thought they were straight but eventually realised that they were actually John Rechy.
I suspect that part of the reason so many homos want to see straight guys having sex with one another - and will pay good money for it - is the paradoxical appeal of seeing innocence ‘corrupted’, and corruption rendered ‘innocent’. Straight gay porn, when it’s done right (and Dink of activeduty.com seems to know exactly how), looks like a fulfilment of the fantasy of most if not all gay porn: a carefree, smiling, laughing, rascalish discovery of masculine erotic pleasure - free of shame and pride, free in fact of ’sexuality’. Tom of Finland drawings, pre 1970s, brought to life. Ironically, straight guys are sometimes better able to embody the gay ideal than gays.
Speculation aside, the ‘bottom’, slightly counterintutive line here is that the fact that someone appeared in a gay porn video, even with an outsized membrum virile in one or both of his orifices, doesn’t tell you what his sexual preference is. All it tells you is that he appeared in a gay porn video. And perhaps that he can take it like a trooper.
As one of the paratrooper models replied when confronted by a shell-shocked Fayetteville woman who’d recognised him on the ActiveDuty site demanding to know how he could have done such a thing:
‘It was no big deal,’ he replied laconically. ‘And besides, I got paid.’
A perfect response to the military, to offended/confused straights and gays alike. And to explanations in general. Foucault would have approved - even if it does somewhat undermine the need for three volumes of ‘A History of Sexuality’.
———
Salon vs Details: James Collard of The London Times speaks to Salon.com editor about his decision to spike Simpson’s original piece because it was deemed too risque for Salon - two years before the Active Duty scandal became a major international story - and a major feature in Details magazine. [link removed as page no longer active.
August 25th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
“It was no big deal, and I got paid”.
Yup, lots of men are like that, and women too. They are basically straight but have same-sex sex and get up again the next morning, or zip their trousers, and think nothing more of it. No trauma, no dark nights of the soul, no coming out to anyone. It’s just sex, sex is fun, and where IS the big deal?
I suppose THAT comes in where “love” or at least overpowering desire gets involved. And for many people, it never does.
The fact that people can and do have sex in this way this seems self-evident to me. Just because queer people define them/ourselves by sexuality, and make it one of the biggest things in their/our lives doesn’t mean that everyone can or should.
August 25th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
I have to agree with Mark Simpson, and not Mr. Rechy, on this issue. As much as I admire John Rechy’s work, I’d be willing to bet that down deep he knows that sexual identity is not quite so pat. Why does everyone use the formula for gay identity only in one direction? About the Puerto Rican hustlers I used to bed in Olde Times Square, my liberal friends would comment: If he’s doing that for a living, he must be gay but too guilt-ridden to admit it. These were the same friends who said about my 30 or so sexual adventures with women: “You’re gay, stop trying to prove that you’re not.” Usually, this liberal, rigid one-way formula is reserved only for the male. When two women have sex in a porn film, they are considered to be straight women trying to titillate men. No one even bothers asking them if they liked the experience. As many of the readers of my memoir, “The Romanian,” are aware, I had sex with a Romanian for years, who did it for financial gain and to win my attention and friendship. But he truly preferred women. Let’s just say that he was desperate for both money and support, but not for dick, so he wasn’t “gay,” whatever that means. In discussions of this sort, we should always elicit the spectrum, rather than the polarity, for defining sexual identity. I actually enjoyed the sex I had with women, but I’d say that about 80% of the spectrum of my libidinal energy is directed toward men, which I suppose defines me as “gay.” It’s quite likely that the soldiers discussed by Simpson were the opposite, with the majority of their libido directed toward women on the spectrum of desire. Only they have the right to define their identity, and challenging their claims is just as oppressive as the actions of those who once said it was an abomination to have homosexual feelings. Mr. Rechy, you should know better, and I think you do.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Speculation aside, and no pun intended, Mr. Simpson has gotten to the ‘bottom’ line here. I’m also glad to see that the comments have already pointed out the things that spring directly to mind when I consider reactions like Rechy’s, to the use of the word straight.
Being gay is a political choice, it is one of the least defining choices one has to make. Unless of course we are discussing your human rights. In this context it simply designates what type of sex you prefer to have. As someone already pointed out - when women have same-sex encounters in a porno no one jumps to protest their characterization as straight. When strangely - plenty will identify as lesbian. Why the double standard exists, and would be upheld by a gay person is beyond me. Indeed it draws to mind a perfectly understandable Male heterosexual response to it.
Mr. Rechy is siding pretty much with a completely narrow interpertation that would befit any self-respecting conservative christian. In what feels a bit like a Jim Crow law, apparently if you have an orgasm in the presence of another man - PRESTO - you’ve earned your pink card. Of course having sex with women has not turned all the closeted men in the world into heterosexuals, or all the confused people in gay-conversion camps the evangelicals open. So apparently this is a one way street. Once you go Gay-for-Pay apparently there is no way out.
Of course what perplexes me beyond belief is someone who wrote a thinly veiled biography - and admittedly had sex & did other things for money. How hard is it for him to believe that people will do a lot of things for that cold hard cash? Even things diametrically opposed to their most base nature. If this weren’t so true - we wouldn’t be experiencing an explosion in ‘reality TV’ and seeing our fellow human beings in all their glory & debasement.
I am going to keep my eyes peeled next Pride for that float from Active Duty, and while I’m at it, perhaps all the straight men I’ve been with will be on the one right behind it!
August 28th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
BTW - Mr Rechy calling you naive is simply ludicrous & anyone who has read you - surely knows that you are many things, but NAIVE is not one of them!
August 29th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
DAKrolak’s mention of Jim Crow laws reminds me of something I’ve always associated with gay attitudes toward male bisexuality: the “one-drop rule,” a tenant of the old south’s anti-miscegenation laws. This was the rule that a person should be deemed black (and forbidden from marrying a white) if they had even “one drop” of black blood in their ancestry. The one drop, then, was considered to be a contaminant; and it seems perfectly analogous to me that when gays consider an isolated or atypical gay experience in a man’s life to render him gay, they’re also considering homosexuality, their own “proud” condition, as a contaminant. I suppose this is simply because any group is so desperate to expand its numbers and thereby increase its power (a fairly indisputable idea that causes eyes to roll when applied to some groups, yet causes heads to vigorously nod when applied to others) that it will use even the bigotry against itself as a tool to do so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_drop_rule
September 14th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
First, I have a problem with our cultural obsession with labels like gay, bi or straight. I think that at baseline people are just sexual. One needn’t look any further than prison (or, for that matter, the military) to assess the extent to which sexuality is capable of adapting itself to the prevailing social milieu.
Personally, I am one of those people who knew they were same sex oriented from early adolescence. I always assumed that it was the same for everybody else. Nothing could be further from the truth. I used to think that the guys on these ‘amateur-fratboy’ had to be at least bi: there’s no way in hell that guys who do EVERYTHING could possibly be straight!
I now understand that this opinion was likely a function of my own wish fulfillment. These guys are just oversexed 18-20 year olds. For some, their sexuality is not yet written in stone; and if somebody offers them a nice piece of change to mess around with another guy, why not? Hell, it beats flipping burgers for 8 hours.
I’m sure there’s a subset of models who are at least curious about homosexuality, only they come from repressive or rural backgrounds where ‘exploring’ isn’t simply a case of taking the Metro North into New York, as it was for me. So they are drawn to these sites, and the paycheck provides them with a rationalization. However, I’m sure most are straight as advertised, and when not getting paid for it, rarely think about doing it with a guy.
December 30th, 2006 at 7:14 am
i dont even know why im bothering to answer this ABSURDITY and INSANITY, but here I go… guess you nuts dont understand what a bisexual or a guy in the closet and in self denial is. being oversexed and young doesnt make you go out and have sex with something your not attracted to, if that were the case ALL guys would have done guys…( and dont say its because they are “scared” because if its “no big deal” they would readily have done it already, and dont say how do i know they havent? get a reality check most men couldnt have and no less enjoy(arousal to orgasm) sex with another male thats what STRAIGHT means… you only get aroused by WOMEN, if you like both your BISEXUAL, not gay not straight but BISEXUAL. So I guess if im oversexed i could easily have sex with a farm animal and really love it too then LMAO. So according to simpson, since I’m(now) gay previously “straight” myself mind you, I know ALL rationalizations to myself to delude myself as well, I as a 100% gay man should “Ironically to be better able to embody the straight ideal than true straight guys by outperfoming them in having sex with women”… In other words since I’m gay I should according to simpson’s theory(and for pay on film) or otherwise, “get into” straight sex far better than straight guys!!! yeah… OK As far as the dudes on active duty porn you can tell they are mostly gay just by the way how gay they really look… it’s called “gay face” and their face looks REAL gay. None of them look straight, most look like closeted young gay men who have not come out yet do you know the CLOSET means??? And the fact they are enjoying the sex with other dudes and they are happier than a pig in shit doing so, obviously a sane person would come to the IMMEDIATE conclusion that they are GAY not even bisexual for the most part. even if some are bi these dudes are WAY too into it to even have a preference for women they are bi but a gay preferance at BEST, since sexuality is not gay or straight necessarily. I suppose if you paid a true vegetarian and peta person enough cash they would happily pig out on burgers for a mcdonalds comemercial? i DON’T think so, so get real and stop your stupid “straight” guy fantasies. Any guy who sucks cock and guzzles cum like they were dying of thirst in the desert is OBVIOUSLY not straight by any sense of the word, yeah he can still love pussy and be bi but he sure as hell aint straight by the dictionaries definition. Oh, and if your defining straight as masculine, forget it, most gay and bi men ARE normally masculine in every sense just like the GAY AND BISEXUAL men who appear on active duty groveling in male on male sex like it was their last meal on earth the active duty guys just have “gay face”. Virtually all gays LOOK gay or if bi look gay to some extent so yes we DO have it tatted on our foreheads.It’s only the freaky effeminate queens who inist that if a guy CLAIMS to be “straight” and is masculine and has a gf then they are according to the queens because the queens are in denial themselves… that they are REALLY TRANSEXUAL, and should have been born female.Anyway the dudes in active duty films are BEYOND into it sexually with other guys I have no words to explain the extensive joy and sexual response they have with the other dudes. And don’t say they are “acting” it’s REAL sexual performance you cant act that. They are in deep denial just like I was I was through ALL the denials myself and yes I was an amateur hustler and no I wouldnt have sex with “anything or anyone” for money or otherwise. according to the definition in the dictionary and society, as far as I know the definition of a STRAIGHT man does not include sex with other MEN but WOMEN, and if they are into both thats bi. So seek therapy for your delusions and come back to reality, and oh figures someone like simpson would come up with the “metrosexual” thing which now also evidently includes guys who are “straight” and not only look like genuine fags but also love it up the ass too now, GET REAL.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Andrew,
The only things that come through in you rather confused ramblings is you desire, you need (or pehaps neediness) for these guys to be gay like you, and your anger at Mark Simpson for challenging what is doubtless a cherished belief (or delusion) of yours. I’m sorry to tell you that I agree with Mark: when the cameras aren’t rolling ‘Dean’ probably prefers pussy, and doesn’t give dick a second thought.
Sex does not define sexuality.
An editorial note: subject-verb agreement, grammatically complete sentences, paragraphs — these are all good things. They allow one to be understood. That you seem unable to satisfy the simple requirements of expository writing is only an indication of the extent to which your own thoughts on this subject are muddled.
Lastly, probably not a good idea to type with meth on board.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:18 am
like I said P.Williams gets off on the deluded fantasy that supposedly real 100% straight guys love having sex with men “for the cameras only”, as if sex on camera isn’t “real” sex, LMAO.I am 100% certain that these guys are WAY experienced in gay sex because they know EXACTLY what they are doing with men and are pros. I bet Williams truly believes its these guys first time lol what a JOKE. Most guys are not like me BUT ALL the guys who do that gay porn site are gay OR BISEXUAL and might even prefer women but a female PREFERANCE still means you are BISEXUAL not straight. and oh, sex sure does define sexuality… sexuality is defined as what arouses you and gets you off, so sorry to say your boys on active duty CLEARLY to be groveling in male to male sex like pigs in shit, and if they like the sex with dudes THAT much they are in fact atleast bisexual if not gay, so sorry to ruin yours and simpsons fantasy. seems to me your completely denying the FACT that there are bisexual people and there is different degrees of bisexuality also. oh…I’m sure if you asked REAL straight guys (not guys who suck dick on film) if the active duty guys are fags they will answer in the affirmative and DEFEND MY RESPONSE 100%.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:37 am
If what your saying is true that in your paragraph that they are straight and “just oversexed 18-20 year olds” then why don’t the VAST majority of young guys NEVER have sex with other guys even when women arent available(prison and military) but use their hands instead? THIS IS FACT and its fact that never more on average thn 40% of the male population have sex with men even when women arent around…I guess A Kinsey was wrong when he said “NOT ALL THINGS ARE BLACK NOR WHITE THE WORLD CANNOT BE DIVIDED INTO SHEEP AND GOATS, NOT EVERYONE IS EITHER HOMOSEXUAL OR HETEROSEXUAL, and Kinsey EXPLICITLY stated that sexuality is a continnum, and implied a broad range of BISEXUALITY. Kinsey also said that exclusive gays like you and simpson seem to think that “any man who is less experienced or less exclusively homosexual is not really homosexual”… even Kinsey said your full of shit and oh… I believe Kinsey found only approx 40% of males have engaged in gay sex, so your delusion that every guy is gay is YOUR delusion not mine. I hope you run into a REAL straight guy and solicite HIM for sex and see what he does to you.I guess since you had to take the metro into nyc just to have sex with men you probably think the only guys who are gay are freaky queens like you who live in gay ghettos and there are no gays in new jersey lmao. good luck denying the existence of bisexuality, mainstream society thinks your insane and side with me because im sane not like you and simpson with your deluded belief that totally straight guys can LOVE cock but as long as it’s on camera for money it doesnt count LMAO
December 31st, 2006 at 4:41 am
oh one more thing… 18-20 year old gays are oversexed too i dont see them having sex with women anytime soon, and LOTS of gay guys get hit on and propositioned by girls for sex and to be “converted” so if they too are “just horny” why arent they having sex with women when dudes arent around? answer THAT one wiseass, oh and since you think all gays take meth means YOU are a stereotypical flaming queen who normal gays like me and the active duty guys would never have sex with because we like MEN not women with penises like you and simpson who are closeted transgender.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:13 pm
John Rechny NEVER said that the guys doing consensual gay sex for pay or otherwise are gay. He simply stated that any man who has ” consensual gay sex for pay or otherwise who get aroused to the point of orgasm are not straight ” he DID NOT say they were gay either did he? NO what he was trying to imply is that these men if not gay ARE IN FACT not straight and are thus…GASP! BISEXUAL. Seems to me in simpson’s cute little “straight” boy fantasy that NOT ONCE has he mentioned BISEXUALITY and that these men could and in fact may very well be bisexual if not gay. Normal people in society define straight as being ONLY having sex with the opposite sex and gay as being ONLY having sex with the same sex, that is why there is also the term BISEXUAL to cover your so called “straight” boys. If to be truly gay you have to be only having and liking sex with men then in fact to be truly straight you have to be only having and liking sex with women. and oh the cute comment sue geroge said that “it’s no big deal” well I say its no big deal until they GET CAUGHT in the act then their closeted nature will then be exposed so these people are on the down low. I don’t see men everywhere bragging that they have sex with men and enjoy it, on the contrary these “straight” guys you talk about keep the same sex acts VERY secret which implies not no, straight men to have sex with men is NOT what defines straight and thus these guys are closeted bi or gay because they dont talk about openly having sex with men to other REAL straight men in public. And the fact that most men are in fact incapable of responding sexually to the same sex reflects the fact that yes most men are straight and not “straight”. I will say it again …
homoSEXual means sexually ATTRACTED meaning RESPONDING i.e. AROUSAL and ORGASM when in engaging in same sex acts.
heteroSEX means sexually ATTRACTED meaning RESPONDING i.e. AROUSAL and ORGASM when in engaging in same sex acts.
biSEXual means sexually ATTRACTED meaning RESPONDING i.e. AROUSAL and ORGASM when in engaging in same sex acts.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Oh Andrew,
You had me at ‘deluded’, odd that most of your supporting material, like Kinsey has been well debunked because of his spurious scientific methods. Not that he is irrelevant, but for you to put words in Mr. Kinsey’s mouth like: “full of shit” and direct them at P.Williams & Mr. Simpson seems beyond absurd. If Kinsey was addressing anyone it would have been the sexual morays of a nation during the decade of delusion (50s). It’s all about context. You must cite where it is said that only 40% of people in Prison have m-2-m sex. What about the female population - they have it in much more alarming numbers, and last I checked most of the data is empirical. It isn’t a gay-straight thing, its a human dichotomy. Sexuality is fluid, not static. Anecdotal evidence is about the best evidence we have when it comes to issues of sex. The hardest of all things to quantify or qualify is human desire.
As one of the original contributors to this post & someone who has read and been incensed by Mr. Rechy’s letter - I ask what are you mad at? These guys are gay, and you seem fairly certain of this, what’s the problem? I also read the article that Mr. Simpson wrote, and loved it. I’ve also seen the ActiveDuty movie he was in. I’ve seen many of the movies Dink produces. Personally I don’t care whether they are straight or gay, nor do I think does the public at large. Many of the men I had sex with both for money & pleasure have wives, families, and normal heterosexual lives. Am I to assume because they seemed to enjoy it at the time - that they are gay? I prefer the modern scientific conclusion that 1-3% of the population is gay over the conflated 10% used previously.
Here is the fundamental thing: Active Duty movies, and all pornography while we are generalizing, are about fantasy. Pure & simple, not reality, no matter how much they pioneered the “reality-based” concept that finds its way into all media from Prime-Time lineup to YouTube. As such it is pretty hard to distinguish the truth from the final product. It’s a folly. I’ve rented & sold porn to people, have porn star friends, met many in the business and even been on porn sets like Mr. Simpson. His viewpoint and mine are much alike having unmasked the Wizard and seen that most of it is smoke & mirrors. In fact it would probably surprise you to no end how many well known gay pornstars lead heterosexual lifestyles. What is even more interesting is that our experience of the porn is subjective, your characterizations of the ActiveDuty films & participants was not my experience of it at all. In fact you make them sound so piggish that if they were - I’d watch them exclusively to see gay guys pretending to be straight guys who enjoy gay sex like pigs. The merry-go-round dizziness would make my personal beliefs moot.
You start your first post with a question - why would you respond to such “Insanity & Absurdity” - really, isn’t that the question here? Why you would vest such efforts into converting the unconvertible? I can tell you the old adage about vinegar & honey is still true. I think the moderators of this Blog & Mr. Simpson have shown you a great latitude, when they could have easily silenced it with a tap of the delete key. Your nonsensical & concentrical rants are given equal time in the wonderfully democratic world of the web. So I say aren’t you tired of all this piss & vinegar, do I have to agree with everything that comes out of your mouth in order to be considered a true gay like you? The gay/lesbian/bi/trans world will never be in concert and agree on anything. They are way too diverse, and far too divisive, I can tell you this firsthand from my involvement in ACTUP & fighting a battle over AIDS, that even under a good cause the world divides into like minds and infighting. Isn’t there room for some discussion or dissension here in the world of sexual desire?
Can’t we all just get along, and leave the other’s fantasies alone. Who cares honestly if these guys are gay or straight? The issue is they were condemed, and dishonorably dishcharged for sticking their penises into other men, the Military & you are both on the same side: You think they are gay and want to punish them for it. Congratulations your side won, these poor souls can now be welcomed into a Gay world where they will be indoctrinated and made to tow the line - the military just warmed them up for that.
Really isn’t it all the same old stuff, unless of course you are being court marshalled?
cheers-DAKrolak
December 31st, 2006 at 4:26 pm
*correction to last definitions i am so infuriated i cant think clearly anymore …
homoSEXual means sexually ATTRACTED meaning REAPONDING i.e. AROUSAL and ORGASM when in engaging in same sex acts.
heteroSEX means sexually ATTRACTED meaning RESPONDING i.e. AROUSAL and ORGASM when in engaging in opposite sex acts.
biSEXual means sexually ATTRACTED meaning RESPONDING i.e. AROUSAL and ORGASM when in engaging in opposite AND same sex acts.
seems to me you queens are DELIBERATELY denying that there are bisexual people and the fact of bisexuality and thus see sexuality aa gay OR straight, black OR white when obviously to any sane person this is not true. If your definition of gay means your “sexuality” is 100% for males then the defintion of straight likewise means your “sexuality” is 100% for females.
To say conclusively that in all cases “sex is the same as sexuality” would be FALSE. HOWEVER, what they mean by that is instances of being raped and NON CONSENSUAL sex acts with the “wrong” gender and also gay men who ATTEMPT to have sex with women because of societal pressure NOT because they enjoyed the experience, but obviously since “straight” men are having and enjoying sex with other men against society then OBVIOUSLY they are IN FACT not straight at all but gay or bisexual according to SOCIETIES DEFINTION. So REAL straight guys will defend me 100% that men who have sex with men are not straight.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:46 pm
having a wife family kids whatever and leading “normal” heterosexual lives is a farce. part of leading a “normal” “heterosexual” life does not include secretly sneaking off to have sex with other men behind your wives or gf’s back now does it??? I never said they were gay i merely stated like Rechy did that they are NOT straight and thus atleast bisexual which is STILL a term that you all are completely ignoring. what “modern scientific” conclusion are you talking about when you state that only 1-3% of the population is gay? how are you defining gay? I suspect you define gay only as someone who is OPENLY admitting they are gay in a survery and who are so obviously flaming that hellen keller can see they are gay and also you are defining gay as the 1-3% of men who have never had a heterosexual experience when in fact you even admit most gay men have had heterosexual experiences so yes, the 10% figure that Kinsey had come up with is VERY true from my experience and another 30% are “straight” or REAL bisexuals, so that makes kinsey’s 40% estimate very accurate to ny own personal experience. that 1-3% figure barely covers the “queen” part of the male population so obviously you think that all gays are effeminate rare freaks like the fundamentalist christians good going… with only your “scientific” 1-3% figure you only believe that the only “real” gays are the rare flaming queens you find in san fran or nyc!!! so I guess then I’M really straight and all the other masculine and totally undetectable gays and bisexuals are really straight too?
December 31st, 2006 at 4:49 pm
the real summation of mine is that your definition of gay means living the gay lifestyle and if you fuck dudes with abandon then you are not gay or even bi because you live the “heterosexual” lifestyle i.e. CLOSETED or DOWN LOW. well according to that I guess me and my boyfriend and all my friends are in fact STRAIGHT just like you said so there you go I’m straight.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:51 pm
oh one more thing… the sex in the active duty videos is REAL SEX NOT ACTING so get a reality check.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:53 pm
oh and one more thing… dink flamingo goes into graphic detail explaining in his text describing the videos stating how much into the sex the pron stars are and HE stated that they are into the sex and are as happy as pigs in shit not me.
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Oh & one of many more things…
Boy andrew, you are one angry gay man, your real summation is that you are straight? That might explain everything, are you sure you’re not a evangelical as well? (Last time I heard such logic - it was comeing froma born-again) Somehow you got it into your nimble mind that I have some sort of hard & fast rule about gay/straight/etc… those of your imaginiation’s making. It doesn’t matter to me what you and your boyfriend call yourself, or what consenting adults do, however, when it comes to rank speculation about people you don’t know - I argue for giving that person/people’s a chance to choose their own identity not making one out of thin air that doesn’t necessarily suit them.
I, prefering a more nuanced, and humanistic – Kinsey-esque approach to sex study. What the zoologist turned sex expert was really trying to show us is that sex in the human animal is far more varied & broader than a simple definition. He was not trying to create statistics to validate Gay Sexual Identity, but show that homosexual habits ARE exhibited by otherwise Heterosexual men. Creating of course a necessity to create a zoological classification for the ambiguity- Bi-sexual. Funny did he find any Asexual ones?
You rant & rave here on a site - in response to a man - Mark Simpson who is pointing out the way in which male vanity+consumerism is causing all males to appear Gay, or at least primp like one. That should be a boon for you & your boyfriend, or friends as you are knee deep in a wading pool of people whose sexuality is not apparent from the outside & they all seem to want to be viewed/cruised/admired - won’t it get a little confusing in the gay mating processes to figure out which ones will let you and which ones won’t - is the outcome increased gay-bashing from mistaken come-ons, or is it that more & more it will seep in through the moisturizing products, that men may erode the barriers of masculinity and find out what homosexual sex is like. Of course once all of them do that, you will brand them and then they can proclaim their Gay-ness, what will be left - it will turn into one incredible Circuit Party, won’t it?
Look outside of whatever gay ghetto you live in (you did say you experienced 40% right), mingle with and talk with people you think are straight, about their sex lives, and then perhaps your anecdotal evidence will lead you to think in a different direction, one approaching the true findings of Kinsey (the one beyond the statistical bullshit you espouse). Of course if your interviewing tactics are anything like your comments here - I don’t expect you will find out much unless you soften your approach. But I can dream, can’t I?
It’s been fun, and thank you for playing Andy - but honestly who do you think would come to this outpost of the far flung web, to listen to you ramble on? I’ve done my best Mother Teresa impression, next you can seek out a really nice support group somewhere to channel your hostilities into, cause I’m going to concern myself with “REAL” issues: like AIDS in America - were you aware that in some AMERICAN cities here that the infection rate is the same as some sub-saharan African nations? Doesn’t that alarm you that years ago we could throw up arms, march in protests while GWM’s were dying & in need of treatments, but now that the people dying are more politically disenfranchised, or of course are of color - we are blind to it and have nothing to say.
Perhaps you should channel your REAL rage into some worthy cause like that. Besides if the orginal article was so upsetting to you - why didn’t you go to Fort Bragg to protest - it was an obvious miscarriage of justice & complete crapping on the provisional ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for these guys to punished, fined, and dishonorably discharged - they are GAY according to you aren’t they - where was the big GAY RIGHTS uproar. Didn’t think so…again you must label them that - but they don’t get a float in this years parade, aren’t they getting the shaft (again).
Cheers,
D*
PS -How can you honestly quote Dink Flamingo as FACT? Next time you are quoting - try some quotation marks, and a mention…not an afterthought - then we really know it is hear-say. BTW - I won’t be checking back here for any follow up comments so why don’t you send them instead to dontgiveafuck@gmail.com
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:14 pm
i never said they were necessarily gay i DID say they are definately and OBVIOUSLY not straight either. what your thick skulls fail to acknowlege or deliberatley avoid is the term BISEXUAL which means sexually responding and liking BOTH males and females. they are either gay or BISEXUAL and thats FACT due to their sexually responding to other males. erode the barriers of masculinity by trying homosexuality??? DAK equates homosexuality with femininity??? homosexuality has nothing to do with femininity, buttwipe!!!
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:24 pm
sex is not sexuality? not necessarily, but in the case of males having fervent sex with males and totally enjoying it , then in this case… the case of all the active duty porn guys, then yes the sex they are having IS a total reflection of their sexuality!!!… gay OR bisexual.
January 4th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Andrew:
Are you aware of the extent to which your comments are strident to the point of being unreadable?
Do you have any idea how inappropriate these diatribes are to the collegial discourse usually encountered on this blog? We exchange ideas, occasionally disagree, and perhaps then agree to disagree. We do not throw mud at each other; call each other ‘full of shit’, etc.
It is a testament to Mark’s patience that he has not deleted your comments. It would behoove you to keep in mind that you are only allowed a voice here at his sufferance.
January 5th, 2007 at 2:23 am
you know something your absolutely correct. I really am a STRAIGHT guy and im not joking. I thought that just because I like to do everything sexually with dudes i must be gay or bi, but I realize now that almost all guys who have and enjoy sex with other guys are straight as can be and yes I now understand that sex is not the same as sexuality. Only I can define my own sexuality and no one else has that right, I am my own person and others cannot know my true feelings. So thanks for straightening(no pun) me out! I am really happy now that I know im just a normal straight dude who loves getting off with other dudes
February 19th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
In response to DAKrolak’s comment where it was theorised that only 1-3% of people were gay: while at one time this would have seemed quite believable to me, I’ve become very skeptical indeed about such a low figure in more recent times for the following reasons:
1) Out of the 180 or so people who were in my year at high school, seven or eight have since come out as gay or are reported to be (and it wouldn’t surprise me if there are others besides these I am not presently aware of), when the law of averages would have had the total number as one comprising rather fewer individuals than this if it were true that gays and lesbians only make up 1-3% of the population.
2) Most of the places I’ve worked at to date have had an average of 1-2 openly gay people there or (if it was a bigger company) in my particular department - again suggesting that homosexuality could easily be as common as left-handedness, and perhaps even slightly more so.
3) I frequently hear accounts from others who have likewise experienced finding out that friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances of theirs are gay/lesbian, which I wouldn’t expect to hear nearly so often if homosexuality were as unusual as some statistics make it out to be.
I’m also somewhat doubtful that sexuality is as fluid as it’s sometimes claimed to be if only because a) sexual behaviour and sexual preference don’t always match (as what goes on in prisons etc demonstrates quite well I think), and b) if it were that easy to change our orientation (as opposed to just our outward behaviour), there wouldn’t be so many cases of people leaving their opposite-sex partner whom they had been with for years, and whom they were always conscious of the fact that they had gone with in the hope that it would “cure” them of their homosexuality, for someone of the same sex.
July 18th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
[...] fantasy that Sporno advertising sells us is not entirely baseless responding to those who adamantly refuse to believe that straight men could get naked with one another on camera and play with each other’s [...]
July 27th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I agree with Andrew.
These guys are either just closeted or it’s all marketing since guys who really are heterosexual/straight, and not closeted gay and bisexual men simply don’t have or desire sex with other men, even if it is for payment.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Many men have girlfriends or wives to conceal their homosexuality. They have sex with them to point of orgasm - some even have the offspring to prove this - but secretly they prefer a sexual/emotional connection with another man. Most of these men who later come of the closet, identify not as bisexual but as gay, despite having engaging in sex with women for years. Many will even admit that to some extent they found sex with women to be pleasurable, but it was not their genuine preference.
So if we accept that closeted men can be married and have sex with their wives to the point of orgasm, all while sexually preferring another man, why is it difficult to accept that a man can be gay for pay “on camera” and sexually prefer women in his “off camera” life?
Where does it say that it cannot work in reverse? There is no science to the contrary. It is just the opinion of some, which I suspect will change over time as homosexuality becomes more mainstream.
November 17th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in an essay on homosexuality nearly two centuries ago suggested that men had homosexual tendencies in adolescence and again towards old age, while being heterosexual in between, the period when biologically they need to father children. His biographer Bryan Magee suggested that Schopenhauer was really talking about his own life. Whether Magee (whom I know only very slightly indeed) is also being subjective, I would not like to say. I would guess that quite a few men are bisexual, meaning they have an interest (but not necessarily by any means nearly an equal interest) in both men and women, and that this may fluctuate over time and according to their experiences. It will only be when people feel it safe to speak really openly and candidly that we will know what the percentages really are.
November 18th, 2007 at 2:38 am
While not very subtile, Dr. Sex’s 1-6 scale is a useful starting point, and highly insightful to the extent that it was the first acknowledgement of the pleiomorphic nature of human sexuality, just like the phenotypical variations he spent decades observing in gall wasps.
Freud and Kinsey are to the study sexuality what Plato and Aristotle are to Philosophy. While you can disagree with them, you have to acknowledge that they got the ball rolling.
I hate the current sexuality labels. For a while, shrinks, sex therapist ect, made the blanket pronouncement that everybody was intrinsically bisexual. I think they backed off, probably because it was bad for business. However, it was spot on to the extent that it acknowledged what I believe is the ’situational’ nature of sexuality.
The most dramatic examples of ’situational’ sexuality are ‘prison fairies’. These are guys who go in straight and not only engage in homosexual acts on the inside, but assume feminine/submissive roles and behavior, too. And the truly interesting thing is that this phenomenon has little to do with ‘the pecking order’, but rather appears to be a passive-aggessive power stategem: some of these ‘bitches’ come to rule their cell blocks. Once they are released, they are again totally straight: it’s as if prison never happened.
To me, this phenomenon says two things about the masculine varient of human nature: 1) most men need/crave ‘feminine’ company, and 2) men need to dominate other men, and will even become ‘women’ in order to do so. On the other side of the fence, Shakespeare was well aware of the extent to which women are capable of becoming ‘men’ in order to dominate them (Rosiland, Viola, Imogen, and more subtilely Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra and Beatrice — who also happen to be his greatest charaters.)
I think the real semantic arguement isn’t between gay, bi, and straight, but rather between gay and homosexual. If one were to draw a Venn diagram, ‘gay’ would be a smaller circle within the greater cohort of homosexuals, and it may be a significantly smaller circle. Nor do I discount the possibility that a small fragment of the gay circle may be outside the homosexual circle to account for the small cohort of ‘gay-acting’ straight men.
I have my own problems with the 1-3% figure. I believe that in this, the 4th decade after the Stonewall Riots, there yet remains a significant ‘homosexual underground’ composed of masculine-identifted homosexuals for whom the ‘fabulous ‘extra-sexual associations of ‘gayness’ (and associdation with ‘Cluster B’ histrionics of the like of ‘Andrew’) are anathema. If anything, the Gay Liberation movement has only served to push these men deeper into their closets. In fact, I may go so far as to (controversially) suggest that all the Gay movement accomplished was to legitimize sodomy among the ‘usual suspects’: hair sylist, interior designers, retail sales help, etc — which is to say nothing at all. To be a homosexual engaged in traditionally male-identified pursuits or professions (military, police, sports, etc) if anything holds an even greater stigma today than it did in the years prior to ‘Gay Liberation’.
It appears I’m not alone in this opinion. Gore Vidal believes there were a higher incidence of men engaging in homosexual acts in the years prior to Gay liberation (yet another reason to call the fifties ‘fabulous’, i suppose.)
I would like to conclude by commenting that the principal reason why Andrew and his like are so quick to wrap the Active Duty lads in a rainbow flag parade them down Market Street on a Pride float is that they’re hot. Incredibly hot. Hotter than most gay men could ever hope to be, in fact. I’m certain that he would not be so quick to claim them for his own were they trolls. Gay men are funny that way.
Seriously Andrew, do you have any idea what goes on during the filming of those movies? How many hours of footage are requried to film an hour scene? Do you have any idea what kind of fluffing likely goes on? Do you think Dink has that pussy porn playing in the background because he thinks it will make the scene ‘hotter’.
That said, I honestly think that they don’t dislike the work, and even enjoy it. It’s just that they’d much rather be doing it with a woman. That, to my thinking, makes them hetero.
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Some of you make it sound as if homosexuality is like alcoholism. If I drink all the time then I have a problem. If I do it ocassionally then its acceptable to society. Sorry but gay sex is not an addiction. I’m OK with the bisexual label because you like what you like. But dont give me that straight crap. If thats the case if I go collect money from every male/female I ever slept with would I be considered asexual?