Last Sunday’s News of The World carried a ‘JORDAN’S LOVER BOMBSHELL’ expose on Jordan’s ‘hunky cage fighter boyfriend’ Alex Reid. What was the bombshell? He’s sexually open-minded.
‘“I’M TRY-SEXUAL: JORDAN’S MAN SAYS “I’LL TRY ANYTHING ONCE!’”’ was the shocking headline for the two page spread. The piece, cobbled together from interviews with ex-friends, and some snaps of him in drag with his mates – obviously for a lad’s night out – did its best to keep the (now old) tranny story going, further undermine his masculinity and suggest that he’s even worse than a tranny – he’s probably a poof! After all, any bloke who says he’s a ‘try-sexual’, even one who doesn’t wear women’s clothes, is obviously a bender….
So far, so NOTW. It is, after all, a famously narrow-minded newspaper catering to people who don’t get much.
But rather confusingly, the front of the NOTW glossy magazine inside the very same edition that mocked and ridiculed Reid for his cross-dressing and daring to step outside prescribed gender roles featured TV celeb Myleene Klaas shaving her face on the front page, the with the come-on coverline: ‘MYLEENE MANS UP! – Tough talking and too feisty even for Cowell. Yes, this girls got balls.’ Inside she poses for a glamorous photo shoot in a suit and a side-parting.
Klaas doesn’t describe herself as ‘try-sexual’ in the interview (though she does talk about comparing ‘boob sizes’ with female friends in toilet cubicles), but if she did it would probably have been presented in the same yay! good on ya! girl power!! fashion as her ballsiness. ‘Try-sexuality’ when undertaken by women now seems, even in the NOTW, to be both a measure of both female empowerment and also their new assertive sexuality. It tends to enhance their femininity rather than bringing it into (fatal) question.
But when men try to join in the experimentation and step outside gendered sex roles themselves, by for instance cross-dressing or expressing an interest in same-sex fantasy, the opposite appears to be true, at least in the public sphere. They are merely deviant, ‘gay’ or ‘sad’ – and instantly shorn of their masculinity. A joke. Even cage fighters. Attitudes towards male bi-curiousness show that for men being ‘half gay’ is tantamount to being ‘half-pregnant’.
This new double standard for male and female sexual behaviour which in contrast to the old ‘stud/slut’ one, penalises men rather than women was documented earlier this year by Canadian sociologists, who found that men were expected to be up for sex all the time – but only very straight sex. Women were allowed much more latitude in both whether they actually wanted to have sex – and what kind of sex they wanted to have.
This double standard is endemic in the UK, as is painfully evident in the recent case of the barmy woman boxer (also Canadian) found guilty of a violent and unprovoked attack on a couple of drunken squaddies at a disco for kissing and dancing with one another and ‘pretending to be gay’ screaming ‘THIS SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED IN THE BRITISH ARMY!’.
Despite being a violent foreign criminal on the run from the law for assaulting British soldiers (from behind) – and moreover a woman who stepped outside of gender stereotypes herself – she was feted by the British popular press as some kind of have-a-go a heroine.
Why? Well, partly because she was quite ‘tasty’ (in the sense of ‘not looking like a dyke’), but mostly because she was punishing men for daring to break the gender rules themselves.
Twenty-First Century trysexuality is, you see, just for girls.
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and to square the fagly circle here are some suggestions for some fagly hobbies from The Art Of Preppiness:
http://artofmanliness.com/2010/01/06/45-manly-hobbies/
Most people who have (nsa) sex spend most of their emotional energy stressing how much they are not including their emotions in the sexual act which is emotionally draining!
But then we will get back to the gentelman callers and the furry slippers and the Watchtower and I really don’t want to go back there!
haha well homos aren’t exactly doing their bit for the continuation of the species, I don’t see why I should!
Well, certainly if no one had sex it would be he end of the world for human beings.
I think that while a person, who for some reason or other, can’t manage to have sex, it’s unfortunate, since it is the most powerful of the emotional outlets available.
The design that prompts Christians to make sex a shameful act is far more perverse than the encouragements which permissively encourage people to do what is natural.
To interpret Ms Brights statements as “It seems to be saying if you don’t have loads of nice happy consensual sex starting from a young age you are a miserable bastard,.” are no more than “it seems to be”:(your)internalizations, not anything she said or implied.
If you lived in a country in which you were constantly badgered by the weird outpourings of the Christian freaks who abound here, as an intelligent person you would take objection to anything they said.
Also not having sex is not necessarily the end of the world.
No, it’s not. It could be the beginning of a lovely new hobby. I desperately need a new one myself.
Monogamy has been in the news in America. A Christian guy wrote an article in favour of monogamy and abstinence and it got a lot of flak. This response from ‘sex positive’ sex person Susie Bright, I find really really annoying:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susie-bright/why-lying-about-monogamy-_b_833038.html
It seems to be saying if you don’t have loads of nice happy consensual sex starting from a young age you are a miserable bastard.
Being ‘sex positive’ can be very annoying. Sex just isn’t very perky. If you’re doing it right.
This is interesting: the CEO of Ashley Madison, the ‘adultery’ dating site, claims that adultery helps maintain marriages.
I hate the way women — e.g. Jezebel the women’s online mag– always present men as the adulterers and themselves as ‘wronged’ by adultery. As if the CEO of Ashley Madison is cheating on all the women of the world himself!
I don’t know if Ashley Madison has a men seeking men section. It’d be interesting to find out. Dating sites with ‘men seeking men’ are one thing, dating sites for men seeking married men are a whole other ‘trysexual’ ball game.
http://uk.jezebel.com/5773892/adultery-website-founder-explains-how-hes-saving-marriages
Ashley Madison’s server has toppled. Probably because they’re on their way to becoming ‘the next billion dollar business.’
Jezebel is just following the feminist line of not letting go of any ‘wronged-woman-ness’ even if it means propping up Victorian ideas of women as secluded paragons of virtue unsullied by contact with the world (or men other than their husband).
I actually think I might make quite a good nun. So long as my nunnery backed onto a rugby club and an army barracks, just for the view, of course, I think I’d be fine.
Maybe I have something in common with Ayn Rand after all…But I don’t aspire to her dream I have my own stupid dreams.
Sisu and Mark S — this is one of those threads I am loathed to read back as I went off on one. Sometimes I can be pompous and despite all my beliefs about myself –moralising. So I am sorry if that came across and seemed to be aimed at you.
The thing I am, in a naiive way I think, is idealistic. Like Foucault when he sounds his most hopeful and innocent, I like to think that sex and radical politics can go together somehow. That who we do or don’t do and how we do or don’t do them, and how we make sense of that, how we organise our relationships, can actually effect social change.
On my more cynical days I think this is completely insane and romantic, especially in 2011. But I don’t think I will lose this approach entirely.
I don’t know about Sisu, but I did feel for a while as if I’d answered the door, starkers, to someone from The Watchtower. But if only QRG could have given us that kind of drubbing, only QRG could have been big enough to admit she might have gone a bit OTT.
Sometimes idealism can tip over into zealotry. But sometimes sexual jadedness like mine can tip over into complacent cynicism.
QRG: Glad your you enjoying it. Definitely fantasy , she calls it romanticism.
Me too. Or even anti-sexual.
I am reading The Fountainhead by the way. I love it so far, especially some of the dialogue. But I am treating it as a complete ‘fantasy’ novel, like Wuthering Heights or something. The vision of masculinity it presents is attractive, but wholly deluded. Or rather, wholly deluded and thus attractive. It’s kind of Mills and Boon for the literary reader.
If i identified my sexuality by the crap sex that i’ve had then i would be asexual
You can trisexuality if you want to. I am going to have a nice cup of tea.
p.s. Graham I could say I have ‘failed miserably’ at sex with men but I know I am not a lesbian. It takes more than terrible sexual experiences to determines ones orientation or lack of!
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to feel ‘numb’ or ‘indifferent’. I can achieve that by watching Newsnight…
QRG: That is, i agree
QRG: As far as ‘emotion-free sex’ goes, its not possible to not have feelings about reality… even if all you feel is numb or indifferent.
Mark W: I tried sex with a women but failed miserably. I thought i owed it to myself to see if i was missing out on anything. Which made me realise i am 100% homosexual. So i guess QRG that Trysexuality does exist for those who try it. As does the insidiousness of shame that Mark W mentioned. I think that Mark S and Sisu would have more interesting gentlemen callers if there was no shame involved. Because when you repress your sexuality you repress everything else about your true self and coming out and being proud is just the beginning of finding the rest of yourself.
This Trysexuality thing really is blowing the compartments right up into little pieces isn’t it? About time too.
Shame, Monogamy, Comparative Sexual Freedoms of men and women, HIV/Sexual health, the ‘myth’ of ‘emotion-free sex’, gay men’s potential interest in maintaining the social order…
It’s all here! Maybe we should just put it back in the fag box and forget about it.
Shame is an insidious and, in many cases dangerous emotional state.I doubt that MSM’s ever identify that way for health; indeed that’s the silliest thing I can imagine. It wouldn’t mean anything at all if they had safe sex or had sex with women who carried HIV or just had sex wuith multiple partners. Why not say Men who have Unprotected sex with Sluts who might have STD’s: MUPS. It’s just shame of being identified with a men who lead a gay lifestyle. I used to find it odd that men wouls identify as being gay if they didn’t have sex at all, or sex with women, however, I think that’s a little more understandable.
Shame is’nt healthy for anyone.
I definitely identify as being gay. I don’t take any particular importance or pride from the fact that I’ve had occasional sex with the females.It seems to be the only kind of relationship can have with them.I wouldn’t go out of my way to have sex with a woman, I would with the right man, if I was horney.
Life without any denial or shame would be very boring though wouldn’t it?
If sex between men wasn’t in any way shameful I doubt Mark S and Sisu would have very many interesting gentelmen callers at all. They’d be stuck with out and proud gayers.
Another thought about ‘flexisexuality’ — if you think about it in ‘market’ terms,
the ‘market’ for men’s sexual encounters is absolutely huge. If you are a man you can go on Grindr, Gaydar, casual sex sites, kink sites, married people’s ‘cheating’ sites –and traditional dating sites. All of which have more men users than women. The ‘sex industry’ is trying to get more women to sign up to its services. I expect ‘flexisexuality’ is partly to do with that. Sure, Katy Perry has helped but she is part of that industry too.
P.s. I should say “if some people think gay is something to ashamed of.”
QRG: I don’t think it matters how someone identifies sexually, as long as it doesn’t involve denial or shame, and for all the reasons(problems) you mentioned. If gay(or homosexuality) is still something to be ashamed of… what more can be done?
Oh sorry I see the ‘Flexisexuality’ website is aimed at young adult women. But I don’t think this explains how they would be treated by parents if they had a serious girlfriend.
I think women’s ‘flexisexuality’ is packaged in a way that makes it acceptable– and as part of the turn-on for men. It somehow manages to avoid that scary term ‘bisexual’. If I were a bisexual woman, seeing a website like ‘Flexisexuality’ would not fill me with deep joy.
Graham– there are loads of reasons why a man may not identify as gay. Or why he might identify as gay even if he isn’t. I don’t think it matters that much what you identify as. But if you are really tortured about your sexuality to the point of total denial about how you feel/what/who you do, I think problems can occur.
With ‘men who have sex with men’ — one of the problems in the denial as has been researched a lot is lack of concern for sexual health. But to improve sexual health I don’t advocate loads of men coming out as ‘gay’. I would hope instead we might become more accepting of how some men do have sex with men sometimes. And that they shouldn’t feel the need to hide that so much that they put themselves and their partners at risk.
Flexisexuality is exactly what Eric Anderson has documented with regards to young men. In a particular social context. But girls’ ‘flexisexuality’ is also in a particular social context i.e. adolescence. as soon as a girl becomes of proper ‘dating’ or ‘marrying’ age, I expect her parents would feel different about who she sees.
I retain my position that Trisexuality is not just for girls! And that ‘emotion-free’ sex is not just for boys. What about women sex workers? To name one example.
P.s. P.s. So i guess its true then, that what bothers someone about someone else, is what bothers someone about themselves.
P.s. Re Religious Shame. Though the shame Marcelo mentioned would be the other side of the coin that you are talking about. Which is interesting in itself, that both behaviours are act outs of the same feelings but one creates, and loathes the other.
Mark W: That “religious shame” That Marcelo mentioned earlier.
So do you identify as Bi or Gay? (if you don’t mind me asking)
Graham: Interestingly, especially in recent Gay politics, since the onset of HIV particularly, a shame inspired tendency which sometimes goes along with “marriage” politics and is called “mainlining” or “assimilation” attempts. In other words, there are definitely men who want to be regarded as being associated n no way with “fairies” or anything gay because they are quasi closeted. They try to develop lifestyles just like straight men with the exception that they go out and have sex with men.
It is all driven by shame.
I have had sexual relationships with women, but don’t like the heterosexual lifestyle. I prefer to have sex with men and I identify very publicly with being gay.
Mark S. Those aren’t the studies i refer to but much earlier hypotheses generated from naive scientific guessing. Sandra Bem was into gender studies when we were still children. The neurpolgical studies I refer to are far more sophisticated and don’t really address the issues you talk about, but rather the relative size of brains„ relative amount of grey to white matter the functioning of general thinking, with none of the kind of behavioral outcomes you speak of which seem very primative in light of current findings.The study paradigms are completely different and don’t attempt to describe the prototypical male vs female behavior. you refer to.
The most prominent differences are explained by the presence of androgen on brain tissue. I.E males all have larger brains than females; this is simply a fact. generated by weighing thousands of brains. The fact that there is more white matter(clustered nerve tissue) in females indicates that their brains are more efficient than that of males. There is no differential in intelligence between the sexes. I’ll see if I can dig up a generalization of what they now know quickly.
QRG you would probably be right if i was asking the question before, but i ask the question afterwards. On reflection it could be another way of them saying “i’m recently divorced”. The reason i ask them Mark W is that even though i’m gay i am also bi curious, in the sense that, how men identify their sexuality is of interest to me. The MSM phenomena in particular. I’m intrigued as to how someone can think that if they define themselves by the definition(men who have sex with men) of a label (gay), they aren’t the label. Compartmentalism probably. Is gay so ugly that they can’t bear to call themselves this? Also when i question further they say they are no longer attracted to women, only men.
Maybe you’re right Mark W I will do more research. But it does say this rather interesting thing:
‘And of course, you only have to think for less than a minute about the claim that gay men and straight women have the ‘same brains’, especially when it comes to the area that ‘processes emotion’, to see a major flaw with this apparently ‘common sense’ finding. I mean, how many hetero women – or lesbians – have the same attitude towards emotion-free sex that gay men have?’
‘Emotion-free sex’ eh? Now that’s a concept!!
So if Trysexuality is just for girls, how come men have the monopoly on emotional free sex? It all seems wrong to me.
http://www.queerty.com/katy-perry-has-recruited-teenage-girls-into-flexisexuality-20110223/
QRG: it doesn’t show anything about the current scientific evidence of m/f brain difference,in fact that’s not even what it’s about at all.
I’m not going to waste time elucidating something so simpleminded: just Google: “M/F brain differences” and you’ll find a shitload of references.(Or you’re free to remain ignorant with your opinions.)
Mark W: There have been several books lately taking apart all that research you refer to:
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2010/10/14/sexing-the-brain-neuroscience-vs-neurosexism/
I think I am starting to change my mind about gay marriage.
If gay men feel they offer straight men some kind of ‘release’ from the chains of hetero-marriage, whilst simultaneously supporting the institution, by maintaining the status quo of ‘infidelity’, maybe they should have to put up with having the institution in their name as well. And then maybe some women sexual outlaws can give some of those gay marrieds some much needed ‘release’from their homo-monogamy, without becoming the ‘whores with a heart’ that heterosexual power relations demand they do.
That sounds like a project I could get my legs around.
Mark W — this is one of Mark S’s pieces on ‘male/female gay/straight brains’ I think it shows it is a very debatable area:
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/06/20/the-zombie-medias-hunger-for-gay-brains/
QRG: If you bother to research just a little physiological electromylography studies you will discover that they show with very sophisticated precision that there are not only significant differences between the male and female brains but that there are extreme differences from place to place, in specific areas controlling different functions. It’s not debatable; it’s a well documented scientific fact!
Someone who is sexually submissive is not“stuck” with that role, they chose it, and generally like it and can as easily chose to be a top. The arrangement generally gets worked out between the two people.
While it often shows in someone’s carriage
and command of themselves,that they are tops, that is not always the case, however they tend to want to be in control.
I don’t really understand what you mean_ “someone’s got to be the fairy” if you mean the bottom, it’s usually the straight guy who want to be the bottom. And no one minds. But they’re both fairys.
@Graham Perrett: the person is speaking chronologically, with the purpose of telling you specifically what he does now.
If he said that he was Bi it would mean that he switches currently from m-f. These designations would be of interest if you were looking for partners for you say if you were looking for a partner for you or you wife(if you have one) or the two of you. Or looking who messed around with your Grandma or Grandpa.(past)
Graham– I’d call that a come-on!
Oh I am perfectly able to not talk or show emotions to men I have sex with.
But I tend to consciously avoid men in declared ‘monogamous’ relationships, as sexual partners. And then, yes, I sometimes get off on talking to them anyway, out of a perverse interest.
The word ‘compartmentalise’ has come from men themselves, I didn’t make it up.
I don’t see why anyone should talk to someone they have sex with. The only point I was making was that this means those people remain ‘unknown’ to us. We can’t make generalisations about them except based on those moments we spend with them physically.
And also, when it comes to ‘monogamy’, we who have sex with married people can’t claim to be outside the ‘problem’ of monogamy. We are part of it. We contribute to how it functions and survives. Mistresses are what keeps marriages in business.
That’s just life. But sometimes people talk as if they have discovered a way of avoiding that fact, of getting round the problem. And I don’t think they have.
As someone who has tried and spectacularly failed at monogamy, I know all too well that feeling when you leave your lover on his doorstep — in his kimono with his poodle– and get in the car, go back home, put the key in the lock and…
… I think that feeling is worth recording.
Sometimes when i ask the “are you Bi or Gay?” question, i get the answer, “I used to be straight but now i’m gay.” What would you call that?
I have watched La Cage Aux Folles too many times obviously.
I answer the door starkers. (But in my mind I’m wearing a kimono and curlers and holding a toy dog).
QRG: By the way the word ‘compartmentalise’ is misleading, in my opinion. And not just because of the ‘mentalise’ bit.
I think it is more a case of mine and Sisu’s kink is not to talk about it — while yours is to talk about it.
Oh fiddle dee dee, picture me in my mother’s velvet curtains and a rooster feather in my hair.
How we do run on!!!!
P.s. Sisu ever since you mentioned your gentlemen callers I have had an image in my mind of you opening the door in an above the knee blue kimono and pink frilly slippers, holding a campari in one hand.
This serves as an antidote to some of the oh-so-slightly macho ways in which you, and Mark S, talk about your sex lives with ‘straight’ men. Including your ability to be so emotionless and compartmental.
Someone has to be the fairy.
Andy Dick opens up about his ‘trisexuality’- and reveals some familiar prejudices about men’s bisexuality
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/01/22/2009–01-22_andy_dick_opens_up_about_his_bisexuality.html
I like the topic of ‘trisexuality’ because it cuts across all the-ahem-compartments of Mark’s writing.
Trisexuality is my kind of gal.
What do submissive gay men do? do they have to not bother with the straight/bis because it’d be hard to get them to be in the driving seat?
are they stuck being buggered by Gay tops forever more?
I wrote this about those compartments…
http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/posts/182754/
The male and female brain is debatable Mark W. Mark S has debated it in fact!
as for the compartment theory– I didn’t just mean about women. I meant the men themselves would feel weird passing through homo-land and trying to make sense of it in their own lives. I know I did when I passed through.
But I understand people’s needs for compartments. I use them myself too sometimes. I just know they aren’t real.
I’m not sure what the relationship is between psychic compartmentalization and the male/female brain differences. The later has been well demonstrated. Men for instance have larger brains, men have considerably more grey matter, women 10 times more white matter (fat)(jest?). There are a whole number of other distinct differences, between male and female brains. That’s not even debatable.
I wouldn’t feel left out if I inhabited only one compartment of a fellows id space. Women tend to be possessive and feel that they need to be the trump card in in the deck.
p.s. It is no wonder your lover fell head over heels for you Sisu. Apart from your obvious charms. We always want what we can’t have, don’t we.
My dear Mr Sisu,
I do believe that according to many theorists of the psyche, including Dr Freud himself, ‘horror’ can be a very powerful emotion indeed.
But good luck with that compartmentalising!
Yours
Dr QRG
Perhaps, QRG; but then I compartmentalise my sex life so that any trace of emotion is forbidden. Hence my horror of any form of emotional intimacy in the bedroom, backroom, sauna or beat. I think it only good manners on my part to expect the same of my gentlemen callers!
I knew a man who lived with a woman as a way of ‘compensating’ for his homo-ness. I would keep saying to my boyfriend– ‘it’s fake isn’t it?’ But he was also getting buggered so he couldnt answer. It made me wonder what the point of ‘me’ was.
Was their ‘release’ worth all that heartache? Not necessarily.
P.s. Sisu: ‘The one time when my married-whore/fb decided to leave his wife to be with me, I was absolutely horrified’.
«< that suggests he could not ‘compartmentalise’ homo sex from ‘emotion’ or his ‘marriage’.
I think the release that otherwise straight, married, conformist men get when being well and truly fucked must be worth their mental gymnastics.
« I don’t think you know this for sure.
I am annoying I am sorry. But I think it is important to not make generalisations beyond your area of expertise/knowledge!
I think passive and active sexualities are an excellent example of our inability to compartmentalise! A man who subs for a man and then goes home and is Mr Big to his wife– yeah, right. If he does manage that it will be I expect through some kind of force of will, convincing himself he can ‘compartmentalise’ that subby slutty homo side, and through overcompensating with his sense of hetero-dominance.
Or, alternatively, his sex life with his wife might be shit./non-existent.
I know these men too you see!
you can convince me of your ability to compartmentalise when you convince me of the existence of a male and a female brain, fellas!
QRG: I have to differ with you on the matter of psyches not being compartmentalized. It has been found, and can be observed with people you know well over a period of time, and in different situations, that people have to varying degree, “multiple”,or “split” personalities” Of course we like to think that everyone has a well integrated personality; however, given sufficiently different and mutually isolated situations in which to adapt, it is possible to have somewhat widely varying forms of adjustment that rise to the surface given significantly different relevant stimuli.
Men do, in fact, have sex with either sex and often, according to people I know who go to homosexual parties which straight men attend assume passive roles for men because they want a change from being active. These are surely compartments.
QRG: I do of course think about what goes on in their heads, and come up with theories, but in the end they’re just theories. I don’t know what goes on in their heads. And it would be rude to ask. More importantly, it would probably ruin the sex.
In the end, I like to compartmentalise too, you see.
But I’ll never be able to convince you that I do. And in fact by definition the more I try the less convinced you’ll be.
p.s. I am not saying men can’t be quite ‘casual’ and objectifying about each other sexually. I know there are key differences between hetero/homo norms in terms of approaches to sex.
What I am saying is that when men ‘transgress’ whether it is by ‘cheating’ or by fucking another man, or both, the anxiety that this causes cannot be ‘compartmentalised’.
Our psyches do not have compartments.
I don’t blame you Sisu.
But you’re not claiming to be a theorist of men’s sexualities!
I lied to myself and you. I do talk to men all the time. Especially married ones. And I find it fascinating. It is a kink of mine. I find it so interesting I forget to fuck them.
The men I talk to are the same ones you fuck, and yet the picture you paint is not quite one I recognise. You could say that is because we have different perspectives. But I am not sure that is the case. I am kind of a homo too– just without the equipment, or the dominant sexuality, to bugger these men.
Men always tell me they can compartmentalise their sexuality from their emotional lives. You and Mark are trying to tell me that very thing! I expect you may believe you can yourselves.
But I am not convinced.
And men whose sexuality suddenly becomes very transgressive and at odds with the rest of their lives, men who don’t normally talk about these things– I think they may have more problems in squaring the circle than you make out.
It is a bit like talking about Pool Hall Dude. Men who we meet but who do not tell their side of the story. And how can they? Because they can’t even admit to having a story to tell.
I for one don’t want to know what is going on with them; and as for their mental aerobics to justify their man-whorishness, I can’t say I care. The one time when my married-whore/fb decided to leave his wife to be with me, I was absolutely horrified.
I think the release that otherwise straight, married, conformist men get when being well and truly fucked must be worth their mental gymnastics.
So maybe men are able to be ‘trysexy’ if they keep quiet about it.
A kind of DADT of sexual liberty.
However, even if they seem to be so expert at ‘compartmentalsing’ their sexual adventures away from their ‘real lives’ can they compartmentalise them inside themselves? Or even inside their marriages/other relationships apart from the manwhore ones?
If these men are not ‘confiding’ in their lovers, the way men do to women, endlessly, and tediously, how do we know what is going on with them?
Trysexuality in action. I think this illustrates one of my points about ‘whores’:
http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/02/11/funny-facebook-fails-try-sexual/
yes hmm that’s a copout.
I know this sounds like a cop out (and I guess it probably is if it sounds like one). But I feel like I’m both.
And what does it matter, either way I’d be embarrassed! (if I’m right, which I think I am).
So I guess I just embody puritan prudery from both ends. Like most people, the “normals”.
where do you stand in all that chatter hmmm? are you a singleton insane with jealousy or a moaning married?
Fact: we like to hear people complain about their problems if it makes ours seem insignificant. If we feel *better* than them and their shitty situation.
Fact: we avoid listening to what we can’t change about ourselves or what causes us envy.
Fact: Single men (straight or gay) and single women don’t want to hear about marital problems.
Just a hypoth (actually I hope it boils over everybody who hears it):
all singles (m/f s/g …) want to be married happily ever after, no matter how whorish they want to behave/want others to behave.
So listening to marital problems drives them insane with jealousy.
That’s why they can’t stand the chatter.
I know you wouldn’t Mark! I doubt Sisu would be that wild about listening to their pillow talk either. The myth is straight men like easy sex no hassle when actually they get more emotionally involved than women sometimes.
I had one guy who I saw once, who continued to phone and text me for about two years afterwards. I mean the sex was quite good but it wasn’t THAT good.
… also, married men love to go on and on to their chosen ‘whore’ about the problems in their marriage. So they can’t separate their life from their sexy fun playtime with women,even though they say it is no strings attached blah blah blah. They put it all at the feet of the poor ‘whore’. They know another man would not stand for that boringness. And that if they talked to another man about it , everything would get far too ‘gay’ for their liking.
I certainly wouldn’t stand for it.
the thing is I care too much about actual whores to be comfortable contributing to the discourse which keeps them in such a shit position in society, without actually having to do their job that seens to me a morally dubious position to take.
I agree. Married men should have to be the slut but they won’t if they are fucking women, so long as these Victorian attitudes to women’s sexuality are maintained. I believe that the demand for pro-dommes is partly so men feel able to be the ‘slut’ in a kind of structured environment.
So my conclusion is ‘trysexuality’ is not just for girls!
The married men with whom I’ve been involved tend towards identifying as the whore — and compartmentalise their whoring away from the rest of their life. God bless ‘em!
Sisu: That has been my experience as well. And what great whores they make! As you suggest, part of the reason they’re so good at it is because it is completely disconnected from the rest of their life/identity — and allocated role. For them it is, quite literally, total release. Pure sex that is blissfully impure.
QRG: I think I understand your POV. As usual, you’re refusing to play the role allocated to you, both as a woman and as a woman who enjoys sex and (probably for that reason) isn’t married. Personally, I think that all men who ‘cheat’ on their female partners should have to take on the role of the ‘slut’. But only if they have really well-formed buttocks.
It’s not that I see anything shameful in being a whore, or sluttish. It’s that that position was the only one available to me. And my interaction with those men would have involved confirming something to them about femininity and the ‘rules’ of monogamy that I wasn’t prepared to confirm.
I have been thinking about this and why I think ‘trysexuality’ is not just for girls at all.
One example I have relates to casual or at least non-monogamous sex. Once you venture into this realm you inevitably meet people who are officially in monogamous relationships but are still looking to trysexy their lives up.
When I have met/talked to/considered fucking men in this situation, the thing that has really put me off. And I mean really. Is the way they position me. In order to justify being ‘unfaithful’ they need a woman who is ‘less’ of a woman, less moral, less good, less pure, than their wife/partner. They need a whore. And then it is ok to think that whore will be ‘up for it’, because whores are, aren’t they?
I have refused to take on this role (especially without payment). When I speak to men who have been involved with married women, their stories have been totally different. In a way they have seen themselves as ‘rescuing’ a poor misunderstood damsel. They have been not necessarily a stud, but a knight in shining armour.
And when it comes to gay men, I’d be very surprised if men in ‘hetero’ relationships felt able to position the gay man as a whore, when for straight men, transgressing into homosex is whorish in itself.
Do you see what I mean?
AND the idea of women not being up for it and men being always up for it-but only with women, is part of the Great Dark Man myth whereby men are seen as predators and women as victims/prey.
I don’t think that myth does anyone any good at all, except maybe for feminists who get some kind of kinky kick out of it.
You are right Mark it is a ‘double standard’ where women are encouraged to be ‘trysexual’ and play with androgyny, whereas men are labelled poofs or trannies if they step out of conforming masculine roles (as that story from Fleshbot about the cross-dressing ‘gay’porn model who had the audacity to go on a hetero dating TV show demonstrated)
BUT I don’t know if women are necessarily total winners in the way they are allowed to not be as ‘up for it’ as men. There are still quite Victorian moral values around women’s sexual appetites and activities I believe. The word ‘slut’ still has a meaning, even in these slutty times.
Women I know who are champions of women’s rights to be ‘slutty’ go on about the ‘double standard’ whereby women are policed and accused of being whorish if they are promiscuous, whereas men are praised for being studs, albeit as you say, so long as they remain hetero studs.
So we have two sets of double standards and that is too many doubles for me. I would rather it if we could consider this situation in its entirity (sometimes) as one where there are pressures on both men and women, not to mention those who do not identify as either to conform to or even to transcend certain gendered norms.
p.s ditto Marcello, ‘failed homo” is just sarchastic.
I would very stubornly be no one other than myself; I’ve put too much effort in that direction, and clearly the gay status quo are currently no more than drearily conforming creatures, worse really than bourgeois heteros since they are trying to copy them now.
I’m very fond of being an individual and despise the notion of being part of the herd.
We are clearly just having a bit of fun with terms Sisu.
There’s nothing wrong with calling yourself something — I call myself Marcelo — which if you think about it, is quiet a bizare thing to do. How does the word ‘Marcelo’ represent me?
It’s not the label thats the problem — it’s the attachment and associations with the label that distorts.
At the same time — the term ‘Marcelo’ is, in a way, the best term — since it doesn’t tell you a lot. At best — it tells you I’m not Chinese. Although that might not be true either.
So, yes, labels are bad — but necessary — otherwise, we’d just be making grunting noises and Mark S would be out of a job.
Like I said — the problem isn’t the label, it’s the attachment and taking yourself to be those labels — that’s the problem.
Lads, you are not going to get an argument from me about “conformity” and the regretable (and so-called) maturing of the gay male community to forgo the individual for group-think and assimilation.
But calling yourself a failed homo, or post-gay, or anti-gay or whatever is being just as label-centric as those who see the fabulousness of marriage and other stereotypic gay trends.
Labelling yourself at the expense of others is exactly the same thing we see as objectionable in the Gay Mainstream… fuck who you want, act how you want, but remember that it is our reactions to identity politics and rigid definitions of behaviour that bring us all to Mark Simpson’s blog in the first place!
You can bet on that; Marks mind is a deep pit of poetic diversity, hyperbole etc.: undying devotion to mental flipflopery.
t seems he showed a liking for “sodomites” once. I suppose that could be “sodomists” or .sodomistas!
Mark, there’s so much pressure to conform that most people do.
So when you find guys like Mr Simpson and yourself — it’s a huge relief.
I like the term ‘failed homo’ although I think we could exchange the word ‘homo’ for ‘gay’.
It’s sounds like a term that we should be proud of.
If your a failed homo or hetero then your a successful person!
Maybe Mark can come up with a word for that : )
Marcelo: Gosh, I’m terribly relieved that I don’t suffer alone! It’s more like being in a state of contracted puzzlement, and sadness. You seem to live in the same social milieu as I do! With out long term assurances from people like Mark and yourself, even Gore Vidal (who i don’t know personally) I would think that I was some some variety of natural freak : “a failed homo”.
I’ve been trying diligently, since I moved to this smaller city to make gay friends , and I may as well befriend wild grouse. I’m gregarious and make friends easily with straight people. But the (more effeminate) gay men are very removed and also, here at least , very religious which is beyond my comprehension even (and an interesting fact by itself in the states).
I’ve always assumed that the effeminateness is a consequence of the female role models in a persons life, since my Mother was more butch than most men, and I took after her. I have never even been able to relate to normal women accept as a 3rd sex. BTW I also always get along really well with drag queens.
I think you are right about the defensive gay men having suffered attacks and becoming rigid, toward anyone seeming masculine despite their sexuaity. (good insight!) It’s a little confusing now because some people “act ” butch and then turn out to be very different in reality.
c’est la guerre!
Yes Mark, there are some men who may have biological effeminate makeup — although there is too much contradiction in the literature on that to say that for sure — but, fair enough, I’ll concede that that is highly probable.
And yes, I have found that drag queens or transgender types to be the most accepting — i’ve always enjoyed their company.
And agree that sexuality is not enough of a bond (apart from a few contacts on the net — all my friends are straight men and a few women).
But, I guess I can’t help wanting to engage with people though — no matter what the difference. It’s just such a shame that gay men have suffered so many attacks to the point that it’s caused so much insecurity and rigidity.
They’ve just become so religious.
But, hey — ce la vie
I’m happy and content at 37 and at a very good place.
Marcello, in America, at least, their were men who’s identity is developed around being effeminate, who’s sexuaiy only seems secondarily, ( were for instance teased in school for being” fems” etc).and need a sence of belongiing which they found in time with similar individuals, who they called girlfriends or girl-which is a black female derivative. They didn’t call all homos girl,or girlfriend only the ones who they shared a common feminine bond.
When I first came out I felt excluded, except that they all wanted to have sex with me. Once I found guys like myself it was ok., and queens who just accepted me for me– like drag queens really– ‘a man or butch or husband material it was all ok.. I think we all try to fnd similar friends.. Sexuality itself (being a homo) doesn’t usually do it..
@Mark Walsh
Stereotypes exist because they are true on average. And I never said there aren’t exceptions to the rule. But of course you missed that because you started to respond to my posts before even finishing reading them out of anger.
Thanks guys — I just went and checked out his reply — again it was a bit stand off-ish. But, I do like the guy. And I totally understand why I would get that reaction. Camp men don’t have it easy and thats a terrible ignorant shame.
I Highly recommend his movies to people.
My intention is not to create animosity towards anyone of my camp fellow cock suckers. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have a dig from time to time.
Trust me — i’ve been called plenty of things in my day. I still remember getting spat at and called ‘dumbfuck wogs’ by racists Australians as myself and mum walked by pubs in the late 70’s early 80’s. That stuff stays with you.
Here’s my reply to some of their ‘all critical’ comments.
“Brothers…ok,ok sisters, I’d be the first person to defend effeminate men — that does not mean that we shouldn’t be willing to question the origins of effeminacy or masculinity in men and the language that has evolved out of that. Needless to say, critical analysis = evolution.
But it usually comes across like a ‘put down’. That because you fuck men, then that makes you a girl (not that there’s anything wrong with girls). And to put all homo, or bi men into one category is very cheap.
I also understand that it’s become part of ‘Gay’ language and I do respect that.
And if you don’t see why religious shame has anything to do with it — then maybe you haven’t understood the effect the Bible has had on human language.
Homosexuality is natural — the Bible made it unatural, therefore confining us into this battle of words. It’s the ‘If you like boys then you must be a girl’ mentality. This adopted atrophy stems directly from these old books and breeds an identity or identification with women at an early age.
Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that for some men who are quiet happy being the way they are. But assigning that language to all homo or bi men is a form of control.
And that — is what makes it so tedious”
p.s. I agree that calling homo men who tend to be effeminate ‘girl’ , I never thought about it but it strikes me as being kind of homop\hobic in origins. Same thing with black persons, I might call a white racist a :‘nigger’ to a black person or to their faces., but not a black person.
I tend to turn the whole thing on it’s head and call straight men who take their masculinity too seriously “girl” which addressed to them makes them confused and pissed off or embarrased. When I say it of them it’s just dishing. I don’t say it to homosexuals or about them usually, unless they have this nevo-butch surface, covering a big queen inside, which is phony. I probably shouldn’t be that antagonistic, but can’t always help myself.
I have a question. I recently made a small comment on Bruce La Bruces Facebook page. It was a quip, in regards to the use of the term ‘girl’ when speaking about homosexual or bisexual men. For example in reffering to a non hetero man “Oh that girl is.… ”
I said that using that term ‘girl’ to describe homo men is tedious. He reacted with a short, yet surprisingly ‘aggresively’ comment. I replied that it was “religious shame based” language. Basically what I meant was that those terms are drenched in so much guilt that it is not productive and not progressive at all.
Now, I know that the term is used ‘jokingly’ (I am aware of Gay culture and it’s history) but at this point I think it is counteractive because things are clearly changing. And you can only laugh at the same joke only so often before it stops being funny.
Maybe because I don’t consider myself to be so rigid in my sexuality that that language just seems ‘tedious’ to me.
It just makes sense that our language should shed it’s skin and adapt to new attitudes.
Anyway — any opinions?
I tend not to use it much myself, but sometimes it is the perfect way of puncturing over-seriousness. And for Bruce and several other of my friends that kind of campy argot is quite an important part of their heritage.
pedro:
There is a difference between a thick skin and kindness. I can’t speak for Mark but I can’t imagine that he’s gratified by your always tossing the same strange old “gay” stereotypes into every discussion; when people show exceptions which there always are and you won’t listen.
Mark doesn’t do this to fight with people, I’m sure. He’d take up Pro wrestling if he wanted to do that.
More boring than anything; I can’t even imagine how it got associated with manliness: The only association I can make is that the bat is supposed to be some phalic extension. Why anyone one would stand around to hit a little ball with it is beyond me; there it gets lost in the imagination. Unless the one who hits the ball the most gets to give head to all the other players!
P.S: e.g, I read a while ago a story about how Teddy Roosevelt, who in his irritation with the effemineness of the Cuban men, insisted that we introduce and make them play baseball to encourge the spirit of “competative manliness” in them. Lazy Latins!
As Marcello remarked at another site, they weren’t as lucky as they would like in getting the Latins aboard with capitalism.
What a peculiar sport baseball is. OK, so all sport is peculiar, but any sport played by oafs in shrunken knickerbockers is especially odd.
The so called men’s movement which was supposedly a correlative of the “womens’s movement”(I believe that this is a Robt Bly version), claimed that men were as pathetically trapped by the same system of restraints that limited women, only that they acted as a foil to the female limitations. In other words, males were not the enemy of female liberty but that a system of contrapositional roles trapped them both. Males for instance, in the process of females staying homebound , are doomed themselves to thankless roles as caretakers who were often not even a part of the family, but more enslaved to bearing alone and externally the full weight of their care. This is especially true in industral societies.
Possibly in the same way that males set themselves up exclusively as competitors of one another, especially in capitalism, disallowed themselves any other kinds of affectional relationships with one another
since they have been trapped by the systems expectations of them.
This is easy to see in America, where males seldom are much more than work horses who battle with one another.
There are many strains of belief in western society that keep men more rigidly constrained by gender rules: chivalry, the conflation of maternalism with morality, the shame of male vulnerability, and for that reason, men who defy these principles will be regarded as a monsters. The men who would change this would have to be completely free of gender-based guilt and unabashedly libertine. Who’s out there that meets these qualifications?
Alas, it doesn’t look like it’s Alex Reid.
I may have spoken too soon:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23756128-katie-prices-boyfriend-alex-reid-admits-he-enjoys-cross-dressing.do
BRAVO!!
@Pedro
I suppose it depends on the gay men you hang with. As a gay man who lived on the more punk/alternative scene, a lot of the gay men I knew had occasional women partners.
The gays you refer to, we called straights, as in closed-minded or not alternative.
@Mark Walsh
It’s spelled relevant, something that you as a native English speaker should know. And I’m not trying to be offensive; rather, you took it as offensive. My criticism is how many gay guys are always saying that there is nothing wrong with hitting on straight men or even raping them by sucking their dicks whilst they are asleep, because all men are naturally horny and willing to get off, but when you apply this logic to them and ask how they would feel if a woman gropped them or sucked their dicks whilst they are asleep, they react with horror. And Mark Simpson couldn’t be offended even if I tried. He is arguably the thickest skinned individual I’ve ever seen.
How is that relivant Pedro? It puzzles my that you are always trying to be offensive, and you are not even on topic. . It just seems that you are trying to create bad feelings, which certainly Mark nor anyone else deserves.
The problem is that gay guys think that it’s perfectly normal that horny butch straight guys are really “open” and “horny straight guys will have sex with anyting”, but when you suggest that if this is true for straight men, that it should be true for gays as well and that they should have sex with women, they go into the “ew, pussy, gross” routine. It’s pathetic. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander.
It’s certainly true that some gay men have a horror of female genitalia, something I’ve dubbed ‘fannyphobia’ in the past (‘fanny’ in the UK is slang for front bottom, not back bottom), though I don’t happen to share that horror. And yes, many fannyphobic gay men would nevertheless like a cute straight man to put out for them (perhaps thinking their back bottom sexier than any front bottom).
But I don’t see how that is ‘the problem’ here. I somehow doubt straight men are terribly worried about gay men’s opinions about their sexuality — but I suspect very concerned indeed about what other straight people think.