By Mark Simpson
A bullet-pointed column in the NYT by Charles M. Blow examines a sea-change in attitudes towards homosexuality suggested by a recent Gallup poll which found that, for the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as “morally acceptable” has crossed the symbolically important 50 percent mark.
Also for the first time, and even more significantly, more men than women hold that view. While women’s attitudes have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men over 50 who consider homosexuality morally acceptable rose by a by an eyebrow-raising 26% –and for those aged 18–49 by an eyepopping 48%.
What on earth has happened in the US since 2006? How did the American male lose his world-famous Christian sphincter-cramp and righteous loathing of sodomy? Have the gays been secretly putting poppers in the locker-room ventilation shaft?
Alas, Gallup doesn’t say. So Mr Blow does what you do at the NYT when you’re stumped: ask some academics. They came up with three theories:
- As more gay people come out more straight people get to personally know gay people which makes it more difficult to discriminate.
- Men may be becoming more ‘egalitarian’ in general, partly thanks to feminism.
- “Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality”.
Now, the first two of these theories seem to me fairly plausible explanations for increased acceptance of homosexuality at any time, but not especially in the last few years – let alone that whopping 48% rise for 18–49 year olds. But the third theory about public homophobes being exposed as secretly gay perhaps goes too far in the opposite direction and is too current-news specific. As if the discovery that famous homophobe George Rekkers hired a rent boy to give him ‘special’ massages could transform attitudes towards man-love overnight – rather than just change attitudes towards George Rekkers.
So I give them all just a C minus.
And, as Blow points out, none of these theories address the main finding – that men now are more accepting than women, reversing the gender split on this subject that has held since pollsters started bugging people with questions about ‘homosexual relations’.
In my own speculative opinion, none of these theories can see the rainforest for the trees. Of course young men in the US are much more accepting of homosexuality – because so many of them are now way gay themselves. It’s not really an issue of ‘tolerance’ or ‘acceptance’ of ‘otherness’ at all. It’s about self-interest – quite literally. About men being less down on the gays because they’re less hard on themselves now – in fact, rather sweet instead. It’s about men in general not being so quick to renounce and condemn their own ‘unmanly’ desires or narcissism – or project it into ‘faggots’.
Which from the point of view of today’s sensually greedy male would be a terrible waste of a prostate gland. Probably most young men are now doing pretty much everything that freaky gay men were once abhorred for doing – from anal play (both ways) to no-strings fuck-buddies, to crying over Glee, and using buff-puffs in the shower while demanding as their male birthright ‘comfortable skin’ (as the recent massive ad campaign for Dove for Men puts it).
And the timing fits almost as snugly as a finger or three where the sun don’t shine. It was after all only in 2003 that the Supreme Court finally struck down the anti sodomy laws still on the statute books of some US states as unconstitutional. It was also in the early Noughties that metrosexuality really took off in the US.
Despite a mid-Noughties anti-metro, anti-gay marriage backlash that helped re-elect Bush, in the Tweenies the male desire to be desired, and his eagerness to use product – and body parts and practises – once deemed ‘gay’ or ‘feminine’ or just ‘wrong’ to achieve this, seems to have become pretty much accepted amongst most American males under 45. It’s consumerism and advertising of course not the gays that has been putting the poppers in the men’s locker room.
Along the way, many young men have twigged that in a post-feminist world of commodified bodies and online tartiness there is decidedly no advantage to them any more in an essentially Victorian sexual division of labour in the bedroom and bathroom that insists only women are looked at and men do the looking, that women are always passive and men are always active – or in the homophobia that was used to enforce it. Men now want it all. Both ends.
And perhaps American women aren’t keeping up with men’s changing attitudes because some are realising how ‘gay’ their boyfriends and husbands are already and wondering where this is all leading.
There’s plenty to wonder about. After all, it’s the end of the road for that holiest American institution of all: Heterosexuality. Not cross-sex attraction, of course, or reproduction – but that system of compulsory, full-time, always-asserted straightness for men which straying from momentarily, or even just failing to show sufficient respect towards in the past could cost you your cojones. What, you a FAG?? If metrosexuality is based on vanity, retrosexuality, it needs to be pointed out, was based partly on self-loathing. ‘Real men’ were supposed to be repulsed by their own bodies at least as much as they were repulsed by other men’s. (If they were really lucky they might get away with passionate indifference.)
After a decade or so of metrosexuality a tipping point seems to have been reached. Men’s self-loving bi-sensuality and appreciation of male beauty, awakened and increasingly normalised by our mediated world, seems to be here to stay. Even in the God-fearing USA. And might now, if it’s in the mood and treated right, choose to be consummated rather than just deflected into consumerism again. When I first wrote about how the future of men was metrosexual, back in 1994, it was clear to me that metrosexuality was to some degree the flipside of the then emerging fashion for female bi-curiousness. I didn’t talk about this much at the time because I knew no one would listen if I did. (I needn’t have worried – they didn’t anyway.)
In this regard, one of the academics in the NYT piece was (finally) quoted as saying something interesting, right at the end:
‘Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but … the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.’
An A ++ to Dr Savin-Williams. Not so long ago, when Heterosexuality was a proper belief system that commanded round-the-clock obeisance, ‘mostly straight’ would have been a heretical contradiction in terms – like half pregnant. But in this Brave New World of male neediness it’s just a statement of where we’re at.
For today’s young men the fear of faggotry is fast being replaced by the fear of missing out.
Tip: Dermod Moore
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[…] represents a resurgence of interest in close male friendship, as the medical, legal and social force of ‘the homosexual’ and for that matter ‘the heterosexual’ declines. A quarter of the Badoo respondents admit to having ‘the most fun they have with […]
I just re-read this essay, and the comments.
A few things struck me.
1) How we have been talking about ‘metrophobia’ recently. So some of the good news findings of this survey though not to be dismissed at all, could well be revisited in the light of: how men are still ‘policed’ (by each other as well as women) over their ‘metrosexual’ expression, due to its homosexual implications. Even if actual ‘homosexuality’ is more accepted, some of its ‘signifiers’ are not.
2) How this was one of the first times I got involved in a discussion here at http://www.marksimpson.com and how immediately the context meant I was able to freely challenge my own feminist dogma for the first time in my feminist-raised life. A ‘tipping point’ maybe for me at a personal level.
3) How Mark Simpson has a habit of coming up with original, pertinent and important concepts that other people come to use and refer to, but he is rarely credited or respected as original, pertinent or important himself. And rarely credited for his original ideas. Maybe partly because he is ‘just a journalist’ or this is ‘just a blogpost’. But this is the internet age. That should not matter.
4) How ‘metrosexuality’ really is difficult for people to accept precisely because it marks ‘the end of heterosexuality as we have known it’ and, as Mark Simpson has suggested elsewhere, ‘the end of sexuality’ altogether.
5) How this is where I first learned what PCB means. It’s now etched into my mind permanently. Like so much else.
P.s. Look who it is! Professor Savin Williams– he is our new best friend, Ritch!
Another gem from Foucault Live (sounds a bit like Take That: Live!):
MF: ‘In contrast (to ancient greece) the modern homosexual experience has no relation at all to courtship…The wink on the street, the split second decision to get it on, the speed with which homosexual relations are consummated: all these are products of an interdiction. So when a homosexual culture and literature developed it was natural for it to focus on the most ardent and heated aspect of homosexual relations’.
Q:I’m reminded of casanova’s famous quote that ‘the best moment of love is when one is climbing the stairs’.One can hardly imagine a homosexual today making such a remark.
MF:’ Exactly. Rather he would say something like: ‘the best moment of love is when the lover leaves in a taxi’!…
[…] Along with Newsweek’s and the Pentagon’s notion that masculinity is always heterosexual. […]
As a gay man trolling the internet for an interesting discussion on America’s newly open attitude towards male homosexuality, just want to say that I’m astounded by the blatant misogyny in these comments.
Three zingers in particular:
1. “Sex with men represents sexuality without entrapment, without feminizing emotional responsibility; after a while, it begins to look like liberation; rather than being an anathema to masculinity, it actually affirms it. This gender reversal in the acceptance of homosexuality is probably a subtle sign in the re-emergence of patriarchy, which is quite exciting.”
“feminizing” emotional responsibility? “exciting” “re-emergence of patriarchy” ? You sound like a sad sod indeed. Patriarchy is for stiffers.
and
2. “Women are traditionally raised first and formost to manipulate their husbands primarily with sexual reenforcement. It no wonder that in the majority of marriages that survive, the woman makes all of the significant choices: even what their husbands wear. Samuel Becket called the pussy a womans “trump card” , for good reason. Of course this worksonly if it is kept a secret amonst the women folk.
Their is no greater comic relief than the situation in which a male realizes his value to the female orgasm andturns tables on the manipulative stunt..”
What a degrading view of relationships. As though a woman, or anyone, withholding sex in a relationship is always a bad thing.
or (on lesbians)
“I don’t think they are suffering nervous breakdowns due to their pussy only diet, or calling men fags to get them into bed. God knows what they are managing to fill their time with. I believe many of them have cats to look after.”
As opposed to having or not having manipulative sex, or as opposed to actually having a sexually and emotionally (eek?) relationship with another pussy ie “person”. I have to laugh.
I wish you all the best in life.
More thoughts on possible causes of the surge in men’s tolerance for homosexuality.
Maybe polarization of sexual preferences and stigmatization of male homosexual conduct are an aberration, and tacit tolerance with frequent clandestine sexual encounters between straight and gay men is the norm. In the book The End of Gay (and the Death of Heterosexuality), Bert Archer claims that, starting in the early 1940s, US psychiatrists and the military colluded in stigmatizing homosexuality by instituting harsh punishments for it and convincing the public that it was a dangerous mental illness. The recent surprising fast increase in men’s tolerance for homosexuality may just be a return to the norm.
Another cause might be backlash against radical feminism and political correctness. PC’s pro-female anti-male bias appears everywhere in our society. In prescribing Ritalin for the normal rambunctious behavior of elementary school boys. In elevating feelings over reason. In elevating self-esteem over discipline and success. In divorce proceedings which cater to women and harshly punish men. In workplace rules agains sexual harassment which have broadened the definition of sexual harassment to mean anything offensive even when it’s barely connected to gender or sexuality. These trends have gotten so out of hand, a backlash is inevitable. One form the backlash might take is a retreat into male-only social relations, and maybe even male-only sexual relations.
A divorce can ruin a man’s life, and divorce is so frequent now, straight men might view marriage as a mere prelude to the hellish punishment of divorce. It might also motivate straight men to see gay men’s freer lives as an attractive alternative. Which makes it incredibly ironic that US gay rights activists are hellbent on legalizing gay marriage and shriek “Homophobe!” at anyone who opposes it. Whether gay men’s lives actually are freer is obviously debatable, but one of the often cited reasons for straight men’s hostility and/or envy toward gay men is our freedom from the duties of marriage and child-rearing.
I’ve always thought it’s hilarious and creepy at the same time that high profile anti-gay activists like George Rekers are so obsessed with male-male anal sex. How do they stay completely oblivious to the fact that their obsession with gay men’s sexual activities casts doubt on their own heterosexuality? Well, we know how that turned out for Rekers. I’ve always wondered if the best thing gay rights activists could do for their cause is to issue public service announcements that anal sex is optional in male-male sex.
Although I’m personally not a big fan of anal sex, I have little sympathy for straight men who are terrified of the idea of taking a cock up the ass, especially the ones who make it the centerpiece of their hostility toward gay men. To me it seems like an issue of courtesy and fairness. For males of all sexual preferences, if you want to stick your cock inside other people, you should be willing to take one down your throat and up your ass at least once to find out what it feels like to your insertee partners. It’s just plain rude to believe it’s okay to do sex acts to your partners which you won’t allow anyone to do to you because you think those acts are too scary, painful, disgusting or insulting. How many straight men agree with me? I’d love to find out. Has anyone done a survey?
PugBear: Interesting speculation. I’m not sure how far I go down the ‘anti-male culture’ route, or imagine that straight men are about to turn away from women, but it’s pretty clear that homophobia has been one of the principal ways of persuading men to conform. I would also say that in a post-feminist (Western) world where women are increasingly liberated from the kind of conformism that their mothers and grandmothers knew, maintaining and being complicit in that level of homophobia clearly means hobbling men’s own response to a changed world — and changed gender relations. Homophobia now just keeps men down. Like James Dean supposedly said about his bisexuality, I think more and more men are saying, in effect: ‘I don’t wanna go through life with one hand tied behind my back.’
Even if Idid, I wouldn’t refain because of your irrelivant chastizement.
triode : What is your contribution to the topic, such that you can claim what is not relivant, and who departed and how? Do stop by when you’ve developed a capacity for complex thought,and perhaps some manners. The thoughts would do. I didn’t start the discussion of sports anyway dim..
Thanks Triode: I alluded to the fact my last couple of posts were meandering round this particular topic thread myself. But sometimes keeping it loose enables more interesting discussion.
I moderate a couple of blogs and it is quite a fine art. I rejected my first comment this week myself, and felt terrible, as I am a big supporter of free speech. But sometimes you have to think of the ‘community’ for want of a better word of the readers and contributors to a blog, and put their interests over those of one individual, who often has a very specific axe to grind.
I find the depth and interest of discussion here much richer than on many other blogs/fora and than in many pubs and living rooms too for that matter. I think Mark S does a difficult job very well.
Mark Walsh makes a good point, at least with one point.
Please tell me what the World Cup, rugby, soccer, footie, football, writing books and all the most recent posts have to do with the article The End of Heterosexuality (As We’ve Known It) Wouldn’t the turn this discussion has taken be best placed in other threads related to sports and literary topics?
This filibustering is an insult to those intellectuals who wish to discuss subjects relating to what the article was putting forth. By rejecting posts that relate to the article — and I know you are — and posting this off-topic banter, you really bring the credibility of your site to a low it doesn’t deserve.
Walsh is one of the persons sidelining the issue — him and Quiet Riot Girl. Perhaps that should be pointed out to them.
Triode: The only posts I’ve rejected have been further essays by Patrick and his disciples about the evils of sodomy.
MarkS: I’d have trouble seeing you write a sports column; you’d probably interject to much sex! QRG: you might be happier in the U.S. : They only cover the cups on one station and in Spanish. So most of the many immigrants get forced to watch baseball; a real man’s game(?). Remember soccer is a girls game here yet. But some mens games are being turned into girls gams which doesn’t make them not mens games(strangely) Noone can tell rugby from sushi.
I still think that soccar is much more demanding of intelligence, coordination and endurance than the rest.
The U.S.‘s refusal to adopt soccar in a significant way is just a form of perverse nationalism; and perhaps fear that they’ll get beat, intead of beating everyone else up.
‘Buggery in the Rain’ would make a good title for a book. But I suspect neither of us are going to write a book about football…
I don’t like it either. Mainly the atmosphere in pubs when the football is on. Incidences of gender partner violence go up during world cups and I can sense why instinctively. The language is interesting. I don’t spend long enough talking to male football fans to know much about it. But I recognise the basic memes you mention! Get in there my son!
I just got back from watching England get slaughtered — or ‘bummed’ as some of the lads in the pub put it — by Germany. I was talked into it by a straight male gym buddy. As he said at the end, after it was all over except for the ritual shirt-exchange: ‘Why are they swapping t-shirts with the guys who just raped them?’
Sometimes I wish I was more interested in football because it might mean I had something more to talk about than sex and the weather. But the vernacular of football does its best to suggest that football is just buggery in the rain.
I hope I am not going off topic. I’ve been thinking on things raised here and in the other threads, but as a poor old heterosexual I keep identifying with this one.
Anyway, I change my interpretations on homophobia sometimes, and it’s probably because it works in complex multiple ways. Sometimes I think of it in terms of identity, as James Baldwin said:
‘straight cats invented faggots so they could sleep with them without being called faggots themselves’
Sometimes I think it is genuine fear, of yourself, of masculinity, of having a cock up your arse.
From my interest in power dynamics in sex, and my unfortunate experience of some ‘straight’ men, I think there is a fear of ‘letting go’ and ‘losing control’ for many of them. And there is nothing like having a cock up your arse to make you feel a little bit unsteady on your feet and under someone else’s power.
In some ways, I think a good dose of buggery should be available on the NHS for all straight men.
They might feel better for it and less in need of waving their own cocks around all the time aggressively, figuratively and literally.
I am currently working on a collaborative writing project, trying to engage hetero men to write about gender and power (ones who already write about it, but not so overtly). And these observations have arisen in part from the tensions that have arisen and their reluctance to ‘give in’ to the process (to put their cocks away and get on with talking and writing honestly about sex!)
QRG
QRG: No! Don’t let the NHS give it out for free! The bottom would really fall out of the market.…
I understand what you mean, though. The main reason I’m not a fan of football, even during World Cups, is because, unlike rugby, every footie fan is a Big Man who knows How It Should Be Done. This is what they talk about all the time. How they know how to handle it and where to put it. Or would, if they were The Boss.
Which of course, they’re not.
Speaking of meterosexuality, as male attractiveness has become more essential to success, I noticed in an article about the rapid increase of male plastic surgery. As I noted before, males are statistically far more better favored for hiring and promotions in the workplace if they are physically attractive.
It is a fact now that correspondingly a huge number of males , regardless of sexual preferance, are opting for various types of surgical improvement. Curiously, one of the more popular forms of bodily enhancement, particularly with straight men, is that of penis enlargement:: not so that they have larger appliances for their mates pleasure,(i.e, have a larger erection) but so that they impress coworkers and business associates better in the showers at their health clubs . There is male vanity!
Patrick: I’m afraid I’m not allowing any more essays from you on this. I note you have your own website to promote your worldview — and your own idea of what constitutes ‘facts’. Anyone interested in continuing that discussion with you can do it there.
Yes, apparently ‘penis enlargement’ operations are for the benefit of other men, regardless of the sexual preference of the man having the op. The procedure, which might actually be better described much of the time as ‘penis mutilation’ doesn’t increase the erect size of the penis but rather turn the patient’s penis into a ‘shower not a grower’. Something to flash in the locker room.
Patrick: while I certainly won’t argue with your point that the absence of anal sex may be safer, baning it would be comensurate to claiming that heterosexuals should refrain from penis to pussy contact. Rest assured you will have a steep uphill climb convincing most gay people that anal sex is not basic to thier sexual expresion. You are like George Bush recommending abstenance. Lol.
Your distinction between gays and “gOys” is just about the silliest thing I’ve heard of. Ithink that you should do whatever you want. I know dozens of guys regularly engaging in safe anal sex who are as healthy at least as you claim to be. Certainly they are far more psychologically fulfulled and less judgemental than you seem to be.
Clearly you should do what you want. I know that you will always wonder what you are missing., and I don’t really know how this topic, which has nothing to do with sex as such keeps getting sidelined. Perhaps you’re afraid that they’ll start making all mens underwear with rear entries?
I apologize for so soon ignoring my promise to post no more. I intended not to, but when another’s post is addressed to me, responding would be the respectful thing to do. I will try my best to keep it shorter.
There is no such thing as ‘safely engaging in sodomy’. That also applies to other behaviors. The proper phrase might be ‘engaged in…luckily with no adverse consequences’. There have been many guys that say ‘to each their own’; ‘live and let live’; ‘what two guys (people) do in private is nobody’s business’.
This isn’t directed at you Mark W, but presented more as food for thought for everyone. According to studies, as I mentioned — anal is 5000% more dangerous than other acts. That means it only takes ONE instance of anal sex to equal the risk factor of 50 other encounters. Couple this with the condom manufacturers statement that their products fail 3–14% of the time. So maybe with one act, you get lucky…but let’s say that in one in ten the condom fails. That already equals 500 non-anal encounters. We KNOW that some gays are highly promiscuous. It’s not inconceivable that some could easily have 100 anal sex partners in a year, maybe less time. That equals 5000 non-anal encounters! They might even neglect a condom sometimes. That really skews the numbers. You and I may be ‘safe’ and use a condom, but it only takes ONCE. We — ourselves — may be the most careful; but the one time, our one encounter, where we had a little too much to drink, or threw caution to the wind in the heat of passion…or, maybe the condom just breaks…despite everything. If at that moment, we cross paths with one of these psychopaths, who — if they are — might even know they are infected, it’s over.
The real fact is, what all of us do, affects everyone, in a matter of time. No man is an island. I’d like to share something I quote often. Go with the spelling and manner of presentation; it is the writer’s style and I’m not changing the text. He was responding to one of those ‘bedroom privacy’ proponents:
You’ll understand in the future –but somebody’s gonna DIE first…
See, some of those “GAY” friends of your’s that Phuck arse; –One of them is going to give HIV to Phuck somebody else –3 days from now. That person, will spread it to another person 44 days from now via the butt-phuck. 51 days after that, it will spread again –to a teenager at a “gay rave” ass-orgy –who, 79 days later will give it to your son (-recently educated about condom use in his high-school health class) via a so-called “safe” butt-phuck session in which the condom will break.
After you put him into the ground 7 years, 3 months, & 2 days later: you’ll finally “get it”.
–Veh
We have to change. It’s bad enough that most people perceive gay=anal. The term gay is forever damaged. But gays seem bent on a path that will confirm that perception. That will be the ultimate downfall. It’s why g0ys distance themselves from gAy. We won’t be complicit.
Best wishes.
Patrick
The fact, of course, Patrick, we are all allowed to choose what levels of risk we want to engage in any activity in which we’re involved. Life is dangerous, and you die in the end we all do,. Some people would as soon defer to a full engagement of pleasure while they are young and dive into forms of fulfillment regardless of risk. I dare say that I and other people are healthy and have had as more of the full engagement of homosexual passion that there can be. I would not habve had things otherwise. Many people safely engage in sodomy and experience the depth of realization that gives total fulfillment. I havre just become aware that there are hosts of people who watch each other masturbate on the web. This strikes me as being about as fulfilling as eating a styrofoam steak. each to his own.
First of all, I thank Mark Simpson for allowing my post. I realized my words would likely be unpopular with someone, but it indeed is a perspective held by many men with feelings of same-gender-affection (which is a far larger demographic than those self-identified as ‘gay’. It is to them, rather than those firmly entrenched in the lifestyle and its many behaviors, that I speak. I need not be too redundant, so I won’t repeat my statements and statistics on the dangers of anal sex. The realities over the last 30–35 years regarding STD’s/HIV/AIDS speak for themselves, as does the fact that 16–24 year old males are at highest risk of infection in our society.
Google “gay sex” and see the wide range of poor role models and bad examples we provide for our youth, without any apology or explanation to the hypocrisy. Mark W, it has nothing to do with crabbiness. Before discovering the g0y movement I mentioned, I was deeply entrenched in the ‘gAy lifestyle’ for 28+ years and aware of my attractions (unconsummated) for 9 years prior to that. The behaviors I engaged in once I ‘burst out’; the depravity I saw and myself even promoted would likely even put you off, Mark W…I thought it was all ‘part and parcel’ of ‘being gay’. It’s what I learned from my gay peers as a young naive 20 year old. The last 10–12 years I began pulling away, deciding I could no longer be complicit with the factions that have gained a stranglehold on the gay community. Perhaps I was let out of a convent — a convent that, over the last 3 decades, has often been based on lies, arrogant insanity and complicit indifference.
Then, 6 years ago, I discovered I didn’t have to ‘follow the herd’ and I discovered a demographic of men that shared my feelings and preferences. I discovered that there are men that are looking for buddies/partners instead of ‘girlfriends’; who don’t need to march and protest to affirm their affections and seem to get through life just fine by not being Out, Loud and Proud. Best of all — after having lost all of my friends and a large peer group to horrendous diseases and painful deaths — I found men that shared my belief that a lot of the sexual expressions in the gAy lifestyle often borders on folly and suicidal tendencies borne out of sheer arrogance and denial.
I finally had a general check-up/lab work after a 10 year neglect; my doctor was happy to announce my good health; STD/Hepatitis/HIV free and all the other numbers in good range. That was a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. I had long ago changed my sexual behaviors, but the nagging thought always lingered — “What if the ‘last time’ I was foolish and risky was the one time that I lost at Russian Roulette? Will I someday find out?” Now I can go forward into the second 1/3 of my life (I’m 53) knowing that I made it through my generation’s darkest times and survived. Mark W, I’m not trying to get attention for myself, but I do hold myself up as a prime example of pure luck.
I try to bring to the attention of young men beginning to recognize their attractions and my (remaining) peers the fact that it is not too late and we can change our behaviors– while still celebrating our affections — and change the course of what could be a very regrettable future for youth that are ill-prepared for a harsh reality. They often step from a coddled video-game environment to a multitude of life-devastating scenarios; all because they weren’t educated to the consequences. You are very correct — “The newer generation of American gays are mostly very confused and distressed…” — and then you add to the confusion by suggesting that “a good taste of real sodomy” is a cure-all, rather than the potential threat it can pose, regardless of the gender or age of the participants. How many guys are going to — unconsciously — get the message that ‘sodomy is ok’ and then later realize that nobody told them about the risks? Hopefully that is what I did bring attention to.
Mark W, if you visit and study the pages at the links I shared, you’ll likely find that you will agree with a lot of what is stated. We share your opinion of the right wing fundamentalists and evangelicals. There are just so many issues that they are wrong on. They mix the premise of homosexuality (orientation) and specific acts (behavior) and attempt to apply a prohibition to all, when that is not what is literally stated in their foundational texts. They likewise often ignore the account of David & Jonathan — ‘a love surpassing even the love of women’; ‘their love found favor with God’; ‘the souls of David & Jonathan were knit as one’. They ignore this very clear account of a same-gender bond and twist what is really said to suit their agenda of guilt and control. http://www.g0ys.org/newthang.htm
One thing that g0ys view as a badge of honor is we are often hated equally by both the fundamentalists and the gays. One faction promotes ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ and another claims they desire acceptance for all. I have to wonder what their true motives are…
I have said enough on the issue, and addressed your concerns. I don’t intend to post further. I don’t pass judgment on gay persons or to attempt to sway those that are comfortable being immersed in the gay lifestyle. My intent is to speak to and spark a realization in those guys just coming to terms with their feelings of same-gender-affection that there are alternatives. If one doesn’t feel comfortable with what they see in the lifestyle; don’t feel they are part of or don’t want to be under the ‘rainbow umbrella’, they deserve to know that there ARE other alternatives; alternatives in which the potential demographic of available men (ref. the Kinsey Scale) is a far larger percentage than just the ‘gay’ niche. G0ys promote Friendship First, Strong Bonds of Brotherhood, Masculine Respect and Trust, Responsible Health and Sexual Practices, Strong Moral and Spiritual Foundations. If all the gay community has to offer is “…a good taste of real sodomy…”, for me, the choice is an easy one to make:) I’ll pass — in favor of choosing what g0ys offer.
PaulQ; post #35 — Great Post! Your perceptions are a large part of what g0ys promote! Also Mark S; post #36 — I agree!
Once again, Mark Simpson, I thank you for allowing me just a small part of your (young) readers time and attention.
Best wishes…wooo hooo…I’m healthy!
Patrick
BTW,It would have been eaziest just to step over your “comment” Patrick. It sounds as if you were just let out of a convent, and aren’t getting the attention you think you deserve; perhaps you wouldn’nt be so crabby once you had a good taste of real sodomy?
The newer generation of American gays are mostly very confused and distressed at the apparent anti-intuitional aspect of the load of propaganda of the religion and control inspired garbage they are being feed by right wing marriage evangelists since it goes with a damning of nonmonogamous sex. As a young man said to me last night: ‘You go through, grade school and high school just wishing and hoping that you could just touch another man, then you discover that you have to seel your soul to the devil/God& marriage to do so. They are always courious what it was like when they didn’t have to posture and preen and plan and plot just to have sex. Its not just the showers, it’s the colusion of gay people.
Mark, as has been discussed ad nauseum in the replies to your ‘gay4pay paratroopers’ piece, the people who are least accepting of the designation ‘mostly straight’ are gays: they continue to hold to the retrosexual ‘suck one cock’ school of gay-identity.
While Dr. Sex’s 10% figure was probably way off, I think he was probably correct in stating that in 1949 the majority of American males had had some same-sex encounter to the point of orgasm. You see, back then they didn’t know it was ‘like … sooo gay!’ This was still a time when the majority of people received the very best kind of cautionary sex education in the barn: one learned early in life what happened when boy parts were put inside girl parts. A mutual wank with a friend probably wasn’t even considered sex.
It has been suggested that same-sex encounters may be an important part of our sexual maturation process. So perhaps an established genetic paradigm is starting to re-assert itself in the wake of ‘gay
Based on my own experience growing up in the eighties, the gay movement has had the paradoxical effect of making us homophobic in ways we had never before considered. I never participated in a circle jerk, nor knew of any guy who did: we all knew it was ‘like … sooo gay!’. It is my understanding that some American secondary schools have gone so far as to remove open showers from team locker rooms — a move bound to have a deleterious impact on ‘team spirit’, even for those who aren’t in the least curious about what their teammates are packing.
Yes Paul, saying ‘like … sooo gay!’ is ‘like… sooo gay!’ And like you I can’t help wondering whether trading in gang showers for gay marriage was such a good deal.
I think that the issue of same-gender-affection is becoming more widely acceptable because men are coming to realize that in expressing such emotions they don’t have to buy into the ‘gAy lifestyle’. Much of it is so cliche and often repugnant. This article was full of such cliches:
“anal play“
(always the over-promotion of playing in ‘you know what’…always the ‘few’ singing their own tune and declaring it the theme song of the many. Shut up!)
“no-strings fuck-buddies“
(yeah…we ALL are just looking for anonymous sex hook-ups…God forbid any of us be interested in building bonds of brotherhood with our buddies, beginning with Friendship First with NO expectation of sex. Not all of us are uncontrollable horndogs. If we end up being intimate, it makes it just that much more special than the typical ‘gAy roll in the hay’. I want my bros to remember my name and know that they will be around for the long haul. The “Four F’s” — find ‘em, feel ‘em, f ‘em and forget ‘em is so 70’s-80’s. Have you guys not learned anything in 30+ years?)
“crying over Glee“
(yeah…we ALL just love musicals, don’t we? No. Some of us vomit at the thought. Will & Grace…uh, no…I have no interest…Queer Eye? No thanks. Queer as Folk? Eye candy, but there was never a bigger stereotype-fest ever.)
“poppers in the men’s locker room“
(gays still use poppers? despite all the evidence of the damage they contribute to, health-wise? Figures…)
“Men now want it all. Both ends.“
(How dare you! Attribute the fetish behavior of a fringe faction of the gay community to the majority of the male population? You guys just think that because some guys like guys that we want to give it or get it up the ass? Get over yourselves — and get away from US!)
I take issue with perspectives such as these: “How did the American male lose his world-famous Christian sphincter-cramp and righteous loathing of sodomy?” “Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality”
Anal sex is 5000% more dangerous than other sexual acts. That means it would take 50 encounters of other sexual acts to equal the risk factor of ONE anal encounter. Condoms are now reported to fail 3–14% of the time, consistently, by the manufacturers. Can you say Russian Roulette? Surprise! Us expressing our same-gender-affections with our pals does not mean we have lost our loathing for sodomy. One does not imply an acceptance of the other. And it doesn’t mean there is a mass rush to dive into the gAy lifestyle, either. Keep your rainbow umbrella…
It’s the gays that attribute the term ‘virulent homophobe’ to some people that are critical of the behavior of fringe elements of the community. Could it be that some people are just sick of the behavior of a small minority within the community that appears to speak for the whole? Why is it that gays think one cannot criticize the gay lifestyle (while still being intimate with men in their own life) without being labeled a homophobe? Elements that have NO relation to my feelings of same-gender-affection (drag, gender-bending, various fetish niches, etc.) that I feel compelled to criticize as damaging to the same-gender-attracted community — I don’t think this makes me, or anyone a homophobe. I love men. But I hate the depictions that characterize homosexual men as anything other than men, and there’s A LOT of that in the gAy lifestyle. People think that these guys that ‘get found out’ are hypocritical homophobes. But maybe they are not. Maybe they are just sick of the maligned perception of same-gender-affection and the imposed rules by some gays that everyone has to join the club.
What on earth gives anyone the idea that same-gender-affection (homosexuality) is synonymous with sodomy? Gays are always so adamant when called any number of epithets referring to anal sex by saying ‘not all gays do that’, but then turn right around and spew rhetoric that perpetuates the perception that gay=anal. Likewise, speaking of synonyms, homosexual is not synonymous with gay. Homosexual is an orientation. Gay is a lifestyle.
Make no mistake about it, the gay community isn’t getting ‘larger’ and more mainstream guys are not ‘coming out of the closet’. We might be acknowledging to ourselves the fact that feelings of same-gender-affection is the NORM — more specifically, amBIsexuality — not the exception reserved for a small minority. That doesn’t mean that droves of mainstream men are going to pick up rainbow flags and march down Main Street. I take offense that just because I’m sweet on my buddies and might get intimate with them now and then, that I am somehow on my way to being Out, Loud and Proud. I spent 28 years in the gAy lifestyle trying to fit that outrageous mold. It just wasn’t for me, and it’s a tired paradigm that not a whole lot of guys are going to jump on board with. Subsequently, I discovered what fits ME, and over the last 6 years I have identified with the g0y movement. The demographic we represent are the very men this article is attempting to lump in with the gay community as a whole. You guys wish you could absorb all the outside-the-gay-community masculine men that have discovered a new intimacy among themselves. It just isn’t going to happen. We don’t want to be associated with the stereotypes. We’re trying to distance ourselves and our intimate feelings with our pals from the stigmas that too many of YOU allowed to be created. Too many have irreparably damaged the term “gay”. We’ll pass, thanks all the same…
Patrick
http://www.g0ys.org
Thanks Sisu!
That makes me love her even more.
’It costs a lot of money to look this cheap’ is one of my favourite lines ever.
Trash camp gets my vote.
Sadly, Dolly does not make the grade into High Camp, but then I would not expect she would want to. Our Dolly is trash-camp, but often that is the best type to be. In her refusal to project a serious persona — and all the serious effort she puts into that — along with the uber-feminity appearance (and its drag-like connotations), Dolly ridicules the expectations of her audience. And all with a self-made take-no-prisoners C&W sassiness!
Sadly “camp” was a useful concept which arose out of gay culture and was left in the trash of a defunct community which people popular inrtelectuals abandoned as gay culture went the way of most truely gay liberationist thought as” power bottoms” (Mark S.) like Mrs. Sullivan forced everyone into wedding dresses.
What kind of camp is Dolly Parton then? It’d better be the good kind; my heroes are falling like flies at the moment.
I can agree with both Uroskin and Mark S regarding Ms. Rand. I think that the best catogorization, from my experience is that she fits pretty neatly into the category of “camp’ as described by Sontag.
Probably because she was so bizarrely right wing, people in college were pretty well divided in America between those right wing business students who worshiped at her alter and those intelectuals who found her spitfully wrongheaded.(with the caviat that American students were never bright stars in the cosmos) she was thought very important at one time on American campuses. I think that some of our tea-bag crowd (who can read) still genuflect at her mention.
To the peoiple overseas who are actually educated she is camp in the same way that the singing plastic Rose gadens in Disneyworld are, and as Sarah Palin will soon be.
And she’s the best and most satisfying kind of camp at that — Ms Sontag’s definition. None of this modern day campy stuff — she was very serious indeed. There wasn’t a campy bone in her body. At least I hope not.
Ayn Rand was a third rate Russian emigre hack writer. Spend your book club money on something more interesting, like Mark’s back catalogue of books.
“Pussy-whipped” is one epithet not many a straight boy is aspiring to.
Flattered as I am, some of Ayn Rand’s books are a great trashy read and much more deserving of your cash than mine — particularly The Fountainhead and Atlast Shrugged. They’re completely mad, of course. But the right-wing nuttery of them is really quite fun.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ！＆＃ and Yvan Greenberg, Grant Richards-Jones. Grant Richards-Jones said: RT @bangpound: It’s the end of the road for that holiest American institution of all: Heterosexuality. http://j.mp/b34wAF […]
QRG: even in 2010 there is such thing as marriage; Christ ‚even gay people are chomping at the bit to do it in the U.S. to aim at marital respectability, of all things. There are legitimate reasons for having some sort of arrangement for the protection of children, even though a lot of them are sadly set lose on the streets to care for themselves.
Fully realized women, who are not non– orgasmic: often a foolish husband’s fault, are wildly needful of sexual satisfaction, and will chase a skilled paramore all over the globe, seeking that ultra experience which a woman would have a very hrd time achieving with a cat. As men realise their full value as erotic beings they are empowered in many ways.
Even with men, it is even a fact, in recent studies done of hiring practices, that good lookig men are considered first over better skilled entrants . This is probably not overt homosexualiy, but it belies something thier than the old utilitarian ideal..
Mark W: I am not very well versed in the politics of marriage: my parents never married and I have never been enticed by that particular institution either. So although I agree there are things worth noting about heterosexuality in terms of how men and women gain and maintain and manipulate their currency/power within hetero relations, it probably is a bit over-generalised in 2010, to speak of marriage as the context in which heterosexuality plays out.
Your words remind me of ‘Respect the Cock and Tame the Cunt’ as spoken so beautifully by Tom Cruise in Magnolia. I can assure you that I do respect the cock. I will not go any further except if you haven’t seen the film, I thoroughly recommend it.
“Quiet Riot Grl“
The “out” lesbians wouldn’t be as likely to object tho the disintegration of the typical “well turned out’ or “not so well turned out” womans training in male subtrifuge, but take it from any man who has attempted the heterosexual role routine: Women are traditionally raised first and formost to manipulate their husbands primarily with sexual reenforcement. It no wonder that in the majority of marriages that survive, the woman makes all of the significant choices: even what their husbands wear. Samuel Becket called the pussy a womans “trump card” , for good reason. Of course this worksonly if it is kept a secret amonst the women folk.
Their is no greater comic relief than the situation in which a male realizes his value to the female orgasm andturns tables on the manipulative stunt..
QRG: Thanks for saying nice things about the lesbians. I don’t do it enough.
PCB is noted in my book of abbreviations! Thanks Mark S. I will probably leave the project on the back-burner to be honest. Be careful what you wish for and all that. I will just watch The Player when I need my fix of Mr Perfectly Perverse. I will read the Fountainhead though, just for the hell of it.
I expect not many of them visit this site, but I’d just like to make a shout out to the actual lesbians out there. I don’t think they are suffering nervous breakdowns due to their pussy only diet, or calling men fags to get them into bed. God knows what they are managing to fill their time with. I believe many of them have cats to look after.
BTW, Mark, that routine of withholding sexual favors from women/wives is a decided extension of Meterosexuality. The smart modern “heterosexual” man’s way of keeping “his woman “in live. That’s not as much mysogyny as “turn around is fair play”: women have done it for centuries to men.
QRG: ‘PCB’ = Pushy Controlling Bottom.
MW: Good point. The rise of male bi-responsiveness means that women aren’t necessarily able to play gate-keepers in the way they have in the past. Likewise, the decline in the effectiveness of the line ‘you a FAG??’ as a way of getting men to jump (into bed) — a line which some women are definitely not above using.
‘If women realized that the price of their liberation was to have only pussy for sexual enjoyment they would all have nervous breakdowns.’ hahahaha that’s brilliant! I am going to get a t-shirt with that on.
But what does PCB stand for you erudite/well-informed bunch?
Ayn Rand is the pop right wing American figure who was the only person business students could safely read because she was the Ann Coulter of the 60’s PCB are poison, I believe.
From what I hear from my acquaintances who go to the private sex parties that are held every weekend in the suburbs, a large part of their debauches are “straight” married men, usually youngish.
It makes sense that women would not be enthusiasts in the movement of heterosexual males leaving the flock. They are clueless, I suspect., but sexualy frustrated: (there seem to be two attitudes quasi heteromen take and that is to chew them to death or make a quick penial plunge in and out before you knowwhat you are up to ). If women realized that the price of their liberation was to have only pussy for sexual enjoyment they would all have nervous breakdowns.
Women have always had thissstrange proclivity that they should be able to have the best of everything, and no ill onsequences. Well it just doesn’t work that way.
A smart bisexual man these days, just turns the ancient female strrategy on it’s head: either behave or you don’t get any nooky(cock in this case).
Steal away : )
‘Today, just being yourself, makes you a revolutionary.’ I like that line, Marcelo. I may have to steal it from you.
Mark S : Thanks, I hadn’t heard of Ayn Rand, or The Fountainhead. She looks fascinating (but what is a PCB?)
I have actually just embarked on a collaborative project with some kink writers. We don’t have the specific aim of ‘bringing Him to life’ (Frankenstein has leapt into my mind now!) but we are trying to re-imagine heterosexual (and particularly M/f kink) using erotica, essays and a notebook. I am documenting the process on my personal blog: http://www.quietgirlriot.wordpress.com
Meanwhile, this het woman is going to keep watching gay porno and eavesdropping on these fascinating conversations about gender and sex from mainly homosexual men’s point of view. Did somebody mention strap-ons? …
The numbers might seem shocking, but realistically most of us have noticed the change over the years. I’ve even been directly engaged in this change with a list of once homophobic friends who have been ‘losing their religion’ due to our friendship. I think the only people that have held back this growth have been sites like Queerty who project a hyper camp sensibility that draws a strict ‘black and white’ line between what’s possible (i.e. If your gay your a queen like us and there is no exception to their rule) and on the flip side you have the right wing homo’s stuck in a futile and doomed dogmatic extremism where historical male-ness is placed above a ‘natural masculinity’ that arises free of conceptual meanderings.
I, myself am not a “typical” camp/effeminate man, just merely a sensitive man. But sensitivity is not exclusive to effeminacy — it’s an aspect of the world we open our eyes to everyday. And as all my friends and contacts have said — that it’s in meeting men like myself that made them realize that the strict lines imposed are false. Theories are fine, but the factual experience of an experience have greater weight. We are, as Uroskin said, a people with a history who have been brainwashed, conditioned by the abrahamic religions. And, usually — it’s real life personal events that cause a fundamental change from these imposed beliefs.
Today, just being yourself, makes you a revolutionary.
I guess straight men bottom because it is something they cannot easily do at home (not all wives are willing to strap on the dildo, they tell me) so I really don’t have the time to explore my own bottom side, not that I regret that.
I’m willing to see this major trend (sexual tectonic shift?) as a return to pre-christian/jewish/muslim sexual behaviour and a de-coupling of sexual relations from marriage and property.
I always thought the Spartans got it right to ban men from marrying until they were 30 and getting their rocks off in a single sex environment. For many guys that is still an obvious attraction considering the popularity of single sex working/socialising spheres in the workplace, football field and prison. And naturally, these days, the sex-on-site venues.
Internet porn might be one of the main causes for that eye-popping surge in tolerance. Particularly websites like XTube, where lots of videos are free, and visitors don’t even have to register to view many of them. XTube mixes links to gay and straight videos on the same pages. They have a gender filter which isn’t very effective. Any straight male with the slightest curiosity about male-male sex can easily satisfy his curiosity anonymously and in complete privacy. Since a lot of it’s free and not behind a registration firewall, teenagers could easily access it. Many of the videos are obviously recorded at home and feature men who don’t fit the strict hotness standards for professional porn models, which might add to the impression that all guys could be, and probably already are, having sex with other guys. These websites demystify gay sex and equalize the sexual preferences far more effectively than gay rights activists could ever hope to achieve. That the surge occurred only among males supports this theory, since Web surfing and porn are both more popular with men than with women.
PugBear: I agree, internet porn probably has a lot to do with that ‘surge’ — in an earlier draft of this post I blamed advertising and porn for putting the poppers in the men’s locker room, but for some reason later deleted the mention of porn. Maybe because I talk about it too much. Although what you describe is absolutely true, I don’t think it’s necessary for straight men to be watching gay porn for porn to have that ‘educational’ effect — hardcore straight porn is somwhat ‘bi’ by definition, certainly when compared to gay porn (where sexual difference doesn’t exist).
I think it goes deeper than just not wanting to miss out on some sexual hijinks.
Nobody is more restricted by hegemonic heterosexuality than straight men, and nobody gains more from it than women. The initial courtship, the wedding, the house, the childrearing, his death, are all about her. With regards to marriage, the default perspective is that of the wife. Straight men get an immensely naughty thrill out defying this gynocentric institution by having sex with another man. Sex with men represents sexuality without entrapment, without feminizing emotional responsibility; after a while, it begins to look like liberation; rather than being an anathema to masculinity, it actually affirms it. This gender reversal in the acceptance of homosexuality is probably a subtle sign in the re-emergence of patriarchy, which is quite exciting.
well Uroskin, from my experience as a female heterosexual with an interest in being ‘bottom’, the search for a competent straight male ‘top’ is like the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack…so I am glad you weren’t on the same doomed quest as me. My question is what is the point of a world that spends a lot of its time and energy in selling us the potency of ‘dominant hetero masculinity’, but when it actually comes down to it, the product doesn’t deliver? I want my money back!
Quiet Riot Girl: If you really want that dom hetero top you’ll have to write him into life, like that PCB Ayn Rand did in The Fountainhead.
Uroskin: I often think that being exclusively top is a slightly pointless thing to be if you’re a homosexual. But it doesn’t half fill your dance-card.
I noticed lately that my fuckbuddies are now always proudly showing off their wedding bands to me after a vigorous session in the sack. This would not have happened even a few years ago. I think you’re right that they are into it because they fear of missing out. I mean, all that ‘fabulosity’ and ‘gorgeousness’ prevalent in the more outlandish expressions of gay sexuality must have tweaked in them that gays are on to something great and they want to get a piece of the action too.
Mind you, they are all sexual bottoms, which suits me fine. But suggesting a three-some with the wife is still a huge no-no.
I see what you are saying now. In my depressing journey into feminist discourse at the moment I am finding that ‘masculinity’ is portrayed as the enemy to women. It really is like going back in time to the 1970s. Men are portrayed as potential rapists basically and not to be trusted. Not by all feminists at all, but wherever people start talking about these thorny issues of actual violence and hatred of certain people/groups, the accepted feminist line seems to be ‘it’s misogyny, patriarchy, ‘rape culture’ and men’ at fault attacking ‘women’. So homosexual men are bound to be given the cold shoulder by this dominant group of feminist activists and writers.
Also, transphobia amongst white middle-class ‘cis’ feminists is rife. I do wonder if there is something about just how reified ‘femininty’ has been, that when it gets more blurred, when men become more ‘feminine’ either by being metrosexual, or by actually choosing to identify as women, the ‘natural’ feminine women are threatened and react defensively. Even though they have been going on about how negative ‘imposed femininity’ is for women forever. I for one am glad men are taking on some of the burden of femininity as I can’t be doing with it!
But the result is that feminism, and feminists discourse on femininty is descending into chaos and parody.
On good days I hope this is just part of a process and we will come out better people, but I don’t know.
They might have new feminist women’s survival camps springing up in the outback. Ready for the gender apocalypse. Greenham common with added guns. I only just had that thought, it’s a bit scary.
e.g. When I wrote recently about heterosexual people having anal sex, I felt this ‘froideur’ descend over me from the direction of my regular female online friends. The fact I wrote about it online was partly because it is an issue I find impossible to talk about to my real-life, straight, feminist women mates. Their froideur would be even colder I suspect. I am sorry to divert from what is actually a really positive bit of news, about the lessening of the grip of homophobia amongst men. For that I am very pleased, and hope it has a direct impact on reducing numbers of homophobic attacks.
I wasn’t being entirely serious in suggesting that the reason women’s attitudes are now behind men’s when it comes to homosexuality is because they’re worried that as you put it so succintly, Barry will run off with Harry. I could speculate about women being more moralistic than men, especially in an age of online porn, and I could probably blather on about how a lot of women are less ‘objective’ about sex (which probably just means less fetishistic), but it seems pretty clear that greater ‘acceptance’ of homosexuality by men is now aligning itself with greater freedoms for men in general. And I’m not convinced that all women think that is a good idea. Particularly feminists — which is very depressing since those new male freedoms are the corollary of the ones that women have achieved.
And you can write about anal sex anytime you like, round these parts.…
I hate to miss out too. That’s why I do try my best to keep my sexual identity as vague as possible though it keeps on acting out its boring hetero side much to my chagrin.
I am curious about the stats on women’s attitudes in comparison to men’s. I can see they may be threatened by the potential Gay threat to their hold over husbands, partners and fuck buddies. But women have traditionally been expected to feel very threatened by other women taking their men, so I don’t know if this is the whole story.
I too can only speculate but I think in the states as well as the UK to a degree, contemporary feminism has started to become more and more aligned to Conservative, ‘Christian’ even, ‘neo-puritanism’. This is not good news for anyone who doesn’t own a Kath Kitson apron, a heterosexual husband and a copy of Grazia. I think women are being encouraged to be more censorious about diversity in sexuality, including their own. This is partly as a backlash against the more permissive aspects of consumer capitalism with regards to selling pornography and prostitution online, and mainstreaming sex work into our entertainment culture via lapdancing clubs and stripper nights. I am only speculating. It could be women are just terrified that Barry is going to run off with Harry, but I think there may be more to it than that. As a ‘pro-sex’ feminist who shows no interest in taking anyone’s husband, I get a hell of a lot of stick from ‘feminist’ women, purely for being open about my sexuality.
This is why I retreat onto blogspaces like this one mainly aimed at Homo-men. You seem much friendlier to the likes of me!