Being a ex-gay and liberal isn’t a contradiction — it’s what I am. I just happen to exist in one of those demographic/political profiles which tends to get ignored because we don’t fit comfortably into the ideology of the left or the right.
That doesn’t mean people like me are numerically insignificant. Of the people I know like me who are working to change to a heterosexual orientation, many are entirely apolitical. But of those who have a political outlook of some kind, I would say a clear majority have politics on the Democratic/progressive/liberal/left side of the spectrum.
However I think a lot of ex-gay folks with progressive sympathies tend to feel silenced by the heavy right-wing slant of the spiritual and psychological counseling groups serving people who struggle with same-sex attraction. A lot of these institutions are well-meaning but some are outright predatory. And even the well-meaning ones are in thrall to a way of thinking which just can’t separate their mission from the conservative politics of the ‘pro-family’ movement.
Some context from autobiography: I discovered I was primarily attracted to other men at the age of twelve or so. No distant father, domineering mother, sexual abuse, or any of the other things which are supposed to ’cause’ same-sex attraction.
To put it simply, I just wanted to get with other dudes instead of with girls.
For many years — fifteen or so — that worked for me just fine. Again, the stereotypical sob stories of the unhappy homo just weren’t relevant to me. No alcoholism, drugs, rape, parental rejection, or anything like that. No crippling loneliness, certainly — I had three very happy relationships with other men which ended as a result of my having to move around the country too much (the coerced ‘labor mobility’ the Republicans love and want to promote) rather than from any deep seated problems.
But as I started approaching thirty, I came to the realization (for various reasons) that I didn’t want to be ‘gay’ my whole life, and I decided to do whatever I could to change.
I emphasize that no judgement should be inferred on my part towards men who are gay their whole lives. Indeed, many of my friends are gay and living in long term, committed relationships with same sex partners. More power to them!
For myself, however, I knew this wasn’t the way.
The problem was, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. But no matter where I turned for ‘help’ changing my orientation, the ‘help’ always seemed to consist of degrading, insulting slanders against gay people, or else manifest religious insanity.
I participated in one NARTH-recommended seminar which mostly consisted of a lot of the b.s. of the religious right (certain death from AIDS, murder, rape, child molestation) recycled and fed to us in a more ‘sympathetic, gentle’ form with an atom-thin veneer of clinical gentility.
It did absolutely nothing to help me. In fact, it seemed that what they were trying to do was get us to look back at our ‘gay’ lives with regret and disgust, which was certainly not how I felt about mine.
When the group leader asked me to speak about my experiences, I said that most of my memories of being with men were happy and not traumatic at all. I also said I thought it might be easier to get closure on that chapter of my life if I could look back on it in a measured way which took account of how I felt at the time, instead of retroactively colorizing my memories with a tint of artificial loathing.
My comments were — well, maybe not exactly ‘brutally shot down’ — but it was clear they were not approved of, and DEFINITELY not in line with the philosophy of the seminar. I was cautioned against ‘romanticizing’ my experiences, even though I was just trying to be honest and realistic. (But two people came up to me afterward and said they agreed with me.)
There were some other groups I participated in too, with equally disappointing results.
Long story short, I finally found a sympathetic pastor who was willing to counsel me one on one, who helped me learn to resist the attraction to other men without trying to get me to buy into homophobic nonsense or hate a part of myself (which I wouldn’t have been able to do anyway — I really like myself a lot!)
At any rate, one thing my experiences taught me is that there are a lot of us out there who feel strongly that homosexuality is the wrong choice for ourselves individually, but don’t presume to know that it’s a wrong choice for anyone else — or even a choice at all.
People with this point of view seem to be more often in the liberal camp. For myself, I should say that I am a life long Democrat, born and raised in a yellow-dog Democratic household.
It makes me wonder how many other liberal ex gays there are out there…
Or are you just suppressing your sexual desires in order to be “normal” and conform to society?
and better understand your new position(no pun intended) and wanting to be straight now you left out the why? Any particular reason?
Not that I’m questioning your choices… well, I am, because as alohaleezy mentioned, you left out the ‘why’, so there is little context here. Like, why… when you’ve been attracted to the same sex since you were 12, you would now consider your orientation to be a ‘choice’ you made, and that you can turn off with just the right help.
It is, of course, your life… but I can’t imagine going into a program to become an ex-straight, or how one would even going about changing such a core part of ones self.
I suppose I did mostly focus on what my reasons weren’t, rather than what they were. That’s what seemed most relevant, but if you like I can expand a bit.
Before I start, however, I need to emphasize what should be obvious: that all of my comments about same sex love are necessarily subjective, and that no value judgments are implied about the behavior of others.
I can illustrate the source of my dissatisfaction with a story. Family is something incredibly important to me, and when my family found out I was gay they were maybe not exactly delighted — afraid for my sake, afraid of AIDS, homophobes, stuff like that — but ultimately accepting and supportive.
So the first time I had actually gotten somewhat serious with a boyfriend, I got the courage to actually bring him home to meet Mom and Dad. The first half hour or so was quite awkward, and then something odd happened.
My mother pulled me aside in the kitchen and asked me flat out which of the two of us was the ‘man’ in the relationship. Beet red and stammering, I managed to choke out words to the effect that I was, but I’d rather it not be phrased in such a reductive way. She patted my arm and said, laughing, “That’s what we thought, but we weren’t sure. We’re just glad it’s you.”
True story! And I should mention that Mom and Dad seemed to ‘magically’ loosen up after that and the rest of the dinner was altogether more relaxed.
And I think that story illustrates up my basic dissatisfaction with homosexuality: what I was attracted to in the first place was the ideal of a completely egalitarian relationship between men, free of exploitation and degradation of any kind. And yet…
And yet it doesn’t seem to work out that way for me — and for enough other people that I suspect the problem is not completely located in some individual characteristic of my own. I should also mention that the things which trouble me do not seem to be a factor in same sex relations between women — at least not that I have ever perceived.
But between men, in my experience, there does seem to be a certain negative element built into an otherwise loving relationship at a very deep level — and it has to do with a certain aggression and drive to inequality which may be instinctive and unavoidable for men, or for many of us at any rate.
A conservative letter writer to a UK newspaper — with whom I am sure I would agree about nothing else whatsoever — summed up my feelings neatly, saying that homosexuality is “not about nice young men holding hands, but about… buggery, with its inevitable hemorrhaging and stench”.
There you have it.
What my experience taught me was that love between men — and I differ sharply from conservative ex gays in that I would never deny real, legitimate love as the driving force of homosexual relations — is compromised by being built around a physical act which symbolically reinforces an inequality between the participants.
An act which is painful for one, perhaps intrinsically humiliating, and undeniably — there’s simply no nice way to say this — stinky.
I don’t want to give offense here, so again let me qualify my comments by saying that they’re subjective and that some male couples seem to have found a way to square the circle and negotiate these intrinsic tensions. But I would have trouble believing that the dynamic I’ve described isn’t something which has to be managed in every male couple.
I could go into more depth about my own experiences in this regard, but I’m not sure if it’s something people would want to hear…
But to put it bluntly, I don’t want to be party to the humiliation of another person. I don’t believe in it. I can’t accept it, it cuts too hard against the grain of my values. But at the same time, undeniably, I liked doing it. And when you are attracted to doing something your conscience tells you is wrong — something that degrades and diminishes a person
you care about — that is a sign that you need to change your behavior.
There are so many forces in society grinding us down and making us feel subservient — I don’t want to add another! I don’t want to participate in an act of ritualized dominance over someone I love (and I certainly don’t want to be dominated either). I want my life to be, as much as possible, about uplift and giving hope to people — family, friends, etc.
When I was with other men, what I really wanted was to add a male lover to that equation. And this was just a bit shy of the day when two men could get married in any US jurisdiction — but I did hope someday to get married to another man, so I did not think of this in an entirely realistic way.
But when one gets married, one takes an oath to love, honor, and obey. And the more I experienced, the more I began to fear that the physical act of love between men is simply not something which would further a feeling of ‘honor’ towards my partner.
Sadly, it seemed to be the opposite — as I envisioned myself at the altar, looking into the nervous, happy eyes of my expectant male bride, I knew I would wonder what lay behind that happiness: why would anyone who respected themselves put in for a lifetime of ‘bowing and bending’, assuming a submissive posture, getting ready to ‘ride the whip’? Could I actully ‘honor’ someone who would permit such a thing? In the ancient world, only a broken, humiliated captive would allow such a thing. Only our modern world has so ground so many people down to the point where they would permit it voluntarily.
At any rate, it wasn’t something I felt I could participate in any more. So I decided to try to stop.
Perhaps someday, in a more perfect world — maybe even in the near future — there can be a better, more enlightened practice of same-sex love, more of the ‘nice young men holding hands’ variety. Maybe that is even the way things are in other societies today — I am admittedly somewhat parochial about the way things are done outside the US. But this time and this society are where I live, and being gay here and now means something specific to this time and place, and I didn’t like being part of it.
Again, I extend heartfelt apologies to anyone I have offended. I don’t want my decision to be a source of anger or hurt for anyone. If you are gay and you have found a way to be with your partner (or husband!) which is free of the dynamic of aggression, humiliation, and dominance, then you should be proud — you’ve achieved something which is not universal. But here is a plea, then: go forth and teach. The rest of us await your word.
you spend so much time worrying about what others and society think. Follow your heart and you will be set free.
to better understand the sexuality of “assuming a submissive posture”. It’s quite natural.
How do you mean exactly?
if I read you correctly, you have been struggling with some deep emotional issues/doubts/conflicts related to loving your partner(s) that has to do with their willingness to be submissive.
Needless to say, men and women in heterosexual relationships rarely even consider this issue, let alone consider it a problem.
So, my advice would be to talk to some women (where there is no stigma attached) about how/why in what way they enjoy being submissive (generally) in their sex lives.
It might help to gain respect for a very natural aspect of human sexuality, and it might unburden you of some of the doubts you have about your relationships. </free, unsolicited, psychological advice>
I’m trying very very hard to understand what you really seem to mean here. It seems as if what you’re saying here comes down to the fact of the sex act itself with gay men being degrading for one of the people involved.
What you’ve described as far as dominating, subservient etc is involved in many relationships whether they are gay or heterosexual so I don’t quite know just what you are really getting at here.
I hope you do continue to write more on this so I can better understand what you mean.
I probably should stop there, because this gets into all sorts of things outside my experience, except… I agree with booman, if you have some women friends it might be a good thing to talk to them about this. Because, basically you’ll find the exact same sort of thing.
With women, in fact, you also usually have the added element of the male partner being quite a bit larger and stronger than you are, so what it comes down to is the attitude of the person you are with, and the trust you put in them. And so on.
I don’t know… I see your struggle, and while I can’t speak to the physical act and your feelings about that, I think you’ll find that some of that is not solved by being in a hetero relationship instead, but instead by what you bring to the relationship. Love, concern, appreciation for your partner, care about their needs and etc., would seem to cross gender and orientation lines. Or something like that.
Anyway, thanks for answering, and good luck on your journey. Keep talking to friends, men and women, and you’ll no doubt get where you need to be eventually.
This was not what I expected. I do appreciate your reply. Like others have suggested, I think you need to consider that for many people being submissive IS a pleasure and not an humiliation.
You’re no doubt going to make a lot of jaws drop. But, you know, I don’t live inside you. I can’t begin to imagine your issues and concerns. So, let’s explore them…. and I hope you’ll find much friendliness and compassion here.
I hope you find better listeners here than you have at your seminars.
I’ve been circling back around to this diary all morning waiting for Lex to come and talk with us. I don’t think any of us have been hostile. Okay. I admit I was a bit snarky but I was trying to provoke Lex into telling us whether his “switch” is really working toward heterosexuality or just a suppression of his homosexuality.
You see, decades ago I was a “fag hag.” I mean, for a couple of years, ALL of my friends were gay men. And deep into the nights of bar hopping we would have very open discussions so I think I know why Lex is trying to change himself. But, I don’t want to presume; I want him to speak for himself…
Sorry about that, I had to work until noon, and then I spent some time composing my reply. I wanted to say something thoughtful which would really organize the way I felt about the matter.
I don’t think I’ve been completely successful but I may post more later this afternoon.
Yeah, me too, however half of my friends were gay women and there doesn’t seem to be a ‘name’ for that..Which I always wondered about..and how the term ‘fag hag’ came into being.
It was meant to be derogatory, of course, suggesting that women who hung out with gay men were hags that straight men wouldn’t be seen with. In my case, I was a fashion model so my agent was gay, the fashion coordinators for the shows were gay, a lot of the designers, etc., etc. I just enjoyed hanging with guys who really appreciated my make-up skills. LOL
And, as my mother said at the time, “I least I don’t have to worry about you getting pregnant.”
Truly wonder why people have to put labels like that on others. I do know that the term somehow conjured up the idea that maybe I hated men simply because I went to gay bars. An amazingly stupid and illogical idea that some people I knew got into their heads.
Yep, me too. Some of my best girlfriends are gay guys!
hanging out with lesbians, you may be referred to as “dutch boy”.
FagStagg- Men who like to hang out with Gay Guys. For some reason it made me laugh. It was around the big MetroSexual period.
my reply to this abhorrent and homophobic, sexist, piece of writing was just eaten by my crap-ass lap top.
i have no desire to re-write it right now.
but i will say this — since you are biological proof that homosexuality is an innate characteristic, how do you reconcile that fact with all of the thinly-veiled anti-gay beliefs you espouse?
oh yeah, anti-gay. how else do you explain this amazing piece of revelatory hypocrisy?
At any rate, one thing my experiences taught me is that there are a lot of us out there who feel strongly that homosexuality is the wrong choice for ourselves individually, but don’t presume to know that it’s a wrong choice for anyone else — or even a choice at all.
so, you were born attracted to men, not the product of the litany of queer-bashing “reasons” for why someone “became” gay. OK.
and now you do not want to be gay anymore. OK.
your comments in the reply section are telling, as well as sexist, disturbing and just not healthy.
seriously dude, your inherent sexism is deeply and profoundly unsettling. you equate being a bottom with being submissive with being a woman. damn but that is shitty. it is also, sadly how most guys think. because gay or straight or bi (ever think of that man, that maybe you might be bi???) guys are socialized to be guys. which means this: guys rule, girls are ruled. guys fuck, girls get fucked.
oh, btw, in regards to your distaste (not just literally,but also metaphysically) with the ass, society has made some remarkable advances in hygiene in the past five or six millenia. soap. water. enemas. showers. toilet paper. non-penetrative sex. saran wrap for rimming. i could go on, but why bother?
one more thing — reparative therapy, no matter how it disguises itself, is a wholly discredited intervention ad is run by charlatans. you are giving them ample cover in your diary and i for one am wondering why…
and before i forget, you owe your one boyfriend an apology. which b/f? the one you offered up to your parents as ransom to protect your own masculinity/top identity. god but what a mind-fuck. i am glad you made your mom happy by telling her you were the guy in that relationship — and so glad you could sacrifice some poor guy on the altar of your own need to be liked for what you think someone wants you to be rather than being who you are.
did you ever tell him how you gutted him so that your folks would not think YOU were the girl? i hope that if you haven’t then you’ll remember what it was like to have a conscience — and call and apologize to him for using him as a shield against your own family’s hatred of homosexuals.
no.
wrong.
bullshit.
you care about — that is a sign that you need to change your behavior. (emphasis added by me)
<snip>
…I don’t want to participate in an act of ritualized dominance over someone I love (and I certainly don’t want to be dominated either).
<snip>
But when one gets married, one takes an oath to love, honor, and obey (emphasis added by me)
there are quite a few “therapist” types out there whose homophobia is intertwined with the this infuriatingly wrong assessment of gay men’s sex being all about “degrading” and “subservience” and of “breaking the weaker ma to become the stronger men’s bitch…” kind of bullshit. hiding behind your own moralizing as a way of coming to terms with your own internalized and palpable hatred of homosexuality is just not very pretty and it is just so cheap a shot to take.
obey? look, when you get married, you can choose how you wish to express your desire to share a lifetime with your lover. “obeying” is not required, unless we have been jettisoned back to the sexist dynamic of women serving their men, which i think you are actually OK with. all three of my brothers and my sister had great ceremonies when they married their respective spouses; none of them promised to obey subserviently — they all agreed to be partners and to love and cherish and be there in good and bad times, and to try and to love.
obey? i trained my dog to obey a few specific commands from me so that when we cross the street she does not get run over by a car or get hurt.
obey? man but you have some very cloaked but coded stuff in this diary.
I agree with you that there seems to be some very, very conflicted/mixed messages and sexism going on here. I wish lex would come back and discuss this more so I could understand what he really means or wants us to know?
“…so glad you could sacrifice some poor guy on the altar of your own need to be liked for what you think someone wants you to be rather than being who you are.”
I completely agree that I didn’t handle that incident as well as I might have. I ought to have said something like, “Can we discuss this later?” or maybe deflected the question somehow. (Though this wouldn’t have come easily — in our house, when Mom asks you a question, you answer it!) In my own defense I should mention that I was only nineteen at the time.
I think you may be making a little too much of this ‘sacrifice on the altar’ thing though. As I tried to make clear, this information wasn’t something I would have volunteered or even felt really comfortable discussing, and the way the question was being framed was something I didn’t really like.
But the reason I included this anecdote was largely because it illustrates the same point you are making — that my behavior was, in a certain sense, exploitative. I realized that myself and I didn’t like it. I still don’t!
Where we differ is this: you see the exploitative aspect of my behavior as something entirely individualized, idiosyncratic, essentially unique to me, whereas I saw it (and still see it) as something more or less built into the nature of the way things are, at least the way things are in the here and now.
“…seriously dude, your inherent sexism is deeply and profoundly unsettling.”
<snip>
“…guys are socialized to be guys.”
Well, I agree with the second part of your comment and don’t entirely agree with the first. I completely agree that males are socialized to behave in a certain way. This is exactly why I think the ‘nice young men holding hands’ format for gay male relationships is something which does not seem to be realized very much.
(You alluded to non-penetrative sex. Surely this happens sporadically, but I don’t know if it is really very common, as a rule, as a way of structuring gay male relationships. If it is, great! But if so, then the people I knew were way behind the curve…)
I’m not 100% sure I agree that it’s all socialization — it may be so, or there may be an inherent component to it — I just don’t know. I have an open mind in this regard. But I do know this: even if it is 100% socialization, this aspect of male behavior seems to be so universally ingrained that it might as well be inherent.
So the reason I disagree with the first part of your statement — about ‘my’ sexism — is that you seem to be mistaking my recognition of a problem and my determination not to contribute to it for an endorsement of the attitudes and impulses — which I agree are “shitty” and in some ways “sexist” too — which cause this problem — namely, the attitude of equating “being a bottom with being submissive with being a woman.”
Causing that equation to be true — at least, the equation between terms one and three — is surely something I participated in. And I’m not proud of it! But do you really think this equation is something created by me?
In passing, I should mention that I didn’t use the terminology of “top” and “bottom” because it’s a language I really do find distasteful. It seems to take at face value the very equation you’re talking about. If you’re so sure the source of the problem is me, then why is this language used so universally to describe the polarization of roles in male-male sexual relationships? It wasn’t something imposed on the gay community by ‘sexists’, it was something gay men chose for themselves. Before accusing me of homophobia, don’t you think you should ask yourself how that happened, and why that language has just as much currency today as it ever did?
Apart from the obvious, face-value identification between “top” equals “good” equals “superior” equals “dominant” and “bottom” equals “bad” equals “inferior” equals “submissive”, there’s a more objectionable, derisive double meaning in the use of the word “bottom”, since it also means “ass”. It’s derisive because it’s equating the poor fellow in that position — a human being — with his ass — a body part.
Reducing human beings to the sexual organs in which they receive the male member is something women object to strenuously when they’re described that way. And rightly so. And yet in the case of gay men, you don’t object to it. Which of us is guilty of ‘sexism’? Think about it!
the issue is that ‘you’ don’t have respect for the ‘bottom’.
You seem to recognize this in yourself, in society, and in our culture.
But you also seem to carry that argument forward to some extent despite seeing why it is problematic.
If you don’t disrespect a woman for enjoying normal missionary sex then your problem must be wrapped up in gender roles. A man should not ‘act’ like a women, nor should he enjoy what a women enjoys.
But what is the basis for throwing those ‘shoulds’ around?
Secondly, you feel like you are disrespecting a partner by taking a dominant role over them during sex. I don’t know too many guys who feel that way about their wives and girlfriends.
But if you feel that way, and you don’t enjoy feeling lousy about feeling that way, then your effort is worth while.
On the whole though, I think you know better than to feel that way.
Hi BooMan & thanks for your comments. I agree with a lot of what you said, but I have to differ in one significant respect.
The parallel between the ‘bottom’ (damn I hate that term!) in a gay male relationship and the woman in a hetero relationship is something several people have drawn here, but it’s not something I think is as straightforward as people are making it out to be.
Oddly, dadanation accused me of equating the ‘bottom’ in a gay male relationship with a woman, when in fact I am in a minority here in not having drawn that parallel.
To explain why I haven’t and why I wouldn’t, I’m going to have to venture into some more territory which will inevitably make some people — if not ‘offended’, then at least ‘unhappy’ with what I will say. I don’t want to make anyone unhappy, so please take these comments for what they are: the opinions of one person who is trying to find an ethical basis for decisions about his own behavior, not to prescribe the behavior of anyone else.
In my experience, gay men experience ‘roles’ in their relationships quite differently from the way straight couples do. A couple of points:
(1) One difference is a built-in function of the situation. In a hetero relationship, the the woman isn’t assumed to have ‘chosen’ her role, so even though people may make assumptions about what ‘role’ the woman plays, it isn’t taken as something which says much about her, personally. In a relationship between men, people look at the ‘bottom’ and see someone who has actively chosen to take a submissive role. I think people see this as saying something meaningful about that guy’s values and character. Indeed, I would see it all the time in social situations with gay men: once people would figure out who is the ‘bottom’ in a relationship (and usually it isn’t too hard to figure out!), that person would be treated — maybe not meanly, exactly — but maybe a bit more cavalierly or indifferently towards his personal dignity. And yes, maybe ‘disrespectfully’ is the right word.
(2) One difference I think is psychological. Generally, it bothers men to be submissive, even if they choose it. Because of the socialization factor, and maybe because of some inherent aggressive tendency, even the most sweetly and pliantly submissive ‘bottom’ will be somewhat conflicted about accepting that role, and I think for many/most it must go beyond feeling conflicted into feeling unhappy. Remember, unlike women, men who are ‘bottoms’ don’t get constantly positively reinforced and reassured that the role they’ve chosen is the right one.
(3) One difference — and it’s an important one — is just physical. The butt is not the same as the female sexual apparatus. For a man, engaging in receptive sex inevitably involves some level of physical discomfort, and for many it has other effects, some of them quite stigmatizing. I’m not going to defend the right-wing canard that anal sex leads to permanent fecal incontinence — I’ve never heard of an actual case of this, and I think they probably just made it up — but it’s dishonest to deny that it does often lead to temporary incontinence, of varying duration. Along with that: soreness, bleeding, and an inability to pass gas normally — all temporary conditions with duration of a few days, a week at most. But this disclaimer misses the point: ‘bottoms’ in a long term relationship may engage in receptive sex every few days or so — which in effect promotes these ‘temporary’ conditions to chronic conditions. Conditions which are inescapably humiliating and stigmatizing.
I have some more thoughts on this, will post later.
Please don’t put words in my mouth, especially if they are yours.
But where to begin…
First of all, yes, you did handle that situation with your boyfriend and your folks poorly then and you continue to handle it poorly now. Whether you were 19 or 89, there is no excuse for the fact that you chose to degrade your boyfriend, without his knowledge of you doing this by the way, just so you could save face with your mom.
Don’t try to shift focus here – it was you played out the equation “guy = top = man” and “guy = bottom = girl” yourself, not just once but now a few time sin both the diary itself and in your replies. I merely responded at how frighteningly sexist that is construct is. It holds no water for you to suggest it is an individualized or idiosyncratic quirk of yours. Unless your are speaking of yourself as Ulysses did when he responded that he was “no man” (as in symbolic terms),
What you recounted is a great example of how men are. Socialized. Full stop. And in such an environment, the worst thing one can be in such a sexist (male-dominated) is to be a woman, weak, submissive, not a man, soft, weak, needy, broken, less than, owned, receptive.
Look at the data from reproductive health studies some day – they are illustrative. In those data sets guys say consistently “if she didn’t want to get pregnant, she would have asked me to use a condom/she would be on the pill/she would have told me to pull out.” and they report this finding with a degree of predictability that is scary. Why scary? Because when you look into the sexual dynamics of seropositive guys having sex with seronegative or someone whose sero-status is unknown, the exact same stuff plays out — “if he didn’t want to get HIV infected, he’d have asked me to use a condom/he should have stopped me and told me to use a rubber/pull out.”
Again, guys are socialized to be guys. In terms of sexual dynamics, what that as played itself out, consistently in the literature, is that men are trained that the responsible party for “safety” in sexual settings is the woman (or in the case of two men, the one who is NOT being the guy.). In plain English, the person who stands the most to be hurt s the one who has to take responsibility for protecting themselves because the person least likely to get pregnant or hurt in the sexual encounter (the guy, the top) just doesn’t. The proximity between his actions and a negative consequence are so distal as to render his connection to the outcomes of his partner moot.
Oh, before I forget, only 50% of gay men engage ever in anal sex. Data not intuition, data. Corroborative studies in the urban men’s health study (a.k.a Gay Urban Men’s Study, P.I. Stall, UCSF) and the Young Men’s Study (YMS, PI Osmond/Catania, UCSF) show that for many many gay men, anal sex is not something they like or engage in at all. 1/2 of all gay men do not engage in anal sex.
Yes, your behavior was and remains exploitative. And yes, you did offer him up, and for what? Not being thought of badly by your mom? Oh was it that you did not want your mom to think your were the girl? That is far more in line with your diary, the latter thought.
it is not surprising that you find the terms “top” and “bottom” distasteful, although the first thing that ran through my mind when re-reading how sterile and asexual your romanticized images are of men loving men, was of a john waters movie where the line is quoted that they will not discuss the sex act “as it disgusts Mrs. dasher.”
If I ever had another sexual encounter for the remainder of my days, I’d still be a gay man. It is not with whom or how or how many I have sex that determines my sexual orientation. You yourself have expressed as much the same sentiment in your diary. You are attempting to CHOOSE to not act on what you feel, and even if you succeeded in not acting on what you are feeling, your attraction is still there, the pull… the call… the innate understanding that you had when you were 12.
I need to do a box quote-n-comment piece here since I could go on for ever I am so mad…
When you write this, I would reply thusly:
And I think that story illustrates up my basic dissatisfaction with homosexuality: what I was attracted to in the first place was the ideal of a completely egalitarian relationship between men, free of exploitation and degradation of any kind. And yet…
* ideal? Egalitarian? Where is the passion, the love, the erotic, the fun?
And yet it doesn’t seem to work out that way for me — and for enough other people that I suspect the problem is not completely located in some individual characteristic of my own.
* heterosexual marriages failure rate is 50%. But that is not the most glaring of problems here; you continue to claim these are subjective feelings not intended as judgments, but at every turn, you pass judgment, make connections, pass sentence. You maintain the slippery eel debate style — “if I say that I am being nonjudgmental and continue to contradict myself, they’ll never pin me down”
<snip>… a certain aggression and drive to inequality which may be instinctive and unavoidable for men, or for many of us at any rate.
* wtf? show me data.
A conservative letter writer to a UK newspaper — with whom I am sure I would agree about nothing else whatsoever — summed up my feelings neatly, saying that homosexuality is “not about nice young men holding hands, but about… buggery, with its inevitable hemorrhaging and stench”.
There you have it.
What my experience taught me was that love between men — and I differ sharply from conservative ex gays in that I would never deny real, legitimate love as the driving force of homosexual relations — is compromised by being built around a physical act which symbolically reinforces an inequality between the participants.
An act which is painful for one, perhaps intrinsically humiliating, and undeniably — there’s simply no nice way to say this — stinky.
* Forget hygiene, forget common sense, forget that in a sweeping generalization you slam an entire portion of the community simply because you have an aversion to anal sex. and an aversion that is based on inaccuracies stereotypes and plain horse shit. having sex with another man, if that man be my lover or not, does not either symbolically or in reality reinforce an inequality, unless I live with the misogynist view that bottom = girl = bad, which you do. what stinks here is not any sex smell but your callous disregard for the truth and your callous disregard for gay men.
<snip> …But I would have trouble believing that the dynamic I’ve described isn’t something which has to be managed in every male couple.
* too much…
I could go into more depth about my own experiences in this regard, but I’m not sure if it’s something people would want to hear…
But to put it bluntly, I don’t want to be party to the humiliation of another person. I don’t believe in it. I can’t accept it, it cuts too hard against the grain of my values.
* bullshit. you continue to make conclusions out of thin air and continue to pass wholesale judgments against gay men for having anal sex. “stinky” isn’t cutesy word, it is a summation for a host of really disturbing and unfounded claims you operate under when thinking about other gay men. and the real truth is that you are party to humiliating many many other gay me by your holier-than-thou, egalitarian and condescending perspective about gay men and anal sex.
There are so many forces in society grinding us down and making us feel subservient — I don’t want to add another! I don’t want to participate in an act of ritualized dominance over someone I love (and I certainly don’t want to be dominated either). I want my life to be, as much as possible, about uplift and giving hope to people — family, friends, etc.
* your logic model is in need of repair. two men having sex does not mean de facto dominance or subservience or anything of the kind. just as sex between a man and a woman does not mean de facto dominance or subservience. you have already decided your conclusion without the vaguest idea what you are talking about.
<snip>
Sadly, it seemed to be the opposite — as I envisioned myself at the altar, looking into the nervous, happy eyes of my expectant male bride,
* WHY NOT OTHER GROOM???????
I knew I would wonder what lay behind that happiness: why would anyone who respected themselves put in for a lifetime of ‘bowing and bending’, assuming a submissive posture, getting ready to ‘ride the whip’? Could I actually ‘honor’ someone who would permit such a thing? In the ancient world, only a broken, humiliated captive would allow such a thing. Only our modern world has so ground so many people down to the point where they would permit it voluntarily.
* you make my point so much more eloquently than I could ever imagine
hi lex, am glad you came back for more explanations and discussion. This whole issue of ‘top/bottom’-and yes I do not particulary like the social connotations behind that myself-seems to me the crux of your problem for some reason. Unless I am not understanding you completely.
To me this is a made up issue as it is a false social construct. Their is no right/wrong way of making love-sometimes your on the top, sometimes your not.
You are trying to change your orientation to have sex with women. Your concerns about the top/bottom issue therefore leads me to ask how sex with woman then will be any different as men are usually on top. Are you trying to say it’s more acceptable to you when it is a man/woman?
I am still trying to understand your point of view and I rightly or wrongly keep coming back to sexism on your part whether you seem to realize it or not. So I do hope you continue to express your views/feelings here if so I can better understand what you mean.
You write beautifully, and are obviously a thoughtful, bright guy. I hope what some of the other posters have said doesn’t make you regret … er … exposing yourself to us.
My comments below reflect not only my own experience and opinions as a gay guy, but also what I’ve observed and spoken about with others. A warning though, to parents and the squeamish: it gets somewhat graphic.
I think your choice of words is pretty telling, and it seems to me that you do have issues about being born gay, in spite of your protestations. Your assumption that certain sexual positions necessarily represent specific identities and roles seems odd and off the mark for several reasons. In many gay couples, sexual roles are fluid. Also, some gay people I know do not engage in anal sex at all, yet I believe they would consider their sex lives fulfilling. In addition, it is not unknown for straight men to experiment with anal sex, with their partners as the (dildo) inserters. And of course, some women like receptive anal sex as well. The anal wall is packed with nerve endings, and its sensitivity to … “prodding” can outweigh the discomfort usually accompanying rectal penetration. In other words, once sampled, often enjoyed.
Another issue I sense is that your concern about the opinions of others perhaps led to feelings of shame. I must admit that for quite a while, if I had the choice of sexuality, I would have chosen to be straight, or to change. It would have been easier, and more “normal.” Society doesn’t exactly exalt those of us who are different, even if our differences are intrinsic and not sought after. It never occurred to me to try to bring that about, however. And as I grew older and, I hope, wiser, I stopped concerning myself with what couldn’t be changed.
And one day, it occurred to me that being gay was indeed a great gift. Any idea why, Lex? It has to do with this blog, strangely enough. I am very grateful that my parents raised me to think of others, not to judge, and to consider everyone worthy of respect. When you’re a smart, snotty kid who is raised in a nice community with good schools, it’s easy to think you’re special. I’m not special in any way, what I am is extremely lucky to have had all those advantages from birth. Knowing that I am in a minority despised by many has helped me to be more humble and I hope empathic toward others.
Please accept the above — indeed, all our comments — as a genuine offer of support; perhaps it can serve as food for thought. I don’t like getting personal in my posts, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.
Thank you for the kind words rob. No, nothing people said makes me regret posting.
I think I understand where dadanation is coming from. I think perhaps the problem there is that I have not convinced him to take what I said at face value: that I do not want to prescribe anyone else’s behavior and that I don’t even feel equipped to judge anyone else’s behavior in the area that I mentioned. I think I understand why it is hard to convince him (and maybe others) of this: because when it comes to homosexuality and the other ‘values’ issues as defined by the right, there are a lot of people who will disingenuously claim not to judge, but then proceed to condescendingly preach a sermon that tells people that their way of doing things is wrong.
That’s not what I’m doing.
I think it’s only fair to remind people that I went into detail about the thinking behind my decision only at the request of others here.
I’m happy to do it, and I welcome the insights from others and constructive criticism about things I may not have thought through carefully. I ask only that people, if they want to argue, argue with my actual point of view, rather than using me as a surrogate for people they want to argue with, who are not present.
Whatever dadanation may think, I’m not trying to ‘split the difference’ between a liberal acceptance of homosexuality and the homophobic, misogynistic ideology of the right wing preachers who are in fact the ones who created the equation of ‘bottom equals woman equals bad’.
I am a progressive Democrat. I am pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gay-marriage.
My decision against that path for myself does not change the fact that I think it is criminal for society and usurp a decision which belongs by sacred right to the individual.
I am not a right-wing fundamentalist. I am not a cultural conservative.
I am not a Lieberman Democrat, trying to make ‘common cause’ with people who hate everything I believe in.
I am not a Hilary Clinton Democrat, who thinks it’s OK to insult women for exercising their reproductive rights and make nice with Rick “The senator from dogville” Santorum.
I am a committed, progressive, partisan Democrat for whom personal freedom is a principle of absolutely fundamental importance.
In a forum like Booman Tribune, I like to be able to assume I’m among friends, and that I don’t have to worry about my words being taken as ammunition for the right. I don’t think dadanation should worry about that either. I’m not sure what I said that he thought could be taken as “giving cover” to those people.
And how important is that, really? If we have to be looking over our shoulders in fear that conservative trolls will be scanning the comments section of BooTrib for people’s words which they can take out of context and use as evidence in a political debate, then we would already have lost our freedom of speech — by our own choice!
At any rate, rob, you seem like you are very empathic indeed and not ‘snotty’ at all. Let me address a couple of your points real quick:
I am grateful for your posting and I hope you find peace of mind and happiness. That said, I’m wondering how you will love and respect any woman when you seem to equate being the receptive partner in sexual activity to be unworthy of respect? I hope I’m not putting words in your mouth or misunderstanding but this is the feelings your words bring to me. I’m also rather confused as to the concept of the one being penetrated equating with submission? As a woman this is kind of beyond my experience, I have never been or felt particularly submissive.
I also have to say that enjoying unconventional sexual positions/ pleasures is not a big problem with a lot of women I know, what we say to each other would, no doubt, shock you. Or make you laugh, not sure which, lol. In any case, good luck to you.
I think, though that this:
is a misreading of what I said. I was trying to describe the reality of people’s attitudes, not to endorse those attitudes or say that I agreed with them. But, completely independent of anything I say or do or think, the position of being ‘the bottom’ in a relationship with another man really is seen as a dishonorable, somewhat humiliated position. Even by gay people, though they tend to be circumspect about admitting that they think so.
That being the case, it does perhaps raise some questions about why anybody would voluntarily assume such a dishonored role.
I don’t think the place of a woman in a heterosexual relationship is viewed as dishonored in the same way.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. Actually, I can’t of course comment on how gay men feel/ talk among themselves as I’m not so all I can say is that some of the disrespect shown to women, mild term, in general seems to suggest that society does equate receptivity to being “lesser” or some variation. Now I’m channeling Adrea Dworkin, help!
So perhaps it’s natural that this should extend to the gay men? Seem hard to isolate oneself from the overarching societal messages there.
Thanks again.
All right, you people win. I renounce all my former views. I just hope you’re happy.
I’m not happy. I don’t neccessarily want you to renounce your views..while I didn’t agree with some of them I was still trying to understand what you meant. I think part of the disagreement here is that your ideas themselves are evolving so some of your statements can be ambigious which leads to much discussion to try and get clarification.
I think I rated some of your comments a 4 for the fact that you were willing to continue to explain or even think through outloud here what you are trying to figure out. As I said that doesn’t mean I even had to agree with you. But starting this diary took guts on your part and do wish you would continue with it.
I just temporarily renounced them – got kindof tired – more tomorrow…
This is frustrating as all hell. Have you no thresh-hold of pride? I mean, at every turn, with every point (made nicely or stridently, whatever the case may be) brought to your attention where you are either making generalizations that are unsubstantiated or assumptions that are based in homophobia/sexism, or just missing the whole boat, you insist on returning back to your original point. Sometimes tenacity is a mark of bravery and reliability. Sometimes, however, tenacity is just stubbornness.
In this case, your inability to hear and grasp one f the most fundamental flaws in your writings demonstrates an unwillingness to either learn or listen. I can’t tell which, but your “I renounce my former views” has all the trappings of snark and not sincerity.
I mean, for Pete’s sake, lex, after the drumming on and on about how the assumption by dominant culture that “bottom is submissive is weak is the woman”, you still don’t believe that any other stance could be either credible or possible. Even as you have bee told that IT IS, you still fall back to statements like this:
That being the case, it does perhaps raise some questions about why anybody would voluntarily assume such a dishonored role.
One simple answer lex: because it is NOT a dishonored role. Because it is not a humiliated position. Because it brings about some extremely pleasurable times. Because it is fun. And not just fun/pleasurable/amazing solely for gay men who are bottoms, but for women and other not-gay men who also have receptive anal sex.
Listen, when I cited two studies, one being the closest to a door-to-door household survey of gay men that you cold ever approach, those were just two of a bevy of such data mines that demonstrate the broad array of sexual activities that gay men enjoy, in what numbers, etc. As for reliability of self-reported data, do some homework — in 1997 the NIH had a consensus panel review behavioral interventions for HIV prevention. The data was of gold-ribbon caliber. Btw, they did conclude that the reliability of self-reported data was incredibly high and acknowledged it as such, in stark contrast to those folks who have always felt self-reported data was biased and unreliable. The NIH and the data could not disagree more with that misconception.
Lastly, it is utter folly, utter nonsense and utterly absurd to suggest that one builds an entire identity out of whether or not they are a top or a bottom. Utter horsepuckey. What do the other 50% of gay men use then for their identity? You just capriciously pick and choose new avenues to try to bring this bus into the parking lot, and it’s just not happening.
You might be interested to know that by data, gay men in regions across the US do tend to fall more into being more likely “tops” or “bottoms” depending on where they live. While it may seem legend, some cities in the US are I fact cities of tops.” Some are not. one other fascinating aspect of the data ;; gay men usually move every three years from and to San Francisco, making us one huge fluid community here. The single biggest risk taken by a newly arrived gay man in San Francisco in his first three years here? Topping someone without a condom (which granted the chances of becoming HIV infected by being the top is quite miniscule). If the guy stays here longer than three years, chances are he will bottom more and more often.
Fluid sexuality and expression and identification, lex.
One more very egregious misstatement you made, which by the way is a constant comment from the far-right anti-gay crusaders, dealt with disease/injury to the person who is the bottom.
You wrote:
One difference — and it’s an important one — is just physical. The butt is not the same as the female sexual apparatus. For a man, engaging in receptive sex inevitably involves some level of physical discomfort, and for many it has other effects, some of them quite stigmatizing. I’m not going to defend the right-wing canard that anal sex leads to permanent fecal incontinence — I’ve never heard of an actual case of this, and I think they probably just made it up — but it’s dishonest to deny that it does often lead to temporary incontinence, of varying duration. Along with that: soreness, bleeding, and an inability to pass gas normally — all temporary conditions with duration of a few days, a week at most. But this disclaimer misses the point: ‘bottoms’ in a long term relationship may engage in receptive sex every few days or so — which in effect promotes these ‘temporary’ conditions to chronic conditions. Conditions which are inescapably humiliating and stigmatizing.
And you know what? Those exact sentiments and grotesquely unfounded claims, are just like those made by the Paul Cameron types and the Fred Phelps types and the Lou Sheldon types of the world. Inability to pass gas normally? Huh? Haven’t you ever heard (of) a “fuck fart?” (Or “queef”)?
Unlike you, I have no shame about being a bottom, and I also have no shame about being a top. It may be in part because I have no shame about being gay or about being sexual.
And they determined this… how, exactly?
Ok, I sure didn’t see that coming. Where does that data come from?? It doesn’t exactly bear on the debate we’re having but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
And: how does that breakdown correlate with red/blue areas? If we’re talking about cities, there’s obviously an oveall bias towards blue. But with that overall tilt subtracted out…?
I don’t have any agenda here, but it’s sort of an obvious question.
How did you come to jump from “gay” to “ex-gay” without ever considering that maybe you weren’t ever gay in the first place, but rather bisexual?
I ask that because while there is some research showing that in women sexual orientation is more fluid, in men it’s mostly bimodal: either hetero or homo, and not much in between. And it doesn’t change. Therefore, that you can be happy in a relationship with another man or with a woman suggests the obvious possibility (to me, anyway) that you’re one of those anomalous guys in the middle. Nothing in the world wrong with that–but I think a lot of the heat this diary has generated is the result of exactly the kind of either/or thinking the wingnuts use when it comes to sexuality.