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Loading ...Corvino: Opponents on our butts
Why are our opponents so obsessed with butt sex?
I’ve personally pondered this question more times than is probably healthy. It occurred to me a few weeks ago when a poster on a conservative blog complained that gays “expect us to approve of butt sex and call it marriage.”
Really?Then last week I was reading an essay by the philosopher Michael Levin. After denying that homosexuality is immoral, he goes on to describe it as “disgusting, nauseating, closely connected with fecal matter. One need not show that anal intercourse is immoral to be warranted in wanting to be as far away from it as possible.”
I think I would have liked “immoral” better.
Then, yesterday, I received an e-mail from a 15-year-old living in a small UK village. He’s thinking about coming out to his “mum and dad,” so he asked them what they thought about homosexuality. They told him, in no uncertain terms, that it was “wrong, unnatural, and disgusting.” He continued,
“But one major point they kept pointing out was… ummm… well they said it was gross how a man would stick his… yeah up another guys… ummm… yeah. And they said it’s where they sorta… yeah I ain’t going into much detail….But what I really want to know is how would you respond to someone who thinks like that?”
You mean, aside from telling them that they could probably use a big fat one up the bum themselves?
That’s not what I actually replied.
Instead I wrote, in part,
“In the abstract, of course it’s weird (and from some perspectives, gross) to think of a man sticking his penis up another man’s bum. But isn’t all sex weird in the abstract? Sticking a penis in a vagina, which bleeds once a month? Sucking on a penis, something both straight women and gay men do? Pressing your mouth—which you use for eating—against another person’s mouth, and touching tongues, and exchanging saliva (i.e. kissing)? Weird! Gross! (In the abstract, anyway.)”
Sex makes no sex in the abstract. But then you have urges, and you eventually act on them, and what once seemed weird and gross becomes…wow.
Our opponents recognize this in their own lives, but they can’t envision it elsewhere. It’s a profound failure of moral imagination—which is essential for empathy, which is at the foundation of the Golden Rule.
How can one “love thy neighbor as thyself” without any real effort to understand thy neighbor?
Our opponents contemplate our lives, our love, our longing, and what do they see? “Butt sex.” Such obtuseness is depressing.
Of course, not all gays engage in “butt sex”—some of us never do—and not only gays engage in “butt sex.”
Of course, most of what we do in bed is exactly the same as most of what they do in bed: cuddling and touching and caressing and kissing and sucking and rubbing and so on. (Not to mention sleeping, which when shared regularly can be beautifully intimate as well.)
What we do is the same not just in terms of formal acts. It’s the same in terms of being weird, and silly, and messy, and sublime.
Yes, Virginia, we make funny faces when we come, too.
It’s always easier to criticize the weirdness in others than to confront the weirdness in the mirror. (Perhaps that’s why mirrors in the bedroom are thought to be kinky.)
Our opponents take anxiety about sex—a natural and virtually universal human phenomenon—and wield it as a weapon against us. Shame on them.
As for the marriage-equality fight, what do you say to someone who thinks that we expect her “to approve of butt sex and call it marriage”?
Thankfully, another poster responded to that one more effectively than I ever could.
The respondent described herself as a lifelong Christian, daughter of a conservative minister, and “personally against gay marriage but passionate about gay civil rights.” (This description will strike some as paradoxical, but bravo to her for understanding the difference between personal beliefs and public policy.)
She then warmly depicts a gay couple she knows who have adopted two special-needs children. The children, she writes, “RADIATE happiness at each other, their parents, and the people around them. Somehow ‘butt sex’ doesn’t seem to neatly contain all the emotions, commitment, and wondrous devotion that their parents’ relationship has provided them with.”
She concludes by chiding her fellow Christian, “Please think carefully before you speak.”
Amen to that.
John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.
For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.
I don’t get it. Is the aversion to anal sex or anal sex between men? If I bugger a woman is that less revolting than if I bugger a man? And most importantly, why do the majority of straight people assume that all gay men have anal sex?
I’ve been on both ends of anal sex and while I’ve found it satisfying there are other sexual acts I find much more gratifying, so anal is a rarity for me. Does that make me a good gay in the eyes of straight people?
Seriously, being gay is about more than having sex, and our “opponents” need to move beyond the sexual, get their minds out of the gutter. I have gay male friends who have never had anal sex. I have a straight male friend who likes to get his girlfriend to strap on a dildo and ride him like a rodeo bull. Who gives a flying fuck what people get up to in the bedroom?
I have sex. I enjoy sex. I could, however, live without sex. If I chose to do so I would be no less gay, I would still want the rights I am fighting for right now and I would still love my partner in many of the same ways I do currently.
Seriously – if all our opponents can think about is sex, perhaps they shouldn’t be pointing fingers at us and calling us unclean.
“butt sex” is not the exclusive province of gay men. Lesbians have anal sex (with the use of sex toys) and heterosexuals certainly engage in anal sex as well (more so the younger crowd).
A few years ago I stumbled onto a vulgar, Christian, anti-gay website that claimed that no real “real man” would ever want to put his penis into a woman’s vagina if it were filled in fecal matter (as compared to gay men who engage in anal sex). I had a good laugh b/c if that website had claimed that no “real man” would ever want to stick his penis into a woman’s anus then it would have been seen as a patently false statement!
RJ,
You are asking people to prove something as if it’s the truth when it is just your own idea about it to begin with and you are crazy obsessed with it. OCD – isn’t that a type of neurosis?
“Some of my straight friends do.”
And I’ve often joked to those straight buddies who talk about having anal sex with their wives that perhaps they are hiding a gay identity.
It’s amazing how they miss the point.
Re: Corvino;s article entitled “opponents on our butts.” Well done! Dr. Corvino. Your best article to date. Thank you from me, my family and conutless of my brothers and sisters around the world.
Might the self-report of, oh, millions of individual people, that they never, ever “chose” their homosexuality be appropriate to enter as corroborative evidence to support the thesis that people are born homosexual? Yes, it’s self-report, but it’s awfully, awfully consistent. I myself have never met a single gay person who recalls “choosing” to be gay.
And, dude (RJLigier), I don’t see any “special treatment above all other citizenry in the United States.” In fact, I see heterosexuals as the ones getting the “special treatment” — like, um, the exclusive right to marriage in 48 out of 50 states.
(In mean, wow, what a bizarre comment.)
Anyway, I think this was a valuable and helpful column (unlike the unfortunate “let’s tell gay jokes, and I don’t allow you to object” column after Prop 8).
I am sympathetic to the matter of being disgusted by something, and being honest about it. I mean, each of us feels what she or he feels.
But it goes both ways: The truth is, the majority of heterosexual men I would not like to see naked, much less would I like see what they do in the boudoir with their honey (and as the point has been made, male and female heterosexuals engage in “butt sex,” too). My reactions would range from a mild “guh-ross” to active vomiting.
But I spend virtually no time thinking about such things. Just like I adore a certainly very elderly male-female couple that I know, but I spend nary a second imagining their doing the nasty (and the multiple meanings of the word “nasty” are curious).
I actually find it kind of curious when a homophobe’s mind goes to “butt sex.” Their mind goes to something they supposedly find off-putting. (Look up professional homophobe Peter LaBarbera: For someone who finds homosexuality objectionable, he spents a lot of time writing about disgusting homosexual sex practices.)
And finding a consensual sex practice disgusting is no excuse for discrimination. It’s like saying, “Old people having sex is gross. They have no ‘right’ to get married!”
RJLIGIER:
Are you willing to take an MRI polygraph and show us that you actually have a brain in your head?
Dr. Corvino: Once I see that image of your handsome face, I read your column immediately, and agree with you, whether I should or not!
Actually, no one cares what kind of sex you have, Corvino. We’re just reluctant to accept your premise that you’re born that way without replicable, empirical science. Are you and any other LGBT professionals willing to take MRI polygraphs so the scientific community can have legitimate self-reporting? Otherwise, all we’re is addressing whether you’re a functional or non-functional neurotic adult who believes their entitled to special treatment above all other citizenry in the United States. Shades of national socialism.
One thing the religious right has tried to do is to make gay sex seem different and more “disgusting” than straight sex. But this is nonsense. Anyone who has seen straight pornography (or better yet, a site such as xtube.com, which presents gay and straight pornography side by side) knows that gay people do nothing that straight people do not do. As for “butt sex” per se, I always think of my favorite defintion of homosexual sex: it is the triumph of engineering over architecture.
Michael–dude, that made my day!
KenTX–and ain’t it true? But it’s also funny that they even had to pass laws against gay sex or sex toys or whatever, in places like Alabama and Texas. If you’re busy working at living a “godly” life (as described by an overweight white guy in a blue polyester suit and a comb-over), then how the hell do you have time to be checking up on which one of your neighbors ordered a buttplug?
Repression makes people even hornier. My brother-in-law likes to talk about the fundamentalist girls in New Brunswick–”They’re dirty as hell! Give great head too!” Every Mormon I’ve had sex with was a good ride, even though it always seems to be followed by some wacked-out behavior. Down South, PKs (preacher’s kids) are notorious for being fornicating hellraisers.
Sarrellec’s comments too…the whole institutional thing about religious people defining themselves and their beliefs partly by the existence of an opposing Other. The Other is a threat and must be vanquished. Sadly, what almost all of organized Christianity has turned its back on is the core message of Christ. Treat yourself right by treating others right. Don’t act with malice, but defend yourself as necessary. Show love and kindness because you can, not because there’s a guarantee of reciprocity. Own your actions. I see no problem with a person who calls him/herself religious, but who also has a strong sex drive they don’t keep to one partner. People are pretty good at establishing limits; some like threesomes and anal sex and slings, but not all people at all times. Once again, paraphrasing Pierre Trudeau, the state does not have a place in the bedroom.
Once again, knowledge of history answers this question so that we shouldn’t have to repeat it–history, that is.
Unfortunately, few christians and fewer jews know anything of the history of the fantasy they view as reality. Based on the perceived wishes of an “invisible friend”.
That this insanity has controlled so much of the world for so long simply underscores the obvious: The majority of human beings couldn’t think their way out of a soggy paper bag.
Not only do they not know the history of their fairy tale, but even if they did, their inability to cogitate would make that knowledge useless anyway.
Judaism is a–and here’s the operative word–PROTESTANT religion.
It is a social structure based on OPPOSING AN EXISTING SOCIAL STRUCTURE.
In PROTESTING the existing social structure of the era.
EVERY religion following Judaism is a PROTESTANT religion of Judaism, including christianity.
Christianity is a social structure which PROTESTS or OPPOSES the Judaic social structure.
See the historical thread here?
These social structures are based on OPPOSITION. Protesting. Adversarial activity.
These social structures cannot exist without an ENEMY. Born of enmity, their very existence depends on, is sustained by, enmity.
Without an enemy–by the way, did you know that the word Satan as used by the Judaics in whatever form of language they had at the time, is translated most easily simply into the word “enemy”?
“The Enemy”.
And as each “threat”–actually, the existing social structure of the time, which is one of the most perfect examples of projectionism I can think of, was being threatened by the new protestant social structures. Anyway–As each “threat” is either defeated or assimilated, a new threat, a new enemy to their invisible friend MUST be identified.
Or their social structure collapses.
It’s interesting to me that, historically, same-gender affection and/or sexual activity was never even identified as a unique function unto itself until Judaism, protesting the Olde Religion Temples wherein same-gender sexual interaction was common-place as a means of worship and/or representation of the power of the natural world, made it so.
Simply as a means of opposing and protesting the existing social structures of the Olde Religions.
I find it somehow gratifying that the very least of the social mores of the Olde Religion(s) has become one of the last bastions of resistance to the complete world domination of the judaic/christian/muslim protestant religious social orders.
So, we should be proud of being one of the last enemies. One of the last “threats”. One of the last remaining SANE aspects of the Olde Religion(s) which venerated the natural world. Which venerated what is REAL. Which venerated the REALITY of seasons and weather and human interaction without the interference of an invisible friend which has survived the anarchy imposed by judaism and its fellow protestant religious social structures.
I LOVE ANAL! Yep, had to say it. If you are saying the basis for the discrimination we face is because they can’t get over the fact that we have anal sex – I think you’re sadly mistaked and making light of what we go through. I think time and time again we see that they hide behind religion for their bigotry and because two gay men/women can’t reproduce alone that we are “lesser” than two heterosexuals. Throwing butt sex into the conversation is a visual tactic but not the reason we are oppressed and treated unequally….as the utopia for straight men is to get their sig. others to engage in anal as well. Seriously – have you never had these conversations with your gay friends about “breaders” and the type of sex they have…to me vaginal intercourse is not a pleasant thought and I can joke with my friends (straight and gay) about it…just as they do about gay anal sex…but my straight friends don’t use their repulsion of gay sex as a reason to marginalize me or discriminate, quite the opposite, they stood by me in the Nov. rallies because they aren’t trapped in religious dogma!
If God hadn’t intended men to have butt-sex, (S)He wouldn’t have put the prostate gland where (S)He put it!
The leaders of the so-called “conservatives” are nothing but prostitutes of the big business. GLBT is simply used by them as a smokescreen (once we are no longer an option, they will quickly find some other group to bash — it’s their profession, after all). Instead of thinking about health care, education, environment, etc they make their followers think about various forms of copulation…
It seems to me that the opposition is not so opposed to “butt sex”, but is opposed to anyone having a good time in life. From the sermons I’ve heard, the christian life is about suffering, marginalization, self-deprecation, and being generally miserable. It would seem that only in this misery can they commune with their “god”.