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?"
I replied, 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 sense 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.
15 Comments for “Gay Sex Isn’t Weird. Sex Is.”
posted by TS on
Corvino strikes again.
He is right to be obsessively interested in this issue, because a compelling case can be made that it is “the” issue. Stupid scripture quotes and a variety of other lines of anti-gay “logic” are illogical. Anybody who thinks hard should realize it. There is, I think maybe, just one real reason people make such vain efforts to make their anti-gay rhetoric somehow indisputable: aesthetic judgement.
oh, but consider revising “Sex makes no sex in the abstract.” As interesting a statement as it is, I don’t think you meant to write that.
posted by JJ on
This is a good article. Though it may not have fit, something else John Corvino could have pointed out is the deviant behavior of obsessing about how others have sex. I cannot imagine what it is like to automatically have sexual thoughts about someone I just met.
posted by Peter Frank on
Not to soudn like a whiny little princess but, Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy are we still even talking about this issue? I think that perhaps when we set out to defend attacks such as those that provoke this sort of response, we lend credence to the “butt sex” attacks!
Give me my rights, let me fight for that. You can attack me all I want with such slander because I know it’s just that, slander!
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977565410
posted by horus on
hear, hear john. well said.
posted by TS on
“I think that perhaps when we set out to defend attacks such as those that provoke this sort of response, we lend credence to the “butt sex” attacks!”
This might seem lime an accurate notion, but one reason it’s not accurate is that “butt sex” arguments are only explicity made by those either crass or self-aware enough to realize that it’s why they hate homosexuality. Very few people are stupid or brutally honest enough to put it this way; that’s why they look for other, crappily rationalized arguments. I think this article helps us understand that aesthetic revulsion might well turn out to be be the real issue.
Also, as a life scientist in training, I have watched the evolution crap rage for several years now. Scientists take the same approach- to argue is to debate on equal footing is to acknowledge that the two sides are on equal footing is to dignify moronry. That falls apart at the first link: to argue is not to debate. Corvino is arguing that aesthetic distaste is the real reason for anti-gay sentiment, not saying that it is a valid reason and the two ought to be considered well-matched opponents for some kind of debate.
posted by Bobby on
“Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy are we still even talking about this issue? ”
—You might have a point, since even social conservatives know they look ridiculous when they use that issue as an argument against gay marriage or whatever. So they use other arguments, after all, this isn’t 1982.
HOWEVER, the “ick” factor still plays a role in how people see us. Most straight men can’t deal with seeing two men kissing. Think about it.
posted by Mark on
Let’s face it. We all tend to fear what we don’t understand. Frankly, when I think of a man and a woman having heterosexual sex, I find it distasteful. It’s simply that I don’t understand it. People do it every day. When you first learned that your parents actually created you by the union of daddy’s penis and mommy’s vagina, it was somewhat shocking and disappointing. I don’t know how we come to understanding…I just wish we would. Or could.
posted by Mirth on
AS to “most straight men can’t deal with seeing two men kissing” It is a cultural thing. In Russia, men hugging and kissing on the cheek is well accepted and common. Remember the two girls who were thought to be gay and attacked when seen holding hands, but they were immigrants from a culture where that was common?
posted by Bobby on
“In Russia, men hugging and kissing on the cheek is well accepted and common. ”
—On the cheek, that’s the key. They wouldn’t want to see Brokeback Mountain. After Romania, Russia remains the most homophobic country in europe. Anti-gay legislation has been passed, South Park got in trouble over “indecency” for Big Gay Al and other segments, neo-nazis have attacked participants at gay pride parades and the politicians are against them.
posted by Tim on
My straight doctor told me that LOTS, probably MOST, straight couples engage in not infrequent butt sex, especially as they age and the wive’s vaginas lose their earlier, um…tightness. He knows this because it is a regular occurence that he treats married men for minor eurethral infections as they don’t have the sense or knowledge to pee after they come and rinse out the tubes.
Thank you.
posted by TS on
“On the cheek, that’s the key. They wouldn’t want to see Brokeback Mountain. After Romania, Russia remains the most homophobic country in europe. Anti-gay legislation has been passed, South Park got in trouble over “indecency” for Big Gay Al and other segments, neo-nazis have attacked participants at gay pride parades and the politicians are against them.”
Thanks for pointing this out, Bobby. I was about to myself. Another funny thing is that these practices (young boys holding hands, men kissing on the cheek, etc.) all seem to wither and die as soon as the Western idea of homosexuality arrives and threatens the fabric of society. Even here in the US, children stop having sleepovers with same sex friends when they arrive at the age where they are aware that it’s “gay.”
posted by SoMG on
Thank you for this article. Woody Allen said it best: “My disgustingness is my best quality!” and “Sex is only dirty if I’m doing it right.”
posted by Egli Ha on
I make sure my girlfriend puts a condom on her finger when she massages my prostate during sex.
posted by mati on
ilick it
posted by russel on
i lick it