When I was a rowdy tweenage baby dyke we used to run through the streets of downtown Portland asking strangers if they could define lesbian sex, a question that often mystified these adults. And though most of us have it often enough (hopefully anyway) there still isn’t a strictly agreed upon definition.
But while this sexual fluidity and lack of sexual definitions is familiar to the ladies (even straight ones, just watch Clerks or ask Bill Clinton) gay men are more well known for having rigidly defined roles. One of the most important bedroom roles has been whether you’re a top or bottom. But what happens if you don’t even particularly like anal sex at all? Is that the only way to be gay? 365 gay columnist Michael Corvino not only asks that question but answers emphatically no saying,
…over the years I’ve met plenty of gay men who insist that anal sex is the only “real” gay sex, and that preference for other kinds betrays prudishness or neurosis or worse. This insistence is just dumb. Either that, or it’s an obnoxious way of pressuring sexual partners into acts they don’t want. (“But baby, if you liked me, you’d be willing to do the real thing.”)
We’ve made penetration our patriarchal definition of sex, and made anal sex a particularly taboo and dirty version of that penetrative sex. We’ve made it scary even. I remember and older lesbian friend telling me a story of reassuring her little brother who was considering coming out of the closet that just because he was gay, “…didn’t mean he had to butt fuck on the first date.”
Corvino argues that the notion of other sexual acts as mere foreplay “…smacks of heterosexist brainwashing…that view is premised on the idea that in order for sex to be “real,” a man needs to be putting his penis in some orifice below the waist.”
I’m inclined to agree with him though I’m sure most of you have guessed by now that I have broad definitions or sex, sexuality and sexual roles. So tell me what you think, men, this poll’s for you.
[polldaddy poll=4891306]
