(Was going to put this in the Pit, but I’m not really mad or anything, so it’s better here)
I recently played hotel to an out-of-town guest. During the course of his stay, we had a conversation about guys, and he was talking about guys he likes, and he made the remark that “… and of course, when they say they’re straight, that just makes gays want them more.”
Naturally, this is a popular myth which has been around a long time. Where did this idea come from? Do gays who seek “straight” guys to have sex with have a lack of self-respect or self-hatred?
I don’t understand the idea of being attracted to someone who tells you that he doesn’t have sex with your gender.
Of course, if you say you’re straight, it doesn’t mean you won’t have sex with your own sex, it just means you are telling people to identify you as heterosexual regardless of your private behavior, since many “straight” men do indeed have sex with men.
Straight men do not have sex with other men. They may have sex in the same room, or with the same woman at the same time, but never with each other. It’s part and parcel of being straight.
I think that some guys find the idea of bending a supposedly straight man to their will very exciting. Like pursuing an unattainable person.
Nice place to fantasize about, but I wouldn’t want to try it. In real life, I like actual gay guys. As gay as possible, please. Trying to get someone who doesn’t suck cock to suck your cock is a recipe for a whole lotta hassle.
Many straight men experiment with gay sex at least once–that’s why they call it “college”; many gay porn stars are straight, because men make more money in gay porn than in straight porn; many male escorts are straight but are “gay for pay.”
If, as the previous poster noted, someone “straight” has sex with a man for “pay”, does that make the sex less sexual or gay, or his dick less hard?
So then, what is your definition of straight and gay?
And anyway, I agree with the poster in Montreal - I do not find straight men more attractive because of their professed "straight"ness. The notion is a big turn-off for me.
“Straight” or “gay” isn’t about where you stick your dick, it’s about who you fall in love with; who you’re attracted to. If it were simply binary–if your dick’s ever been touched by another man you’re ipso facto gay–then there should be an orientation for guys who do nothing but masturbate, or some such nonsense. I was gay before I ever had sex with a man; and if someone offered my a million dollars for me to have sex with a woman, and I did so, that would not make me “straight.” It would make me richer, and a little queasy, but I’d still be gay.
I think that, if a man is willing to engage in sex with another man, at the very least he starts to slide in the direction of bisexuality. To me, “straight” has a very clear meaning of “is only sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex”.
Now, perhaps some straight people are wired differently than I am, but I’m pretty certain that I would be physically incapable of having sex (depending on how you define “sex”) with another man. I would simply be unable to acheive an erection. At least not without some absurd mental gymnasics that would result in my somehow convincing myself that that the other person was a female (my options would range from closing my eyes and imagining that he’s a woman, to full-blown self delusion).
I’ve posted before about the kid I counseled once who had a wide variety of hangups, but one item on his agenda was that he considered himself straight, was attracted to women almost exclusively when sober, but when he got drunk he loved to get, and sometimes give, oral sex from/to other men.
I’m quite willing to buy his self-assessment on an orientation basis (noting that he appeared to be a close relative of Cleopatra for other reasons), who, inhibitions released by drinking, found sex with whoever was available pleasurable and hence engaged in it.
(From a recent report from a mutual friend, he’s managed to get most of his hangups resolved through extensive later therapy. I don’t know where his sexuality has landed – but he is married to a woman, apparently quite happily.)
I see him as an illustration of the distinction between orientation and sex life – his exclusive romantic and primary sexual interest was in women; he simply was sufficiently erotically aroused by available gay sex to engage in it after drinking, evidently without significant emotional investment in the men with whom he had sex.
But that kid isn’t ‘straight’ by any rational definition of the word. Having sex with members of the same sex, especially on a regular basis, precludes a person from being ‘straight’.
No offense, kid, but I’ve always felt that the idea of “people want what they can’t have” is just so from the Ann Landers School of Pop Psychology, it’s funny.
Seriously, as a rule, I certainly DON’T want what I can’t have BECAUSE I can’t have it (you probably weren’t insinuating that). Sometimes, as Mick Jagger sung, I can’t get what I want. Then again, sometimes, I do get exactly what I want.
In any event, that principle of wanting-what-you-can’t-have may work for some people, but not for many others, myself included.
Also, the idea about men wanting hot lesbians is a good point.
Sexually, many men are prowlers, in a way. By that I mean they get erections and thus, seek release, or ejaculation, which is a necessary bodily function for men. Younger men especially get very frequent erections, and seek release from just about anyone who will give it to them. While they may be bashful about acknowledging their eagerness to receive a release from another male, when it comes down to business, how many really just do it anyway, like pissing or burping, and later rationalize to themselves using socially acceptable excuses like drunkenness, or even excuses which are personally acceptable (it was Halloween, and I was in costume, and no one could recognize me, so it doesn’t matter if I did it or not since I’ll never have to account for it)?
As to lesbians, if a consenting hot lesbian can get him off, hey, it’s a hot female - who cares if she’s a lesbian?
I remember my college existentialism prof going on and on about Sartre’s examination of essential nature and the his question, “Is a homosexual homosexual because he is, ‘homosexual’ ‘in-itself’, or is he homosexual because he previously performed homosexual acts?”
Knowing how silly it sounds in French, I thought it was hilarious that Sartre wrote a sentence consisting of nothing but the word “homosexual” and linking verbs.
And it was equally hilarious that Sarte’s take (or what I recall of it) was pretty much, “Yeah, except for all that **ck he sucked, he’s totally straight.”
Er, that would be a negatory, Bru. Plenty of people play the field. A person may be predominantly attracted to members of the opposite sex and still be attracted to the odd MSS. It doesn’t mean that said person is not straight or bi or any of that nonsense. It just means that attempting to enumerate every sexual preference into straight, gay, or bi is as silly as arguing that a rainbow is black, white, or grey. (Sorry about the metaphor. The momentum carried me.)
Heterosexual(Straight): Attracted to/has sexual relations with members of the opposite sex.
Bisexual(Bi): Attracted to/has sexual relations with members of either sex.
Homosexual(Gay): Attracted to/has sexual relations with members of the same sex.
These are not subjective categories; Your actions place you in one of them. You do not ‘pick’. For example, if you sex up the ladies primarily, but taste man-flesh every now and again, you are bisexual. You may not like that category, and insist that you are ‘straight, with swinger tendencies’, but that doesn’t make it so.
Your sexual orientation isn’t so much what you **do **as what you feel. I knew I was gay long before my first sexual experience, and that experience didn’t make me **more **gay. And even if I had sex with a woman, still being exclusively attracted to men, that wouldn’t make me **less **gay.
On the other hand, most men who have sex with each other in prison are straight; I wouldn’t even call most of them bisexual. They’re having the only kind of sex available to them, and it doesn’t change the fact that they’re attracted to women.
The only truly bisexual people are the ones who feel an attraction to both men and women, regardless of his/her actions.
As my old friend Billy often said, “Suck one **ck, they call you a **cksucker.”
I don’t know how that applies, but by damn, I was not going to pass the opportunity to quote it here. (Billy had a ton of these little gems.)
My take on this whole gay/bi/straight thing was that it was mainly sexual attraction that defined what orientation you were.
It’s a confusing thing, because I’ll daresay that many people might think, “If I were gay I’d go for him.” or whatever, but when it came down to brass tacks, they couldn’t actually “get it up,” because the real attraction just wasn’t enough. I think someone like this would not be gay. (Or, if they were gay but felt a “tinge” of attraction for the opposite sex, but not enough to “follow through,” same thing. Not straight.)
And also, there might be some (the “gay for pay” types) that can “get it up” when the pay is right, but there is no real “heart” or “attraction” behind the erection. They’d have zero interest in the sex if it weren’t for pay. To me, these people aren’t gay.
