Bill Weintraub

Re: Frot and the Married Man

5-1-2005

Thank you TBird.

As I see it, TBird, like many of the married men who come to the Alliance, is troubled by two issues:

what does it mean to be committed to his wife; and,

what does it mean to be a man who loves other men.

Let's take a look first at committment:

1. Society is in the process of moving from a strict heterosexual norm to bisexuality.

Some people will be, inevitably, caught in the change.

2. When a straight-identified, married guy comes to our site, it is always after a long, brutal, interior struggle between his love for his wife and kids, and his same-sex feelings.

Let's be clear about that.

The man is straight-identified.

That means he genuinely loves sex with women.

He's married.

That means he has intense emotional ties to his wife and kids.

But he also has very strong same-sex needs and desires.

"Very strong" means they're compelling.

Usually he has denied and/or suppressed those feelings for years -- often decades -- before he finally decides to explore them.

3. We neither encourage nor discourage such a man from being involved with another man.

But, if, as most clearly are, he's determined to follow through on his same-sex feelings, but also determined that he doesn't want to harm his marriage or hurt his wife, this is what we recommend:

*Gender monogamy.

That means one partner of each gender.

NO more than that.

*That he look for a Frot Buddy from among other married men -- not among gay men.

Because the emotional needs are different.

Chances are, the gay guy wants the equivalent of a marriage.

A married man cannot give him that.

Whereas two married men can give each other a lot emotionally and physically, while recognizing and understanding that they'll never destroy their marriages for each other.

In addition, most gay men have been promiscuous and often harbor some STIs.

Few straight guys ever come close to the level of gay male promiscuity.

In fact, many of the straight-identified guys who come to us were virgins when they were married and have never been with another man or a woman.

So the safest thing for them to do is seek out another married man with a similar history.

But we do warn them that there's always a risk when you go beyond one partner.

Nevertheless, if their male partner is STI-free, they will remain so also.

4. What is the effect on the marriage?

Virtually every man reports that his married life, including his sex life with his wife, improves once he has a Frot buddy.

That's not surprising.

He's happier, he's easier to be around, and he feels sexually energized.

And all bi guys say the same: that being with a man is so different from being with a woman that they don't feel a conflict.

5. Furthermore, our models are the various warrior societies, in which bisex was the norm.

Men married.

And they had a single, usually lifelong, male lover, also a warrior.

Very common.

Now, my husband -- and we were married in a Christian holy union ceremony with warrior elements -- is bisexual.

Though he was once married to a woman, he is no longer.

His life history is unusual and not something he wants made public.

Nevertheless, I can say we have an exclusive bond.

That's another way to do it.

But for the married guys who are coming late to this table, it's not realistic nor is it necessary, in my view, to ask them to divorce before they find a Frot buddy.

They won't do that in any case.

Marriage has too many advantages.

The danger to them is that they'll get caught up in the gay-anal-promiscuity meat grinder.

We give them a structure which, hopefully, helps them avoid that.

For gay men, on the other hand, we counsel absolute Fidelity.

Because most gay men operate in a heavily promiscuous milieu, and that needs to change.

So the two groups have different needs.

What the bi-net folks recommend is that bi-guys come out to their gfs when they start dating.

But that's rare.

According to bi-net, only 25% of bi-guys are out to their gfs.

The truth is, as TBird describes, that most women will not tolerate rivals of either gender.

In any case, like any other activist, I have to operate in the real world and with what I've been given.

Absolute Fidelity is the ideal.

On the other hand, I think it's normal and desirable for people to have children.

Are we going to deny guys who love women and want to have kids, male companionship -- forever?

I don't think you can.

The fundies think you can, and that's why they preach abstinence.

But in the real world, people have sex.

And what we need to do is give them a structure in which they can have sex safely, joyously, and lovingly.

What about the nature of men who love other men?

In his post as originally drafted, TBird said,

This energy, this wonderful feeling I get in my heart when I look at the images on this site, won't subside. To me, this site is not porn-- it's a Divine sharing of a soft, vulnerable side of men.

I wrote to TBird about the word "soft," saying it had the effect of reinforcing a present-day cultural prejudice about men who have sex with men which is not accurate:

The culture says that men who have sex with men are soft; and that men who have sex with women are hard.

Other cultures have said the opposite.

To the Greeks and also the Romans, men who had sex with men were "hard" -- that is, masculine -- because being constantly in the company of men made you so.

Whereas men who were what we would call "womanizers" -- men who had many affairs with women -- were "soft" -- because spending so much time around and seducing women imparted to them the qualities of women.

Indeed, in the propaganda war between Octavian, later Augustus, and Marc Antony for control of the Roman Empire, Octavian turned imputations of homosexuality to his advantage by quietly suggesting that such made him hard, whereas Antony's association with Cleopatra, a woman and "oriental" to boot, had made him soft and unfit to rule Romans.

It's very important then that we recognize that our contemporary soft/hard - gay/straight dichotomies are cultural, and not real.

They could and have just as easily go the other way.

Further, the reality is that we Frot men are not soft.

To the contrary:

Not only is Frot itself a hard, muscular practice which in that sense is quintessentially male, but we've taken a hard stance against anal penetration.

Which has made us very unpopular with our peers.

So neither intellectually nor sexually are we "soft."

In short, we have to be careful, in our use of language, that we don't unconsciously impart qualities to "men who have sex with men" (MSM) which they don't actually possess.

Guys have sex with guys.

Guys have had sex with other guys since the beginning of time.

Providing they do so phallically and not anally, doing so does not change them.

They don't become more of a guy or less of a guy.

They remain guys -- men.

Of course men who can, in the face of a very homophobic and sexually narrow society, acknowledge their attraction to other men may experience that acknowledgement as liberating.

And it's certainly honest.

But you're still a man.

Arguably a more complete man than those men who forever deny their bisexuality.

But no more or less a man than they.

Should TBird decide to have a relationship with another man, it will hopefully enrich his life and strengthen his marriage.

But neither I nor anyone else can guarantee that will be the case.

For this is not a matter either of fact or of faith, but of the human heart, which, said Tennessee Williams, twists and curves like a road through the mountains.

Bill Weintraub