Straight men have, until very recently, been unable to admit that they might – heaven forfend, Muriel! – enjoy a bit of anal play. The point is that gay men can be comfortable that their arse is a significant erogenous zone. Can you imagine? I’d have to get a dishwasher. The proportion of my time I spend engaging in anal sex is less time than I spend doing the washing-up every week. While certain religiously conservative people would have you believe that homosexuals are rampantly sodomising each other at every available opportunity, believe me, we are not. This is particularly true when it comes to anal sex. It was theirs.įor there are certain “straight” people who are more obsessed with gay sex than gay people are. We blessed homosexuals further worked out that we could rid ourselves of the shame so assiduously shoved our way because it wasn’t ours to begin with. Of course, those of us who grew up to be gay worked out that such pleasure wasn’t dirty or immoral – even if at the time I recall being aghast that “up the bum” was the norm for my people. From the gay boys who are bullied even before they know they’re gay through to the straight boys who like anal play but are terrified that they might be gay, to the bullies themselves who are unnaturally obsessed with what other people might be doing with their own bodies. This is, very simply, how guilt and shame are propagated, how you can alienate people from their own bodies, and how everybody ends up miserable. Any interaction, therefore, between arsehole and finger beyond what was absolutely necessary that could inadvertently lead to confusing feelings of pleasure must be avoided – or at least never spoken about lest everyone think that you’re gay. Consequently, it was also dirty and immoral.
Because straight men were once straight boys and while not all straight boys called gay boys (like me) bum bandit on a fairly regular basis, a fair few of them did – or at least didn’t take a stand against those that were.īums, sticking things up them, and the pleasure subsequently derived from such an activity was “gay”. If men have an uneasy relationship with their body as a whole – is it too skinny or too flabby, too hairy or too smooth? – it’s with one hole in their body that they have the oddest relationship of all. And thus, the G-spot represents a point at which two of men’s most perplexing issues intersect – their relationship with their body and their relationship with their feelings. While not quite the Manhattan Project, the same principle applies: you can’t unring a bell. As you know if you pay attention to fairytales, you should be careful what you wish for. Because the search for the male G-spot led men up their own arse and to the prostate. Except these missions were to somewhere more intimidating than darkest Peru. Pleasure, you say? Great shuddering waves of pleasure? In stark contrast to most men’s laissez-faire attitude to other traditionally female activities – child-rearing, say – why wouldn’t men want a piece of this initially female-focused action? Men rigorously and vigorously investigated and explored and embarked on expeditions akin to those undertaken by Victorian adventurers.