Call me when he lets his girlfriend fist him. Now THAT'S trust.

What kind of courage dose rimming take?

I love it - "letting danger throw itself headfirst into YOU" is a very Chuck Norris phrase.

Ah yes, another bullshit masculine/feminine binary.

Oh dear......

"God I hope I'm not pregnant."

Too funny, Max!

@3:

Or conversely, something that would happen in Russia...

This is kind of awesome. I don't entirely agree with him on these points, but I don't entirely disagree with him either. I was joking with a friend that it would be awesome to explain to a straight guy the dynamic where bottoms tend to be more insatiable in gay relationships, so tops tend to have the "withhold sex power" when they ask who the "man" is and then ask them to clarify in what way they mean the question. This makes me think of that.

Well, I'm not sure I like being referred to as a "grizzled retired general", but I do like being saluted, so points for that. And points for going first. Good boy.

@2
"What kind of courage does rimming take?"

Just a taste.

Why do I suspect that the "straight men who take in the ass are the real heroes" idea is somehow not going to manage to translate into any form of increased respect for gay men?

Or, for that matter the "it takes incredible courage to allow someone inside you" isn't going to translate into any respect for women, gay or straight?

Is this why the Marines are so flipped out by repealing DADT? That they're afraid that an influx in gay bottoms is going to make them look cowardly?

I don't see how being penetrated involves courage, or for that matter how rimming does either (@2). You're either into it or you aren't. If you are into it then anticipation rather than fear is what I would expect (/have experienced). If you aren't into it then don't do it.

@7 yes!

So my dick is a dangerous weapon that I've been throwing into women all these years? I'm not sure if I'm horrified or ego-boosted by this.

Hope that girlfriend played the 'boyfriend' role as well and bought him some nice flowers the next day.

@10:

That was a very tongue-in-cheek comment, to be sure!

@4: While on a greater, big-picture level, I agree with you -- I really like this piece. And it does speak to the social heteronormative gender binary that totallyyyyy exists still even if it is "just a construct" or whatever. Saying it's not real doesn't make it go away, and stuff like foster amazing realizations for people who live and breathe the binary. And we're all living in the binary right now whether we want to or not, unless you're living on Queer Magic Island or something that is only inhabited by people who were born and raised on Queer Magic Island.

I want beach-front property on Queer Magic Island.

@ 2, 10, 15:

Sounds like you've all licked the problem, in any case.

16: I wasn't making an argument about whether or not gender binaries exist, I was calling bullshit such notions that to be penetrated is "feminine" and to be the penetrator is masculine. That's all.
Some of my best friends live on Queer Magic Island.

Damn the lack of post-post editing abilities. I meant to put masculine in quotation marks too.

I actually wrote this article, and I'm happy you all liked it, or at least found it funny. The article was calling bullshit on the penetrated:feminine::penetrator:masculine , but my self-mockery definitely undermined it a little. Especially that last line.

@11 I don't think anyone's a real or fake hero. I just explored a new side to bravery and wrote a field report. Anyone who endures anything for love is brave, period.

@2 I've rimmed, but didn't gain any serious insight because of it.

@1 We'll work on it. What's your number?

i've got a bookmark somewhere about a guy who cast a dildo out of his own penis and had an ex-girlfriend peg him with it. if i can find it, i'll post it here.

Not to pooh-pooh Mr Levant's experience, but pegging didn't take any bravery on my part, just a dirty, lusty, sweaty desire-that-could-not-be-slaked!

But hey, all dudes should get pegged in their lifetimes, IMHO. Good experience.

@21

From the Vice Guide to Anal Sex:

http://iceinlava.com/vice/vg-as.html

THE AFTERMATH

There is a weird thing that happens to men after the strap-on thing. They behave differently the next day. They seem to come to a kind of realization that being a bottom isn’t as subservient as it sounds. They finally understand that you have to be kind of brave to let someone put a bit of their body inside yours. The next day you’re going to hear him say things like, “yeah, that’s a good idea. I should put that picture there.”

Well, I don't know about courage...god, that just sounds so patronizing. I'd say curiosity and lust are more what it's all about. (However the article, overall, was great, so thank you Max.)

But I do think this article touches on something important about trust. I need the intimacy to get the pleasure, but I can't have the intimacy without a guy I can trust. I had a boyfriend who begged me for anal, and I never relented, although I was never sure why. When I met my current (amazing, awesome) guy, I couldn't wait to try it.

Maybe that's what bugs me about the "courage" thing. It implies that a woman who refuses anal just doesn't have the courage to do it, and so it becomes a kind of litmus test for a woman who thinks she's strong or gutsy or whatever. For me, anyway, refusing anal was about judgement, not courage. No guy or girl should be pressured into any kind of intercourse just to prove how brave they are.

(Incidentally, the guy I refused snuck it in one night after I'd passed out -- just partially, before I woke up and flipped out. Thus proving that my instincts were correct.)

Well stated, 11.

The concept, intention and execution are quite good, but the article came across as just another (and rather laboured at that) way for another straight man to indulge in self-congratulation. Only the remembrance of my last protege prevents me from speculating on whether self-congratulation must surely be the favourite sport of the hetero male. Given the author's talent, he shouldn't have to work so hard.

And if he has other, more G-rated material, perhaps he should work with Dr McGraw, who'd swallow it whole and twice on Sundays.

@24 I think this commentary is exactly right.

I find the dismissive comments interesting. Women are always bottoms and lots of guys just don't get it. With pegging men can see sex form a women's POV. Women are hesitant or brave about sex because of the invasive quality of it. I say good, it's about time and turn about is fair play. As straight character in a story I wrote says, “You know a woman is always taken but it is best to offer yourself to her first.”

@ 24

Nice link. About the same tips as we've all seen on these threads, but beaucoup points for style!

Just had to come back here and congratulate myself for reading @26's post. Pride in your work, that's just the hetro-male way :-)

@25

Well said. I know I could never receive anal from a guy I wouldn't trust with my life first, and who didn't take it himself first. It's far, FAR too easy to cause physical damage, for it to be unpleasant or traumatic, and to make it a terrible experience entirely. I'd be more inclined to trust someone who took that risk first (better yet, does it on himself flying solo). Just seems more likely to know what the hell he's doing and how to minimize potential badness (yay lube).

@30, yup, exactly. Courage is about overcoming fear. But when you trust the guy (because he knows how it feels) there is no fear, just curiosity and lots of mutual pleasure.

DIY anal for guys is a great idea. Figure out how you like it done, and you'll have a lot more confidence (and empathy) when you do it with someone else.

@29 - Touche - or should it match your avatar and be tushy? It's all good, though. I am gearing up to be rampantly homocentric all August, and am cheerfully taking notes about what to include in the performance.

@19: But being penetrated is feminine and penetrating is masculine, for an overwhelming majority of people in USA. I'm not suggesting things should be constructed/understood this way, but we're talking about generalized social roles/norms, and "Men fuck and women get fucked" is a very present meme for many, many people. It ties into homophobia, too (which I read as ultimately a fear of challenges to the straight male masculine identity i.e. a fear of effeminization through role deconstruction/confusion, especially sexual roles like the penetrator/penetratee binary). That fact that you or I or person X don't think about things this way or don't agree that roles in sexual penetration should be gendered doesn't mean that they're not for enough people that the binary exists as a social norm.

Also, letting someone inside one's body does take an incredible amount of trust and bravery for anyone socialized into a conception of hirself as an "individual"; one's psychic conception of 'self' (generally, in contemporary USA culture) is connected to the physical space occupied by one's body, and letting someone inside that self is about as vulnerable as one can make oneself (this is why rape can be terribly traumatic: it's not just a bodily violation or denial of agency, it can be experienced as a total disruption of one's sense of self, of ontological persistence). As with anything that someone might find difficult or frightening, if one is regularly penetrated one may well become accustomed to it, and obviously there are also people who will never have experienced penetration as crossing a psychic barrier or making oneself vulnerable, but Levant's attitude mirrors that of many, many 'straight men'.

John @34, you've got me further convinced that perhaps all this "feminine courage" or "bravery" of which you and Max speak is more a projection of male fears of penetration than any overarching truth about female experience. You insist that bravery is required for anyone who is socialized to think of herself as an individual -- except for some people who inexplicably don't fit into your equation. Then you go on to say that Max's attitude mirrors, not women, but straight men. I suspect this is all about straight men working through the baggage of traditional gendered sexual norms, i.e., being penetrated is scary because it makes you the weak, vulnerable "girl," one who must bravely submit to the phallus that invades you. It fails to recognize the agency of this "feminine" role and the power of female sexual desire. All but one of my experiences with anal were instigated by me, out of desire, and they left me feeling pretty damn powerful. I'm reminded of a friend who wanted to try anal sex as a teenager and whose boyfriend, who wouldn't, later said she was "too sexual...disgustingly sexual". Where does his fear fit into this theory?

What I take issue with is this view of penetration as a threat to the self rather than an opportunity for intimacy for both. It's funny that no one has theorized the threat or vulnerability a man faces when he gets a blow job or has his balls fondled -- I mean, women have teeth after all, young or inexperienced women can be clumsy, and these are the most vulnerable parts of your body! Yet no one has theorized the "bravery" of this.

I suspect your views of the sexual dynamic have been strongly influenced by feminist theories that focus on the traditional view of man as aggressor and woman as vulnerable victim. Fair enough, but I wonder if it isn't time to find a new theory for heterosexual relations that allows for shared intimacy, reciprocity, and female sexual power. Perhaps one that views a woman's role, even in penetration, as being the explorer rather than being passively explored... or better yet, one that views men and women embarking on these explorations together.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppd6LHfhk…

Irena, I was going to say something rather similar to your last post, but you already did. Kudos and thanks for it.

Just adding a little perception: the interesting thing when different groups (say, different genders) start sincerely approaching equality is this 'attempt at understanding the other side' that portrays the other side as noble in a way that is still quite normal for the side making the comparison. Minorities are sometimes 'glamorized' in the same way, in that their (supposedly) nobler features are cast in a light that makes them understandable to the majority as said majority attempts to accept this minority. The Rousseauist "Bon Sauvage" seems a good example: when Europeans started appreciating native peoples, it was not via seeing them as 'variations on the same theme' ('we're all humans'), but as 'noble' savages, 'good', 'in harmony with nature', 'not perverted by the evil characteristics of (mostly Western) civilization', etc.

Similarly, a guy might posit courage for girls who want to be penetrated (anally or otherwise) as part of his understanding of what it means to be a woman and have sex (in his own journey towards equality). What you propose is probably a second stage -- something that comes on as the guy starts realizing that women and men are equal-and-different rather than 'noble' or 'courageous'.

It would be interesting to actually map and understand the trajectory of groups who are sincerely trying to accept each other, to come together and find the roots of their common humanity. That is, as far as I know, an unresearched field.

@24: exactly. self-congratulatory is the word.

There are actual straight male allies to women and queers, and then there's a strain of self-appointed straight male "allies" that trip over themselves with their comic level of "concern" for the tragic plight of /the other/. How noble. How chivalrous. They are less concerned with being an ally than they are concerned with getting women and LGBTQ to give them a cookie so they can feel that they are better than the other straight men. Enough with the cookie-seeking.

Dan's views on pegging are great, but this was a poor link choice. I don't know where to begin to unpack all the condescending bullshit in this guy's article.

Things that make me go "hmm"

1. Author "reports back" from the field what he regards to be the shared pschosexual experience of most females, using the basis of that one time his girlfriend pegged him.

2. Author feels that it is necessary for him specifically to be the correspondent of this information. As if somehow it was not worth the trouble of asking females, or females people were incapable of communicating themselves, or have not previously communicated, how they feel about being penetrated. As if his status as a first-time straight man gives him some kind of expert status on the subject in general.

3. Author attempts to break the chains of the gender binary by reinforcing the gender binary ("men=more dangerous than women because they have a penis") and heaping a steaming pile of shmaltzy sentimentalism on the reader about how all older women are heroes and "courageous war generals" because of the popularity of anal and vaginal penetration of females. Really? Seriously? Wait, which archetype were you going for here, was it "the noble savage" (credits to #37 for beating me to it) or "the cult of true womenhood"? Oh no, no, you just wanted to let women know that you understand how difficult and terrible life must be for them, what with them having to have sex using a vagina and all. You totally get all their problems and self-sacrifice without them even telling you, now that you've taken it in the ass once. And hey, every once in a while, you'll let a woman do anal on you again, cause you're just that open-minded a guy.

That was a disingenuous blog post. It wasn't "straight guys should try pegging. I tried and I liked it." It was "I'm such a wonderful ally because I can make sappy generalizations about females' relation to sex." This guy cannot speak for my or anyone else's sexual experience.

This is what his post should have been: "Pegging can be fun. More straight couples should give it a shot. And there are lots of good ways for straight couples to get into it. The Bend Over Boyfriend series, for example, is a great example of an accessible, kinky indie porn that can get you and your S.O. into it."

More questions:
When was the fact that women can be as brave as men ever a question?
And if it was, why would we need his account of getting rear-ended by his girlfriend to answer it?
Why are we evaluating the strength of character of the female populace as a whole based on their sexuality?
Why does the author feel he is in an especially authoritative position to discuss heterosexual females' experience of penetration from the vantage point of an experience he had as a heterosexual male? Is this like how textbooks still insist that Columbus discovered America even though there were already people living there?

Dear author: Who knows whether you mean well, but you're surely on the cookie-seeking side of the "ally" fence. It's a shame you've been getting so much attention. Bug off.