God and nature gave women these super buttons on the outside, lesbians oked from day one.
Not sure a man or other can learn the proper tongue or finger technique from a book. Put your tongue down there and stimulate, or gentle rub the clit with your fingers with a one or two finger visit into the vagina. What else is there to say?
The skill and sensitivity is in the fingers or tongue of the person doing, man or or woman or other, and how can a book teach that.

@104 Omnipotent Comment God, DonnyKlicious: LOL I think? Um, er, uhhhh............why, are you mad at me? B-but....you don't have to cancel your Amtrak tickets.....we could just skip the naked bungee jumping part. Or.....was that the attraction (re: @73)....? We could at least "Aack-oop!" together...........no?
All kidding aside, Donny, my ex really WOULD have taken a blind flying leap over a bridge railing if someone told him to, ignoring any common sense (especially from me). Any plans we made or trips however carefully coordinated in advance often stood the high possibility of getting cancelled at the last minute because someone told him a "scare story" on the way home from work. I was using the "bungee jumping naked if everyone else took a flying leap" phrase as a metaphor. Methinks you're just playfully messing with griz at this point.

EmmaLiz @52
"Here's what I can see being an expectation/norm .. I think "play with my butt" is as reasonable a request as "go down on me" for those that enjoy it.

Agreed.

"Here's a glove & lube, please play with my butt while I touch myself" seems just as reasonable as "please go down on me." And more likely to make me happy. :)

@106 Youthinks correctly 😁

Maybe your bf doesn't like giving you oral, LW? Have you asked him if he enjoys it rather than scold him. It must be freely given. Nothing worse than a man doing it because it's expected. If he's not into it, get a bf who is. Then you train him. Tell him what you like.

@108 Aack-oop, VW beeps, and a big hug right back atcha!

Griz @85: Not at all, I just had nothing to add.

DrJones @87: It's the 21st century. Like everything else, communities exist online. Monogamous rural kinksters are likely to have FetLife profiles and other internet communication channels where they can discuss their kinks with like-minded folk, even if they confine their physical acts to their exurban bedrooms (or basement dungeons). Also, how do you think these monogamous couples met in the first place? Online is the answer for a lot of them. Chatrooms are virtual munches, and those who frequent them are just as much a part of the "BDSM community" as those awful poly city folks who dare to flaunt their kinks in gasp! semi-public fetish clubs.

John @92: Non-monogamy has been "normal" for a long time, yes, but OPEN, MUTUAL non-monogamy is a fairly recent trend.

Venn @93: I was not inviting any inference of the sort, but the fact that straight men are straight kind of implies that they would be far more willing to let their female partners penetrate them with dildoes than with the penises of third parties, no? So from their perspective, a dildo would be better than the so-called "real thing," because a "real thing" would be attached to someone to whom they're not attracted. What gay men prefer is, I'm certain, different, but irrelevant to the concept of straight anal sex.

Lava @97: Indeed, and the fact that everyone has a tongue seems to indicate that god is cool with pansexuality.

Griz @100: Congrats on the hunsky!

Lava @109: I disagree; a man NOT doing it is worse than a man doing it because it's expected.

@82. Bi. Oh, I don't think straight women for whom passive anal isn't part of their repertoire are (broadly) homophobic in how they see 'up the arse'. The opposite, in fact. I think such people just think, 'not for me'. It allows them, usually, to see gay men as having a separate sexual-cultural identity from them (more so than might be good for the purposes of feminist and antihomophobic organizing--but this is another question) and to accept, to be non-prejudicial, about gay men.

The people suffering from homophobia for me are the straight male cishets with poor, unattended-to prostates. There's nothing in wanting your prostate stimulated that says anything about your sexuality. I think many straight men can't accept this; they think asking a woman for this to be part of their sex life 'would make them gay'.

@94. Dadddy. Are these locker room encounters, as well as locker room conversations? Are the straights getting manual stimulation, that is, from other men?

@113,Fan. Now I'm confused. I meant there's nothing worse than a man who doesn't enjoy licking pussy, doing it because it's expected of him. What fun is there in a man giving oral to a woman and not enjoying it?
Luckily, many enthusiastic givers around, so better the others are upfront and they can be discarded early.

And I disagree. A man not doing it is preferable to me than a man doing it because it's expected of him. If it's not a loved activity, best stay away. Personally I would find it hard to lick pussy, so I'm not for making men do it if they don't like doing it. Just find men who do.

There's women who don't like oral so the guys who don't like giving it can find partners. Best everybody upfront with their truths on date one, then time's not wasted.

Ms Fan - Well, Mr Savage has invited that exact inference and then some.

Hunter @111: Sounds like an invitation to ass-fingering to me, but hey, your kink is ok.

Harriet @114: Agree 100% that straight men who think opposite-sex butt play is "gay" are homophobic. (Straight women, too; there have been letters from women asking Dan "my man asked me to finger/peg him; is he gay?" Aaarggh.)

Lava @116: I figured you would disagree with me! I think not doing it at all is worse, because there should be a general understanding that oral sex is standard, and expected. Yes, she expects you to lick her pussy, so you'd better be willing to lick her pussy. Ideally, novices will do it because it's expected and find that it's an amazing turn-on, and grow to do it because it's so much fun. But I agree, if certain selfish jerks can't see it as anything but a chore, they should indeed be kicked out of bed -- particularly if they hypocritically expect to receive head themselves.

Venn @119: Well, it appears gay men differ in their opinions on whether a dildo can be just as enjoyable as a penis. Colour me not at all surprised, as Everyone Is Different.

Ms Fan - I was focusing more broadly than you were. Whether A would provide for a more enjoyable sexual encounter than B or not I doubt I'd attempt to decide. Mr savage has come down hard on their being no difference worth considering in ANY function, and I was thinking of an important (though not necessarily dealbreaker level) difference outside of the bedroom that Mr S has derided (you may recall his support of the author of the comic about being attracted mainly to trans men but only after a certain amount of transitioning; the author's position on hetero-coded sex acts was basically to wonder "what's the big deal?" but Mr S went farther, into Riley Dennis territory).

Weirdly, this has given me the idea for another of the many novels I'll never write about a woman's demanding to be permitted to enter the World Penetrating Championship and challenging its rule about Natural Members Only in a high court - think of the Casey Martin case against the PGA, when the Supreme Court decided to treat the PGA Tour as an ordinary workplace.

Ms Fan/M?? Harriet - Could we save the designation "homophobic" for when there's something actually hateful involved, please? The term is so overused that it has brought about a backlash against gay men (I could speculate about whether this is actually a feature rather than a bug, but I won't). M?? Harriet's scenario is really two; one must divide the OS men who think it would make them gay from the ones whose female partners would write in great panic to Mr Savage calling them gay or asking if they were in a manner inviting the inference that they wouldn't fully believe an answer to the contrary. But even in the case of the former group, if the opinion were expressed respectfully, my first instinct would be just to think that the person involved strongly identified as a Top. (Book: In One Person, by John Irving) And just yesterday I was hearing about some junk science study trying to get gay tops and bottoms to fit into some male/female-coded dichotomy. Who needs that?

@113 BiDanFan: Okay, that's what I thought, and thanks about the hunsky although I really couldn't help myself.

@121. Venn. I take the 'phobia' in 'homophobia' seriously; I think the haters of homosexuals are usually in some irrational way afraid that gayness will impugn or spoil or shame or decredentialize or harm them. The typical way this will happen is not through violence (homophobes believe that they can beat up queers,not that gay hordes will set on and rape them) but through insidious forms of suggestion or autosuggestion: proximity to gays, exposure to gays and the acceptance of gays, will turn these homophobes gay. What's happening is that these homophobes are not sure about their sexual identity and are phobically projecting their insecurity onto those of us blissfully free of homosexual panic, the gays (or queers, or benders etc.).

To me, homophobic mindsets are scary insofar as they are a tissue of poorly articulated fears and prejudices. Thinking you're gay because you felt something pleasurable in/on your prostate, if the affect is violent and/or immoderate enough, is just what I'd take as troublingly homophobic.

Agreed that no one needs a male/female-coded dichotomy of top/bottom. It's very much part of my own female identification; but this is not usable for others generally or for political purposes.

Re: straight men and butt stuff reluctance... Not being a man myself I can only tell you what I experience with men, but here's the thing. While I'm sure that homophobia or top identification or whatever are part of it for plenty of them (and I'll leave that conversation to you), it is not my experience that this is the reason straight guys aren't into butt stuff. The reason is way simpler than that. If they have not experienced it and their sex life is otherwise pleasurable enough, they simply don't think about it. For most people, the default is that it would hurt to have something inserted in your ass (finger, toy, whatever) and also most straight guys, even the ones who'd like to fuck a woman's ass, aren't eager to eat it, and so they would not really think so much about wanting the same for themselves. And having not done this thing, their initial response is "yikes no" or "gross no" because they associate butt holes with shitting and tight sphincters. Also despite all the talk around prostate pleasure, my experience is that they are more like clits- simply having someone apply pressure or contact to one is not going to necessarily cause pleasure. You must relax and have a skillful partner or else know what to ask for, so even if you do have a straight guy who is curious to have something (finger, toy) shoved up his butt, unless he or the woman know what they are doing or are willing to play around for some time, it's unlikely to be a super pleasant experience that makes them say "yes more of this" after a first or second try. It takes a bit of experience and curiosity and relaxation to get there, and again, there's simply the inconvenience factor of having to be very clean and somewhat prepared. On this point, I think gay men really do not comprehend the extent to which the default towards PIV so wholly dominates the sex life of many (most?) straight people- to the point that I don't think most men ever even think about it. So I'd say it's far less homophobia and far more just lack of really ever thinking about it at all.

For myself, what I've found is that butt play is better if you ease into it, usually with a finger or tongue while giving head, and let it grow slowly from there.

Venn @121: I briefly dated a straight, genderqueer, biologically male bottom. He didn't enjoy being the active partner in penetrative sex. He liked things like frottage and receptive anal sex. He said that every one of his female partners had expected him to "top," which made him uncomfortable. (One might think he'd have been the perfect partner for me, but alas there were other incompatibilities -- along with the fact that I wouldn't have been happy with PIV being completely off the menu.)

By contrast, a majority of gay men are bottoms. So where are the straight bottoms? Hiding in a closet, no doubt -- a closet that says they must be the tops, that they must perform straight masculinity in this way, that they must hide their desire to bottom. I hope with a decrease in (sorry) homophobia -- I'ma use this word until a new one exists to denote bigotry against GLs and/or BTQIAs -- more men will feel comfortable coming out as straight bottoms, or as heteroflexible if that's the way they see it, for those who might be open to occasional same-sex play.

Emma @124: Good point that just as straight women are put off butt sex by inept male partners, straight men may be put off by inept women. And that many men, like many women, don't do anal simply because they see no need.

@124. Emma. The 'they' you are talking about is a 'them', a set of straight guys, you know and have dated. But there are lots of self-questioning straight men, bicurious, some probably bisexual, who gravitate to gay scenes because they want to explore sensations on their prostate (in a partnered setting). In my experience and observation, some of these men are bi bottoms and some are not (don't want to be or couldn't easily be); and some of those who aren't are confused, sometimes homophobic. There is a lot of value to me in saying that liking prostate play doesn't make you gay.

M?? Harriet - That exists, but it's a subset. Had you said that straight men's saying receiving anal is for gays often coincides with "homophobic" attitudes, fine. Calling the statement inherently homophobic would require that it least cover a supermajority of cases. Now you might be inclined to lump "I don't want to be gay" with "I don't want to be thought/called gay"; I am not. (I don't hate straight or bi people, but I certainly never liked being taken for OS, most strongly disliking it when there was nothing that would be accepted as proof to the contrary.) The latter category we might amusingly call "homophobiaphobia", or we could have a serious conversation about how some women wield homophobia in the form of accusation of homosexuality as a weapon to keep straight and gay men regarding each other as enemies or to keep OS men from bonding too closely with each other. Weirdly, I'd even accept that many of the women who do this aren't personally "homophobic" in that they may well not harbour any prejudice against gays, but are just opportunistically using anything they think they can turn to advantage (it could be argued they're "homophobic in effect").

And then of course there are those who just identify as Tops and foolishly extend that to straight men in general, often non-maliciously. Not an admirable sentiment, but quite common, due mainly to ineffective education. Fixable through other means.

Ms Fan - "Most gay men are bottoms"? Sure, when going for someone really attractive who's just presented as (or whom they presume to be) a top.

Funnily, the "junk science" study I mentioned I heard brought up yesterday by a homonormative bi man who refuted it with a recent study finding that, while bottoms (slightly) outnumber tops, they are both in the minority.

You are one of a very small number of people here to whom I'd extend the benefit of the doubt of believing that statement to be made entirely in good faith.

Ms Fan - To be clear, I don't object to a word denoting general irrational fear/hatred towards all those who are not cisstraightsexualbinaryoranyotherdistinctionthealphabetsoupincludes. Each letter should also have its own specific term (as, currently, L, B and T clearly do, while A and perhaps other letters, if not widely used, would at least be recognized - G currently does not).

That charges of "homophobia" are over-used is a separate issue. I've had conversations before that the general understanding that something has to be called "homophobic" to get people to pay any attention could be called prejudiced itself. Why isn't calling something anti-gay (or anti-bi, or whatever) a sufficient condemnation? It is for me. I don't require that someone reach the level of homophobia before knocking such a person off my Good Human list. Anti-gay is bad enough.

I've been noticing the backlash for a couple of years now. I think it may coincide with the increasing conservatism in the rising generation (I won't speculate about whether it's a cause). People whom I'd previously found to be okay (though usually not really good) on gay or LBT+ issues made a clear move in the aftermath of running into "EVERYTHING is homophobic" a few dozen times too many. This classically has taken the form of the sentiment, "I love calling guys f*s because it triggers so many SJWs." That was when I began telling people on both sides I wasn't their sword - a sort of counterpart to NotYourShield.

Now whether it's significant or not that most of the Everything-is-Homophobic crowd consists of OS women and that the brunt of the backlash appears to be against the G is open to interpretation. You might think I see a particular connection there. I couldn't possibly comment.

@harriet: "The 'they' you are talking about is a 'them', a set of straight guys, you know and have dated."

From 124: ... Not being a man myself I can only tell you what I experience with men, but here's the thing. While I'm sure that homophobia or top identification or whatever are part of it for plenty of them (and I'll leave that conversation to you...

@Venn

There are plenty of women who are as homophobic as men, and plenty of women who enforce rigid gender roles and narrow definitions of masculinity. But there's also legit concern over finding out that your partner is gay- it does happen that men who are in denial of their own homosexuality get married to women, have children with them, etc, and then secretly have affairs with men or later leave them for men when they "find themselves" and while I'm sympathetic to the difficulties of coming out in a world that is still homophobic, I'm also sympathetic to women who are sick of being used to help men figure out who they are. So some of the "is my husband gay?" freak outs are based more in this fear than in homophobia which I think might be part of what you are saying, and I agree with Harriet that disconnecting the pleasure of butt play from homosexuality would go along way to correcting this freak out. Fears that your husband is actually gay should have nothing to do with whether or not he enjoys butt play, etc.

@127. Venn. "We could have a serious conversation about how some women wield homophobia in the form of accusation of homosexuality as a weapon to keep straight and gay men regarding each other as enemies..."

I'm not sure what you mean here, or how prevalent you think this is.

One thing that I would suppose happens is, when one partner of a straight couple is progressing beyond the other culturally--is groping towards a more curious or enlightened life--for the other to say in reproof, 'are you becoming a faggot? Are you going queer?' It's a kind of call to arms--'don't forget where you came from'. The response it's meant to elicit is to get the man (usually) to crawl back into his shell, to say he still believes in monogamy and hickory ribs and likes NASCAR. (I once heard a woman say to a man who was transfixed in front of a Jackson Pollock--erm, not a notably gay artist--'if this is the kind of person you're going to be, I'm not sure I'm interested in sticking round with you'). So sure, yes, people feel threatened by lots of things, and 'are you a faggot?' is a big stick they can brandish to try to face down the threat.

Beyond that, I don't really see valuably homosocial male relationships, gay-straight alliances or friendships, being scuppered by straight women.

@130. Emma. You didn't finish your thought.... You're sure that many straight ... guys have no interest in butt play? I'd be sure, too. Your account in @124 of why many straights don't even think they could enjoy having their prostrate played with is likely to be right.

I once negotiated no PIA, only prostrate play, maybe toys and rimming, with a straight guy, who had shyly expressed an interest. As I was rimming him, he said, 'I could never get this from my partner'. When I said, miffed, 'why not ask?', he replied, 'Jemima*? Ask Jemima?' and proceeded to laugh in a mirthless, sphincter-tightening way. Now, the talk between us wasn't of my being shamed or abasing myself--there was no sex talk; in my mind, I was just getting down to it. But he thought I was being cheap to serve him in this way. This is the sort of thing that happens all the time with 'straight' or bi men and bottoms (or submissives) like me; and I'd say that attitudes like that of the guy I was fucking are casually--no more than casually--homophobic.

*a name fairly close to Samantha

Harriet, I was literally quoting, copy and pasting, what I said above- a post that you were supposedly originally replying to by saying exactly what I said as if we disagree. What do you mean I didn't finish the thought? At this point I can't even follow the thread of conversation but I was not disagreeing with you, rather I was pointing out that I had said exactly the same thing.

As for your anecdote, no doubt men who have sex with men while claiming to be straight are going to be disproportionately homophobic or else they wouldn't be claiming to be straight in the first place, and it does not surprise me at all that they would have a shitty attitude towards both their male and female partners- It's the woman's fault that they are having sex with a man (they can't get the woman to do it) and it's the man's fault for having sex with them (they are cheap to serve him). Shame will make them blame everyone else before having an honest look at themselves and their situation

Also Harriet, There are abusive, manipulative and insecure people in all genders, and surely there are women who will abuse and manipulate men by deliberately threatening their sense of masculinity, egging them on to “be a real man”, and otherwise encourage toxic behaviors and rigid gender roles. Women can be bullies just like men, and plenty among them are homophobic, and so one way women can abuse or belittle men is to insult their manhood, imply they are weak, or otherwise use homophobic stereotypes to insult them- implying that they are effeminate or sissy or whatever. Patriarchy is a tool and plenty of women wield it too, sometimes against men and sometimes against each other. It’s harmful to both men and women. My point in my post with Venn above was not to dispute that this happens but rather to say that there are also other reasons why women might freak out that their male partners might be gay- one does not need to be homophobic or a defender of patriarchy to freak out that their partner might be lying about their sexuality or using the marriage as a way to avoid confronting the truth about themselves.

@68 it buggars my belief that you could be so unplugged from the news media in general not to intuitively understand that many people - including national politicians - would have called for West to "shut up and stick to rapping". Anyone who is that out of touch has no business commenting in the first place, and basically I don't believe you're that out of touch. And no one - not even Trump - is threatening Kaepernick with jail time. By your own standard you outlined in this very post, you ought not to be defending him. Agreeing with Kap (or West) should really have absolutely nothing to do with if you think he's right or wrong - that's just cherry picking - when we're arguing over the principles. That's something that really frustrates me, people who are willing to sacrifice whatever principles because they believe in the Personality Cult of whoever's talking. If Obama today went on some new-holocaust stuff, there's a number of people here on theslog.com who would agree with them, instantly forgetting whatever principles like "not murdering people for their genetic heritage". As people, we're all fungible. We'll die, and for most of us, that's the end of everything and we'll never be remembered - but we can live on in our ideas and principles and hope that the world is better for those after us by building the intellectual infrastructure to make things like populism (which has certainly never been higher in my lifetime, and, I think, a scourge on humanity) less socially acceptable. Principles first, opinions second.

@134. Emma. This is what you wrote:

"While I'm sure that homophobia or top identification or whatever are part of it for plenty of them (and I'll leave that conversation to you..."

It isn't a complete sentence. It's just a modifying clause. Or two parallel modifying clauses. This is the sense in which you didn't complete your thought. What I imagined you meant to say was something like, 'while homophobia may be part of many men not wanting to experience pleasure in their prostate, for very many others it's just that they don't feel the urge to explore'. And yes. Sure. I accept this. I don't know what you were trying to say; but I accept this line of thought independently.

Not all 'official' straights but practising bi men are homophobic, even in passing. For many, doing comes before saying... they are on the way to being out, to having an identity that doesn't repress some part of what (they find) they can with pleasure and without undue panic do (and have). To some degree, I think we've all been there--I was, when very young--and good luck to these people.