Inside the secret world of the straight guise

My blog was featured in a story in the Village Voice by Tristan Taormino about straight men who have sex with men.

I really appreciated the journalist featuring my beliefs about why straight men have sex with other men and thought she did a fine job. She also pointed out the very thing that I have tried to ask myself--why is this okay for females but not for males? Read what she has to say.

Straight Men Who Have Sex With Men
Inside the secret world of the straight guise
By Tristan Taormino
Tuesday, July 29th 2008


Once again, a female singer has a hit song called "I Kissed A Girl"; I saw Katy Perry perform it on network television the other night. As she danced around in her cute yellow dress, I thought: "Wow, singing about lesbian smooching was pretty racy when Jill Sobule did it—same title and subject, different and better song—in 1995 on MTV." Now it's ready for prime time? Well, it's been almost 15 years. Plus, the whole idea isn't that threatening anymore.

If a straight woman confesses she's messed around with another woman—even had full-blown sex with her—most people are quick to shrug it off. She was drunk. She's experimenting. At most, maybe this means she's bi-curious. But it's no big deal. Women have a lot more leeway to explore their sexuality with other women without questioning their orientation or setting any alarms off. On the other hand, society doesn't make room for men to do the same. Can you imagine the flip side of this scenario?


No, I don't mean Bon Jovi topping the charts with a new rock anthem called "I Made Out With a Guy." Let's say one of your male friends confesses: "I was at the club last night with Bob. The music was pounding, I had a few shots, and his hair just looked so good, so we made out, and I jerked him off in the bathroom." For most people, there's really only one response: "Dude, you're gay." Maybe, but maybe not.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than three million men who self-identify as straight secretly have sex with other men. Although there's been some mainstream dialogue about African-American men who have sex with men "on the down-low," there hasn't been much talk about white guys who do it. And there are plenty of them out there.

Take a brief scroll through one day's worth of "Men Seeking Men" posts on New York City's Craigslist, and you'll find dozens of listings like "Str8 Guy Needs Great Cocksucker" or "Handsome Masculine Married Irish Guy Seeks One or Two Hung Married Irish Buddies Who Want Head and Maybe More."

From the super-brief to the incredibly detailed, some posts offer interesting explanations:

Though I have always been hetero, I also have had a fantasy to anonymously suck cock and swallow his cum.

I am a married white male forty-six, six-one, one-ninety—a goodlooking, successful, Ivy-educated guy who finds himself in town alone this week. Not interested in changing my life in any major way, but do feel the occasional need to deal with this side of my nature.

I am married . . . looking to provide no reciprocation needed or wanted oral service for VERY masculine, verbal straight/bi/straight acting men. My clothes do not even have to come off. This is about YOUR pleasure . . . not mine.

These examples articulate some of the reasons why heterosexual men get it on with other men: for anonymous, no-strings-attached sex; to explore homoerotic desire without a gay identity or relationship; or to fulfill a fantasy, including one of dominance and submission.

"When these straight men have sex with other men, it is not about an attraction to the other man—it is about an attraction to the sex act," says Joe Kort (joekort.com), a licensed therapist in Michigan. "When asked about what they enjoy, it is never the actual man, but instead his body parts, the sexual behavior they engage in." Many of Kort's clients (who are overwhelmingly white) are straight men who have sex with other men (SMSM). He's even created Straight Guise (straightguise.com), a website dedicated to the subject.


He cites dozens of explanations for SMSM behavior: "Some have been sexually abused and are compulsively re-enacting childhood sexual trauma by male perpetrators; some have sex with men because it's easier and requires fewer social skills than those required to have sex with women; some are 'gay for pay'; some like the attention they receive from other men; some like anal sex, which they're otherwise too ashamed to talk about or engage in with their female partners."

He acknowledges that some of these men may be bisexual or closeted gay men, but in his experience in treating clients over an extended period, many of them are not. He believes that when it comes to sex, identity and orientation, preferences, fantasies, and behavior do not always neatly line up in one category. More often, they are complex and even contradictory.

Mike, whom I found on a personals website, is 44, married, and works on Wall Street. He has been having sex with men for four years, and says he likes the closeness and the male bonding. Plus, "It's just less complicated than with women. We're both there for sex, and that's it." John, 35, also works in finance, identifies as straight, and is dating several women. But he mostly enjoys getting blowjobs from men: "There are less emotional complications for me. Many men will do things some women will not, and many men give better oral sex. I think men will exercise their hunger for sex and not deny that they are horny more so than women. They feel comfortable sexually bonding." Both men admit that their female partners don't know about their behavior; in fact, their families and friends don't know.

Unlike some psychology professionals who want to pathologize these men, treat them for sexual addiction, or "cure them" of homosexuality, Kort approaches his clients without an agenda. He also unpacks some of the cultural baggage that contributes to this phenomenon: "They are interested in the sexual contact with other men.

They are working through issues of father hunger, lack of touch from other males, and the need for contact with other men on deeper levels that women enjoy with each other and men do not. Some of these men tell me they meet other men and really just want to be held and talk to the other men, but that the men they meet want it to be sexual, so they go through with it but really don't want to. Ironically, since men are not allowed to touch—except for a pat on the butt in sports—they use the sexual realm to find ways to touch each other and receive touch."

Bisexual Sex Addicts: A Typical Story

Here is a good clinical example by another therapist of how non-gay men who have sex with men can be the result of sexual addiction and be driven by father hunger.

The author is Jerry Goodman. I know him through SASH (Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health) which is an organization for sexual addiction and compulsivity.

Jerry has been an LCSW (Licensed Certified Social Worker) psychotherapist for approximately 30 years, the last 18 of which he has specialized in treating male sex addicts. In the early 90’s, with his wife, Margaret, he developed the Counseling Affiliates Sexual Addiction Treatment Program in Houston. In 1991 Jerry took one of Patrick Carnes' early sexual addition training intensives for therapists and continued to follow Carnes’ literature, lectures, workshops and personal counsel. Finally when professional certification became available, he obtained the Certified Sex Addiction Therapist certification (CSAT) in 2001. The following year he received the Supervisor/Consultant Certification for assisting other therapists in obtaining the CSAT. Jerry draws not only on his years of training and professional experience but also on his years of personal recovery

Sex addiction help
Houston Counseling Affiliates
2620 Fountainview, Ste. 250
Houston, TX 77057


Here is a case example that involves MSM.

A Story about Bisexual Sexual Addiction

The following are excerpts:

It was unanimously decided that he was not a repressed homosexual but that he
had long been addicted to sexualized re-enactment of his childhood trauma with
his father which had prevented him from completing some of his psychic
development, leaving him in doubt of his masculinity. This was part of the
anxiety and inner turmoil that he had acted out over and over. He was told that
the neurologically programmed addictive response would probably stay with him
but that with the willingness to work a strong recovery program and to do some
significant psychological work, he would be able to control the addiction rather
than the addiction controlling him, allowing him to have the life he and Laura
wanted. Laura also learned that she needed to participate in a recovery program
and to do psychological work to help her with the effects Manuel’s problem had
had on her and to resolve her own issues which she learned had played a part in
unconsciously attracting her to Manuel.

Later in the article the therapist writes:

"These patterns are clear evidence of sexual addiction despite the unavoidable
presence of cultural influence which probably accounted for the sexual identity
doubt expressed to Carlos when he said he had wondered if he was gay. Ultimately
the professional treatment ruled out repressed homosexuality, and even prior to
that there was a good indication of a heterosexual identity in that he felt
genuine love, which could be assumed included romantic and sexual love, for
Laura."

And finally he ends with this:

No doubt Manuel will have an attraction to males his whole life that was set in
motion as a child by the rejection and criticism from his father. In a sense the
rejection by his primary masculine role model prevented him from developing a
secure concept of himself as male. Therefore, the attraction to males probably
has an element of unconscious searching for unfulfilled fathering and
symbolically taking into his psyche the masculinity he had partially distanced
himself from in childhood in reaction to his father's harshness. This “quest,”
like all other patterns of experience that occurred in his psychological
development were neurologically programmed as part of his psychic “map” or
template, and therefore a permanent part of him.

For the entire case example click here

High Sex Drive is Associated with Increased Sexual Attraction to Both Women and Men

In my private practice and coaching I have noticed that straight men with a higher sex drive tend to be more willing to be sexual with other men which this study by Richard Lippa talks about. I have also noticed that gay men with high sex drives are more willing to have sex with women and can be satisfied with them.

I wrote about men with high sex drives at joekort.com in an article called, "Are you a sexually high T or low T?" and "Am I a sex addict or a high T?"

This study is important as it is not about sexual orientation as much as it is about sexual drive and behavior.

____________________________________________________________

Information about the sex drive and same- and other-sex attraction study
in the April 2007 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior

The complete reference for the article is:

Lippa, R. A. (2007). The relation between sex drive and sexual attraction to men and women: A cross-national study of heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual men and women, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 209-222.

Abstract:
Recent research suggests that, for most women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both women and men. For men, however, high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to one sex or the other, but not to both, depending on men's sexual orientation (Lippa, R. A., 2006, Psychological Science, 17, 46–52).

These findings were replicated in a very large BBC data set and were found to hold true in different nations, world regions, and age groups. Consistent with previous research, lesbians differed from other women in showing the male-typical pattern, that high sex drive is associated with attraction to one sex but not the other. Bisexual women and men were more similar to same-sex heterosexuals than to same-sex homosexuals in their pattern of results.

The correlation between same-sex and other-sex attraction was consistently negative for men, was near zero for heterosexual and bisexual women, and negative for lesbians. Thus, same-sex and other-sex attractions were, in general, more bipolar and mutually exclusive for men than for women. The current findings add to evidence that sexual orientation is organized differently in women and men and suggest a biological component to this difference.

A brief description of the study:
The higher women’s sex drive, the more they desire both sexes. However, the higher men’s sex drive, the more they desire either one sex or the other, depending on their sexual orientation. These are some of the findings presented in a new study by California State University psychology professor, Richard A. Lippa, published in the April 2007 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The findings were based on data collected from over 200,000 people who responded to an Internet survey posted on the BBC Science and Nature website.

For most men, a higher sex drive simply intensifies their existing sexual orientation, Lippa reported. The common-sense view is that heterosexual men with high sex drives are very interested in women, and gay men with high sex drives are very interested in men, and this is indeed what the BBC data showed. The unexpected result was that women seem to be more intrinsically bisexual in their sexual attractions. Whereas men tended to be either-or (heterosexual or gay), women had more shades of gray.

Lippa, a prominent gender researcher, said that the data from the BBC Internet survey suggests that the observed differences between women and men may have biological causes, because the results were very consistent across a number of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, Malaysia, and Japan. Results were also consistent across a number of world regions, including Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, and they were equally true for people over and under 30 years of age.

Lippa’s analyses of the BBC data showed that most women were considerably more attracted to men than to women, and thus it is incorrect to label most women as “bisexual.” However, many more women than men expressed some degree of attraction to their own sex. In the BBC survey data, 90 percent of women labeled themselves as heterosexual, 7 percent as bisexual, and 3 percent as lesbian. In contrast, 91 percent of men labeled themselves as heterosexual, 4 percent as bisexual, and 5 percent as gay. Thus, nearly twice as many women as men identified themselves as bisexual, but almost twice as many men as women labeled themselves as homosexual.

Lesbians were the only group of women who did not show the "high sex drive leads to increased attraction to both sexes" effect. Instead, they showed the pattern typical of heterosexual men. For lesbian women, high sex drive was associated with increased attraction to women, but not to men. Why lesbians differed from other women is not clear. Lippa speculated that the difference might result from the effects of prenatal hormones, particularly androgens, which include male hormones such as testosterone. Some social scientists argue that sexual orientation is influenced by prenatal variations in sex hormones like testosterone.

Lippa served as a research consultant to the BBC Internet survey, which was developed for use in the BBC documentary Secrets of the Sexes. He is a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fullerton.

This article appeared in a special section of the April 2007 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, guest edited by Richard Lippa, devoted to studies that analyzed data from the 2005 BBC Internet survey. Results from this survey were presented in the BBC One documentary, Secrets of the Sexes. About a quarter of a million people across the world responded to the BBC survey, which investigated psychological sex differences--how men and women differ in their cognitive abilities, personality traits, sexual attitudes and behavior, mate preferences, and attitudes. For further information about the BBC studies and their results, see the BBC Science and Nature website.

Anal HPV common in Heterosexual men

This article is an important one for the men I talk about on this blog.

These men are most likely getting Anal HPV because they are on the down low and having sex with other men.

This Reuters Health, July 2008 is proof that these men exist.

________________________________________________________________

Anal HPV common in hetero men
Last updated: Monday, July 21, 2008

Roughly one in four heterosexual men have anal human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and, in many cases, a cancer-causing type of the sexually transmitted wart virus is present, a study shows.

Certain strains of HPV, which can be transmitted from male to female partners, are responsible for most cases of cervical cancer. Although much is known about HPV infection in women, this is not the case in men.

Only two studies have reported anal HPV prevalence in heterosexual men," Alan Nyitray, from the Arizona Cancer Center in Tucson, who led the current study, told Reuters Health. "The first study from Amsterdam recruited men in an STD clinic. The second from Sao Paulo recruited men who were husbands of women with confirmed cervical HPV infection. Our study is different in that we primarily recruited men from two universities, in addition to the general community."

In their study of 222 men, the researchers found that the prevalence of HPV in the anal canal was 16.6 percent. The prevalence of HPV around the anus (the "perianal" region) was 21.3 percent.

High anal cancer prevalence 'unexpected' in heterosexual men. Surprisingly, Nyitray noted, the prevalence of cancer in the anal canal is much higher than was reported in the Amsterdam and Sao Paulo studies, even though subjects in these studies were from seemingly high-risk groups. "This prevalence wouldn't be surprising for men who have sex with men, but for heterosexual men it was unexpected," Nyitray said.

Roughly one third of the men with anal HPV infection harbored a type that can cause cancer, the report indicates.

"There are a number of questions this study raises," Nyitray said. "For instance, how was HPV transmitted to the perianal region and anal canal of these men" and "how persistent are the infections," which are likely to affect the risk of anal cancer. – (Reuters Health, July 2008)

More MSM Finding Partners On Internet In Chicago, Contributing To Increase In Syphilis Cases, Report Finds

Every once in a while I think it is important to remind those reading this blog about the risk of HIV exposure and other STD's.

The following article talks about a report from Chicago in which men who have sex with men who meet from the Internet are experiencing a higher rater of STD's.

___________________________________________________________

In the MedicalNewsToday.com, a story appeared about an increasing number of men who have sex with men in Chicago are finding sex partners on the Internet, helping to fuel a rise is syphilis cases among the group, according to a report recently released by the Chicago Department of Health, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The number of syphilis cases in Chicago remained around 300 cases annually for about 10 years, and until 2001, most cases were recorded among heterosexuals. In 2007, 331 syphilis cases were reported in the city, 71% of them among MSM, the Tribune reports. According to the Tribune, one concern related to the increasing number of people diagnosed with syphilis is that they also are HIV-positive. Among heterosexuals diagnosed with syphilis at Chicago clinics four years ago, 6% were HIV-positive; however, last year, 15% were HIV-positive, the Tribune reports.

For the report, William Wong, medical director of the health department's division of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, conducted confidential interviews as part of the health department's routine disease-surveillance activities. Wong said that for the first time, more MSM said they met sex partners online than in places such as bars.

He added that 34% of men diagnosed with syphilis in 2007 at clinics run by the health department said they met their sex partners on the Internet, compared with 33% who said they met their partners at bars or clubs. "Prevention does work, and the reductions over the last 10 years among women and the heterosexual community are an important advance," Wong said, adding, "We are making progress.

But syphilis is still around, and there's still work to be done." Deborah Levine -- executive director of the Oakland, Calif.-based Internet Sexuality Information Services -- said that although the Internet is not the cause of the increase in syphilis cases among MSM, it increases the risk of disease transmission. "If you go to a bar in a night, there might be 200 or 300 people there," Levine said, adding, "You can go on multiple Web sites in a night and potentially meet thousands of people.

The speed and sheer numbers allow for more possibilities for passing around infections." Wong noted that although the Internet has created new challenges, it also offers opportunities for intervention.

The health department has added more information about syphilis to its Web site and started posting banner ads on other sites. It also has launched a new site, called "inSPOT," which is administered in partnership with ISIS.

The site allows men to send e-mails anonymously notifying their partners that they have been exposed to an STI (Shelton, Chicago Tribune, 7/14). Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org/.

You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy.

The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2008 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

SO YOU SAY YOU’RE STRAIGHT: The one in five hidden homosexual heterosexuals

A book proposal by the late Dr. Neil McConaghy was given to me by the author's daughter, Dr. Finola McConaghy, and placed on StraightGuise.com with permission. She was unable to publish this book and found Straightguise.com and asked if I would be willing to add it to the literature on the website which I accepted.

While at times dense and difficult to read as many academic books are, Dr. Neil McConaghy does a thorough job in researching SMSM's and presenting it in a scientific fashion.


SO YOU SAY YOU’RE STRAIGHT:
The one in five hidden homosexual heterosexuals

Introduction

Chapter 1. Who is homosexual? The false
homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy

Chapter 2. Sissiness, tomboyishness, effeminacy, butchness and
the homosexual heterosexuals

Chapter 3. Theories of causes of sexual orientation and the
homosexual heterosexuals

Chapter 4. Why homosexual heterosexuals conceal their
homosexual feelings: homophobia, biphobia and
sissyphobia.

Chapter 5. Psychological health and homosexuality. Is there a role
for treatment of homosexual feelings?

Contact Dr. Finola McConaghy at the address and phone below:

Dr. Finola McConaghy, Ph.D.
281 Cabbage Tree Rd.
Grose Vale NSW 2753
AUSTRALIA
Phone 0427 427 477
finola.mcconaghy@naturevet.com.au
All rights reserved.