Sen. Larry Craig to be on Matt Laur Primetime October 16, 2007

NBC confirms Matt Lauer will interview embattled Sen. Larry Craig Tuesday October 16, 2007. The interview will air in a Matt Lauer Reports primetime special. Excerpts will also run on the Today show Wednesday morning. Lauer will also interview the Senator's wife, Suzanne Craig, who will be speaking publicly for the first time about the incident and the events that followed.

While I don't believe he is innocent of his foot tapping and intent to have sex with another man, I also don't believe he is gay.

I have had hundreds of heterosexual male clients have sex with men and the only thing homosexual about it was the sexual act. Nothing more.

Research is starting to support that sexual acts can be distinct from romantic love. In other words, one can have sexual acts with another human being and it can be void of any romantic and affectional feelings.

Men have intuited this all along. Myself included, we men know that there can be sex for release, sex for love and sex for both. So then why is it such a stretch to believe that men having public sex in restrooms with other men are only doing it for sexual release and nothing more.

Researcher Lisa Diamond tackles the issue of sexual desire and romantic love. Diamond, a researcher and Associate Professor Psychology and Gender Studies Department of Psychology at the Univerisity of Utah wrote an article called, Emerging Perspectives on Distinctions Between Romantic Love and Sexual Desire in Current Directions in Psychological in 2004 stating:

Sexual desire typically denotes a need or drive to seek out sexual
objects or
to engage in sexual activities, whereas romantic love typically
denotes
the
powerful feelings of emotional infatuation and attachment
between
intimate
partners.

Okay so we kind of know this. But in her research she says:

Furthermore, extensive cross-cultural and historical research shows
that
individuals often develop feelings of romantic love for partners
of the
‘‘wrong’’ gender (i.e., heterosexuals fall in love with same gender
partners
and lesbian and gay individuals fall in love with
other-gender partners, as
reviewed in Diamond, 2003). Although
some modern observers have argued that
such relationships must
involve hidden or suppressed sexual desires, the
straightforward
written reports of the participants themselves are not
consistent with
such a blanket characterization. Rather, it seems that
individuals are
capable of developing intense, enduring, preoccupying
affections for
one another regardless of either partner’s sexual
attractiveness or
arousal.

What I find of most interest in that excerpt from her study is this:

Although some modern observers have argued that such relationships must involve hidden or suppressed sexual desires, the straightforward written reports of the participants themselves are not consistent with such a blanket characterization.

So this explains why it is possible for gays and lesbians to heterosexually marry and truly fall in love with their spouses. They are not manufacturing it they truly are romantically and affectionally attached to their spouses.

Diamond goes onto say in her article:

Why do the majority of human adults fall in love only with partners to whom
they
are sexually attracted? One reason is obviously cultural: Most
human
societies have strong and well-established norms regarding what
types
of feelings and behaviors are appropriate for different types of
adult
relationships, and they actively channel adults into the ‘‘right’’
types
of relationships through a variety of social practices.

I understand that Diamond's study is about romantic love more than sexual desire. But is it too far of a stretch that one can have sex with someone of the same gender and that is all it means--that they had sex with someone of the same gender?

Physical release. Physical touch with another man. The men who come to my office having engaged in these sexual practices with other men tell me they have no desire to be in a relationship with another man, wake up next to another man, or fantasize about anything about another man. When they do the sexual behavior it is impulsive, erotic and a release.

Are there closeted men in those restrooms? Yes. Are they gay men there? Yes. Are there sexually addicted gay and straight men in there. Yes. So why can't we consider that straight men are in there with their own set of issues themselves without it having anything to do with homosexuality or bisexuality.

Isn't that what we are doing to men like Craig? Trying to push him and men like him into cultural boxes so we can all rest easy and match him with what he does sexually to identify him.

We don't know him. But, shouldn't he be the judge?

Diamond, L. M. (2004). Emerging perspectives on distinctions between romantic love and sexual desire. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 116-119.

Mother-son Incest

I discovered today that at MaleSurvor.org there were postings about the lack of resources on mother-son incest. There is such a taboo that mothers can--and do--sexually abuse their sons. But they can--and they do! However there are few to no books about the subject.

I want to start talking on this blog about mother-son incest because it does exist and contributes to straight and gay sexual acting out.

Some of the sexual abuse by mothers causes men to seek out sex with other men feeling that men are safer than women. Again, this is not about homosexuality it is about sexually acting out trauma. And there are a number of reasons for this that I will discuss here on Straight Guise.

One of the reasons mothers sexually abuse their sons is misandry.

The following is an excerpt from my book, 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find Real Love in chapter five on gay men and their relationships with their mothers. I have edited it to speak to any male who has issues with his mother.

In this society, it is taboo to speak ill of our mothers, so we either keep
silent or get judged negatively for doing so. By going against his mother, a
man
gets punished and called a misogynist. Perhaps, owing to the horrors of
sexism,
the culture has become too focused in one direction, looking only at
what men
have done to women. It may be time, however, to examine what women
do to
men—especially mothers raising the boys who ultimately grow up to hate
women.
Somewhere our mothers play a part in engendering this negativity.
When
someone disparages his mother, why is our wondering whether she is
at fault met
with disapproval? We allow sons and daughters alike to
criticize their fathers,
and our discomfort over their negative talk is
considerably less than the public
outcry when the topic switches to Mommy
Dearest.
Society reveres anything
associated with “mother”—Mother Earth,
Mother Nature, and the celibate,
childless Mother Teresa. Especially in the
mental health field, when we examine
a child’s early infancy, we focus on
the mother, talking about the time and
attention she devotes to nurturing
her baby. During the child’s first year of
life, the father is rarely the
primary caregiver. I am sure this will change as
more fathers, particularly
gay men, join in the care and rearing of their
children. But until then,
talk about child-rearing usually focuses on the
mother.
Herein lies the
source of the social mantra “Love your mother.” No
one wants to believe that
a mother could not love her children. No one wants to
hear about how a
mother can lack maternal instinct. Those who speak out about
their mothers
abusing them or being indifferent maternally to any extent will
often not be
believed and find themselves accused of betraying their
mothers.
Mother
attachment runs so deep that in Necessary Losses, Judith
Viorst writes, “A
young boy lies in a hospital bed. He is frightened and in
pain. Burns cover
40 percent of his small body. Someone has doused him with
alcohol and then,
unimaginably, has set him on fire. He cries for his mother.
His mother has
set him on fire.”
Viorst goes on to describe the difficulty of separating
from one’s mother: “. . . it doesn’t matter what kind of mother a child has
lost
or how perilous it may be to dwell in her presence. It doesn’t mater
whether she
hurts or hugs. Separation from mother is worse than being in her
arms when the
bombs are exploding. Separation from mother is sometimes worse
than being with
her when she is the bomb.”
You can love your mother, not
want to hurt her,
and at the same time tell her how you feel about her even
when it is not all
good. Often, it’s the father who leaves the children and
the mother who
sacrifices her life for them, so it makes sense that she’s
protected and often
given a pass when she behaves badly. Our society even
protects mothers who have
mistreated or killed their own children; usually,
a group joins to create a fund
to help these mothers. Rarely is the same
done for fathers who mistreat their
children. But this makes sense, since
mothers are often there for her children
and the bond between them is very
tight.

More about mothers who sexually abuse their sons and how this manifests later.

There exists one book on this topic of mother-son incest called The Broken Taboo by Hani G. Miletski (Author)

Fear, Risk & Danger

This week on the cover of the New Yorker. This ritual which has been going on for more than 40 years suddenly makes news just because of Larry Craig? My hope would be that those who write and talk about this in the media will stick to the facts about why and what really goes on those bathrooms rather than sensationalizing it and making a mockery out of it.

As Joseph Campbell once said;

Boys everywhere have a need for rituals, marking their passage to manhood. If society does not provide them, they will inevitably invent their own.

If we don't start acknowledging and making room for straight men having sex with other men this behavior will only continue in underground, dark and secretive places shaming the men who do it causing them to do it even more.

FEAR, RISK and DANGER

These are the crucial elements that cause these men to act out sexually with other men in public places. They are also what cause new lovers and couples who fight and make up to have hot, bonding and exciting sex. The fear, risk and danger of losing someone and being abandoned during the vulnerable time of attaching to new love or in conflict with your partner who you do not want to lose activates natural drugs within your body chemistry.

Natural chemicals such as dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline give sex its "high." Sexual behavior causes chemical changes in the brain, which promote a mood-altering and mind-altering experience.

Then there's a natural drug in our bodies called phenylethylamine or PEA for short. This drug is released when we fall in love each time. Like any drug, it's first release is its most potent which is why most people will say they "never got over their first love". They remember the chemical high that bonds attaches you to a partner.

PEA is an essential chemical for those who are addicted to inherently risky behaviors like gambling, shoplifting, bungee jumping, and sex. PEA's molecular structure parallels amphetamine, and is strongest when first released. This also explains why so many people with addictions say they're always seeking the feeling they had during their first high, and want to re-experience it over and over.

Great books to read about these chemicals to explain why men like Larry Craig would engage in public sex are

and

Misandry: The hatred of men as a sex

I’m sorry mama! I never meant to hurt you! I never meant to make you cry but tonight I’m cleaning out my closet.
—lyrics to Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet (I’m Sorry, Mama)”

Eminem went where no son has publicly gone before—or is allowed to go—in attacking his mother. In this society, it is taboo to speak ill of our mothers, so we either keep silent or get judged negatively for doing it. It is as though we are not allowed to talk about the bad only the good. By going against his mother, a man gets punished and called a misogynist who hates women.

Countless articles and interviews analyzed Eminem’s lyrics to “Cleaning out my Closet,” focusing on how his anger at his mother has become generalized to hate for all women. But what about his mother in real life? What kind of woman was she toward her children and her son?

A misandrist (which my word processor cannot even find in its Spell Checker) is the respectable feminist equivalent for the word misogynist, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Even in Webster’s little to nothing can be found on misandry, the hatred of men! Misogyny was a known word in Latin and Greek and according to the OED, was first used in English in 1656. Misandry was first used in 1946, three hundred years later. And to top it all, the word is a compound, combining the Greek words miso meaning “to hate” with andros, for man. Some books—Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, for one—use it in their titles, as do some articles. But little is out there that explains the concept fully.

Both misogyny and misandry are gender-neutral: Misogynists and misandrists can be either men or women. In general, however, usually women hate men and men hate women. Perhaps because of the horrors of sexism, our culture had to go very far in one direction and only look at what men have done to women. However, I think it’s time to examine what women do to men— especially mothers raising the boys who ultimately grow up to hate women. Somewhere they play a part in engendering this negativity.

In addition to criticizing Eminem for expressing his anger at his mother and trying to pathologize it, why not analyze his mother’s possible misandry? When someone disparages his mother, why don’t we wonder if she is somehow at fault as well? We allow sons and daughters alike to criticize their fathers, and our discomfort over their negative talk is much less than the public outcry when the topic switches to “Mommy Dearest.”

Society reveres anything associated with “mother,” as in Mother Earth, Mother Nature, and the celibate, childless Mother Theresa. Especially in the mental health field, when we examine a child’s early infancy, we focus on the mother, talking about the time and attention she devotes to nurturing her baby. During the child’s first year of life, the father is rarely the primary caregiver. I am sure this will change as more fathers, particularly gay men, join the care and rearing of their children. But until then, talk about child rearing usually focuses on the mother, primarily because the default is the mother, just as people often assume that everyone is heterosexual.

So therein lies society’s social mantra of “Love your mother,” because no one wants to believe that a mother could not love her children. No one wants to hear about how a mother can lack maternal instinct. Those who speak out about their mothers abusing them or being indifferent maternally to any extent will often not be believed and find themselves accused of betraying their mothers.

What happens to males raised by these women? And how can it affect their sex lives?

The Case of Shawn

Shawn was a 37-year-old male married with two children. He loved his wife deeply having been high school sweethearts. She was the first female he met who treated him kindly and affectionately. He came to therapy with me due to troubling compulsive sexual fantasies which had now become sexual behaviors involving finding couples through the internet with whom he could be sexual with the wives with the husbands watching being humiliated by being dressed as a woman and called names by both himself and the wife. At the end of the sex act his ultimate sexual desire would be to orgasm onto the man's face (a term known as Bukkake)--the ultimate humiliation to the man with both of he and the wife laughing at him.

Shawn was troubled by so much about this fantasy turned into reality. First, was he gay or bisexual if he wanted men to be involved and wanted to be watched by the man? What kind of a guy was he to cheat on his wife? He did not want her to discover this as he knew she would leave him immediately and he did not want that. He wanted to stop his sexual acting out.

I work with clients around the details of their sexual fantasies--as much as they are willing and comfortable in telling. Each detail is a lead to their pasts leading up to the formation of their sexual desires. In the details are embedded the answers as to where the therapeutic work is to be done.

I asked Shawn what he meant by his wife being the "first female to be kind to him". Shawn told me his mother was always putting down his father, making him sleep on the couch many nights and talking about him in critical ways. His sister was treated like a queen and was complimented, supported and given special treatment by their mother while Shawn was neglected and ignored by both his mother and his father. His father was gone quite a bit and Shawn believed this was his way of avoiding his mother who was so mean to him.

Shawn's mother talked poorly about males who were not "macho" and athletic. His father was a computer tech and Shawn described him as a "soft" male. Shawn himself could have been more athletic had he been encouraged but his parents did not do so. His mother laughed at males she thought to be "fags" and accused his father multiple times of being homosexual.
It all made sense to me now as to why Shawn would have this fantasy and eventually act on it. The healing was connected to his childhood. In his sexual acts, he "wins" over the mother (the wife of the couple) aligning with the powerful and male-hating mother figure. The alignment is in humiliating the husband forcing him to dress like a female as females were the "superior" gender in his family and being male was inferior. In the fantasy, Shawn gets to the be the "man" his mother wanted, he wins her over and is in the power position over the husband rather than being in the same category as the father, which Shawn always felt he was growing up.

This clicked with Shawn immediately. He immediately connected the dots and his therapy work was not about confronting his feelings of anger and resentment toward his mother who he realized now was a misandrist. He remembered more details of how her hate for men manifested and recognized it was most likely because of her alcoholic patriarchal father.

But what about what he was doing to his wife? He did not want to hurt her by all this cheating. Together we discovered that to gain a sense of masculinity and triumph over his pain he had to do it in secret and hiding. This was not about his wife. He would most likely have acted on this with any women he was involved with.

Over the next year his compulsive behavior to act on his fantasy fell away. The fantasy and images he would find on the internet of this type of humiliation remained but he no longer felt any compulsion to act on them.

Oscar De La Hoya Photo Scandal

Why are we so fascinated by the sex lives of others? Especially
when they deviate from the norm of what we see in the media?

Straight Guise has taken on one part of the fascination in terms of straight men who have sex with men and there are so many more--men and women-with complicated sexual fantasies and desires?

Maybe because we are fascinated at all the twists and turns sexuality can take. Voyeurs at heart, people want to know what is happening behind closed bedroom doors.

But I think it is more than that. It is that all of us have sexual
interests and desires and we think ours might be odd or abnormal. We don't
really know it isn't talked about. Even if you don't have fetishes or kinky
desires, no one really knows what is okay and what is not okay. What are others
doing? Does it work? Do they like it? Can they face themselves--or worse their
partners--the next day.

Now we have a new sex scandal--Oscar De La Hoya. I never heard of him until all of this. A
handsome man who might have a kinky sexual fetish. So what? I feel so much for
him that I won't link or post to any of the sites that show him posing as
"Goldie" for the camera. That is so disrespectful and mean. So what if this is
his fetish? Why does this make news? And since it is making news then lets at
least talk about it respectfully!

By Tim MorganSep 26, 2007

Oscar De La Hoya
still maintains that the ever increasing
batch of
photos
that show a man
identified as the boxer in a variety of
poses
and
cross-dressing like
outfits are not him. But the scandal seems to
grow each
day and more
pictures are released with women included and
the
whole sordid
mess is
growing. On Thursday a tape of a phone call
was played on the nightly entertainment
show Entertainment Tonight. The call
mentioned an amount of $70,000 for the
photos. And the Los Angeles paparazzi
agency that continues to post new
photos everyday has
now released this.

How can humiliation produced on being forced to put on women's clothes by hostile women cause sexual excitement? The late psychologist and author Robert Stoller wrote so much on the topic of males enjoying being treated like females--called Transvestism. Transvestism is usually a heterosexual male who enjoys wearing women's clothing and pretending to be a woman. Stoller talked about a client he worked with who enjoyed being forced to wear women's clothing. Stoller identified some reasons and I have added some of my own here: In the meantime, my heart goes out to Oscar De La Hoya and hope he stays strong during this time of attempted humiliaton of him.

1. He knows it is only a fantasy.
2. The excitement is accompanied by a guilt-removing devise inherent on the story: since the pathetic man is being forced to dress by the cruel woman, he cannot be accused of wanting to do this himself.
3. He gets to be something he cannot be in non-erotic life--softer and more gentle like a woman.
4. The excitement if often related to the fact and awareness that he is really a male being dressed as female. There is no excitement if they actually turn him into a woman. The arousal is the humiliation of being male treated and turned into a female while still being a male.

My belief as to why men have these type of transvestite fantasies is due to misandry--the hatred of men. I will talk more about this in future blogs.

Gay, straight, bi, MSM all valid terms, researchers say

Today in the Washington Blade :

Craig scandal brings issue of sexual identity to light
Gay, straight, bi, MSM all valid terms, researchers say

ELIZABETH PERRY Friday, September 21, 2007

Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-Idaho) arrest last June for allegedly soliciting sex from another man in an airport restroom and his insistence that he is straight has reawakened the debate over sexual behavior, identity and orientation.“I am not gay. I have never been gay,” Craig said at an oft-quoted Aug. 28 news conference. “I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis Airport.”

Kort, a gay therapist who specializes in gay affirmative therapy, said it is possible that Craig might well be homosexual in terms of orientation, but not identity. He said being “gay” is an identity, while being “homosexual” is an orientation.

“I treat many men who are homosexual and do not wish to be gay,” Kort said. “They cannot and do not change their orientation, however. For these men, and Larry Craig may be one of them, being gay is the furthest from how they see themselves. He may be a straight man who enjoys occasional sex with men or he might be a homosexual or bisexual man, but would never identify this way because it is an affirmative identity that does not fit for him.”

That view is controversial among many gays who reject the notion that “gay” is an identity. Some scientists and researchers in fields ranging from psychology, AIDS research, blood donation and more, use the term “men who have sex with men,” or MSM, for their purposes. It’s useful to them because it removes the stigma associated with terms like gay or bi and while questions of the latter terms raise a bounty of identity issues, MSM is more concrete and quantifiable.

20/20 to Feature Love Won Out Conference

Tonight on the television show 20/20 they are doing a story on an organization called, “Love Won Out” which is an anti-gay activist group which proposes that gays can convert to straight.

Focus on the Family's Love Won Out
conference will be featured during a segment of ABC's
20/20 scheduled to air Friday. The show, called "The Toughest Call," is
to air from 9 to 11 p.m. EST. "It's about people who have to make tough
choices in their lives," said Allison Lynn, a 20/20 producer.

Focus on the Family's Love Won Out ministry exhorts and equips the church
to respond in a Christ-like way to the issue of homosexuality. And to those who
struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions, the event offers the Gospel hope
that the desires can be overcome. "Many of the speakers at our conferences
had to make a very difficult choice," said Mónica Martí, Love Won Out media
manager. "They had to choose to live their lives by God's standard for
sexuality, instead of bowing down to their own feelings or what popular culture
said was unavoidable. The courage and transparency they exhibit during their
sessions resonates with men and women struggling with the same decision
today." ABC News Correspondent JuJu Chang visited the conference in Omaha,
Neb., held in April.

As you know if you are a regular blog reader of Straight Guise, I am vehement that if anyone is helped by these organizations and actually "converted" from gay to straight they were not gay to begin with! They were one of the straight guise I identified in the beginning of this blog.

THE CASE OF TED:

Last night I met with a client (Ted), of whom I have had hundreds like him, who was acting out homosexually from sexual abuse as a child and is in full recovery–not of homosexuality but of trauma and abuse.

Ted found guys through the Internet that he could get to worship his muscular athletic body and fellate him. They would even kiss.

While Focus on the Family and Love Won Out would say, “This guy is gay or at least bisexual”–he is neither.We uncovered he was reenacting his childhood trauma and abuse.

As an adolescent an older man told Ted he had a great build for his age–which he did. The abuse went on for several years.

This client is looking for intimacy with men–which our society leaves little to no room for among men.

And Ted is not gay. He is aroused by women, desires women, has sex with women and compulsively sexually acts out with men. He does not desire men, he sexually acts out with them for physical release and other psychological issues--none of which have to do with a homosexual identity.

Focus on the Family and Narth would take these straight men, label them as “homosexuals” struggling with “same sex attraction” and when they heal identity them as ex-gay.
It is not gay. I wish they would leave “gay” and “homosexual” out of their entire discussion.

They believe all homosexuality is about pathological origins and slant good information about heterosexual men and women who have issues with homosexual behavior and label them gay and lesbian.

The other part--perhaps more offensive and hateful--is that there are gay men and women who are riddled with self-hate who look to these organizations as hope that they can change and rid themselves of being homosexual. This is called, "sexual anorexia".

Sexual orientation cannot change–ever!