The Back Door and Sexual Orientation

If you can't tell from the title, his entry is going to deal with some very "adult" topics.

So my favorite female talk show host I frequently write about on this blog, whose show and books and website and Facebook page I think are generally great, took a call in her third hour on Monday's show from a wife concerned because her husband of seven years wants her to use a "strap-on" on him.

Both the caller and the host went right to "He might be gay," with the host advising that the caller go through his computer with him to see what's on there.

I think a little more nuanced approach was in order.



There's more than one reason a man might want his wife to use such an item, some "more gay" than the others.

Prostate stimulation can feel good, whether a man is heterosexual or not. So I would have liked the wife to ask her husband why he wanted this. Was it more about the phallic symbol and his wife being adorned with it? Personally, I find the idea of my wife or any other woman wearing such a device to be a complete turn-off. I don't want my wife to use one on me, or to wear one at all, and I've never wanted to see any woman wearing such a device, let alone using it. However, it is one way to stimulate a prostate.

That means there are others,  and maybe the caller's husband would have been happy with the other ways, one of which would be her using her finger. Maybe he was trying to spare her of that, because maybe the idea of her putting her finger there, no matter how clean he just got in the shower, is even more of a turn off to her than a strap-on. Still, that leaves hand-held toys, which I suppose might be considered the "best" of both worlds, unless it really is about him wanting to masculinize his wife.

There are various things a wife can do to her husband's back door. Some guys have no interest in that whatsoever, but just about every "sex expert" out there will tell you that it does not mean a man is gay if he want his wife (a woman, after all) to do those things. Again, though, I think questioning his heterosexuality would be in order if it was mostly about masculinizing his wife, and not his physical sensations.

I want to throw in here a flip side to this - that there are people who swear all day that not all homosexual men engage in back door activities. I'm not sure I believe it, but it would add to the idea that wanting back door play and being a homosexual are not the same thing.

None of this is to say that any of those back door activities are actually good things to do. I've heard conflicting arguments about how unhealthy those things can be. As far as the moral issues aside from health issues, the main "it's wrong" point seems to be that saying it is OK for a husband and wife to do makes it OK for two men to do, which seems to be poor reasoning to me. I mean, we don't say it is OK for two men to French kiss because a husband and wife French kiss. I personally think an argument can be made that it is wrong for two men to do because it is a kind of sexual or sex-like bonding that should be reserved only for a husband and wife. (And I want to be clear I strongly support the freedom of association so that if men want to do these things with each other in the privacy of their own home, I would never support a law that would try to prevent them, even though I have a moral problem with such behavior.)

Bottom line (no pun intended): What makes a man homosexual is voluntarily engaging in sex-like behaviors with another man or WANTING to, not anything he does to himself or wants his wife to do to/with him.

I do have to wonder what the reaction would be if a man who's been in a homosexual relationship for seven years (or much longer) ever called the show and said either of the following: 1) he found pictures of nude women on his partner's smart phone; 2) his partner has asked him to wear a stuffed bra in the bedroom. Would we hear "So, you found out he's straight."? I doubt it. Why? Because they'd spent all those years engaging in homosexual behavior, and that's not erased by a few quirks. Why isn't the reverse true as well?