There’s been a lot of talk in recent months about gay men who, try as they might, just aren’t into anal sex. Vlogger Bradley Birkholz is one of them.
“Like many young gay guys, when I first came out I wondered where I fit into the anal sex spectrum,” Birkholz says. “Butt sex seemed glamorous, easy and enticing.”
But after giving it a couple of tries, he says, he quickly learned otherwise.
Related: Let’s talk about ‘g0ys,’ gay men who are so opposed to anal sex that they’ve created a little club
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“Anal sex wasn’t as fun or simplistic as it had appeared on PornHub,” he says. “I learned it could be painful, awkward, and messy.”
For a while, Birkholz never knew what to say when people asked if he was a top or a bottom. In his heart, he wasn’t a top or a bottom. Nor was he versatile. He wasn’t anything.
After finding an online group for gay men who aren’t into anal sex, he learned he was hardly alone. Turns out there’s a whole subculture of gay men who aren’t into penetrative intercourse (a.k.a. “sides”).
Related: Don’t call me gay, I’m an androphile: The latest sexual subculture to add to your vocabulary
Suddenly, Birkholz says, all of the anxiety he had carried for years dissipated.
“I’m not shaming butthole sex. If you love it, great,” he concludes. “But my message is that you don’t need to feel pressured into conforming to the expectations of gay sex fed to us through porn and popularized media.”
“Come banish the butthole binary with me.”
Related: Queerty readers sound off on ‘g0ys,’ gay men who are so opposed to anal sex they can’t even
Watch Birkholz talk abut banish the butthole binary in the video below.
Stache
Naturally this comes from another twink youtube wanna be celebrity. Rolls eyes.
Heywood Jablowme
To be fair, it seems that millennial gay guys are so bombarded and overwhelmed by PORN and its unsubtle messages of “how to do sex” that they have trouble figuring out what they really want.
Back in the ’90s oral sex was the vast majority of gay male sex. Nobody spent much time overthinking it. But now oral is hardly even considered “sex” at all because it’s not what they see in porn. And they see bareback anal in porn so they think bareback is the only way to do it, when that’s hardly the case and it’s still dangerous.
It’s amusing that they think there are no tops or bottoms in oral sex but that’s because they think oral sex is not “sex.”
Bopper1
…why is this even a topic or an article?…if you don’t want something in yer butt, don’t put something in yer butt…see how simple that was?…
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Beacause Tops and Bottoms exist. And THIS is also a thing and deserves to be discussed too.
Creamsicle
The real problem is that so many of our expectations about sex come from porn now. Nobody ever said that being gay requires anal sex. Lots of things are sex: oral, trotting, mutual masturbation, etc.
Heywood Jablowme
Yes. Although examining that sort of stuff would require a lot of new labels (eek!) and you know how they hate labels. 🙂
Creamsicle
Whoops. I meant frotting. If trotting is a sex thing then I don’t know what it is.
radiooutmike
Yes, the overwhelming majority of people do consider anal sex as part of being gay; of course none of those people are actually gay. That’s why it is used as a pejorative against us.
Everyone should do what they want to do.
Brian
Trotting can definitely be a sex thing. For those who are into that sort of thing.
Noun
trots
plural of trot
(plural only, slang) Diarrhoea/diarrhea.
I’ve had the trots all morning and haven’t been able to go out.
VentiBlue
There’s no need to “get rid of it” but to just state that you don’t do anal, or as they did say I’m a “side”
Personally, I use top and bottom to communicate what I like to do during sex. Terms and language mean something
Knight
Yup…agreed.
Paco
If you don’t like it, then don’t do it. There is no need for a video trying to convince others not to like it too.
For me personally, I really see no point of doing anything else without penetrative sex. It is the only thing that counts as sex for me. I would completely give up sex if it were only going to be foreplay.
car
For what its worth: For decades I pondered the great mystery of anal sex—why did some have a vacuum for an anus? Why did (like myself) find it eternally painful (even in love!)? Many years ago, I and a now famous editor published an issue of a hay magazine, the sex issue and we asked this very question.
The answer was interesting. Consulting an authority on the matter, we learned that anal sex apparently has more to do with the position of the prostate in the anal cavity. If we tucked far up, it would be require a longer penis to engage, and the opposite would also be true. I also recall that The Advocate, when it was an authority, also published a sex poll, whihc indicated that it was anal sex was not as prevalent as porn and gossip woule leave us to believe.
Knight
Not every human is made to enjoy anal sex (or vaginal sex, FYI). that’s not a news-flash.
Brian
I”m like you. I’ve tried receiving several times over the years, and it’s never been anything but pure discomfort and pain. I know there is pleasure to it, somehow, or so many people wouldn’t do it, but for me, it’s never been an iota of pleasure, it only hurts like a MF.
I’m actually grateful though. I became sexually active in 1985, and not having a bunch of random guys sticking it in me got me through the AIDS crisis intact. It also made me quite sure that oral sex does not lead to HIV, or I would have gotten it for sure.
OzJosh
If there’s a problem around attitudes to gay sex these days, then a big part of it would have to be the proliferation of youtube videos and blogs proffering opinions and advice from immature, inexperienced twinks with no expertise and very little actual experience. Almost everything this boy-man says in his vlog is wrong. Since when has gay sex been all about anal sex, either in porn or public perception? Since when has anybody assumed that gay sex automatically means anal sex? Anyone who is even vaguely aware knows that huge numbers of gay men choose not to have penetrative sex at all, an the vast majority do not have penetrative sex exclusively. Moreover, the notion being promoted here – that NOT having penetrative sex somehow opens up possibilities – is demonstrably nonsensical. Not having penetrative sex simply takes those two possibilities (giving it and getting it) off the table. And whenever I hear guys giving advice warning that anal can be or is necessarily painful or messy, my first thought is “clearly you’re not doing it right”. It shouldn’t actually be either – and maybe what we need is more people with actual knowledge dispensing advice, encouraging guys to know their bodies and know how to use them, rather than tortured twinks who feel they’re doing the world a favour by parading their own prejudices as sage advice.
Knight
Agreed. But this goes deeper; while the jewish community can be very accepting of gays on the one hand, they absolutely abhor the concept of anal sex, which they see as “pagan” and traif (not kosher). This jewish twink is basically trying to impose his own self-shaming onto the rest of the community.
Knight
Oh, geeze…yet another attempt from some jew to shame the community away from anal sex because his rabbi told him he could still be a good boy and keep kosher as long as he sticks to oral. I can’t tell you how many guys like this I’ve come across in my life (Mormons too, FYI). Jews are just typically into oral to begin with, so if it makes them feel better and less shameful, then so be it. But don’t push that nonsense on the rest of us.
Some labels are there for a reason; to bring down the barriers and “own” one’s sexuality. As a total top who LOVES anal sex, I WANT any potential partner to understand my personal sexual preference coming into it in order to eliminate confusion or mislead expectations. On the same token, I’m hoping the other dude I’m going to potentially go bone-dancing with is as up-front as I am to ensure we are both going to enjoy it. Point being, I would say the exact opposite of what this author is saying; own your sexual “label”, be honest with yourself and your potential partners. It just makes everything much easier all around.
And as an aside; #bottomsrule #bottomappreciation #bottompride #keepemcoming 😛
Chevelter
It’s spelled jeez, not geeze. Goose doesn’t rhyme with juice.
Knight
Hmm…I’ll take your comment as an attempt to being helpful as opposed to trying to sound like a pompous ass. But no, you’re wrong…there are in effect MANY ways to spell the substitute expletive “geeze” (my personal preference). As it its origins are slang, there is no standard and you will find most variants in dictionaries http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/geeze
So, yet again, a non-native English speaker has to educate a native-English speaker in his own language…as is so often the case in life.
Brian
Again with the “total top” thing. Seriously, why do you work that into so many comments?
tham
So all the “tips” he learned from porn hasn’t really worked out in real life…and now he’s a “social activist”, telling people that the stuff you see in pornos aren’t as easy as they might seem.
So what does he think about Action films?
Knight
LOL!!!! Or “how to” films?
StupidBoy
I found this informative. I am very attracted to feminine top guys. Even guys that wear makeup, although I am not attracted to women. If they can stick something and cum up in him, he is more of a man than I ever will be. I have a beard, but identify as a bottom. I like wearing slacks and sweaters and dress shirts and ties, but I wouldn’t have a problem with a guy who wears makeup or fishnet stockings penetrating me. That doesn’t identify masculinity or feminity to me. I’ve never heard of “sides”. I will have to investigate it more. I find the incessant attraction to gym rats tiresome. I click through the slideshows on other websites with photo after photo of gym rats at the club with boredom. I hope his videos can help more guys explore more varieties to sexual satisfaction than only a buff, muscular man pounding a femme twinky bottom, because I don’t fit into that narrative.
Brian
Beard as in fake girlfriend, or beard as in facial hair? Either one seems odd to follow up with “but identify as a bottom”.
Bradley Birkholz
Grossly inappropriate to compare me with g0ys and androphiles. I’m a gay man, and I don’t condone or identify with either of these groups.
salex
On the ADVOCATE article, when was it published?
What I’m attempting to say, is sexual tastes change. What may have been accepted as “normal” sex years ago may not be, or may be, valid in our current culture. ex: HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT AN ILLNESS.”