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Thoughts on Sodomy

By: Cal Y. Pygia



To be fucked in the ass, whether willingly or otherwise, and whether one is female or not, is associated, for many, with not only submission, but also with humiliation and degradation. The rectum, the anus, and even the buttocks are associated with the elimination of feces, or bodily wastes. From early ages, we are taught that defecating is at best a private, and at worst, a shameful act. It is something that is done alone, in private. After one is no longer a toddler, even being assisted by having someone wipe one's ass is considered humiliating in the extreme by most people.

Everyday language likewise reflects the discomfort that society experiences concerning the buttocks, the anus, and the rectum. "Up yours!" is not considered a friendly suggestion. "Kissing ass" is regarded as contemptuous; only a "brown-noser" (that is, someone who would sully his or her nose with feces), or a sycophant or a toady, would stoop (figuratively, if not literally) to do such a thing as a means of currying favor with a superior. As a matter of fact, men and women who were charged with practicing witchcraft during the Middle Ages were said to show their inferiority and loyalty to Satan by kissing his anus. "Asshole," of course, is not a term of endearment, nor, for that matter, is "ass."

The submissive, shameful, and degrading character--or, in any case, characterization--of anal intercourse, or "sodomy," as it was once called (as were fellatio and bestiality) was once sufficient to cause not only social ostracism, but also execution, which is why homosexuals are sometimes called "faggots," since bundles of sticks, or faggots, were used as kindling wood to start the fires with which sodomites were burned, in public, at the stake. Being a faggot was a pain in the ass, it seems, even in the Middle Ages.

In ancient Greece and ancient Rome, which were, overall, fairly accepting of homosexuality, the passive, or receptive, partner, whether in oral or anal sex, was regarded as a contemptuous individual, especially if he were past his teenage years. As in modern Mexico, among other places, fucking another man is macho, but being fucked by another man is shameful. The reasoning seems to be that, by definition, a woman is someone who is fucked, just as a man is someone who fucks, regardless of whether the "fucking" itself is by way of the anus, the oral cavity (that is, irrumation), the vagina, or, for that matter, manual means (that is, masturbation). (Today, it has become fairly common for women to say that they have "fucked" a man, although such usage is very recent and does not reflect the way in which fucker, fucked, and fucking has been understood historically.)

It's okay for women to suck cock or to be fucked, even in the ass, for that's who women are--the fucked--and that's what they do--get fucked. However, a man who sucks another man's prick or who takes another man's dick up his ass (or even masturbates another man's cock) performs a role that is against the natural order; by acting as a woman, he assumes the female role and thus becomes effeminate, or womanly. That's why, in prisons and elsewhere, such men are called "bitches," "sluts," and "whores" as well as "punks."

A man who sucks another man's prick or takes another man's dick up his ass is less than a man; he has "unmanned" himself; he has symbolically castrated himself; he has become, as it were, a woman. In prison, a man must be willing to die to protect his manhood--that is, to avoid being raped by his fellow inmates. If he isn't willing to die to preserve his anal virginity, he will become some other man's "bitch." He may even be hired by other men, for a pack of cigarettes, payable to the punk's husband, boyfriend, master, or owner.

If homosexual anal intercourse (and, for that matter, fellatio) is such a vile, disgusting, shameful, and degrading act, why is it that some men (and women), myself included, enjoy watching it, even if we wouldn't engage in it ourselves, as either the fucked or the fucker?

First, it is both aesthetic and highly erotic. Watching a thick, hard, smooth cock lunge and plunge within an impaled anus, between sleek, firm cheeks, vanishing and reappearing, as balls swing and collide against buttocks or perineum, the men gasping, grunting, moaning, groaning, and sweating--well, it's enough to make anyone, gay, straight, male, female, or shemale, hard or wet.

More fundamentally, however, anal intercourse, especially between two men, shows that sex need not be strictly reproductive in its purpose; it can be simply a means for giving and taking pleasure. If procreation isn't regarded as the end of sex, then sex can be meaningful, whether it occurs between a man and a woman, two men, two women, a man and a shemale, a woman and a shemale, two shemales, a group of men of the same sex, of the opposite sex, or of the third sex.

A third reason that anal intercourse, especially between men, is sexy is because of the negative publicity it has received since ancient days. Among Jews and Christians, homosexual (and, indeed, heterosexual) anal intercourse, or "sodomy," has been, and, to a large extent, still is, considered unnatural and sinful; in the Bible, it is a called an "abomination." Men, it seems, are at least as ready, willing, and able to defy divine imperatives as were Adam and Eve. Forbidden fruit remains a powerful aphrodisiac, and shame, humiliation, and degradation are parts of the appeal of the forbidden.

According to communication experts, women are democratic. They believe in equality and fairness. They want everyone to participate, and they make their decisions on the basis of group consensus. On the other hand, men are hierarchical in their relationships, interaction, and communication.; For them, there must be a pecking order, with one man, the alpha male, in charge, and all others subordinate and, if need be, submissive. Anal intercourse, among males, is an expression of dominance and submission, in which the alpha male demonstrates his dominance by fucking the beta male in the ass, thereby empowering himself while he proves his superiority by subjecting the other, lesser man to an action that, for the lesser man, is shameful, degrading, and humiliating. To elevate himself, the dominant man debases the submissive man.

Pointing to the accomplishments of art, science, technology, and culture in general, human beings like to think of themselves as exalted beings, as creatures who are made in the image and likeness of God, their Creator, and as occupying a station, therefore, a little lower than that of the angels. We are the crown of creation--or so we like to tell ourselves. However, there is another side to human nature, a darker, more primitive dimension, wherein animal instincts, although repressed, reside, as wild beasts in a deep jungle--instincts, desires, and urges which are more chemical and biological even than they are emotional and are far, far removed from anything even remotely rational.

Among women, with their nesting instinct and their maternal instinct, perhaps these impulses are amenable to a participatory and democratic social structure of equals. Among men, whose instincts are more predatory, life is more about the hunt, about the kill, and, among themselves, there must be a hierarchy of leader and followers, of dominance and submission. This instinctive need to dominate or to submit, to conquer (if not to kill) or to be conquered (if not killed) manifests itself in one man's sucking of the other's cock or in his taking the other's prick up his ass. Both fellatio and anal intercourse frequently emphasize domination and submission even in the kneeling positions that are often adopted by the impaled, the presenting of the buttocks to be penetrated, or the nursing upon the erect penis, as if it were a breast that offers nurture and sustenance, thereby highlighting the recipient's dependency as well as his submissiveness.

No one has yet fully or even satisfactorily "explained" homosexuality, but it seems to me that, during all-male activities (hunting, among our ancient forebears, for example) or environments (prisons, for instance), homosexuality develops as a non-lethal means of asserting or relinquishing one's manhood. Instead of killing his rival, the dominant man unmans him; instead of penetrating his vitals with a sword, the dominant man penetrates his rival's anus with his own erect penis. Instead of being killed, the lesser rival submits, accepting the cock in his mouth or up his ass as proof of his subordinate status, in a manner similar to the that in which a lesser dog licks the anus and the genitals of the alpha male or exposes his belly to the leader of the pack. The ejaculation of semen, whether inside the rectum or onto the buttocks and anus, is the final proof of the dominance of the alpha male and of the beta male's submissiveness, a brand, as it were, by which the dominant man establishes and displays his ownership of the symbolically disemboweled, submissive male.

To watch two men fucking--or, to be more precise--to watch one man fucking another man, is to see, in its most basic form, the dynamics of dominance and submission which underlies the hierarchical social structure of the patriarchy in which, for better or worse, we live, even today. As for other men, I know not what course of action they may take, but, as for me, give me anal intercourse between men instead of death!