This video, as it is from XTube, is obviously NSFW. But it's pretty friggen hot.
So, some of you may have read a thread over on BellyBuilders, and then a subsequent post on SFBayDude’s blog about gainers and encouragers and anal sex.
The thread had an accompanying poll asking how people viewed anal sex in terms of their own sexuality. Some of the people on the thread, including SFBayDude (the originator of the discussion, and someone I would consider a friend) drew the conclusion that the majority of gainers and encouragers didn’t feel like anal sex was important to them.
This really riled me, and similarly riled a couple of my pals that I was discussing it with.
Although I have the utmost respect for SFBayDude, and everyone who tried to add constructively to the thread on BellyBuilders, I feel that the conclusions drawn from the the poll and SFBayDude’s subsequent blogpost are both flawed and misleading.
The issue with all of the discussion starts on a flawed premise -the idea that the poll in the message board was either representative of the Gainer/Encourager community or correctly interpreted by the people responding. I don’t believe either of those assertions to be true.
First, the obvious limitations of a poll on the BellyBuilders message board are many and varied (even though they’re pretty unavoidable). The poll only had a relatively small sample size (as of the time of me writing this, 264 people has responded). As of my writing this, over 40,000 thousand accounts have been registered on BeefyFrat. This small sample is compounded by the bias that having it on the BellyBuilders message board exclusively creates. Without trying to put down BellyBuilders, I know plenty of people that simply avoid the BellyBuilders message board completely because they feel like it’s dominated by a handful of unpleasant people (a point highlighted by the unrelated and obnoxious rants that derailed the thoughtful discussion on the thread). Therefore, there might simply be a link between the subtype of gainers/encouragers who frequent BellyBuilders and the results, and not gainers and encouragers on the whole. The fact that you had to be signed up for an account with BellyBuilders to respond to the poll further intensifies this factor.
My biggest issue is with the wording of the poll. Although it’s obvious that SFBayDude put intelligent thought into designing his poll, there are some pretty big issues with the wording.
First, it left a big swath of confusing middle ground data that people then lumped into the anti anal sex category. The middle ground option is as follows:
“I'M INDIFFERENT: Sometimes I like it, sometimes not”
Now, even for people I know who really enjoy anal sex, basically anyone can resonate with the phrase “Sometimes I like it, sometimes not.” I personally really enjoy anal sex under the right circumstances, but have zero desire to engage in it unless it’s within the realm of my own limits. Although I see anal sex as an important part of an intimate relationship, and central part of a fulfilling sex life, under many circumstances, I would really not want to do it.
The second most anal sex positive option of the poll is:
“I LOVE IT: It's usually what gets me off”
The second most anal sex negative option of the poll is:
“I DISLIKE IT: I might do it for the right guy, but it's not my thing at all”
I feel these options confuse the variable of enjoying anal sex under the right circumstances with the idea of only liking anal sex if you want to have it all the time and never do anything else. They’re two very different things. Just cause you only would do it with “the right guy” doesn’t mean that it’s not your thing at all. It might likely mean that you think that anal sex is a personal, intimate practice that you want to share with someone you care about.
I commend SFBayDude for his attempt to not only examine the frequency, but also the feelings of gay men engaging in anal sex. I am very thankful for all of his efforts to better understand the sex lives of gainers and encouragers, but I don’t think saying things such as “almost 2/3 of all gainers are at best apathetic about, if not outright turned off by, anal sex” is helpful. While it was a nice first step into investigating the sex lives of gainers and encouragers, I don’t think we have enough data at all to make such sweeping generalizations. They’ll just serve to further divide an already relatively small group.
One could liken the attempt to prescribe a set of “normal” sexual wants onto gainers & encouragers as analogous to the hypocritical attempts of the gay community to define that “twinks” were what it was “normal” for a gay may to be attracted to... And we all know how well that worked out. lol
I know I sound like an enormous nerd typing all of this, and I know that I’m prolly taking all of this way too seriously but, it’s something I feel passionate about and this is my blog so ha! haha
Where SFBayDude and I do agree on is that you should have whatever kind of sex you want. No one can tell you what’s right for you, and no one should. It’s your life, it’s your body, and if you’re reading this blog, you’re already too in touch with your deepest, most inborn desires to not be having the kind of exactly the kind of sex you want to have.
Thanks for bearing with me and my rant. Gainers, Encouragers and Sex are all topics very close to my heart, and I obviously have strong feelings about this topic.
Coming Soon; Gainers & Encouragers & Sex Part II:The Fun Stuff - Tips & Tricks
9 comments:
Well said; I totally agree.
Thanks for posting this. It's good to see someone state it so openly.
To clarify, I agree that the poll and the sample were flawed (and admitted so in my post), however my position was based on multiple points of reference, including my own personal experience dating both gainers and non-gainers, the experiences of my good friends, chats and panel discussions at numerous gainer events and observation of different chat habits of gainers and non-gainers. That's not to say I'm necessarily right, but my point was based on more than a poll.
I also in no way concluded that any one kind of sexual preference is "normal" for our kind. My conclusion was that gainers/encouragers who like and dislike anal sex are both in good company.
I'd be interested to hear what your perspective is, as opposed to what it isn't. Next time, think about writing an original idea. Explain it. Defend it. It's easy to tear down others' ideas. It's a bit harder to propose your own. Give it a shot sometime.
Isn't his original idea that your assertion that "almost 2/3 of all gainers are at best apathetic about, if not outright turned off by, anal sex" is wrong? That comment also strikes me as just a little bit like asserting that one type of sexual preference is "normal" for our kind.
Just because it's a critique doesn't mean it's not an original thought.
Kudos to you both for intelligently broaching this topic. It's interesting to read about both perspectives.
I think you're too quick to dismiss the poll results. 277 responses out of a population of 40,000 isn't that bad - it's almost the same margin of error as a political poll you might see on CNN.
The pool of responses is a bigger problem. I think that messageboard attracts a higher proportion of goons and idiots, but why do we assume that goons and idiots are more or less likely to be anal sex averse than the general gainer population? I'd imagine a lot of what we know about homosexuality has a base in surveys of men living in New York and San Francisco 50 years ago... they missed all the lurkers and closet cases, too, but got enough information to take a stab at finding some greater truths.
And then, the results. Whatever you make of the answer wording, 25% DISLIKE/HATE anal sex. Not much ambiguity there. I haven't found a survey that asks this question of gays in general, but 25% seems high. If we knock off 10% because somehow it turns out people who don't like anal sex are more active messageboard posters, I still say the figure is high. So I wonder why that is, and I want to know more. Don't you?
I don't think it's much of a jump to think that goons and idiots would have some sort of aversion to sex as some sort of self protection for their ego, combine simple lack of experience with anal do to poor interpersonal skills, you could easily explain the bias.
Holy run on sentence Batman!
Give SFBaydude02 a break! I think everybody's taking this way too seriously. It was never intended to be a rigorous scientific poll, and yet we're interpreting and criticizing it as such. Take it for what it is: an interesting issue that I, for one, have not seen raised before. And I'm glad he did.
Although he does criticize the poll, doesn't GetASnack mainly argue that one can't and shouldn't take it too seriously/draw broad conclusions from it? I was deeply confused by SFBayDude's post. In one paragraph he makes sweeping statements about gainers and encouragers sex lives, and in the next, just contradicts himself.
With SFBayDude being such a relative newbie blogger, you'd think he'd be thrilled to have such an established presence in the community critiquing his work, even if it wasn't 100% positive.
I think it depends on who you talk to. Personally, I agree more with SFBayDude's analysis regarding this situation. Then again, that is based on my own feelings of the subject and my experiences with other gainer/encouragers.
However, I do have to point out a major flaw in GetASnack's thinking. I don't think BeefyFrat's current population of 40,000 is a reasonable number to be throwing around in regards to this topic. Anyone who searches for people in their area on BeefyFrat can see when someone has updated their profile and when they last logged on. Being from a state with a relatively small population (2 million) it's easy for me to search through two pages of profiles to see who is and isn't deeply involved in this community. In my state there are approximately 20 people registered on BeefyFrat. Five of those have logged on within the last two months. The rest haven't logged on to the site since they created their profile pages two or three years ago. That's 15 people you are counting that really shouldn't be in regards to population of the community. I've looked at surrounding states and found the same thing. Approximately 1/4 of the profiles are more or less active. Not to mention the slew of people who have duplicate profiles because they forgot their password or wanted to change their sn.
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