How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [38]
As both gay and straight reviewers have pointed out, Queer as Folk bears little resemblance to reality. Pittsburgh doesn’t really have the glamorous gay scene depicted on the show, and the club where the boys hang out, Babylon, seems to be part Land of Oz and part some demented teenager’s vision of an eighties disco joint. Since the popular series focuses on a very narrow segment of the population—young, urban gay men who spend a lot of time dancing and taking drugs—it ’s taken a lot of flack from gay activists. Yet straight women have connected to this show in great numbers. Why? As far as Showtime executives can tell, straight women like the gay sex scenes. “It was intended as a gay show written for a gay audience,” explained Daniel Lipman to the press when they released the viewing figures. Lipman, along with Ron Cowan, created the American version of the British TV hit. “It has amazed everyone that there’s such a crossover.”
The show’s 2003 finale attracted an audience that was 50 percent straight female. Mindy Newby, a California insurance underwriter, told Newsweek that she initially found the homosexual sex scenes “shocking,” but “then it became incredibly sexy. Straight men should watch it.”
The show has become a craze among many straight women, who organize all-female Queer as Folk dinner parties. An informal poll of my straight girlfriends who watch the show confirms this. “It’s just so hot,” says my friend Sarah, a computer consultant in Wilmington, Delaware. I agree. I think we are beginning to see a trend in which heterosexual women will become turned on by male homosexuality as much as traditional straight men have been excited by lesbian sex. All of the sex on Queer as Folk is either anal or oral—what does this say about the average female viewer’s sexual preoccupations?
The success of the book Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man further proves that heterosexual women respect and solicit the gay male perspective on sex. The advice book, by Dan Anderson and Maggie Berman, has been in print for more than five years, and is available not only at traditional bookstores, but at hip chain shops such as Urban Outfitters. It’s very penis-oriented, with a whole chapter on size, shape, and the presence or absence of foreskin. One chapter explores the world of the hand job, and another is devoted completely to fellatio, with sections on “BJ Basics,” “Hummers,” “Tin glers,” and even “Dick Whipping” (lightly smacking the penis against one’s face).
Oral sex has not always been part of most Americans’ sexual repertoire. According to a 1994 study of American sexual practices, only a minority of women over age fifty had ever performed oral sex. Among women younger than thirty-five, however, more than three quarters had done so. Most men, whatever their age, had been both givers and receivers of oral sex.
Straight people have become oral. How much of their newfound fixation do they owe to their gay counterparts?
Straight People Become Less Anal-Retentive
“Attention all straight men! This is a call to arms,” wrote ex porn actress Tristan Taomarino in The Village Voice at the turn of the last century. “There is something you need to learn how to do,” she continued, “something that can transform your life . . . You’ve got something to pick up from your gay brothers. And it’s not just those fashion and decorating tips you marvel about on Will & Grace. . . . There is a craze sweeping the nation, and you oughta know about it. It’s ass fucking—with you on the receiving end.”
Whoa.
Anal sex has become the newest craze among heterosexuals, with both men and women vying to be on the receiving end. It’s not as if gay men invented anal sex, or that no heterosexuals tried it before the 1990s—after all, statistics show that more heterosexuals than homosexuals have practiced anal sex. And it’s a fallacy to think that all gay men engage in anal sex—many never do. Still, though, it’s as if the heterosexual practice