Male homosexuality

Gay men
Homosexual cruising

Incidence

Homosexual men have, over the last 30 years, created a male homosexual culture equalled in its openness and visibility only by that of classical Greece. In the USA, about 4% of adult white males have only homosexual contacts; after puberty about 37% had at least one homosexual experience leading to orgasm. Almost half of a sample of homosexual males reported at least 500 different sexual partners, although some claim up to 7,000. One third of homosexual men use bathhouses regularly as meeting places, with 62% occasionally participating in this commercial setting for anonymous sex. "Cruising" in the search for sexual partners is an almost universal practice amongst male homosexuals in the USA (in contrast to female homosexuals) and takes place in a variety of public places (lavatories, cinemas, bathhouses, streets and parks). The homosexual culture has encouraged greater sensation-seeking, including coprophiliac interest in anilingus and the insertion of the fingers or the hand in the partner's anus.

In the UK in 1994 a survey indicated that although 6% of men indicated that they had had homosexual experiences, only 1.1% had had a homosexual partner in the previous year, with 1.4% indicating a partner in the previous five years. These figures contrast with the 1948 Kinsey report in the USA which indicated that around 30% had had some kind of homosexual experience, with 8% indicating an experience in the previous three years. It suggested that 10% of males were practising homosexuals.

Claim

The classical Greek conventions governing the propriety of particular sexual acts have little part in a modern unconstrained homosexual culture. Much of its present physical expression would have repelled the Greeks as being absurd or contemptible, while the compulsive and mechanical quest for sexual encounters with strangers would have been incomprehensible to a society which extolled self-mastery and abhorred anonymity. The passive role in anal intercourse, relegated by the Greeks to powerless women or slaves, would have been inconceivable as a chosen activity of free men.