"The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Talk to, and Become Intimate with Anyone" by Perry Brass

OK, I know that I came up with “37 Ways to be Seductive with a Man,” and it seems that just 37 is not going to be enough. So here are 23 more. Since a lot of women have written to me about the previous “37 Ways to be Seductive with a Man” post, I have specifically tailored these ideas for women to use. But I hope that my gay readers will try them just as seriously.

 1)            Say his name in a way that is deliciously suggestive. Most men either rarely hear their names spoken at all or even fear hearing it (after all, at work why say someone’s name who’s there unless it’s either to dress him down or make him feel on the spot). But make him feel like his name is a magic incantation, or a password to something wonderful. Example: “Christopher . . . guess what I’d like to do?”

2)            Call him and tell him you’ve missed him. Don’t email him: emails are so business. Don’t text him. Texts are so teenage. But actually call him, and make sure he knows that you mean it, and you mean business too—but in a really great way.

3)             Learn a lesson from dog trainers: Make him feel that you are a reward for everything he does. In other words, never let him associate you with punishment. Good dog trainers know this in spades. So, if you’ve had a bitch of a day, make sure there’s real space between the bitch and him.

4)            Remember something about him and repeat it. It can be his mother’s name, that he’s allergic to shellfish, that he likes having his feet tickled or his nipples slightly pinched, that he hates oatmeal and loves hamburgers. The important thing is that you remembered it. Write it down after you see him, if you need to. In fact, make a list of these things and refer to them. Ask him about his mom: “How’s Elizabeth doing?” or “How about just burgers tonight?”

5)            Tell him what you want: This is especially wonderful in the sex department. A lot of men are too shy to ask you if there’s something that you really like to happen. So tell him what you’d like him to do, as in: “I love having my back kissed.” “I love having my ass played with.” “I love having my ears nibbled.” “I love to get laid outdoors.” “I love watching you do things naked.”

6)            Ask him what he’d like. But not in a demanding way. Don’t make him feel that if he’s too shy to let out what really turns him on, then he’s a loser. Just repeat the request at some point later, but in a softer and more reassuring way.

7)            Feed him something that he’d really like. Especially out of your hand. There is something about feeding a man that makes him feel incredibly taken care of. So many times now food is confused with either stress (as in the idea of the “Business Power Breakfast”—really, who wants these twits around you at breakfast? Yuk!), or with relieving stress, as in guys who slug down a dinner at Bennigans and a beer after an awful day at the office. So, give him a chocolate-covered strawberry directly from your fingers, or your navel. One of my favorite ways to eat ice cream is slathered on his sex organs. It gives him a tingly shiver, and me too. And nothing adds to the flavor of ice cream like a man’s cock.

 8)            Ask him how much he would like to submit to you. Men who are assertive and commanding all day, who have to be Masters of the Universe at work, find that being completely submissive sexually is . . . well, fantastic. It gives all that hard-working testosterone some time off. A little B & D can go a long way, and he’ll either love the chance to experience it, or just say that he’s not interested—at the moment.

 9)             Ask him how much he would like you to submit to him. (But with boundaries around it!) You’re giving him a huge amount of license doing this, but as with a license to drive, you do have to obey the rules. So tell him that you are in for a little slavery, but in a nice way. (As in No Hard Hitting, No Marks, Nothing Mean and Disgusting.)

 10)             One day when he arrives at your place, give him a moment to breathe, and then suddenly be all over him. He’s sitting, and you’re now on his lap, kissing him, holding him, and making him feel that you are the very atmosphere he’s hot and bothered for. So many guys feel that sex has to be this cat-and-mouse game that takes too long and is too complicated. Make him feel that you aren’t playing games with him.

 11)            On the other hand, don’t do this too often. Allow him a time to be all over you: it’s his turn now to be aggressive. However, if for some reason, he can’t, don’t get huffy about it and demanding, but—let him know that a little aggression on his part would be very welcome.

 12)            Get him naked, lying facedown on your lap. That’s it: like a little boy submitting to be spanked. But, don’t spank him, at least not a lot. Guys love this. They revert to kidhood again. Play with his spine, his butt, the backs of his legs (very sensual places), his neck, and the backs of his ears. Caress his hair. He’ll come back for more.

 13)            Experience times when he’s completely naked and you’re clothed, or half clothed. Make him feel that he’s now a plaything: guys go crazy for this. Most of the time, it’s outside the Male Role to be the plaything. And all men fantasize about being it. They do.

 14)            Try making love with your clothes on, or at most of them on. Clothes can be very sensual, and provide a kind of erotic friction that turns up the heat—the Victorians were famous for this, having a good lay while still in half corsets, and those long knickers that men wore. If things get too hot, take something off, like your shoes and socks.

 15)            Stop making love for a while and have a snack. Something light, and sexy in its own right, like slices of melon with prosciutto. The juicy, salty, sweetness of food like this can be very stimulating.

 16)            Don’t rule out talking dirty, but don’t ever let it get vulgar. In other words, say something like “I’d really like it if you sucked my (tit, cock, ass, etc.)” but don’t say something like “Suck my tit! Suck my cock!” unless you really want to get into turbulent waters. It may be such a turn-off to some men that they never come back. A lot of men who live and die for porn don’t want it taken outside of their imagination, so remember that.

 17)            On the other hand, ask him if he’d like to share his favorite porn scenes with you. Ask, but don’t demand. Everyman has a “secret world,” and if he wants to let you in, great. But don’t barge in. At a certain point, he may open up to you about it.

 18)            Tell him you want to take a shower together, if you haven’t done it before. Water and soap are . . . well, water and soap. You can provide everything in between. Also, in the shower, play a few games, like spitting water on him. Directly at him, but not in his eyes. Also, showers are perfect places for “water sports,” if you are into them. But, if you have to ask what “water sports” are, then maybe you’re not ready for this.

 19)            Tell him how nice he smells. And if he doesn’t smell that way, make sure he does smell that way by rewarding him for smelling nice. This may mean getting into the shower, or giving him some cologne that you want him to wear. (Nothing overwhelming, just some nice light male fragrance with a hint of lemon or vetiver in it.) Also, many men have a smell that is simply their smell, and it can drive you nuts—especially a crotch, underarm smell, or fresh summer perspiration odor. So let him know it.

 20)            When you’re out, buy him a drink first. And always offer to pay for something—no matter who he is or how rich he is, it makes a man feel very good that you are offering to pay for something, even if the invitation has come from him.

 21)            When you’re at a bar, make him feel that you are taking care of him, like, for instance, pass him the peanuts or whatever is out there for nibbles. Then nibble a bit on him, too. There’s something about sticking your tongue in a man’s ear at a noisy bar that drives any man more nuts than the peanuts. It adds a refreshing ocean sound to an abrasive environment. Hell, the peanuts can wait.

 22)            When the two of you go out alone, never order something he hates: that way he can taste everything on your plate. If he’s one of those of tight-assed types who can’t bear to eat anything off someone else’s plate, cut off a piece of something and put it on his, saying, “I’d really like for you to taste this.” It shows that you want to share with him, and this in itself is very conducive to intimacy.

 23)             But don’t force the issue if he refuses. In fact, don’t force any issue with him unless you feel so strongly about it that you’re ready to renegotiate the relationship. What you want to feel is that you can enjoy everything you can with him, and don’t worry about the other parts. That’s what your other friends are for. One of the worst mistakes people make with their sexual/romantic partners is wanting them to be casual friends. They aren’t; when they do become this, then most of the heat goes out of the relationship and the question is: do you really want that?

The perfect way to be seductive with a man is to read The Manly Art of Seduction, available as a very popular Kindle book, also available on Nook, Smashwords, Diesel Books, Apple Ipod, and other formats. Or, you can read it in plain old black-and-white print through Amazon, many lgbt bookstores, and independent bookstores throughout America—ask for it. You can read more about famous gay author Perry Brass at his website, perrybrass.com, where he is also always available to answer questions (decent ones: don’t ask him if he’s as hot as his books. He embarrasses easily.)

When I got Michael Lucas’s email about boycotting the Center, my first thought was to send out another email (that would definitely not reach Lucas’s thousands) asking everyone to support it. The Center, despite its limitations on resources, is the only open organization of its sort in New York. No other organization even comes close to its openness: dealing with its staff has been a phenomenon of openness compared to any other cultural/ethnic/religious/political organization in the city. Not only is it incredibly financially reasonable to deal with—in other words, try going to the 92nd Street Y and tell their staff what you want to do and wait for them to explain money to you; but planning a meeting or event there is simplicity itself. Again, try going to a Catholic church, or any synagogue or church for that matter, or a local YMCA, or even a New York city school or library, with your needs and see what the reaction is.
Sure, I know the Archdiocese is exceptionally open to queer meetings, but the point is basically all you have to do is just walk in to the Center office, state what your purpose is, find a free date on their calendar, put down a deposit that could barely get three people into Starbucks, and you’re in.
Also, and extremely important, the Center is the only place of its sort in New York that you can simply walk into: no membership cards, no one at the door asking you what your mission or problem is, no ID is requested, nothing. So you have this motley crew of street people and Upper East Siders, the extremely hip and the extremely ragged, all brushing elbows with each other, with no regard to any previous element of categorization except for the fact that you agree to treat other users of the Center with respect and moderately human sensitivity.
(Both of these qualifications have never been easy to find in New York, but they are found most of the time at the Center.)
So the Center has found itself in the worst bind it has been in since the great NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) controversy in 1989, when Allen Ginsberg wanted to perform there as a NAMBLA supporter, and was banned from doing so by the Center—and later NAMBLA became the first gay group ever to be totally banned from its facility.
This has given NAMBLA supporters a lot of fuel for their own feelings of being aggrieved, and it always brings up that old ghost in the closet of being the only group, historically, that has been categorically excluded from the Center. However, since the Center now has a large parents constituent and parents of all stripes (gay and straight) trust their kids to go to Center events, the specter of a bunch of “dirty old men” lurking around in raincoats stalking young innocents always comes up with a lot of big red neon around it.
This same specter is true for Siege Busters waving the flag of Israeli apartheidism: what Israel has done to its Palestinian neighbors and even citizens is not humane, but the Palestinians have been adamant in their refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. So, in both instances, you can go round and round with these ideas and still end up with nothing.
My own feeling was that Siege Buster should have been given a forum to talk about their side of the issue (or problem), without fanning fires using a term like “Israeli Apartheid.” Some of my friends, who are totally pro-Palestinian, ardently believe that the UJA (United Jewish Appeal) should be forced to register in the U.S. as a “terrorist organization” because it supports Israel. This to me seems like insanity, but I’m sure they will scream loud enough about it, just as Israel’s supporters will.
All of this only makes me want to support the Center as the one place that should and could allow a backdrop for this discussion. I frankly hate the “I’m going to take my bat and ball and leave the playground” attitude of people attacking the Center, even though there have been times when I’ve felt exactly the same way. But, after a little reconsideration I have come back to it, and realized what a stake we all have in it, or should have if we gave it any thought.

(One last request: I hope I have got all the names right here of the constituent organizations I have mentioned; it’s sometimes hard to keep them straight without a program. Second disclosure: Michael Lucas also contributed a blurb to my previous novel Carnal Sacraments, which I was tickled pink to get: being a writer and publicity whore myself, I’ll do anything to get my egregiously worthy books into the hands of readers, an attitude that I’m sure Mr. Lucas and I completely share. Thank you, Michael.)

Perry Brass has published 15 books including erotic classics like Mirage, Angel Lust, Warlock, The Substance of God, and Carnal Sacraments, as well as How to Survive Your Own Gay Life. As an activist, he joined the Gay Liberation Front in 1969, right after Stonewall, becoming an editor of Come Out!, the world’s first gay liberation newspaper. In 1973, he helped start the Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, strongly advocating the use of condoms a decade before the onslaught of HIV. His newest book is The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Talk To, and Become Intimate with Anyone which is a guide to leaving passivity and getting what you want—nicely. He can be reached through his website, www.perrybrass.com.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 6 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 22 posts. There were 4 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 592kb.

The busiest day of the year was November 29th with 96 views. The most popular post that day was 37 Ways To Be Seductive With A Man, .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were google.com, en.wordpress.com, ask.reference.com, search.conduit.com, and search.aol.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for how to be seductive, how to be seductive to a man, seductive talk, how to be seductive to my boyfriend, and being seductive.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

37 Ways To Be Seductive With A Man, May 2007
9 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Tea Room Sex, A Blast from the Old Past? December 2007
2 comments

The Manly Art of Seduction Gets Banned on FaceBook January 2010

Discovering Manhood and the Work of Branden Charles Wallace March 2010

Malachy McCourt and I discuss aging . . . and fawking. March 2010
2 comments

Malachy McCourt and Perry Brass at Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble

Last night, Monday, March 22, 2010, I took part in an event at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble called—of all things—”Nifty After Fifty,” sponsored by the Greater New York Independent Publishers Association and produced by Francine Trevens. Fantastic evening. We got about 175 people there, mostly eager to hear Malachy McCourt, our guest of honor, talk in his sweet-and-salty Irish-tweed spun voice about the simple things of life that usually aren’t. He compared same-sex marriage to Adam and Eve—an idea that would make many Fundamentalists croak. Because . . . when Adam “lay” with Eve, she had all of his DNA in him (who else’s?) . . . so “he was just about fawking himself, right—now how different is that from same-sex love and marriage?” Malachy talked about “fawking” pretty often. “Fawking,” the Irish version of carnal knowledge, always sounds so much more picturesque than the American reference to it which sounds . . . OK, vulgar. There were also scenes from a few short plays that deal with getting older and hating it (let’s be honest: you don’t have a choice in this, but you can make the most of it) from Francine’s new collection of plays, Short Plays Long to Remember. “Short Plays” contains “Bar None,” my one-act about the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights group, opening the bars in New York to gay men in 1966: something most have long forgotten.

Prior to this, a bar owner in NYC could have his license revoked simply for serving booze to anyone who even appeared queer. Of course this law was rarely enforced because so many bar-keeps routinely paid off the cops, which in turn kept the Mafia happily in the bar business.

Other readers on the program were Norman Beim, Kat George, Francine L. Trevens, Andrea Troy, Marni K.Connelly, and Kay Williams.

Norman is a playwright and Kay was an actress before becoming an author (not that you can’t do both) so they read from two of Norman’s plays wonderfully. And Malachy read from “The Rocking Horse” by Daniel P. Quinn—I think you could hear Malachy McCourt read the Yellow Pages and get a kick out of it.

There was also a song, or two, from singer/lyricist Michael Colby and pianist Annie Lebeaux on a sparkly new hybrid Yamaha piano (does this mean it’s also a car?). 

As my part of the evening, I gave a talk entitled “The Erotic Life After 50.” It was actually more about The Manly Art of Seduction, but, hey, shameless self-promotion is something that gets most authors either on the bestseller list or somewhere in author hell where the company is Shakespeare and Voltaire. Why complain?

So, if you didn’t make it to B & N on a really crummy, rainy but fun night, here’s what I said.

If 30 years ago someone had told me that at 62, I’d be publishing a book called The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Talk to, and Become Intimate with Anyone, I would have said . . . of course, what else would I be doing at 62?

I came from a generation where seduction—that is, real seduction, not the TV Jell-O version of it—was a way of life. And I grew up in the Deep South where we not only depended upon the kindness of strangers, we invited it whenever we could find it.

The truth is seduction has been a wonderful part of my life, but it took me a while to figure out how it works, and how I can explain it to others so it will work for you, too. We live in what I call the “culture of rejection,” and often older people feel the sting of this. We’re overlooked, we feel rejected, and sometimes it feels that even attempting to initiate any kind of action is futile. This leads many of us into erotic shutdown: we feel that we are either too old or too “smart” to be seductive or allow ourselves be seduced.

This is sad, because the loveliness of your own inner self, which has no actual age, is being denied. Much of the Manly Art of Seduction is about being open to this authentic self inside you, and letting it open you to the seductiveness of the world—and of yourself. In other words, the seductive you is waiting to come out, and it—or you—will be successful at seduction, once you connect with it.

First, some definitions: Seduction—that’s simple: an invitation to intimacy.

Intimacy: a real closeness energized with the deeper aspects of yourself, and of someone else.

The Manly Art of Seduction gets you in contact with this deeper self through mind exercises and actual experiences. You will use this contact to give you the confidence to achieve closeness and go as far with it as you want to, or circumstances allow you to.

The world is not perfect—and neither are you—so you may strike out sometimes. But—and this is very important, so stay awake—as you become better at the Manly Art, you will find more men attractive and also attracted to you. Therefore, as you become more open to the inner beauty of yourself, a lot of other men will become attractive as well, and many of them, as you follow the techniques of The Manly Art of Seduction, will start to approach you now.

The Manly Art, using scenarios and exercises, explains how to approach men, speak to them, what’s really happening in a seductive conversation, and how to touch men physically and emotionally, becoming more intimate with them, negotiating possibilities. It also shows you how to keep rejection fears away, and maneuver a relationship into warmer and more satisfying waters.

Realistically, I tell you don’t expect clear weather all the time—there are some horses in fact who don’t want to be led to any kind of water. And I’ll tell you how to dive out of a situation just as I’ll tell you how to enter it. But there is one lesson I want you to keep no matter what: as you get closer to the real you that our relentless commercialism works so hard to keep you isolated from, you’ll learn not to reject yourself. So you’ll never beat up on yourself, feel hurt inside, and walk away.

This is at the core of the Manly Art. Now how you go from your inner self to your outer one, and then from you to him, or her, or her to her, or . . . well — seduction is universal — is laid out clearly with questions after most chapters for you to answer. So that the book also becomes a journal for your progress in Seduction.

One of my main goals is to open seduction up to everyone, especially people who feel left out, who often end up spending the night alone and feel self conscious about themselves because they are either too shy or have some aspect of themselves that they feel ashamed of. So I have a chapter on disability and seduction, as well as on weight and how we deal with that in a society obsessed with youthful slimness. I also included chapters on seduction across race lines and class lines, which sometimes feel like an even tougher barrier. And also issues like erectile dysfunction, penis size, seduction and married men, straight men, threesomes, and seduction within a relationship where sex has either become stalemated or nonexistent.

Since one of the keys to successful seduction is making yourself available, I have a chapter on seduction over dinner at your place, even if you can’t cook and your home looks like a gang of Neanderthals just left it, or what do you do when you go to his place and he’s acting like romance is just not on the menu. Turning cold potatoes into a hotter dish is at the meat of the Manly Art, but the most important thing is knowing that you are at the center of it and can bring someone else into it and love every moment of it.

If you’re intrigued about the Manly Art of Seduction, I’m co-leading a workshop on it with Jerry Kajpust on April 29, and will be happy to talk with you more about the workshop, too

PS. I want to thank Bart Greenberg from the Lincoln Center B & N’s Community Relations staff for making this event possible. Bart is the friend of many communities, and a great pal to have in the book world.

(Note: the following is the text of a piece I read at a panel discussion on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, at the LGBT Community Center in New York on the work of the painter Branden Charles Wallace, as part of the Center’s Second Tuesday Cultural Program. The other panelists were Philip F. Clark, who blogs about art @ BlogSpot; Peter Drake, Dean of Academic Affairs at the New York Academy of Art; Bruce Donnelly, filmmaker working on a documentary about The Comfort of Men; and Jerry Kajpust, M.A., co-leader of the Manly Art of Seduction Workshops, staff member at the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation.)

Discovering Manhood and the Work of Branden Charles Wallace

            I first saw Branden’s paintings at an Erotic Art Fair at the Center at least a year ago. I thought of all the artists in the room, his work stood out. What attracted me was the sense of casual male power in it, especially in his paintings of men wrestling or playing rugby. They had that feeling of a suppressed, muscular strength that at any moment would unleash itself and bring the viewer along with it. I think it is that sense of a casual even diffident power that so often attracts us to men and the world of men, this secret world in which male intimacy, strength, and vulnerability mix and sometimes collide. Branden and I started talking, and he revealed he was a fan of John Singer Sargeant; of course this too excited me. Sargeant may be the greatest American painter who ever lived—or is certainly in a narrow field of greatest American painters—he was hugely classical, constantly fresh, and also queer as the proverbial 3-dollar bill: something art historians have tried to hide for years. Many are no longer hiding it. But I thought Branden had some of Sargeant’s freshness and that luscious, sexually-energized power waiting to embrace you and invite you into its more private, beautiful regions.      

            Later, I learned that Branden had experience working with the military as an Army contractor; I’d also had 3 years of a similar experience as an “Air Force wife,” when, living with my ex-partner, an Airman, got to experience that paradoxically tender and hard environment of the military—suppressive, disciplined, aggressively egalitarian, at once. The “Comfort of Men” series reminded me of that; in the environment of war, men allow feelings to come out, from heroism and almost bottomless love to extremes of grief that they suppress in everyday life. I felt Branden wanted to take these feelings, which are allowed, even nurtured in a gay environment, and expose them to a larger, more menacing world.

            In a contemporary America, any male efforts toward other men are either identified as gay (and trivialized as such); or desperately try to sneak out of the gay category, often through compulsive commercialism. In other words: if it really sells, it can’t be all queer since selling is what real men do to put food on the table.

            This is sad to me, not because the “normal” man has contracted himself to fit into a narrower range, but because the gay environment itself has become so much bigger, so heroic, that the TV sitcom stereotype that tries to explain us to the world only comes out more moronic—and even teenagers are seeing that.

            How did American men end up where they are now: totally gelded as far as deeper feelings are concerned? Gelded, depressed, alone, often suicidal? If you look back at men from earlier times, the letters they wrote, the pictures they exchanged, and grasp the male tenderness involved, it makes one wonder how did we get to this point?

           Sam Staggs, who made a name for himself in gay porno writing as “Phil Andros,” wrote about gay life in the 1930s, when he was a friend of Gertrude Stein’s: “We existed under the protective umbrella of American sexual naiveté.” In other words, there were fewer categories because sex itself was so forbidden that it was hardly talked about.

            Several things changed this. One was the increasing popularization of Freudian jargon, so millions of people were bandying around terms without ever reading Freud.

            But a pattern of acute, dangerously popular homophobia emerged in the early 1960’s due to two figures. One was Jack Kennedy and his circle which tried to bring a razorish preppy butchness to American culture in order to hide Jack’s own queer fears and tendencies: There were many rumors floating about Senator Kennedy and he knew it. Kennedy loved sexual attention, and probably never cared that much where it came from, although his father Joseph Kennedy did. So this attitude of arrogant sexual defensiveness, with Joe McCarthy’s bigotry behind it, hardened to concrete.

            The other influence was the emergence of the Playboy philosophy, bringing “red-blooded”-American-male heterosexuality out of the closet, and nailing everything else into it. Hugh Hefner was a publishing revolutionary; he knew American men wanted to do a lot more than tiptoe through the tulips. Before Playboy, the stereotype of homosexuality was that it existed because women, put off-limits by Victorian repression, were not available. In this environment of virgin womanhood, homosexuality “swished” in. Also, homosexuality was abetted by the fear of pregnancy, so basically homoeroticism had no reason to exist except as an outlet for desperate, horny men.

            Marshal McLuan, the Media-Maven of the Sixties, declared that with the advent of birth control, women would become “the bomb” of sexuality, constantly exploding, and homosexuality would totally disappear.

            In truth Marshal McLuan has disappeared, but not homosexuality. Still, the Playboy Philosophy and Kennedyism changed the environment in the early 60s. Gay men were no longer sinners and sickos: they were losers. The Playboy brand of Reddi-Whip supermarket sex had become so pushed down America’s throat, that it would remain there until feminism exposed the fact that Playboy was exactly that: for boys. The Playboy image and philosophy would not let men grow up and become actualized people.

            So, where does this leave us?

            My feeling is that currently, gay men are authentically discovering, even inventing the male gender: that is, manhood as something distinct, the way that feminists did for womanhood. Until recently, men were still considered the colorless, odorless, unobtrusive background against which a feminine element could be identified and used. This led men to a negligible position: they could not strive for self-identity and recognition, because that was feminine. They could feel nothing but fatherhood, regular-guyness, sportsmanship, patriotism, and their own willingness to die if necessary for a cause that often they could not define.

            The old male virtues of vigor, self-fulfillment, and sexual attractiveness were in constant question. If you look at pictures from the Renaissance down the emergence of bourgeois culture you see images of fantastic male power and excitement. With the emergence of bourgeois and then consumerist culture, men are deadened to the point of oblivion.

            My favorite example of this is Gerald Critch in D. H. Lawrence’s 1913 novel Women in Love, who can only show feelings that are violent and brutal, and who finally kills himself after he is sexually rejected by a woman. His friend Rupert Birkin who openly adores him, says, “He should have loved me more.” But Gerald cannot. What this has meant in contemporary culture is that gay men are often now in the role of saving other men, of being habitually open to the needs of men and valiant about it. I talk about the male need for valor in my book The Manly Art of Seduction, and it is by pushing valor to include an admission of the beauty of men, something our own society can only merchandize but can’t really honor, that gay men are not only discovering and inventing the gender of manhood, we are saving it.

For more information about Branden Wallace, go to:

http://www.brandenwallace.com/comfort.html

This is wonderfully exposed in a recent piece in Out In Jersey, “A Gathering Storm From Kampala to Newark,” written by Taylor Siluwe. Here is the article in its entirety, and my comments after it:

“A Gathering Storm From Kampala to Newark”
Taylor Siluwe

Are American evangelicals seeking to ‘Transform’ the world?
PrayForNewark seems innocent enough; so outwardly innocent that even Newark Mayor Cory Booker, possibly unaware of its ideological roots, gave it his blessing. But those roots have been exposed by Bruce Wilson (co-founder of Talk2Action.org), and PrayForNewark’s squads of church members. They are blanketing the streets “block by block” in prayer and are directly tied to the International Transformation Network (ITN.)
According to Wilson, “ITN is one of several global efforts, operating under the ‘transformation’ brand that are re-engineering along theocratic lines cities and even entire nations. For the Transformation movement, which claims homosexuals are possessed by demons and that prayer and faith healing have cured thousands of HIV and AIDS cases in the nation, Uganda is a prototype.” David Bahati (who drafted Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill) along with Ugandan First Lady Janet Musveni, have attended ITN conferences. Lloyd Turner, founder of PrayForNewark, spoke at ITN’s 2009 conference stating that the city of Newark is “97% adopted” and has seen a reduction in crime rates.

But the issues raised go much deeper. Rev. Bernard Wilks of Dominion Fellowship Ministries, a leader of the coalition behind PrayForNewark, is a member of the International Coalition of Apostles (ICA). According to their website, their mission is “… the fulfillment of Jesus’ great commission to make disciples of all nations.” One of Wilks’ fellow apostles is Jim Ammerman, the 83-year-old founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), an organization in charge of endorsing 270 chaplains and chaplain candidates for the armed services. Ammerman worked with an evangelical group based in Arkansas, the International Missions Network Center, to distribute the Bibles through the efforts of his 40 active-duty chaplains in Iraq. According to a Newsweek piece, Ammerman called Islam “a killer religion” and Muslims “the devil.”

A watchdog’s role requires constant vigilance. So states the website of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. When asked for a comment about President Obama recommitting himself to repealing the U.S. Milatary’s anti-gay Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, Michael Weinstein, founder of the MRFF, succinctly said, “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” While Weinstein expressed annoyance that the president hasn’t put a stop-loss in place to end the discharges of dedicated personnel while congress deliberates, he went on to point out other troubling aspects which insinuate a greater problem − what he described as the military’s “virulent” misogyny, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
The National Organization for Marriage produced an infamous fear-mongering ad on the dangers of same-sex marriage. It was titled ‘The Gathering Storm’, its words rang hollow and baseless to the ears of those fighting for marriage equality. However, The Gathering Storm’s often parodied opening − There’s a storm gathering, the clouds are dark and the winds are strong. And I am afraid − in the broader sense, inadvertently rings true. Because from the streets of Kampala, the largest city in Uganda, to the streets of Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, many see the creeping influence of fundamentalist Christian apocalyptic ideology creeping into the US government and our armed forces and are extremely afraid.
The MRFF describes itself as a “national movement to restore the wall separating church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by man; the United States armed forces.” With military contractor Trijicon engraving scripture onto rifle sights (which Weinstein reported to ABC who broke the story); with the Family Research Council lamenting that “gay behavior” should be completely outlawed in America; with Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality bill reportedly not only tied to The Family (the secretive group of political elites responsible for the annual National Prayer Breakfast) but also with International Transformation Network, a disturbing picture of a growing fundamentalist Christian Taliban is emerging. It is seeking to transform global culture, through government and the military they say, for the glory of Jesus.

Should Americans brush off Pat Robertson ignoring his own devilment while also invoking the presence of Satan in Haiti, or when he blames the next hurricane on a gay pride parade. All of this while fleecing his faithful followers at the expense of the LGBT community. A watchdog’s role does require constant vigilance, especially when the enemies of human equality and liberty disguise their bigotry, misogyny, warmongering and lust for dominion behind the innocuous face of the Prince of Peace.
Maybe it’s time the watchdogs began to bite.

[end Out in Jersey piece]

What makes the information in this piece so pertinent to me is that it reflects so much the plot of my novel “The Substance of God, A Spiritual Thriller” in which I talked about powerful networks of “Christian businessmen.” The Christian business network has long been recongized, but most people ignore its real focus: dissolving any distance between church and state; between Christianity as a political power and the rights of people whose morality is not based on Leviticus; and scapegoating anyone who stands between them and this agenda. (Strangely enough, Christ said in one of his most powerful arguments—against the Jewish kosher laws and hypocritical Levitican morality—”It is not what you put into your mouth that is unclean, it is what comes out of your mouth.” Still Christian fundamentalists and their business allies cherrypick from Leviticus, and have come up with a convenient moral package bayonetting whomever they feel they can get away with. Gays and lesbians this week, Moslems the next, abortion providers one week, and anyone—ANYONE—who subscribes to the idea of your bedroom being a private place and birth control being a private choice, in another.

What is happening in Newark is something to watch out for. It is a “perfect storm” of fake morality, race and poverty, crime and the dispossessed, all working together to see who is destroyed in the end.

Hitler, you can smile now. The “Christians” are doing your work.

This is wonderfully exposed in a recent piece in Out In Jersey, “A Gathering Storm From Kampala to Newark,” written by Taylor Siluwe. Here is the article in its entirety, and my comments after it:

“A Gathering Storm From Kampala to Newark”
Taylor Siluwe

Are American evangelicals seeking to ‘Transform’ the world?
PrayForNewark seems innocent enough; so outwardly innocent that even Newark Mayor Cory Booker, possibly unaware of its ideological roots, gave it his blessing. But those roots have been exposed by Bruce Wilson (co-founder of Talk2Action.org), and PrayForNewark’s squads of church members. They are blanketing the streets “block by block” in prayer and are directly tied to the International Transformation Network (ITN.)
According to Wilson, “ITN is one of several global efforts, operating under the ‘transformation’ brand that are re-engineering along theocratic lines cities and even entire nations. For the Transformation movement, which claims homosexuals are possessed by demons and that prayer and faith healing have cured thousands of HIV and AIDS cases in the nation, Uganda is a prototype.” David Bahati (who drafted Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill) along with Ugandan First Lady Janet Musveni, have attended ITN conferences. Lloyd Turner, founder of PrayForNewark, spoke at ITN’s 2009 conference stating that the city of Newark is “97% adopted” and has seen a reduction in crime rates.

But the issues raised go much deeper. Rev. Bernard Wilks of Dominion Fellowship Ministries, a leader of the coalition behind PrayForNewark, is a member of the International Coalition of Apostles (ICA). According to their website, their mission is “… the fulfillment of Jesus’ great commission to make disciples of all nations.” One of Wilks’ fellow apostles is Jim Ammerman, the 83-year-old founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), an organization in charge of endorsing 270 chaplains and chaplain candidates for the armed services. Ammerman worked with an evangelical group based in Arkansas, the International Missions Network Center, to distribute the Bibles through the efforts of his 40 active-duty chaplains in Iraq. According to a Newsweek piece, Ammerman called Islam “a killer religion” and Muslims “the devil.”

A watchdog’s role requires constant vigilance. So states the website of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. When asked for a comment about President Obama recommitting himself to repealing the U.S. Milatary’s anti-gay Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, Michael Weinstein, founder of the MRFF, succinctly said, “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.” While Weinstein expressed annoyance that the president hasn’t put a stop-loss in place to end the discharges of dedicated personnel while congress deliberates, he went on to point out other troubling aspects which insinuate a greater problem − what he described as the military’s “virulent” misogyny, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
The National Organization for Marriage produced an infamous fear-mongering ad on the dangers of same-sex marriage. It was titled ‘The Gathering Storm’, its words rang hollow and baseless to the ears of those fighting for marriage equality. However, The Gathering Storm’s often parodied opening − There’s a storm gathering, the clouds are dark and the winds are strong. And I am afraid − in the broader sense, inadvertently rings true. Because from the streets of Kampala, the largest city in Uganda, to the streets of Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, many see the creeping influence of fundamentalist Christian apocalyptic ideology creeping into the US government and our armed forces and are extremely afraid.
The MRFF describes itself as a “national movement to restore the wall separating church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by man; the United States armed forces.” With military contractor Trijicon engraving scripture onto rifle sights (which Weinstein reported to ABC who broke the story); with the Family Research Council lamenting that “gay behavior” should be completely outlawed in America; with Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality bill reportedly not only tied to The Family (the secretive group of political elites responsible for the annual National Prayer Breakfast) but also with International Transformation Network, a disturbing picture of a growing fundamentalist Christian Taliban is emerging. It is seeking to transform global culture, through government and the military they say, for the glory of Jesus.

Should Americans brush off Pat Robertson ignoring his own devilment while also invoking the presence of Satan in Haiti, or when he blames the next hurricane on a gay pride parade. All of this while fleecing his faithful followers at the expense of the LGBT community. A watchdog’s role does require constant vigilance, especially when the enemies of human equality and liberty disguise their bigotry, misogyny, warmongering and lust for dominion behind the innocuous face of the Prince of Peace.
Maybe it’s time the watchdogs began to bite.

[end Out in Jersey piece]

What makes the information in this piece so pertinent to me is that it reflects so much the plot of my novel “The Substance of God, A Spiritual Thriller” in which I talked about powerful networks of “Christian businessmen.” The Christian business network has long been recongized, but most people ignore its real focus: dissolving any distance between church and state; between Christianity as a political power and the rights of people whose morality is not based on Leviticus; and scapegoating anyone who stands between them and this agenda. (Strangely enough, Christ said in one of his most powerful arguments—against the Jewish kosher laws and hypocritical Levitican morality—”It is not what you put into your mouth that is unclean, it is what comes out of your mouth.” Still Christian fundamentalists and their business allies cherrypick from Leviticus, and have come up with a convenient moral package bayonetting whomever they feel they can get away with. Gays and lesbians this week, Moslems the next, abortion providers one week, and anyone—ANYONE—who subscribes to the idea of your bedroom being a private place and birth control being a private choice, in another.

What is happening in Newark is something to watch out for. It is a “perfect storm” of fake morality, race and poverty, crime and the dispossessed, all working together to see who is destroyed in the end.

Hitler, you can smile now. The “Christians” are doing your work.

The book banned on FaceBook

I’m not sure what it takes to get banned from FaceBook. I guess you have to do something so heinous that it has not only no redeeming social value, but you should not be able to show your face either in civilized company or on any street in New York. I mean, it should be in the same category as someone who kidnaps girls out of madrassas in Afghanistan and sells them into prostitution. O.K. I did not do that. And neither was I actually physically banned from a site that now captures the imaginations, time, and for many the advertising attention of edging onto a 100 mil people. That means that FaceBook now is an unofficial country, much larger than, say, Vatican City, with an amount of wealth that would make the Vatican pink with envy.

No, I did not get banned. My book did. Like a lot of authors, I got taken in with the idea that in order to sell my book to the multitudes, I needed a FaceBook ad. I had been flogging the hell out of the book on my FaceBook page to whomever would give me an inkling of attention (and let’s face it, any author’s friends, among whom are many other authors, get tired of being the same old meat to that writer’s works).

I needed an ad. So I clicked the little button that runs you through “creating your ad.” It was simple. My book is a how-to book. It is about mastering an art form. It could be the art of sculpture, or French cooking (pace Julia), Baroque dance, or flirting. O.K. It’s actually closer to the last one. The book is called The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Speak to, and Become Intimate with Anyone. The book is aimed squarely at gay men (you could pretty much tell that from the cover), and it has absolutely nothing to do with seducing 13-year-old virgins of any gender (sorry, Mr. Polanski), or imposing yourself in a male-chauvinist way on anyway. The main reason for my writing it is that in this age of Cubicle Hell and Digital Isolation, too many queer men have become just as klutzy as anyone when it comes down to going up to, meeting, and scoring with other men. They are wracked with feelings of rejection, even before they leave their apartments. I wanted to change this, and came up with a wonderful program to do this: I know, it has made me psychologically secure, socially popular, and sexually happy as a pig in doody most of my life. Since you are only allowed a paltry 100 character in your ad, I had to get in their “the fustest with the mostest” as Stonewall Jackson advised. So my ad had the book cover and these few words:

Frustrated, scared of rejection, a complete guide to emotional and sexual satisfaction with men.

The ad then came with a link to the Amazon page for ordering the book. Since on FaceBook ad rates are based on the size of your potential audience (and they are steeeep, let me tell you), I narrowed down my audience to single gay men: a merely 13,000 souls I was told. Therefore, the ad would appear on pages that other single gay men would see, and not on pages frequented by Christian households, etc. I released my copy up to the FaceBook gods, and a few hours later, got a message from them saying:

 ”Hi Perry Brass,

 Thanks for purchasing a Facebook Ad! Below is the confirmation for the ad that you have created. You will be charged only for the impressions or clicks your ad receives and this amount will never exceed your daily budget. We will email a receipt for each charge from your Facebook Ads account to this email address.”

 This message was signed: The FaceBook ad team. I came to learn that at all points I would be interacting with the FaceBook Ad team, never with a real person who can be reached one-on-one. But I had the potential of reaching 13,000 randy, ready, single gay men, so what the hey (!) as they say.

 Blissfully, my ad ran. I was given a link to spot every page view and click, and the clicks did happen. I was getting a lot of clicks and hundreds of page views. I was happy. The book was not selling through the rafters on Amazon, but then we have a recession going on.

 Everything was hunky-doory for a week, when suddenly I got an email from my friends at the FaceBook Team telling me that:

“The content advertised by this ad is restricted. Per section 5 of Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines, this content is prohibited from being advertised on Facebook. We reserve the right to determine what advertising we accept, and will not allow the creation of any further Facebook Ads for this product. Ads for this product, service or site should not be resubmitted. We appreciate your cooperation with this policy.”

 In other words, the famous FaceBook team, looking over hundreds of thousands of FaceBook ads decided that my ad, for The Manly Art of Seduction, was not in keeping with FaceBook’s good name in this world. My product, a book, would be banned from FaceBook ads, even though it defamed no one (FaceBook has a ban on any product that calls for racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientation hatred of any kind), sold no service, and did not direct anyone to any kind of questionable site other than Amazon.com.

 I was furious, of course, as any author or reader can imagine, and having obtained the name and email address of a real person at FaceBook, who answered me once in the name of the famous Team regarding a billing question, I fired off an email to “Betty.”

 ”Dear Betty,

       Can you please explain to me why the ‘FaceBook team’ has decided that after 58,000 impressions and over a hundred clicks, charging me $68, my book will henceforth be banned from ever being advertised on FaceBook? I think that banning books is a very serious charge, and would like to know why FaceBook has suddenly decided that this book is offensive? The book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and probably hundreds of bookstores. So what is it about this book that FaceBook finds offense enough to ban it from ever being advertised on ‘our site’?”

I’m sure “Betty” felt this was a quagmire she was not going to get her kindly butt into, so she turned the question over to “Molly.”

“Hi Perry,

Thanks for writing in to us. This issue has been escalated, and after reviewing further, the product was determined to be unacceptable to run on our site. We do not allow ads for products with a sexual emphasis, including seduction, sexual health, etc. Please note that we reserve the right to choose which advertisements we’ll accept, and we will not allow the further creation of ads for this product. Users have demonstrated that they are very sensitive about these types of ads on our site, and we are taking these concerns very seriously.

 Thanks for your cooperation with this decision.

 Thanks for contacting Facebook,

 Molly

Online Sales Operations

Facebook

 I was, as ever, amazed at the chirpiness of this response from dear ol’ Molly. I was also amazed at how many other truly questionable ads I found on FaceBook—ads for a site for foot fetishists, for a site for definitely X-rated “massage therapists,” and for numerous dating and plain old escort services. One of my friends warned me, though, not to call attention to these ads, because the poor schnooks who took them out and were paying for them, would be bounced off, too, and didn’t they have a right to pay dollars for FaceBook’s millions of eyeballs, just as I had wanted to?

 I also learned that FaceBook has a truly hypocritical attitude toward gay content; they will censor any ad they feel is “too gay,” and once told The Advocate, a national gay magazine, that they could not use a picture of Matthew Mitcham, an “out” gay Australian diver who was a star at the Beijing Olympics, in a Speedo. In other words, an image that a couple of billion people had seen, this diver in a skimpy bathing suit, was not right for an ad for The Advocate. The Advocate, which is now owned by a gay media conglomerate, caved in, feeling they could just as easily switch the cover image to one of a straight celebrity in more than a Speedo. They did, and the FaceBook Team was happy. So my question is, do these more “blue” ads just get past the FaceBook Team’s eyes? Or, did some bluenosy fundamentalist, while on the lookout for trouble, alert the Team to the vileness of my book?

 (In regard to FaceBook’s hypocritical and homophobic stance on “gay” material, I can also attest that numerous other gay men have had similar experiences, to the point that even images of shirtless men have been deleted from some FaceBook pages. This goes on while the same kind of image can appear happily on other pages.)

 It’s all hard to say. But it does make me wonder now that we are entering that phase when Social Networking sites are becoming the gatekeepers of a lot of our culture, one way or another, what other things will be banned from promotion on FaceBook, etc.?

 As an aside, I Googled movie titles with the word “Seduction” in them: They are numerous, and some of them are tied to classic movies such as “The Seduction of Joe Tynan” with Barbara Harris and Meryl Streep. Sorry, Meryl, your movie can never be advertised on FaceBook. Also, I did an Amazon search of books with the same word in the title: I stopped counting after sixty titles. I would gather that none of these books can be advertised on FaceBook either. Sorry, you poor authors, you toilers of the pen and the DVD screen: clean up your acts! The Seduction Police are here.

You can also read more about FaceBook censoring The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Talk to, and Become Intimate with Anyone  in this article in Out in Jersey:

http://outinjersey.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=608:facing-homophobia-with-facebook&Itemid=1
For more information about the upcoming workshop based on the Manly Art of Seduction, Jan 20, 2o10, please visit

http://manlyartworkshop.eventbrite.com