• The comic strip

    L'homme penetrated

    , published on January 11, 2023 by La Boîte à Bulles, deals with the subject of anal penetration in men.

  • Martin Py and Zoé Recondo dissect the subject through a 150-page investigation to explore in depth how the taboo that surrounds it can be a source of violence.

  • A codified practice right down to the use of the words used to talk about it.

    “The word to penetrate has a connotation of domination where it is women or homosexual men who find themselves in a position of being penetrated, therefore dominated.

    It's a whole story of patriarchal domination ”, estimates Martin Py with

    20 Minutes

    .

What if the world became better if every man was penetrated?

This is the question that Martin Py and Zoé Redondo are trying to answer through the comic strip

L'homme penetrated

, published by La Boîte à Bulles.

Based on a statistical survey organized in 2019, they detail how the "taboo" around the buttocks of certain men can be the basis of much violence.

Thanks to a 150-page story based on real testimonials from four people with different profiles, the authors explore the subject in depth.

While he will be present at the Angoulême festival which opens this Thursday, January 26, 2023, Martin Py returns to the investigation which allowed him to note that this “shock” subject is a more common sexual practice than it seems. .

“It touches people in their identity.

When you ask guys what they think of a man being penetrated, they ask themselves questions about the sensations, about what they can feel.

“, he explains to

20 Minutes

.


Did asking about male anal penetration make your investigation more difficult?

Every time I mention the subject somewhere, it makes people jump, especially straight guys.

Last week, I was drinking beers with a girlfriend accompanied by one of his friends.

We very quickly talked about my book and the guy immediately got carried away by saying: “I'm not homosexual, why are you talking to me about that?

There's a kind of discriminating reluctance to all of this and a lot of people are uncomfortable with the subject.


Were you surprised by the results?

Yes and I was surprised throughout my search.

I first learned that 59% of heterosexual men who had never had sex with another man said they had already been penetrated by a female partner.

This includes both rimming, masturbation and even anal penetration… Regarding anal masturbation, 44% of heterosexual men say they have already used it alone.


But those numbers plummet when it comes to talking about it…

Of all those men who have ever been penetrated either by themselves or by a female partner, only 4% are able to talk about it publicly.

At the level of homosexual men, there are only 15% who are able to speak publicly about those who have already been penetrated, which is not much more.



Can we speak of the invisibilization of this subject?

Yes, because this discrepancy between the practices that individuals have and the ease of discussing them publicly goes beyond modesty about sexuality.

Anal penetration is completely invisible in men because it is considered to be linked to sexual orientations and ideas of gender.

And as in all taboo subjects, there is structural violence that comes to be inserted.


Who are the victims of this violence?

Heterosexual men who are ashamed of having these practices, other heterosexual men who do not practice penetration and miss out on something that could do them good or even homosexual men who have a kind of injunction to have these practices because they are linked to their sexual orientation.

But also for women in general because culturally, people who are penetrated are always put in a position of inferiority.


This is what the testimonies transcribed in "The Penetrated Man" illustrate...

Through four testimonials from people with different profiles, we can see that there are many other things than male anal penetration that come to be housed around this subject.

One of the speakers goes so far as to speak of rape... It's not that far off because behind these dogmas of the injunction for a straight woman to be penetrated, some undergo sexual intercourse because they feel obliged.

Behind this injunction to be penetrated if you are gay or if you are a woman, or not to be penetrated if you are straight, there are forms of violence.


Do you mean that there is also a whole cultural dimension to male anal penetration?

The word penetrate has a connotation of domination where it is women or homosexual men who find themselves in a position of being penetrated, therefore dominated.

It's a whole story of patriarchal domination which also comes to dictate our intimate relationships and which codes sexual practices in specific representations.


And these representations fit right into the LGBTQIA+ community…

On the side of gay communities, we see that at the level of gender representations, people who consider themselves passive by receiving things in their bodies are much more stereotyped as effeminate.

On the other hand, the active ones, those who are in relationships where they only want to penetrate other men, are in representations that are much more stereotypically masculine.

Until not very long ago, it was considered throughout the Mediterranean that men who entered were not considered homosexual.

It is clear that these codifications of who penetrates and who is penetrated, they translate strong identity positionings and they imprison certain people in gendered representations.


We cannot imagine that this subject has so many underlying discourses.

What was your initial impulse to rub shoulders with this?

I started working on this subject because I was questioning myself as an individual.

By making this comic, I learned a lot of things because I had no idea what prostate orgasm was, what it could cause, who practiced it or not... The final objective is not not to propagate anal penetration but to allow readers to question themselves about their sexual relations and how they are stuck in forms of sexuality that isolate them.


What do you want to say to straight men who refuse to talk about it?

What I want to say to straight guys is that if you don't want you or your partner putting fingers in your ass, that's okay, but ask yourself why. you do not want.

And that doesn't mean that you have to do it, but it does mean that behind these injunctions to sexuality, in fact we imagine that it's a matter of taste, but in fact for me it's enormously linked to cultural injunctions .



In your opinion, is there progress to be made on this subject at school?

Sexuality is considered somewhat innate.

Some parents say to themselves, “It will happen on its own.

“On the side of national education, sexology courses remain hyper biological and we never mention tastes or why we have certain types of relationships.

I would have liked so much to be spoken to about consent in college, I would have liked so much to be spoken to about what it is to be a penetrant, a penetrated, why we have these practices- there and what do they mean… I know it makes a lot of adults scream but what I would like the most is for teenagers to read our book because it would save them a lot of violence .


Your book has been out for several weeks, did some reactions surprise you?

I have received a lot of messages of support from people who tell me very touching things.

Recently, a 40-year-old lady said to me, “I have only just discovered my sexuality with my husband, thank you for studying this subject.

“People don't speak out too publicly but I get a lot of messages in private.

During a book signing, a dad came to see me telling me that he had been practicing anal penetration with his wife for years and thanking me for talking about it.

It's great because it generates discussions, it's not just a shocking subject!

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