Dancing Around the Volcano: Freeing Our Erotic Lives: Decoding the Enigma of Gay Men and Sex

by Guy Kettelhack

Book Overview

In the tradition of Frank Browning's The Culture of Desire comes Guy Kettelhack's provocative, honest, unapologetic look at the sex lives of gay men. Dancing Around the Volcano is essential reading for the American gay community.

Gay men have long been told that regardless of their individual characters and desires, they should aspire to a monogamous model in their romantic and sexual relationships. Now, Guy Kettelhack wants to "tell the truth...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609801511
• ISBN13: 9780609801512
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

The secret logic of gay male sexual behavior and fantasies

This book tries to explain why many gay men have the sexual fantasies and behaviors they have. And it does an excellent job, particularly from an Kettelhack's untrained eye not being a psychotherapist himself. This is the first and only book like this for gay men. Many books exist like this for heterosexuals such as Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies by Michael Bader, Erotic Mind by Jack Morin and In the Garden of Desire by Wendy Maltz, to name a few. Great job in doing the detective work on trying to figure out where the types of specific sexual behaviors and fantasies gay men have come from! (...)

Very thought-provoking book for gay men and their sex drive

Society really makes it hard being gay, even in today's enlightened times where we are seeing sitcom characters come out of the closet and openly gay candidates elected to political office. For many gay men, the journey isn't over when they've accepted themselves as being proud of who they are. The next hurdle is a deeper insecurity over sex and their participation in and enjoyment of it.Kettelhack's discourse, a part of his own process of self-discovery, serves to make gay men stand back and try to throw away the bulk of society's anti-sex conditioning while they evaluate the role of sex and aggression in their own lives.There are cogent arguments presented that show the amount, place, and aggressiveness of every gay man's sexual encounters are not up for judgement by anyone other than that man and his sexual partner. This is very a refreshing outlook in a current society that continues to self-censor it's most basic sexual instincts, even in the more "liberated" gay community. In fact, Kettelhack's book shows that sometimes members of the gay community can be even more self-censoring in their sex lives for fear of what straight society thinks.Dancing Around the Volcano doesn't advocate the sole position that all sex is good under all circumstances. It makes steps to educate the reader that decisions about one's sexual habits are can only be made by the person and their *honest* and *true* feelings, and should not be influenced by what society perceives as pathology. Kettelhack demonstrates that each person can be different and everyone is free to make their own decisions. Through case studies, examples are given of men releasing themselves from the burdens of society's mores on gay sex, as well as examples of men who decide they are honestly for themselves pursuing an unhealthy sex life and decide to change it.Eric HuntAustin, T