Institutions have never truly hated sex.
They hate honesty.
What they despise is not desire, but desire that refuses to kneel, confess, or pretend it doesn’t exist.
So instead of eliminating pleasure, which history has shown to be impossible, they perfected something far more efficient: cognitive dissonance.
A spiritual technology so advanced it allows you to want, do, deny, and condemn.
All at once.
I know this because I once became an unofficial sexual health consultant to straight women curious about anal sex.
An unlikely role, but entirely predictable.
In a society where bodies are never explained.
Where sex education is contraband.
Where women are expected to perform intimacy without ever being taught how to inhabit themselves.
And frankly, who better?
We are the encyclopedias of “forbidden” knowledge.
Demonized in public.
Consulted in private.
I was happy to help. If I can bring clarity to one woman at a time, I consider that community care.
But I always began with the same question:
Is this something you want or something you’re negotiating in order to keep a man?
I resent being asked to provide instructions for pleasure to women pressured by men who feel entitled to access but allergic to responsibility.
Especially here.
Where bodies are moral battlegrounds, not sites of knowledge.
Where homophobia thrives because no one is taught how anything actually works.
Once I knew it was her choice, only then did I move to the practical truths.
The unspeakable facts.
That the body needs preparation.
That comfort matters.
That patience is not optional.
That care is listening.
That control belongs to the one receiving.
That relaxation is a process, not a switch.
That safety requires the right protection, the right products, and above all, the right partner.
A partner who understands intimacy is not conquest.
In other words, everything patriarchy refuses to teach.
What they fear is not sex, but the erotic—the kind of embodied knowledge that makes dishonesty, coercion, and numbness impossible to tolerate.
And here lies the profound irony:
The same men who are obsessed, aroused by it, fixated on it, demanding access to it, are often violently homophobic.
They want it.
They pursue it.
They sometimes “accidentally” force it.
And then they call us immoral.
Straight men are allowed to desire anything as long as they never have to interrogate that desire.
Interrogation, after all, is for sinners, not for men.
And patriarchy does not stop at straight men.
It takes from all of us.
I have had conversations with many gay men who believe that to be “properly” gay, intimacy must always culminate in intercourse as if anal sex is a requirement rather than a possibility. As if penetration is the proof of desire, rather than one of its many expressions.
This, too, is obedience.
Outercourse, touch, care, presence, and the many languages of intimacy are more than enough. But a culture that refuses sexual education replaces knowledge with dictated scripts, and scripts demand performance, not feeling.
Women are expected to endure it quietly.
Most of these conversations ended with gratitude.
Until one didn’t.
She was what people call “liberal.”
Knew the right language.
Held the correct opinions.
But when marriage came up, the homophobia leaked.
When fasting season arrived, scripture reasserted itself.
She told me without hesitation that she believed homosexuality was a sin.
I stared. 😳
She had come to a gay man to learn how to enjoy anal sex.
Then came the revelation.
She was doing it to protect her virginity.
Everything snapped into focus.
This was not confusion.
This was theology doing acrobatics.
‘Virginity’ intact.
Desire fulfilled.
God appeased on technicality.
Anal sex is not sinful when it is repurposed as a moral loophole.
She is not alone.
There are women having anal sex because religion forbids birth control.
Others to avoid pregnancy.
Others to remain“pure.”
Bodies bent into compliance.
Pleasure rerouted through loopholes.
Desire smuggled through silence so doctrine can remain untouched.
This is what institutions do best.
They do not eliminate desire; they deform it.
They do not protect women; they train them to negotiate harm.
They do not challenge violent men. They excuse them.
Sanctify them.
Hand them entitlement wrapped in scripture.
We live in a world where heterosexuality is sacred, no matter how coercive.
And queerness is sinful, no matter how careful.
Where women are told their bodies are holy but are denied ownership.
Where gay men are mocked, feared, legislated against: yet quietly consulted when straight morality runs out of answers.
This is not faith.
This is fear dressed as righteousness.
This is not morality.
This is control with incense.
This is not sexual freedom.
It is survival masquerading as choice.
Until we confront the institutions that taught us to hate ourselves while secretly depending on us, we will keep performing this exhausting ritual:
Holy in public.
Desperate in private.
Perpetually shocked by the contradictions we refuse to name.
Amen to the loophole.
Bahiru Shewaye (pronoun try me/ fuck around and find out) is a queer Ethiopian writer and filmmaker whose work examines how patriarchy, religion, and heteronormativity regulate bodies, desire, and belonging. Their writing centers embodied knowledge, intimacy, and contradiction as political terrain, drawing from lived experience and critical analysis. Bahiru is a co-founder of House of Guramayle, a cultural platform supporting LGBTQ+ communities in Ethiopia.