Frot - Concept and Etymology

Concept and Etymology

Genito-genital sex or genital-genital (GG) sex is a physically descriptive term for sex in which there is contact between the genitals, in the same naming convention as "genital-anal sex" and "genital-oral sex". This type of sexual intimacy is not restricted to humans. "GG rubbing" is a term frequently used by primatologists to describe the act among female bonobos, and is sometimes used in reference to "GG rubbing" among bonobo males, under the term "penis fencing." Thus, penis-to-penis rubbing between males is thought, according to varying evolutionary theorists, to have existed before the development of hominids into humans and bonobos, and may or may not have occurred in the homosexual activity of both of these genetically related species.

As a modern concept that describes a specific activity among men who have sex with men (MSM), the term "frot" emerged in a context of a debate about the status of anal sex within the gay male community; some in the anti-anal, pro-frot camp insist that anal sex ought to be avoided altogether. Another view argued that the popularity of anal sex would decline (presumably with a corresponding drop in HIV rates) if gay men could somehow be persuaded to stop thinking of anal sex as a "vanilla" practice, but rather as something "kinky" and not-quite-respectable—as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s, when gay men who preferred to do only mutual masturbation and fellatio sometimes used the mildly disparaging slang term "brownie queen" for aficionados of anal sex. Oral sex was heavily practiced in the 1950s and early 1960s, and people who invited anal sex were called by a pejorative name such as "brownie queens".

Gay activist Bill Weintraub began to heavily promote and recommend the gender-specific meaning of "penis-to-penis rubbing" as "frot" on Internet forums sometime in the late 1990s, and said he coined the term. "I don't use the word 'frottage,' because it is an ersatz French word which can indicate any sort of erotic rubbing," he stated. "Frot, by contrast, is always phallus-to-phallus sex." Weintraub believes that is what actual sex is – genital-genital contact.

Alternative terms for frot include frictation, which can refer to the wider meaning of "frottage" but also penis-penis sex specifically, and frontism. Slang terms for frot include "cock rub," "bumping dicks," "knocking cocks," "tummy stix," "sword-fighting", "Oxford style", "Princeton rub", and "Ivy League rub". The lesbian form is referred to as tribadism, a term derived from the Greek word for "rub" (tribein). In ancient Greek and Roman sexuality, a tribas, or tribade, was a woman or intersex individual who actively penetrated another person through use of the clitoris or a dildo. Because penetration was viewed as "male-defined" sexuality, a tribas was considered the most vulgar lesbian. Until the 20th century, the term referred to lesbian sexual practices in general, and therefore lesbians were occasionally called tribades.