Center of Gravitas Views on Gay Porn

{mosimage}Reading through various blogs often spurs me to rethink my assumptions about topics like gender, academia, and even sex. This type of prompting is one of the greatest things about the blog world that I have discovered over the past few months. Adam's blog propelled me to reconsider queer theory's relationship with the larger queer community, for instance.

Similarly, Joe of the ubiquitous Joe.My.God recently posted one of the smartest entries I have encountered. Joe raised important questions about self-loathing and the ways gay men perceive ourselves and what types of messages we internalize.

"But, GayProf, you promised us porn," I hear you saying, "It's right there in your title! When are we going to get to the porn?" We love you, GayProf, because you give our daily lives meaning and purpose. Okay, maybe you aren't saying that last part – for now.

I want to think about gay porn, in particular, because it has such an immediate connection to ideas about our sexuality. And, hey, who doesn't love gay porn?

It's sexuality, after all, that defines and names our community; and it's sexual desire that drives the porn industry. Few people, I imagine, buy Anchor Hotel for its stimulating character development.

We need to be more conscious, though, about the messages the porn industry sends us. Porn, more than any other type of media, both shapes and is shaped by our desires.

Yeah, straight porn has some serious issues as well, but some hetero-type can work out that mess on their own. GayProf can only write about what he knows – and he knows gay porn.

Issues of porn's objectification and the ethics of voyeurism will have to await some other blogger as well. That's not where I am going today (and there is only so much of a kill-joy I am willing to be) .

Rather, Joe's ideas prompted me to rethink some of the dominant themes in the gay porn industry. In particular, two themes concern me: the emphasis on "straight" men and the recurring representation of rape as erotic. The two themes often intertwine and both ultimately undermine our community by enforcing dangerous visions of sex.

Many forms of gay porn actually start with the premise that gay men aren't desirable enough for our sexual enjoyment. Rather, it's straight men who become the alleged holy grail in gay eroticism. An entire genre of "Camateur" internet businesses have developed around filming straight guys for gay consumption. One such site declares to its potential subscribers, "We've all seen them: those incredibly hot straight men. It presumes that the unattainable straight men figures centrally in all gay men's fantasies." How, oh, how can gay men be content without knowing what these straight boys do alone?

Fortunately for us, the site gives a solution by claiming that it offers "the chance to get to know these men in the up close and personal way you have always wanted to." Why bother looking for gay men when we can spy on straight boys? Of course, most of these men's straightness proves dubious beyond their porn appearances. That's not the point, though.

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