You don’t want to know how it’s made.
That admonition is usually reserved for referring to certain foods, but it can extend to other products of dubious concoction. Like porn. Specifically, straight porn.
If mainstream gay porn’s personal tumult is whether to doff condoms to compete with encroaching cut-rate bareback productions and a tough economic climate, then top-tier straight porn finds itself questioning just how far is too far when it comes to raunch. I’ll freely admit to enjoying more high-class straight productions based on the new wave of built and attractive male stars they employ. Still, if I avoid condomless gay porn because I think it tends to present performers at their worst, then low-budget gonzo-style straight porn is equally repellent to me.
As its style and tone could worryingly become the new industry standard, I have to wonder if there is some fundamental difference between the straight male and gay male libidos. When we seek out skin flicks, do we really want the same things from them, and are hetero men bringing something to the table that’s foreign and unintelligible to us? For all the adverse drubbing gays take for being supposed perverts and freaks, is there a weird and vicious motivation in the straight male sex drive that’s pandered to by porn merchants and thus implicitly encouraged?
A few months back I happened to view some B-roll from a hetero feature online that had a favorite actor of mine in the cast. What I saw was, candidly, appalling. The women for the most part — the more rough-hewn and trashy ones you find in these guerilla-shot efforts — complained endlessly and had a hissing, visceral contempt for the men; the men in turn seemed like passive animals, turning from the women in meek avoidance and going through the motions as a director brayed hoarse orders about keeping up the pace and the energy.
The actor I fancied lay with a thousand-yard stare in his eyes as an actress he clearly detested rutted away on his permahard (chemically bulwarked?) cock, and the youngest and most attractive of the ladies could be heard to ask plaintively if she could hurry and rinse off after her co-star just unloaded all over her. It was like some awful circus act performed by players who were either half-dazed or watching the clock, and I found myself wishing they would turn on their handlers and make a run for freedom.
This isn’t even the first indication I’ve had that straight porn productions seem fraught with spite and animus. In the documentary Thinking XXX, Tera Patrick made an oblique reference to an on-set “incident“ that left her reeling — many have posited that Rocco Siffredi, no stranger to handling his co-stars roughly and even sadistically, is the likely culprit — and all I could think was Jesus, was she hurt? Another actor I’m partial to who veered briefly into gay films because he admitted he liked being the center of attention for once appears in behind-the-scenes footage and dejectedly utters “That’s right. I’m not even here…” when the cameraman follows the actresses around and regards him as little more than a potted plant in the pan. Later, as he converses with the actress he would later do from behind in the restroom, an unguarded grimace comes over her face as she looks at him. Yikes.
I know it’s still a taboo for male performers to jump back and forth between gay and straight studios, but I can understand now why they would want to take breathers from the hetero side. The gay industry certainly has its debits, but either all the making-of featurettes of gay shoots I’ve seen are carefully edited and staged, or it’s a vastly more laid back world.
The men are invariably shown laughing and rough-housing, sometimes breaking out into song or dance, waving to the camera goofily as they hammer away at each other. The director will be hugged, and pratfalls galore will cause the entire production to erupt into laughter. I was quite surprised by the genuine camaraderie I saw evidenced particularly in the spate of Hungarian entries I viewed for my piece on their loony subtitling. The models run together on the beach, engage in horse play, and help each other with dialogue. It’s like summer camp, and I honestly feel naive for ever assuming that gay porn was so much more dark and lurid than its straight half. The fact is, not only is it apparently far more pleasant to create, but thematically in many respects, it seems harmlessly quaint and innocent.
Director-turned-author — and former Nightcharm scribe — Sam Benjamin‘s take on the dichotomy in the medium is persuasive, especially given the front row seat he occupied in observing both sides. His account of his tenure behind the camera is rife with anecdotes that are at best queasy, at worst numbing: a “victim” mission statement handed down by producers that relied on actresses being “punished” and “targeted” for abuse and humiliation masquerading as sex, a push-the-envelope approach tailored to male audiences’ hunger for degradation, and a troubling blurring of arousal and aggression that tainted even his own reasoning. I have taken note of the disturbing ease and frequency with which the word “abuse” is now the keyword/selling point in titles. His segue into the “Zen of Gay Porn” was by comparison guiltless and morally unsullied.
The men he encountered were gentle and game, their interplay egalitarian, the sets free of tension. Benjamin is careful not to rebuke all straight porn — only the garish gonzo variety he traded in — and his assessment of the difference between straight and gay porn is the cynosure of how differently the gale male vantage operates: free of the “Lady Problem” — that is, the simultaneous obsession with women being arousing and the hatred of them for being so — ours is a fantasy unburdened with rage and infantile Mommy resentment.
Ask yourself: have you ever watched a DVD because you hated the men depicted and wanted to see them brutalized and laid low? Do you think other men are inherently filthy and deserved to be choked, branded with lipstick as whores, or slapped around? Do you feel ashamed that you enjoy porn?
I’ve come to accept the double standard that it’s very difficult to sexually exploit a man, and especially a gay man, because hetero culture equates penetration with victimhood, and our bodies are harmonious as penetrative and receptive pleasure vessels. For all that pornography reveals about what men may think about women, what does it really tell us about what they think about other men? Is their paralyzing fear of another man’s sexuality the reason so many movies visually truncate male performers down to little more than a torso and a dick — a monstrous, avenging fiend without a face? To get on board with this, we’d have to hate ourselves.
Most of us will concede that we’re raucous sex pigs deep down, and rape fantasy — we’ve all imagined either being forcibly taken or forcing ourselves on another man — is so openly tolerated that it ceases to have a sick, internalized connotation. Directors and gay audiences have an implicit contract that what’s being depicted is all well-choreographed fun, and since same-sex sexual assaults haven’t gone through the roof, it’s clear we can make the distinction. And yes, scenarios that would seem tasteless and vile when directed at a woman play like overheated cartoons in gay features. Can a sneering, 6’3”, 290-pound muscle bottom ever be anyone’s victim, and would it ever enter into our minds to hate him for going all in? I can watch a scene that involves a man coerced into getting gang-banged atop a pinball machine or a pool table by four beasts in heat and not once have it remind me of The Accused. More like The Enthused!
Even the way we approach and interpret the skeeziest of straight offerings effectively blunts their hard edge. Lecher porn — involving young women pretending to be teenage babysitters and school girls seduced by predatory old creeps — is a big seller. The men involved are purposely cast to seem repulsive and risible, which I guess all amounts to a parody of contrasts the determined audience gets off on.
One of the undisputed kings of the genre is the British actor Dick Nasty (top right), who’s forever intended to be something of a comic buffoon that straight viewers’ egos will feel no threat from. The perversity comes from the fact that he’s so witty, charming, at times winkingly ironic, and sexy as hell that he’s developed a devoted gay fan base. The gay men who love his movies — an audience with whom the leering chauvinism depicted therein fails to connect with on any meaningful level — could care less about naughty nymphettes and barrette-wearing bimbos, and would love to be his willing playthings themselves. Our own variation on the theme, the Daddy Genre, takes a different route, the young men cast not as baby-talking simps, but hot-for-teacher sex machines who are often the aggressors or instigators of all manner of nastiness with their salt-and-pepper studs of choice.
To hate what you should love, and to destroy what you desire: it’s a joyless futility and a pathetic fantasy I’m happy to say is completely wasted on me.
© 2010, Shawn Baker. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com
Thanks for illuminating the chasm, Shawn. A good percentage of het (gonzo) porn is truly revolting. What little I’ve caught made me nearly ill. I’ve yet to understand what it says, symbolically speaking, about the eternal ‘battle of the sexes’… not sure I want to know…regardless, I’m doubly happy I’m gay and out of the fray. Give me a bunch of hung n hot n horny homos havin’ a good romp for the camera, and I’m a happy queer camper.
Brilliant! Why don’t more sex sites write shit like this? HUH!?
Funny, but I feel that a lot of recent gay porn – especially from the mainstream studios – **is** about degradation and humiliation. So many studios feature models who literally spit or piss on each other, slap and strike each other, and call each other names (and, yes, there’s a difference between “talking dirty” and what happens on screen). There’s one “horsey” studio that is so egregious in its values that I completely avoid it,
I’ve also noticed that the models rarely engage in kissing or caressing, or any other signs of intimacy. It’s just about the sex; for all the models seem to care, they could be fucking a silicone doll. There’s often very little chemistry or connection (and many, in fact, skip any set-up, but go straight for the penetration).
As a result, I gravitate to the “semi-professional” (they can no longer be called “amateur”) websites. They often feature “straight” men, but the sex seems to be more honest and more about connection and chemistry.
I’ve never felt that it is all a “wink-wink, it’s just a fantasy” situation; and it concerns me because, unlike so many straights, porn is all too often the only exposure gay men have to the gay world, and all too often, it is from porn that men learn about the expectations and etiquette of gay sex and gay relationships. What kind of expectations are being set by men who spit and hiss at each other?
good write up and important considerations. yes, it’s true — many things are wasted and the hyper-reality juxtaposed with slight variance on theme yet an atmospheric as flaccid prune — yes, it’s true many things are wasted and the alarming degree to which abuse circumvents a solid richness that would incorporate so much more than a gutteral manifestation of the id. anyhow, good write up!!
Well sais, JAY. I so agree.
Outstanding essay, Shawn. And thanks for the link to Sam Benjamin. That was equally as eloquent.
Even most gay leather/bondage/fetish entries that I’ve seen play very vanilla compared to a typical straight gang bang movie. You can tell the men aren’t really into that scene. Two guys playing rough is not the same level of depravity as what you see in a cheap-ass straight movie. There’s still plenty of “soft” gay porn with lots of kissing and gentle play. I think gay porn felt in the 90s that it had to be socially redeeming and message-y, so it almost became too cute and sweet for a while. Raging Stallion’s tough guy movies might be a response to that, but your average DVD is pretty guys having photogenic sex without debasing each other.
straight porn is so vile. Shameful.
Very insightful essay.
I’ve often felt that there was a paradox at the heart of most straight porn I’ve seen. On the one hand, they’re all about men and their penises. It can’t be an accident that men who have nothing attractive about their bodies except a big dick are perfectly acceptable in straight porn, and if it were all about female bodies and genitals, it wouldn’t be important to have a big dick at all.
If the women were the object of lust, one thing you wouldn’t expect to see would be movies where one woman services lots of men – and yet that’s very common. Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas aren’t curiosities, they’re genre defining classics.
The permahard cock wouldn’t be so important – as it isn’t in a lot of gay porn. And you wouldn’t get so many closeups of a cock being stroked to errection by an anonymous hand, and pumped by one or more vaginas and mouths.
Kissing and boob-fondling? It happens, but not much. As for cumshots, have you ever seen an internal cumshot in a straight movie? They’re rare in gay stuff, but nonexistant in the straightporn world.
There’s a reason it is, quite literally, the money shot. Straight men want to see cum.
And yet, and yet…male performers are there as the necessary evil. They provide the cock, and it’s the woman who gets to be on the DVD cover. How many straight-only male porn actors really are “porn stars” – remembered years after their retired? I can’t think of any.
wow…great article and insight. i haven’t watched straight porn for a long time, and i never was into it to begin with, even back in those days when i thought i was a straight man and that i would be married forever. once i earnestly began to investigate those longings i had for dick, i began watching gay porn on a reasonably regular basis, and loved it. you are so right in describing the differences, what with the women going nuts for their man’s cock, no matter what he looked like.
i think you can actually feel so much more attraction in gay porn. these men truly enjoy fondling, sucking and fucking each other. the women in straight porn are there because they have to be there; the men in gay porn are there because they want to be there.
@Jay: The thing to remember is that all that spitting and pissing isn’t degrading necessarily. Some guys are really into piss play. Certainly most people are revolted by it, and that’s certainly their right, and the norm. However, it isn’t safe to assume that they are being forced into it. I’ve seen enough interviews from people who have done water sports porn to know that most of the actors are truly into it.
If you look at this article again you will see quickly that the author makes the point that it isn’t the actions that are despicable, but the attitudes of those involved. The pinball scene he references would be repellent if a woman were being used. Is that double standard fair? Maybe, maybe not. On some level there is an understanding that men want something different from sex. When a muscular power bottom gets gang banged it’s hot because he’s into it. There’s no victimization there, there is something actually kind of beautiful in his being able to let go enough to allow that to happen. Not everyone is capable of that. On the other hand a woman who truly wanted that sort of treatment, in the way that bottoms in our community are praised for would be viewed as a tramp or a whore. THAT double standard isn’t ok. That issue aside though, it sounds like this isn’t a matter of sex craving women not being given the respect they deserve, but normal women who are willing to have sex even though they aren’t really into it and men who are used as props. All too disgusting.
wow, never actually looked at it that way. It is absolutely true!
I think you’re all cum guzzling sluts!
In the context of this article, how about an analysis of that “Straighthell” web site. Shocking.
For once, I have something nice to say about this hellhole of a site, so brace yourselves:
I’m glad you guys are at least thinking about lady parts. Try to keep it up. It will help.
Gertz, you pretty much summed up my feeling about hardcore staright porn. That is , except for penis-vagina sex, all the other acts I find lewd and revolting (double penetration, facials on command, choking, name calling her bitch,whore,etc..) Disgusting.
Agreed. I’m bi, but don’t watch much straight porn simply because it just seems so…dead. I can tell the actors are *trying* to seem like they’re into it, but you can totally tell how bored and uninterested they are, if you really look.
Not to say that gay porn isn’t the same way sometimes, but most of the time it I definitely notice more “this is fun!” vibes then “When’s my paycheck?” ones…