straight pornography is male gay in sensibility

[Heathcliffscathy]

This came to me in a wave of inspiration...straight porn is a hypermasculinised view of sex. Hypermasculinity has it's place in the pantheon of what it means to be a gay male (not all, not every, by any means).

straight porn is totally phallocentric: penetrative to the exclusion of all else and the builds up to an inevitable anal sex finale, or blowjob come shot/facial.

the vagina plays second (third?) fiddle to anus and mouth and size is all. breast stimulation gets barely a look in.

bear with this as I know it's treading a dodgy generalisation line, but it does strike me that if you were to argue that male gay sexuality (as a generalisation, i know that there is a vast continuum out there that we are all on male and female) is the zenith of hypermasculanised male sexuality, then mainstream straight porn is pretty gay?

Do you think it's possible that the homoerotic is so repressed in 'straight' man that it has to find it's outlet in porn, which leaves women utterly hard done by porn wise?

i know there is a strong argument to suggest that straight porn is just about degrading women and undoubtedly that's in there a lot of the time but could there be another basis to it?

I think porn's just porn TBH. The sensibilities are the same - straight porn is made by men, so is male gay porn.

Dunno about gay women's porn.

I've read some erotica for/by gay women, but not seen any films. If I remember it was quite sci-fi, gothic in tone. But I may have wandered into a sub-genre !

I know that lady vampires featured quite heavily.

I've never seen gay porn, either. I wonder...

I have only ever seen lesbian sex depicted in straight porn - so for the benefit of men. It left me cold. I am straight, but that's not the point. It was just totally geared towards men - women being penetrated by each other in all sorts of inconceivable ways.

I'm pretty sure this is not a true representation of sex between lesbians. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but just that it is not all about how far you can stretch each other's vaginas to accommodate various implements

I have seen some porn made by a British women for straight women.

But never gay porn for either gay men or women.

i think that porn made for lesbians would be interesting to see how different it is to porn made for men.

Is there even such a thing as lesbian porn made by lesbians? There must be...

There is so many different types of porn out there that i am pretty sure there must be some Lesbian pron made by lesbians

I think there is. My best friend is a lesbian and she and her partner indulge in a bit of porn (films and literature). I haven't really asked her about it to date. Must bring it up over our next drunken meet-up! (in the interests of feminist research on behalf of MN, of course!)

I would imagine that you would have to wade through mountains of crap male-made 'lesbian' porn to find any.

Probably!

Ah well there is a lot of erotic/porn writing on the net, that;s for sure!

I agree with blinder that you probably have to know where to look and googling would not yield the right results.

I think the answer to the OPs question lies in lesbian porn.

now there's a thought

Mumsnet lesbians, where are you? We need to know!

Right I'm going in...

Is everyone waiting for her to report back from the front line?

But wrt the OP I think much of what passes as hyper-male behaviour, such as the inhuman treatment of women, violence etc is a reaction against the feminine within. Men are so conditioned to hate the feminine principle, and to associate it with weakness, fragility, receptivity that they must distance themselves from the concept by 'killing' it. But of course everyone has a spectrum of strength---weakness within themselves.

Maybe porn is part of this male attempt to not be gay/feminine/weak because they sense that deep down they are fragile. But I don't think you can call that 'gay'. Because 'gay' doesn't equate to weakness in reality. Just in the confused minds of the hyper-male.
And by 'minds' I of course mean 'durr testicles.

Well I can confirm that there are websites for lesbian porn. I haven't watched any, just found an article on a lesbain site with links.

So it's there. So there you have it.

Not sure what the next move is TBH. DH is looking at me like this

ROTFl!@ISNT

Well done, our first foray into feminist investigative journalism . tell your DH you are doing important works in the names of Mumsnet!

How weird, I was just thinking about this today.

Someone - can't remember who - has suggested that the act of consuming hardcore straight pornography is essentially homoerotic, and that the real erotic focus of the porn is a)the male protagonist or b) in situations where men watch/discuss/compare/joke about porn together, the 'mate' with whom the porn is shared.

She distinguished between softcore, where the female object is the focus of, and is trapped by the male gaze - which fact is both its function and its appeal - and hardcore, where the focus is the male protagonist's cock. She argued that while it's true that there was an element of identification with the male protagonist in hardcore, the overarching structural function was the fetishization of the cock of another man, which is, in culture, both constantly present (in loos etc) and infinitely absent (cultural imperative not to actually look.

When I said (wrongly as it turned out) that it would be difficult to find genuine lesbian porn, I wasn't issuing a challenge ISNT.

Interesting. But just because women make it, doesn't mean it's not degrading to women of course. Patriarchy rules ok.

I'm interested in male gay porn because it's made by men. I wonder if they subject themselves to the same humiliation.

Oh men love looking at other men's cocks. All men. Who are the kidding?

they kidding

Blimey

really - so a lesbian making lesbian porn for other lesbians is degrading other lesbians?

No, I don't think anyone has said that. I don't think anyone on this thread has any knowledge of lesbian porn. I would love to know what lesbian porn is like!

Me too reasonable doubt.

I think that blinder's point is what I was thinking about porn made by women for (straight) women - that given the prevlence of mainstream heterosexual porn for men, the sort of way it all works might be difficult to get away from as everyone knows "what porn looks like" IYSWIM. So eg a woman making porn might make porn which is unlike porn made by men to an extent, but still be unable to entirely escape the typical porn style/scenarios/roles etc IYSWIM

Dunno.

I have seen porn made by women for women if that helps? I'm not about to go and watch a load of lesbian porn to keep you lot happy

I think the point about using those orifices are that they don't actually give the woman any sexual pleasure

Dittany, how wrong you are!