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?

cunillingus features highly in japanese porn (I learned that off a website for students in Japan).
OTOH bukkake def orginiates in japan, which is definitely more to do with male homoerotic bonding than anything else.

"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?"

Absolutely agree with this. Feminists have written about this

I think some cultures repress the homoerotic in men more than other cultures. I believe it's particularly oppressed in American men because my female American friend was shocked to see my brother and his mates hugging and play-fighting. Middle-Eastern men tend to touch each other more than British men, squeezing each others' legs/thighs is acceptable. Russian politicians kiss each other fully on the lips when they greet etc.

I wonder if the more repressed it is in a particular culture, the more it's expressed through the porn tastes of that culture?

The people with the most power in the porn industry are more like the CEOs of supermarket chains - they want the cheapest suppliers and don't care about the goods. Making good porn costs a bit more (you have to pay people good rates for starters), it's perceived as an untried quantity, the men who are usually in charge are not interested in women;s viewpoints - but this is not exclusive to the porn industry. The whole of the media is uninterested in 'women's' issues unless these involve ways to sell women make up and clothes or slimming products.
People will tell you that the collapse of Scarlet magazine was down to women not liking porn - this is rubbish. Scarlet sank because it wasn't a porn mag, it was just another women's mag full of shoes, make up, 'relationship' advice and one or two not-that-great erotic stories.
Filament is a far more interesting magazine but as yet it's not got big industry backing because it's by and for women and won;t run consumerist features or fasion/beuty puffs.

'I'm not sure that I agree with this because gay men sort of like women so much more than straight men do, and many have great relationships with their mothers.'

I don't think you can generalise. There are plenty of gay misogynists about unfortunately, and there have been definite strands in gay culture, historically, about how generally awful women are with their revolting female bodies.

Interesting piece, Dittany.Particularly when the writer says that he considered the work 'sick and cruel slapstick' and not really 'about sex' at all. I also think that the bad porn that has been coming out over the past few years is a reflection of the more general selling of cruelty and selfishness in entertainment media: the reality shows and 'chat' shows where people are encouraged to laugh and whoop and cheer as someone is reduced to hysterical tears, confronted with an appalling truth about his/her life, physically endangered, dumped in cold water, repeatedly knocked down, whatever - not to mention all the stuff like Saw and Hostel - just because it's labelled 'horror' rather than 'porn' isn;t going to stop some people wanking over the depictions of women being chopped up.

dittany do you believe that most men are women haters and do you have any theories on why that should be the case?

not rhetorical, genuine question.

steth, OH I know gay men can be misogynistic, especially in works of literature written by gay men, so I'm not trying to generalise but I'M thinking more along the lines of how gay men and women get along so well in groups. I think you can generalize about that. I watch 'so you think you can dance' (I LOVE IT) and the entire programme is more or less populated by women and gay men, including the judges.

SGB, I see your point about making women-friendly porn, I really do, but I also think that it can only take place in a post-revolutionary utopia in the distant, distant future. Because any attempt to do the kind of porn your talking about is going to be hijacked by men, so the only option feminists have got is to say 'no' to porn. If saving one woman from one of the scenes dittany's post means lots of people go without wanking material, well, then so be it. It's a trade off I'm willing to make.

Hijacked by men, or hijaked by profitmakers, Sakura? How do you define the hijackers and what is their motive?

capitalism and patriarchy feed off each other. That's why feminists tend to gravitate towards Marxism.

But they're not synonymous. They may feed off each other, but their motives are not the same. I lean more towards the view that profit-making, not misogyny, leads.

yes but the profit makers, the ones who do really well under a captitalist system, have to have a certain, how shall we say, ruthlessness about them. They fuck the environment and they fuck women and children.

I'm a bit late to this, but I would say that mainstream porn is less about repressed homoeroticism than it is about male narcissism.

I think that it is geared towards a fairly immature version of male sexuality, where the main, er, thrust of the issue is about wish-fulfilment and identification with an unrealistic position of power.

In porn, the fantasy protagonist is basically saying 'Woo-hoo, look what my penis can do, it can go anywhere!'

They don't need to engage with the female receptacle in any way, because they are just an unthreatening generic fembot on which they can visit the imaginary power of their almighty cock.

It is an immature version of sexuality, but functions as a lowest common denominator for the marketing men.

I am far from convinced that most men actually see women like this, but I think it corresponds with a level of development in most men which pornographers can make money from.