This book investigates what women enjoy about consuming, and in some cases producing, gay male erotic media–from slashfic, to pornographic texts, to visual pornography–and how this sits within their consumption of erotica and pornography more generally. In addition, it will examine how women’s use of gay male erotic media fits in with their perceptions of gender and sexuality. By drawing on a piece of wide-scale mixed methods research that examines these motivations, an original and important volume is presented that serves to explore and contribute to this under-researched area.
The 2000 case of Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Customs Canada provided Canada’s highest court with its first opportunity to consider whether the analysis set out in R. v. Butler - in which the Supreme Court identified pornography as an issue of sex discrimination - applies to pornography intended for a lesbian or gay male audience. The Court held that it did, finding that, like heterosexual pornography, same-sex pornography also violates the sex equality interests of all Canadians. Christopher Kendall supports this finding, arguing that gay male pornography reinforces those social attitudes that create systemic inequality on the basis of sex and sexual orientation - misogyny and homophobia alike - by sexually conditioning gay men to those attitudes and practices. The author contends that as a result of litigation efforts like those brought by lesbian and gay activists in the Little Sisters case, the notion of empowerment and the rejection of those values that daily result in all that is anti-gay have been replaced with a misguided community ethic and identity politic that encourages inequality. This is best exemplified in the gay male pornography defended in Little Sisters as "liberation" and "central to sexual freedom." Gay Male Pornography rejects the equality claims of gay male pro-pornography advocates and argues that there is little to be gained from sexualized conformity. To date, no one has taken the position that gay male pornography violates the legal right to sex equality. This book does that and, as such, it will be of value to scholars of law, sociology, and gender studies, as well as to all who have an interest in equality and justice.
Open any gay lifestyle magazine (even the serious ones) or go to any gay bar, and you're likely to encounter something related to pornography, be it an image of a porn superstar or advertisements for pornographic magazines, DVDs, calendars, etc. Given that it is an omnipresent feature of gay male culture, one might assume that gay pornography has received considerable attention from academics. Yet, surprisingly, even those with a professed interest in gay studies have neglected this medium. This book addresses that omission with a series of provocative essays devoted to the topic. Contributors from the fields of history, law, media studies, psychology, and more explore the complex world of male pornography and the various ways in which it permeates gay culture.
Can hot gay porn flow from the pens of lesbian writers? Can a gay man write convincingly of female sexuality? Can art remake same-sex desire? Switch Hitters answers an emphatic "yes!" to all these questions, celebrating a truly queer approach to sexuality, where hot sex is more important than gender labels.
A unique, multifaceted look at the meaning (and the specifics) of gay male pornography Open any “gay lifestyle” magazine (even the serious ones) or go to any gay bar, and you’re likely to encounter something related to pornography, be it an image of a porn “superstar” or advertisements for pornographic magazines, DVDs, calendars, etc. Eclectic Views on Gay Male Pornography Pornucopia examines this phenomenon with a series of provocative essays, in which experts in history, law, media studies, and psychology, as well as laypeople and gay porn insiders explore the complex world of male pornography and the various ways in which it has permeated gay culture—from the 1970s until today. This first-of-its-kind book examines the phenomenon of self-writing and performance for gay men in the last century, specifically looking at the lives of modern-day performance artist Tim Miller, who has received national recognition for his one-man shows portraying his struggles as a gay man; Wakefield Poole (born 1936), the first producer of gay pornography (Bijou, Boys in the Sand) in the era accompanying the emergence of the gay rights movement; gay adult film icon Scott “Spunk” O’Hara (born 1961); and Aaron Lawrence (born 1971), who worked as a gay escort, actor, and producer/director of his own sexually explicit “amateur” videos. In this groundbreaking analysis of gay men’s relationship with pornography, you’ll also learn about: gay pornography and the messages it carries about intimacy, body image, and hegemonic masculinity representations of ethnicity in gay pornography gay pornography and safer sex gay pornography and censorship viewers’ perceptions of gay pornography gay pornography and internalized homophobia, misogyny, and body fascism changes in the way gay pornography is produced and performed—from the 1970s through the 1990s the meaning of the recurring settings in American gay pornographic videos: prison, the military, and other all-male environments; and recurring themes: leather, S/M, dissatisfaction with heterosexual life, initiation into gay life, etc. In addition, Eclectic Views on Gay Male Pornography presents two fascinating chapters about the case of Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium in Vancouver. In this landmark case, the Canadian Supreme Court was asked to determine whether gay male pornography violated the sex equality protections guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court also examined the way that Canada Customs treats international shipments to gay and lesbian bookstores. In addition, the book provides a revealing insider’s perspective on the gay adult video industry that contrasts the workaday reality of making porn with the glamorous mythology of the skin trade.
We all have an erotic code. Your peak erotic experiences and fantasies have coded information about you that can help you understand yourself better. Through this book, you'll see how nonsexual narratives exist in your sexual interests that will help crack your erotic code. You will learn how to have a sex-positive attitude toward your sexual fantasies and minimize any shame you carry about your erotic interests.
Whether a hundred times life size on a billboard or romping through the pages of a glossy magazine in his Calvins, Tommys or Ralphs, the male model is the gold standard for masculine beauty. The characters in these stories run the gamut, from the billboard-gracing Aiden in Cynthia Hamilton's Big Picture to life models in drawing classes and ordinary guys immortalised in a catalogue shoot in T. Hitman's When Gary Met Larry. They hook up with artists, photographers, roommates and lovers in locations from New York and Miami to a beach in Australia.
Despite the fact that there actually exists a large number of pornographic and romantic texts about male homosexuality consumed and produced by American women since the 1970s, the "abnormality" of those female cross-voyeurs is constantly underlined in U.S. popular and academic culture. As the astonished, public reactions in the face of a largely female (heterosexual) audience of “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) and “Queer as Folk” (2000-2005) have shown, a woman's erotic/romantic interest in male homosexuality is definitely not as accepted as its male counterpart (men consuming lesbian porn). In the academic publications on female cross-voyeurs, the application of double standards with regard to male/female cross-voyeurism is even more obvious. As Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse note in their "Introduction" to “Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Internet” (2006), slash fiction – fan fiction about male homosexual relationships mainly produced and consumed by women – has stood in the center of fan fiction studies so far, despite being merely a subgenre of it. The reason for this seems to be an urge to explain the underlying motivations for the fascination of women with m/m romance or pornography within the academic discourse – a trend which differs completely from the extremely under-theorized complex of men interested in "lesbians." It is this obvious influence of conventional gender stereotypes on the perception of these phenomena that provokes me to examine the way in which the works of female cross-voyeurism and their consumers/producers are conceptualized in the U.S. scholarly accounts. In many ways, this thesis explores unknown territories and respectively tries to take a closer look at academic problems that have not been adequately addressed yet.
Best Gay Erotica 2011 is the biggest page-turner of them all, with stories that run the gamut of gay male sexual experience: from first times to one-night stands and from long-time lovers to explosive group get-togethers. Writers line up to get into Cleis Press' Best Gay Erotica series because it sets the bar for the highest quality of sexy, gay stories. With the the knack for finding seductive, literary talent, award-winning editor Richard Labonté is an icon in the field of erotic and romantic writing. This year's edition is hot-to-trot and globetrotting, featuring stories are incredibly diverse in both the people and the pleasures.
What an era it was, racks of magazines with hot guys on the glossy cover and hotter ones inside. Tucked in among the slick photos were stories, two or three to an issue, fiction by a host of writers including Dale Chase who spent eight lively years writing about sex with mechanics, bikers, professors, politicians and a host of others; sex in traffic school, supply rooms, and onstage at the theater; sex in just about every venue you can imagine and a few you can't. Characters are strong in Chase's work, her prose lean and powerful, her sex scenes guaranteed to turn up the heat. Take a trip back to a bygone time that showcased some of the finer gay erotica ever written; open the book to any page and prepare to be stirred.
