Womyn are sexy, alluring and beautiful to look at. Most men are not.

Womyn having sex with one another is a beautiful, arousing thing to watch, men having sex is not.

Sure there are exceptions, I'm sure gay men would disagree whole-heartedly but as you said most porn is made for and bought by straight men and that's what turns them on.

I don't mind watching gay porn but compared to straight or lesbian porn it does nothing for me and I think the above is whay.

Just my take...please don't flame me if you don't agree.

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With few exceptions, men in straight porn are decidedly not attractive to watch - having sex or not having sex. They are just plain fugly (as PS would have said).

However, the final scene between Banfalvi and Kopazs from Bjorn's Thick as Thieves is as beautiful to me as any I have ever seen in porn anywhere - gay, straight, bi or anything else.

~ GaySatyr

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aybesea's answer about it being a predominantly male viewing audience doesn't work because the same values are held in the non-porn viewing segments of society. It's not just adult movies where this is a "problem", but in our culture in general.

I should also point out that, from what I've heard, most girls get turned on by watching two guys doing it.

So, the only negative attitude that exists here is, really, men on the subject of two men. This might make some kind of sense if gay sex is equated with anal sex, but the fact is that most men don't have a problem thinking about anal sex with women - just when it comes to men. So to object on those grounds is to avoid the underlying issue.

Also, the objection to male anal sex (from those who don't have a problem with female anal sex) really makes no sense if you think about it. Men and women should (generally speaking) feel the same way about anal sex. Physically, men actually get more pleasure from it than do women. So, the fact that men don't like the idea when it comes to them can only really be a cultural thing.

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Everyone has their own basic coding and sexual map. -lunacy-'s response illustrates the point, but I don't believe you can make a blanket statement like women are sexy and men are not, and have it stand on it's own as a basic truth. Everyone's perception is subjective.

My wife looks at Playgirl magazine and finds the men to be sexy. Some women are indeed crotch watchers. The secretary at work often gives me double-takes if I'm wearing a nicely pressed white dress shirt (or tight jeans). The girls eye my son appreciatively and appraise his lean muscular physique.

But indeed -lunacy- your comments say a lot about how our current western society shapes our perception of sexuality. In general, women are taught to view themselves as being sexy, and go to great lengths to live up to our culturally defined standard of perfection. This can be extremely unhealthy. They are not taught to look at men as being sexy in the same way that men are taught to view women. Men are not encouraged to view themselves as being sexually desirable for their physical attributes. There is no socially appropriate attire to enhance a man's sexuality like there is for women.

This has not always been true for all cultures, everywhere, and for all times. There have been, and do exist today cultures than place a strong emphasis on male sexuality, looks and physical attributes. There have not always been cultures that are as male-homophobic as ours. By far the best text I've found on the subject of human sexuality is 'The Prehistory of Sex'.

50 years ago in this country (and most of the western world), the idea that women could have sexual desires and fantasies like men was thought to be preposterous. The ensuing 'sexual revolution' was really women regaining what they had lost through the course of history. 30 years ago women having fantasies about men together wasn't even on the map. Today it is a measurable quantity, but not even close to the male fantasy counterpart. SNP's post in the previous thread illustrates how the female attitude about male same-sex being threatening still lingers.

I should probably put together a list of website links and reference material to post on the subject.

More later.

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I tried to give what little I know regarding the second question in the original thread and I've nothing really new to add here.

Regarding the here and now though. If I told my girlfriend I wanted to fuck another man she'd either faint or be sick; if my girlfriend told me she wanted to fuck another woman I'd crack open a bottle of champagne
This is where we are and where a whole lot of other people are. I hear what Mythsong says about 'most girls being turned on by two guys doing it' but this doesn't tally with the conversations I have had and the opinions I have come across.

SNP.

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I was brought up in the sexually repressed 50s in a religious environment where sex was never discussed. Once in 7th grade the smartest kid in the class was caught giving a blow job to a highly disturbed older kid in the locker room. I had never considered such behavior possible and when I understood what had happened it made me feel ill. I had never been taught anything about homosexuality.

Shortly after, my older (8 yrs) brother who was a repressed homosexual, although I did not know that then, caught me masturbating and told me that I should let him see or he would tell mother. It didn't go any farther than him grabbing my hardon before I kicked him away screaming. I think I may have thrown up. I suppose one could argue that it was the act of an older person abusing me that made me ill but I really think it was the sexual part. I was already used to his verbal abuse to me.

I then tried to find something that would educate me on the subject and I have formed a tolerant attitude toward all forms of sexuality. I forgave my brother (I must have been a true Christian then!) and nothing like that ever happened again.

I still think most heterosexual men are instinctively turned off by the thought of men having sex with each other. I know that if a guy/guy scene popped up in a hetero sex movie, I would close my eyes and hit the ff.

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My wife is probably the most heterosexual woman I know. Though she doesn't usually cover her eyes in abject terror, she's pretty quick to jump on the FF button to get by all those pesky girl-girl scenes. It annoys her to no end that they put that stuff in so called 'couples' porn. And her reaction to girls kissing in mainstream movies or soft core porn is usually "Eewww, I can't believe they actually do that." She was very uncomfortable when she found herself in the middle of a bunch of gays and lesbians on the wrong evening at a night club, with people making out around her.

It's not that she's homophobic. She'll watch the gay pride parade on TV. She has a transvestite friend. She's married to a bisexual man. It's just that same-sex activity, either male or female, isn't part of her own area of sexual interest.

As for myself, it really does irk me that Vivid markets all those titles with girl-girl scenes to the supposed couples audience. The AVN reviewers and everyone else jumps right on the bandwagon, calling Vivid's "Let's Play Doctor" with Asia Carrera's gyno tongue lashing antics a good couples movie. I vote for better content labeling. But hey, if your going to have lesbian scenes, you may as well put in a gay scene too, just for equal time. That would be more stuff to FF over.

But seriously folks, who DO you think is picking out that movie to watch tonight? When women start laying out fistfuls of cash for porn the way men do, that's when content will change.

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Of course, even among women, there's a huge range of individual preferences in what we like to see!

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~ GaySatyr

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In just 16 short posts there are about a dozen issues each worth their own section in www.sexuality.org.

-origins of orientation
-heterocentrism
-homophobia
-privilege
-classism
-the "conservative" sexuality and sham rebelliousness of the "liberal" porn industry
-fetishism
-size-ism
-cultural tunnelvision
-the male gaze
-the beauty myth
-the myth of the porno lesbian
-niche marketing in the porn industry
-devaluation of women's financial power
-sexual acculturation
-childhood sexual trauma

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(Ask most men what kind of threesome they'd be interested in participating in - either as a theoretical mental excercise or an actual fantasy - and I bet they'd say MFF. Ask most women, and I bet the answer would be FMM.)

While I'm not denying that you weren't taught anything, I suspect that you were and you may not be aware of it. Even if nobody you knew in person discussed sex at all (let alone homosexuality) you were still exposed to media. I'm sure that you knew *something* about sex, even if you couldn't point to a specific source. And the media, even more so in the 50s, would have made homosexuality into a taboo issue. Further, even with a lack of explicit discussion, there is still body language and non-verbal clues as to how people feel about certain things. (Plus, the lack of something positive can often be just as telling as the presence of something negative...)

There are literally thousands of things we do / think / feel that are the subconsious product of the environment in which we were raised, the specific source of which (in terms of having been taught to do/feel/think it) cannot be clearly identified. Yet, take an individual from a culture where (generally speaking) things are different, and the odds are that they (also without being able to point to any specific circumstance in which they were taught) would say that they simply feel things in that different sense.

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(I should note that the movie The Ass Collector actually does have a "gay cameo", if I can use that term. For a few seconds it shows a guy giving another guy a blowjob as the camera pans around a kinky sex party. Kudos to Siffredi for filming it and including it in his "straight" movie.)

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A little background about myself won't hurt, so you can understand my point of view. I do not want you thinking, "Well, Rob's bi, so that's why he thinks like that."

I'm primarily heterosexual, and have always wanted women (I married one.) I had a total of two pre-adolescent same-sex experiences, both of which were a bit uncomfortable. I dated a few girls, and had my share of teenage sex (though at the time it didn't seem like enough.) There wasn't really any porn available, but there were a few volumes of erotic literature. These were fairly well balanced, mostly heterosexual content, with a little bit of girl/girl and boy/boy stuff. I would call it a healthy introduction to sexual fantasies for a teenager. At that point in my life, the idea of pursuing any type of same-sex relationship wasn't even in the picture. But I wasn't homophobic, and couldn't understand people who were.

At 17 years old with a military ID, I was able to gain admittance to an all night adult theatre in NYC. The first movie was a feature film. I don't remember the title, but one scene was etched into my memory. It was a scene with two young boyfriend/girlfriend couples. They had sex with their partners, then traded partners. The boys settled back to watch the girls together, and I thought, 'wow, this is really hot.' My naive mind logically extrapolated the next scene, and I thought, 'I wonder if the boys together will be that hot?' But of course they never did. After a few more movies like 'Women who teach young girls' and a western where two girls in the saloon string spit between touched tongues, I had pretty much figured out the whole porn thing.

This wasn't about watching men and women have sex, this was about men watching women have sex. The men were pretty much props, just anonymous and emotionless cocks. Though sexually aroused, I was appalled by the biased one-sidedness and bigotry it projected. The inclusion of female/female content, and lack of any male/male content spoke tons about our current western society, both male and female culture. I was expecting the rosy walk in the park that I got from those volumes of erotica, and found myself slammed in the side of the head with a baseball bat instead.

I honestly and truthfully believe that if you are going to show female same-sex, then you should also show male same-sex. I honestly and truthfully believe that you should show sex from both the male and female perspective, including your own and your partner's fantasies. Male and female fantasies really aren't that different.

My prescription:
Take a book of male fantasies and a book of female fantasies. The most prominent two that come to mind are Nancy Friday's 'Women on Top' and 'Men in Love'. Choose representative fantasies in proportion from each category, and play them out on film as written, uncut and unedited. This would include both male and female same-sex fantasies. If someone doesn't like a particular scene, there is always fast-forward or skip-scene. There is also tons of more current grass roots material on the web to choose from if you know here to look. A whole series could be done from just those two volumes, that would appeal to both men and women.

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Some people are gay, some people are straight, some people lie somewhere in between (no need to speculate here on the shape of the bell curve -- or the reverse bell curve, if reverse it be). Some people (female, male, gay, straight, and in between) enjoy anal stimulation; some people don't. Some people (male, female, straight, gay, and in between) like porn; some people don't. Some people (female, male, straight, gay, and in between) like broccoli; some people don't.

Some people are sexually experimental -- they consciously seek to expand their range of preferences and comfort zones. Other people are less "sexually ambitious" -- they take their preferences and comfort zones as they find them and are happy to keep them static.

These differences may make certain people more or less compatible with certain other people, but I don't think that they should give rise to moral judgments about the superiority or inferiority of someone's sexual development or sexual identity.

Speaking only for myself, I've yet to meet a person who determined what his/her sexual preferences would (or should) be and then "self-installed" them, like down-loading a computer program into her/his mind and erogenous zones.

There are both respectful and disrespectful ways to express one's sexual preferences (and even one's sexual aversions) in public discourse, as well as in intimate dialogue.

Recognizing the unfairness of the cultural hegemony of conservative heterosexuality seems ample grounds for militating for cultural change in the socio-sexual realm -- but not for militating for the cultural hegemony of, say, pan-sexuality. To me, the great enemy is hegemony itself, not any particular sexual preference or orientation.

Edited by - Bob on 5/2/2003 3:29:17 AM

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SNP.

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However, it should be apparent that there is obviously a niche market for gay scenes in straight movies, and that some people would buy it. (There is money to be made there - how much is another question. Would people boycott an otherwise straight movie just because of one MM scene? Would people who heard of such a movie go out of their way to pick it up for it's uniqueness value?)

Since there are speciality videos geared to all sorts of things, many of which no doubt have a smaller viewership than a straight movie with a MM scene, it makes little sense to base the entire argument on the fact that such material won't sell. If producers really thought about it, I don't think that they would reject the idea on that point alone.

I still say it is at least as much (if not much more) to do with cultural values than anything else. (I'm sure that most producers don't even consider it at all and, if they do, they don't really think about it but just automatically assume that it wouldn't go over well - or they are personally (rather than commercially) "against" it so don't do it.)

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It's not as if this is an untapped market; I have seen fully bisexual material advertised. Admittedly, if it were advertised more heavily it may increase market share slightly but porn producers never seem to miss a trick, so why they would have overlooked this if it genuinely was lucrative, I don't know.

Note, I'm making no comment whatsoever on what factors have led us here (I've done that already, especially in the original thread), all I'm talking about is what sells.

SNP.

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~ GaySatyr

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There are markets that are not being adequately addressed that do not necessarily preclude male/male scenes. If this were not the case, there would not be dissenting individuals like myself. I may be in the minority, but so are the women screaming "Where's the porn for us?" There is very little porn that has the content I want to see, presented the way I want to see it. A personal case in point. I'd love to see a male version of Veronica Hart's 'White Lightening'. It's never been done. Lump it off into the bisexual genre if you wish, but I think a lot of people, women included, would enjoy it.

So, to twist this thread a little more:
I don't know the first thing about film making, but I can write. I've written erotic fiction that has been very well accepted by the female audience, and does indeed include male/male sex. If film producers really got smart, they would ditch the standard porn formulas, and start looking at some grass roots fantasy material for new content.

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Some of the smaller local video stores stock everything sequentially by number, with no categorization. Some display all gay, bisexual, and she-male titles together on a separate shelf.

One larger store for VHS titles has a large section with gay only, and separate shelves for lesbian, she-male, bisexual and fetish titles. For DVD, they display the gay and bisexual titles next to the VHS ones, but all other titles are displayed alphabetically.

On-line here at ADT, female penetrating male strap-on are lumped in with the bisexual titles, even the ones that have no bisexual action. ?????????

Also here at ADT, the transsexual (she-male) title I reviewed showed up in the new review sidebar and got lots of banner four it's 4-star rating. The last bisexual title didn't even show up on the new review sidebar. I don't know about the first two bisexual reviews I submitted.

And my biggest pet peeve of all, NO ONE has a category for male/female all heterosexual titles or a way to search for these.

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~ GaySatyr

Edited by - GaySatyr on 5/2/2003 5:35:38 PM

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the list of new reviews is automatically generated from all new type=0 movies. the reviewers recommend is something i do manually (but it can be random as often i'm trying to do too many things at once.) i don't really have anywhere to feature bi reviews (gay ones are featured at gaydvdreview), but would like to change someday.

the reality is that i've learned a lot since we started adt and would have had a different category system if i knew better in the beginning. i'm sure the same can be said for many stores (considering my initial knowledge came from running a store.)

fantastic thread btw. i'd like to add that we shouldn't assume that anyone really knows what could sell as so much of what sells is based on advertising or price. market data in pornland is a lot of guessing.

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Most areas of business are fairly well evolved, porn has been on the go for centuries, and given the high percentage of unsuccessful new ideas in business/innovation(excluding those which couldn't have been done previously) I think it's a pretty safe bet (far better than our 70%) to say that it is unlikely a rich seam of porn gold is just waiting there untapped: I just don't buy it.

Let me ask you a question, compare the following: gaping female anuses and male-male sex in otherwise hetero films. Which of these two would seem a fairly way out esoteric event and which would sound fairly rudimentary? If you were to start with a man and a woman fucking as your porn starting point and push the boundary from there, which would you expect to encounter first, ass to mouth as a means to its own end or male-male fucking in an otherwise hetero environment? I say if you're looking for an untapped resource this is one thing that would have been stumbled across many moons ago and the fact that it hasn't speaks volumes.

SNP.

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Let me make this point again:

My wife is a straight woman and doesn't like girl/girl scenes in her porn. Just because a lot of men like to see them, does that mean she has to?

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You wrote:

Edited by - Bob on 5/2/2003 7:40:51 PM

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To be fair to myself (which I like to be), I did feel that I was addressing a specific point Steph had made and that I was fleshing out points I had already made rather than just repeating them.

With regard to your point, yes I agree with you that when we talk specifically about couples porn you have identified an issue. Where we maybe disagree is exactly what that issue is.
You seem to be implying that couples porn should not include lesbian scenes. My view is rather that couples porn is such a stupid concept as to be wholly worthless. I mean, I wouldn't walk in a bookshop and ask 'can I have a book suitable for a man to read please' or choose my television viewing or eating habits or any lifestyle element on such crude labelling. To suggest that a video purporting to be 'couples porn' will be enjoyed by all couples is like suggesting a video aimed specifically at men will be enjoyed by all men!!
SNP.

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As far as the implied question, 'Do women respond better to written erotica or visual erotica?', I'm not even going to touch that. I like both, and depending on my mood, respond equally well to either.

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I think you and I both agree that, ideally, it would be great to have available a wide range of high-quality porn videos, made and performed in by consenting adults, that appealed to all (non-criminal) sexual tastes and orientations. As far as I'm concerned, the more good porn the merrier, provided that I can find plenty of videos that float my own particular boat (selfish guy that I am).

Cheers!

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Underlying everything else, the biggest point I've been trying to make is about content labeling, and the ability to find the type of content you like, and avoid the type of content you don't want to see. The other point is that all types of content should be available, in reasonable quantity, at a reasonable price. Of course supply and demand will determine the quantity and price. Just because something has not been done before in a big way, doesn't mean there isn't a market for it.

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Flash,
My point was that you should stumble across male-male scenes well before gaping anuses. To me, suggesting gaping anuses may have been discovered (as marketable) but not the odd male-male scene seems as likely as discovering the micro chip before discovering the wheel.

SNP.

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I know as a hetero male, I'd prefer to see a male-male scene in a current film to see a male-female scene in a current film including Ron Jeremy. No offense to Ron, but he is an automatic turn off for me.

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The second customer says to the waiter, "I don't like extra sauce." The waiter says, "Sorry, it only comes with extra sauce.

The third customer asks the waiter, "What else is on the sandwich?" The waiter says, "Sorry I can't tell you. You'll have to buy it to find out."

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Just because I have an opinion and voice it, doesn't mean I expect everyone to agree and go along with it. I still have a right to my opinion.

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We aren't made from cookie cutters, and neither should porn be. But we should know what it's made from, before we partake. As consumers we have the right to ask for what we want to have in our products, and expect to get what we pay for.

Edited by - RobHammer on 5/2/2003 11:28:13 PM

Edited by - RobHammer on 5/2/2003 11:29:25 PM

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With regard to your coding of bisexual titles, here is a quote from Tina Tyler in the thread Tina Tyler: bisexual titles?:

... the 'perceived' market is gay men, when the actual market is straight women, bi- curious men and open minded couples.

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1. straight - primarily MF but may include some MFM, FMF, MFF, orgies, and minor FF (but no MM except for accidental gay cumshots - Ewww!))


2. bisexual - primarily MFM, FMF, MFF and includes both MM and FF interaction


3. lesbian - essentially exclusively FF or multiple F action


4. gay - essentially exclusively MM or multiple M action


5. TV/CD/she-male - M as F (or F as M with strap-on) interacting with either M or F (or both)


6. fetish - where sex of any kind is secondary (or even nonexistent) to the fetish theme
Each of these could have many subcategories, and, based on the subcategories, could even overlap to an extent.

~ GaySatyr


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SNP.

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Easy, 2 women on 1 man versus 1 man and 1 woman on the other woman - think of it as a sandwich with the meat being the honored position! Essentially, MFM and FMF are 100% straight 3-ways; whereas MFF and MMF are bisexual 3-ways.

Based on generic acceptability of the broadly defined straight porn market, as long as the majority of action in a video is heterosexual, MFF action is allowed; whereas, because of its gay contact, MMF action is shifted exclusively to the bisexual category.

~ GaySatyr

Edited by - GaySatyr on 5/3/2003 1:04:10 PM

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Over time, I'd love for the data to be manipulated such that there are primary and secondary categories - primary being one of the six I have listed above and secondary being every other possible way of distinguishing the content of the activity or bent of the video.

For example: Currently, if I select Asian and Bisexual categories, I get all titles which are bisexual, regardless of their ethnicity and all titles which include Asians, 99 and 44 one hundredths of which are straight. What I should get are bisexual titles which include Asians.

Another example: There are titles labeled as gay from Jet Set and Red Moon Video which are spanking videos where one man delivers a paddling (generally extremely half-hearted - the wimps!) to another. Although there is nudity, in some of these videos, there is no sex at all - just the spanking. In other, there is perfunctory sex or masturbation lasting only a few minutes after a lengthy paddling. These titles belong in the "Fetish" primary category and the "Gay," "Spanking" and "Discipline" secondary categories.

Unfortunately, the way things are currently set up, if a title is labeled "Gay" in the category field, adding any other label screws up the way the database works, mixing gay titles in with straight one. Ideally, I'd like to see the primary and secondary category selections side by side, such that you could select any combination from either group. However, it would (will) be a tremendous amount of work to reorganize the database to make this possible.

The structure is already there in that all titles are either "Gay" or anything else in a field not currently used for the category search. The data in the field could be modified to cover my system but it is way more than Steph and Drew can do, given that this database is a labor of love rather than a serious money-making site.

~ GaySatyr

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Edited by - Bob on 5/3/2003 2:05:01 PM

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I gave it 4.5 stars, maybe should have given it 4. It was borderline there. The first scene has Alexis Malone and Ashley Long doing Erik. The sex was fine, but for me, the women were interchangeable and Barbie-ish. They were so interchangeable, they might just as well have used Ashley and Angel. But I was happy that they didn't bother with pretend lesbianism.

The second scene was hot, and very well shot. The last scene was very quiet - too quiet for some of you guys, but my husband and I liked it.

The review was submitted last night, should be up any time now. For you, Bob, I'd say that one is a worthy rental.
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Edited by - lindi on 5/3/2003 2:12:36 PM

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~ GaySatyr

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Edited by - Mythsong on 5/5/2003 12:29:59 AM

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