I'm a grad student doing research on gender and sexual identity issues of users of transsexual porn (MTF/shemale). Would any of you be willing to share some of your private thoughts on why you enjoy shemale porn? What is the allure? Do you identify as bi-sexual or straight? What fantasy does the shemale star satisfy? Do you prefer shemale on male performance, or shemale on female performance? Thanks!
yeah, girly looking shemale's fucking girls is "as good as it gets!!!"
It's like the lesbian scene you love'd with that one missing thing......... A COCK!!!!! :) :)
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Lost Horizon Deactivated User
675 Posts 6/05
Posted - Dec 10 2005 : 9:21PM
I tend not to analyse too much what and why I enjoy what I enjoy but I will offer here a few of my thoughts on the matter, half-formed and unstructured as I admit them to be.I suppose what I enjoy in shemale porn could best be summarised as the transgressiveness of it. We often say that porn is about fantasy but I increasingly feel that it is nearer the mark to say that it is about spectacle - (Victoria Givens, I thought, made this point very eloquently a few days ago on another thread when she wrote about the role of exaggeration in porn - check it out) - and shemale porn, in its radical deviation from the porn norm, delivers a unique and intriguing spectacle. Shemale porn is like a really hot curry or an extra strong relish: it does not suit every palate, but, once you have acquired a taste for it, eveything else seems bland in comparison.
In the third of his 2003 Reith lectures on art and the brain, Prof. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran argued that one of the things we enjoy in art is what he called "peak shifting", where things we enjoy in life are exaggerated far beyond their natural limits. He cited Tinbergen experiments on gull chicks which showed that not only would a chick peck at any yellow stick with a red stripe in just the same way that it pecked at the red spot on its mother's yellow beak, but that the chicks actually prefered a yellow stick with two or three red stripes over their mother's beak with it's single red dot. Ramachandran suggests that when we enjoy a Picasso we are like those gull chicks, favouring an exaggerated and unnatural representation over the real thing. I suggest that something similar is happening when we enjoy shemale porn. If you like you could consider conventional straight porn as the equivalent of a Titian or a Raphael - certain aspects are exaggerated or idealised, but, basically, the picture remains within fairly tightly defined realist boundaries - while shemale porn, on the other hand, is the equivalent of a Picasso or a Pollock - the boundaries have been broken down and we pursue pleasurable spectacle in its most unadulterated, primal form. (This would also explain why bad conventional porn is usually still good enough to do the job, while bad shemale porn is always unwatchably appalling.) Note, for example, the way a number of tgirls have excessive surgery on, particularly, their breasts or face that give them a figure or features that are a little more extreme than anything you would encounter naturally, but are, nonetheless, not unattractive - (actually the same thing is true of a number of genetic girls in porn who have had similar procedures, and catwalk models and Hollywood beauties too commonly have physical features, whether due to nature or surgery, that are about as far from the average human shape as you can get without looking entirely freakish - I suggest that it is precisely this exaggeration, so long as it is not overdone, that leads to these people being marked as 'attractive'). Shemale porn appeals because it speaks to something deep within us: that part of our brain that looks for and finds pleasure in the exaggerated, the extreme, the unexpected, the strange, the deviant, things that defy the norm - the part that enjoys a Picasso more than it does a Raphael. I hope that makes sense. (I did warn you that these were only half-formed ideas.)
Straight. I base my sexual identity on what I do in my life, not what I watch in my porn.Entirely neutral. I like to see a nice mix in my shemale porn: tgirls in both active and passive roles with girls, guys, other transsexuals, and in group scenes.Are you aware that there is also an emerging genre of ftm transsexual porn? eg
Finally, let me point you towards the HungAngels.com boards - these are exclusively devoted to transsexual issues so you may get a richer variety of responses to your questions over there.
Edited by - Lost Horizon on 12/10/2005 10:17:14 PM
exactly....Amos Vogel writes about taboo...esentially what you say about transgression of the deviant the unexpected as much to do with desire inherent in something that is 'forbidden'. It attacks prevailing morality and offers pleasure in the initial disgust of the attack. Julia Kristeva continues with the idea of pleasure in the abject, which is what disturbs order, it's the ambiguous, like the shemale. The most important aspect of the trangression of a taboo is that it does not deny the taboo, but it transcends it (Bataille)...
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Lost Horizon Deactivated User
675 Posts 6/05
Posted - Dec 10 2005 : 10:36PM
I'd be unhappy with terms like "disgust" and "abjection" - I have no consciousness of those sorts of emotions in my response to shemale porn. For me it is an entirely joyous pleasure in transgression. If you wanted to argue that unconscious feelings of the sort you describe must unlie my conscious pleasure or that joy is, in some way, always parasitic upon disgust because these sorts of emotions always assume the existence of their opposites or whatever, well, that is your business, but I would feel you had rather missed the point. Nonetheless it does sound like we are more or less on the same page here.
i wasnt very clear i dont think. it's not that you in particular would feel disgust, it's just that there is pleasure in disgust as their is in excess or exaggeration...i was just relating the theory of exaggeration/excess you mention to the theory of taboo, and why we like what is taboo.
I get pleasure too...in the ambiguity...the contradiction...the deviance. but maybe there is more to it....
You said initially that you tend not to analyze what you like to watch for pleasure....many of my friends tell me the same...and here i am trying to analyze it all. someone's got to, maybe, right?
Celina Jaitly, the new Goddess...... 448 Posts 8/04
Posted - Dec 12 2005 : 4:38PM
For me it's definitely a case of 'forbidden fruit'. Straight porn was in the beginning, but totally shifted to the background once I got into shemale porn.
As for labels, I never cared about it. Don't see the need to label myself by my sexual preference either.
I have no preference for any kind of setting in a scene. I do like it when a video contains a variety of scenes (Passive T's, Passive men and the whole shabang.).
I must admit that my interested in Shemale Porn is going descendo. I've been a follower of the scene for 10 years, and I'm definitely not the leech of 3, 4 years ago. Now I only watch 2 or 3 every several months, but that has more to do with a change of lifestyle and more work and study that I have to deal with. But I'm glad to see that the genre is growing.
Count me in! I enjoy the wild side of tranny porn occasionally. I am only a member of two adult internet pay sites and one is a shemale site. I'd say about half my porn wanks are to tranny stuff.
As far as identifying as straight or bi, I am truly not sure. I have had two experiences with men in my life, but only oral, and only on them. I guess I like cock, but the thought of kissing or screwing a man truly does not appeal to me. And I also love everything about the female genitalia too, including oral. Bottom line is I really don't care: I might be bi, I might not, oh well.
This is where shemales come in for me. I get to lust after the "girl" while also fantasizing about sucking the cock. I haven't had any experiences yet, but maybe some day.
Most of the porn I watch is gay, with participants generally collegiate through mid/late-30's and themes that encompass college life, boy-next-door, blue collar, military, etc. I'm not into the rough and kinky stuff nor am I into twinks, tattoos, piercing, scruffy men or bears. Clean-cut (but uncut is a plus), good-looking-to-handsome, and toned to muscular men are my type (but not serious bodybuilders, please). I like both smooth and naturally, moderately-hairy men (happy trails, chest hair, hairy legs).
I also watch some straight porn, usually where I've fixated on one of the male actors (most currently, Toni Ribas).
While I like the idea of bisexual porn, most of it is so poorly executed that its purveyors should be executed. There are a few good titles out there, though.
Transsexual and she-male porn generally turns me off. I like my men masculine, and, if they must be with women, I'd much prefer that my imagined competition be real.
I quite enjoy shemale-porn as long as it's only shemales fucking girls. I wouldn't lilike to watch a guy doing it with a she-male because that would be a bit gay and I am not gay so I won't find it appealing at all. But watching a girl with a she-male just has that extra nastiness factor which I most look for in the pornstars I like.
Posted - Dec 10 2005 : 6:36PM