I pushed him lower so my big dick was against his chest; I pushed his meaty pecs together. They wrapped around my dick perfectly as I started tit-fucking him like a chick. His hard, humpy pecs gripped my meat like a vice. Of all the things I did to him that night I think he hated that the most. It made him feel like a girl. I sighed, ‘Oh, my bitch got such pretty titties! They was made for tittie fuckin, made to serve a man’s dick’.[39]
As in a great deal of written or pictorial gay male pornographic presentations, what one gets from the above is a ‘source of liberation and equality’ in which the physically more powerful, ostensibly straight male is glorified. This linking of manliness with heterosexuality and overt masculinity is a common theme throughout many of these materials with masculinity often gained at the expense of a woman or ostensibly gay male’s safety and self-worth – all in all, the antithesis of both equality and liberation.
To the extent that women are not used or ridiculed in the pornography sold as gay male (and women frequently are ridiculed and used as objects of sexual debasement), the effects of sexism and misogyny are not eliminated. These materials, while free of biological femaleness, continue to promote violence and/or the sexual degradation of others along the lines of gender as socially defined, interpreted, and imposed through systems of sex inequality. They often sexualise large, hyper-masculine men – many of whom are described as ‘straight’ men who find sexual arousal through the infliction of pain on socially feminised sexual subordinates (read: gay men) who, in turn, are shown enjoying the pain, humiliation and degradation to which they are subjected.
Frequently, sexual subordination is enforced through extreme forms of torture and violence, with masculinity again epitomised and celebrated in men who ridicule and emasculate others in the name of sexual pleasure. Humour, we are told, is found in the sexual debasement of another, assertiveness tied to aggression, resulting in an identity politics that creates, packages and re-sells a sexuality that epitomises male supremacy. Femininity in turn is linked with emasculation, linked with inferiority, linked with inequality on the basis of sex. Indeed, those who are emasculated in these materials are often specifically described as gay male, while those who abuse them and who are iconised as sexual role models are described as heterosexual.
Note, for example, MAC II 19: A Drummer Super Publication, Volume 19.[40] This magazine contains an article entitled ‘Prisoner’ that details the torture and sexual mutilation of prisoners of war during a fictional military coup. Many of the prison officers are described as ‘straight’ and ‘real men’ whose masculinity is shown through the sexual abuse of their prisoners, most of whom are belittled as gays, queers, sissies etc.[41]
A similar theme is found in Bear: Masculinity Without the Trappings.[42] The emphasis in this magazine is on overt, hyper-masculinity. Like MAC II 19, many of the stories mock gay men, describing them as ‘too feminine’, ‘sissy’ or ‘queer’. One article, for example, quotes a trucker who, while bragging about the men who have ‘serviced’ him at truck stops, says:
…truckers sure know about the clean finger nail faggots taking up stalls all day playing footsies, tossing toilet paper and love notes at any pair of boots along side. Most truckers ignore them. Some want to kill them and others figure a blowjob for free is one hell of a lot better than tossing dollars at a whore.[43]
This publication, like many others, promotes violence and aggressive, non-egalitarian behaviour. The theme throughout is hyper-masculinity found at the expense of someone else’s liberty and self-worth. Merit is found in degradation. Rewards attached to one’s ability to use or be used. Equality, if at all, is found only in reciprocal abuse.
What all of these examples provide is a sexualised identity politic that relies on the inequality found between those with power and those without it; between those who are dominant and those who are submissive; between those who are top and those who are bottom; between straight men and gay men; between men and women.
From these and other materials, we are told to glorify manliness and those who meet a hyper-masculine, muscular ideal. The result is a sexual and social reality in which men who are more feminine, less male, are degraded as ‘queer’ and ‘faggots’ and subjected to degrading and dehumanising epithets usually used against women, such as ‘bitch’, ‘cunt’ and ‘whore’. These men are in turn presented as enjoying this degradation. In sum, these materials reinforce a system in which, as Catharine A. MacKinnon explains, “a victim, usually female, always feminized” is actualised (1989, p.141).
In examining the exhibits before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Little Sisters case, we also get materials that sexualise racist stereotypes and degrade members of racial minorities for the purpose of sexual arousal. The message conveyed is one in which gay Asian men, for example, are presented as smaller and more feminine than their Caucasian counterparts and thus willing to be sexually subordinated by a more dominant, more stereotypical white male. An example of this type of publication is found in the magazine Oriental Guys (OG). This magazine is, as its title indicates, a pictorial and written collection of articles and photographs of, and about, Asian men. A quick review of the magazine makes it clear, however, that, although ‘about’ Asian men, the magazine is directed at the Caucasian gay male market.
OG presents photographs of young Asian men, usually posing by themselves. These photo spreads are often accompanied by articles with titles like ‘Be My Sushi Tonight’[44] or ‘Behind Bars in Thailand’[45] which discusses sex for sale in that country – a country where the sale and sexual use of young boys, via sex tourism, is rampant. The magazine does not present more than one young man at any one time. There is no apparent presentation of violence or physical pain. The magazine does, however, focus on and sexualise the youth and race of those used to produce this publication with the stories throughout the magazine describing, among other things, older white men cruising Asian boys and male prostitutes. In this context, young Asian men are described as ‘pearls of the orient’, ‘easy to find’, ‘accessible’ and ‘available.’ Often, the photo spreads of young Asian men, shown face down with buttocks elevated, are accompanied by ‘news’ articles that tell the reader how, for example, to recruit young Balinese men.[46] These, in turn, are accompanied by ‘letters to the editor’ that detail the success of the magazine’s Caucasian readers’ ‘foreign’ sexual conquests.
The focus and content of this publication sexualises racism and sexual exploitation. This is its intended result and it is marketed as such. While degrading to Asian gay men, the theme promoted also justifies through sex the types of attitudes and inequalities that make racism and sexism a powerful and interconnected reality. The white male is described as one who seeks out an inferior Asian other; the young Asian is described and presented as ready and willing to serve his sexual needs and fantasies. The white male is superior; the Asian male inferior. The resulting harm is an affront to all persons seeking equality.
40
5 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 49,
42
7 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 197,
44
9 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 262,
45
10 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 6,