In a similar vein, the reader is offered materials in which African-American men are presented as violent sexual predators with large sexual organs who care only to emasculate white men through rape or in which the same men are presented as sexually desiring to be the slaves of white men needing to reaffirm a masculinity threatened by the Black male.
With titles like ‘Native American Drifter Hustles Man in Abandoned Mall’ and ‘Hawaiian Cocksucker Licks Cum From Peepshow Booth Floor’, the collection of essays in Sex Stop: True Revelations and Strange Happenings,[47] is typical of this type of gay male pornography. Many of the stories contained in it sexualise racial difference, sex with or between young boys and incest. In the story, ‘Boy Buys Bicycle by Riding Man’s Face’, for example, the author describes how he and his friend were paid by an older Black male for sex when they were boys. The story concludes with an editorial comment in which the editor of this collection of stories explains that “this gentleman is married and has grandchildren. He says he has no regrets and just loves to chase old Black men when he can get away from his wife to do it.”
Throughout many of these materials rape is also normalised, consent implied. For example, in the story, ‘Sucks Brother Off Before Wedding’ from Juice: True Homosexual Experiences, the writer describes being raped by his older brother and other men. Explaining that these experiences formed the basis of his preferred sexual experiences as an adult, the reader then details another of his sexual encounters as follows:
Once when I was about 25 I got raped by a powerful young guy that I had taken home to blow. I always say that was the best sex I ever had. Rape at that stage of the game was enjoyable. God he was good. He knew just what to do to a willing asshole that kept saying no. He took me with force and I fought him right to the bitter end and – thank God – he won out. When he got through with [me] I knew I had had it. The bastard never came back though.[48]
The identity sold is one in which violence by one man against another man or men is normalised through sex for the persons involved and for the consumer of these materials.
This is a common theme. The magazine Dungeon Master – The Male S/M Publication,[49] for example, presents men torturing other men in sexually explicit ways with hot wax, heat and fire, while sexualising this abuse as sexually arousing for the abusers, the persons injured, and, again, for the consumer. The magazine Mr S/M 65[50] presents photographs of men being defecated on and who derive pleasure from eating and drinking excrement. The film Headlights and Hard Bodies[51] includes footage of men sexually using other men who are being pulled by neck chains, hit and whipped while tied to poles, penetrated by large objects and/or subjected to clamping, biting and pulling of their nipples and genitals. Men presented as ‘slaves’ are shown in considerable pain but finding sexual enjoyment from the abuse inflicted on them by others. Those released from bondage kiss the man or men who have just beaten them and thank them for putting them in their place with whips and verbal degradation. MACII magazine,[52] in turn, glorifies sexually explicit torture in a military setting, while detailing the kidnapping, torture and sexual mutilation of prisoners of war. In a photograph in the same magazine, two young men are shown confined in a cage. One, face down and bent over, is being slapped by an older man in a Nazi military uniform. Another is chained and hung in stirrups with a hand shoved down his throat.
What one sees in these materials is an almost pervasive glorification of the idealised masculine/male icon. Through them, inequality is sexualised, homophobia entrenched, sexism normalised. Dominance and non-mutuality, submission and inequality remain central to the sexual act and in those photos where men are alone, positioned, posed, humanity is removed and replaced with an object. As ‘Men Against Rape and Pornography’ (a US activist group) accurately explain, the man exposed becomes a non-human, an object waiting for you to do something to it or wanting to do something to you because he has what it takes to do so. The message sent is that some people want and deserve to have sex forced on them. They solicit this and they deserve this.[53] Either way, the result is a sexuality that is hierarchical and rarely compassionate, mutual or equal.
No Women, Just Men: Harm-Free?
Some have argued that any perceived inequality evident in gay male pornography is rendered non-harmful because in it, unlike in heterosexual pornography, women are not sexually exploited within the heterosexual context. That is, men are presented with men, not men with women, and the sexuality presented is used and experienced by gay men, not straight men.
Arguments that focus predominantly on the use of men in gay male pornography risk claiming that what makes heterosexual pornography harmful is the use of biological females by biological males and that it is this biological polarity that makes women unsafe and unequal. This is misleading, as well as sexist and homophobic: sexist because it implies that harm to men isn’t harm, and homophobic because it implies that harm is avoided if it is done to gay men. Gay male pornography does not eliminate harm simply because there are no women in it. At a basic level, this argument assumes that there is something about men hurting and violating men that makes the resulting assault non-harmful, normal and acceptable – an assumption that only reinforces already dominant assumptions about acceptable male behaviour and male aggression generally. Sexualised violence is violence and the biological capabilities of the person who harms or who is harmed are irrelevant.[54]
Moreover, any analysis that rests on biology is dangerously naive. Power does not depend on the biology of those who assert it. Straight pornography is harmful not simply because it presents a biological male violating a biological female, but because of the model of behaviour offered the biological male and presented/sexualised as normal, male gender behaviour. The mere absence of biological ‘opposites’ does little to undermine the very real harms of rape, abuse, assault, harassment and discrimination resulting from materials in which ‘male’ equals masculine, equals dominant, equals preferable. The fact that a biological male can also be a ‘bottom’ is in many ways irrelevant if in order to be that bottom, he is required to assume those characteristics which ensure that those who are ‘men’, socially defined, remain on top.
The coupling of two biological males does nothing to destabilise sexual and social power inequalities divided along gender lines if those behaviours – central to the preservation of gender hierarchy (cruelty, violence, aggression, homophobia, sexism, racism and ultimately compulsory heterosexuality through which heterosexual male dominance is preserved) – are not themselves removed from the presentation of sexuality as power-based. Because gay male pornography sexualises gender stereotypes and the inequalities inherent in them, it reinforces those behaviours and characteristics that ensure that heterosexuality remains the norm and is compulsory, because it does little to advance a model of gay identity that subverts those socially prescribed gender roles that ensure and enforce heterosexual male privilege.
47
12 Little Sisters Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 200,
49
14 Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 48,
52
17 Little Sister Trial Exhibits, Exhibit number 49,
54
19 See generally, Christopher Kendall (2004) ‘Gay Male Pornography and Sexual Violence: A Sex Equality Perspective on Gay Male Rape and Partner Abuse’.