Podcaster, screenwriter, queer lifestyle writer and loud, proud lesbian Jennifer Lynae Lee has been getting off to male gay porn since her teenage years – and she’s convinced other lesbians do the same for a number of very important reasons. For PinkNews, she explains why.
I hold my breath. I listen with my left ear pressed to my bedroom door as my parents leave the kitchen and walk down the hall to their room, their footsteps falling further and further away. Ever so faintly, their door clicks shut. Go time.
I turn my bedroom TV on to a random DVR recorded episode of Parks and Recreation. Doesn’t matter which one. It’s a red herring. I grab my iPod and earbuds, and slide under the “soundproof” pile of blankets I arranged on my bed.
My heart races as I place one earbud in my left ear and listen for floorboard creaks with my right.
I turn the volume down to one notch and open the Safari app. Private mode. Just like I practiced.
I type: P. O. R. N. G. A. Y. Enter.
I am a lesbian and I love gay male porn. And after a handful of years fully immersed in the women loving women scene, I have convinced myself that most other lesbians do too.
My theory concerning the universality of this experience is twofold. The first being that gay male porn allows women loving women to be sexual without addressing any internalised fears or questions surrounding their sexuality. Secondly, it is arguably the most consensual porn genre available online.
For most queers, growing up closeted creates an internal tension. Living a lonely life that conflicts with the desires of your body, mind and soul. For me this manifested as “your fav”, an avoidant mentality and action plan. Anything that contextualised women as sexual made me freeze up like a kid getting caught sneaking a midnight slice of cake. So when it came to dating and sex, I circumvented the hell out of that s**t. The only bit of wiggle room I could find was matters of personal pleasure.
Around the age of 13 I gave into the urge to explore porn. I had all this pent up sexual energy and my midnight search escapades felt too good to stop. Learning about sex was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to feel something to feel good.
After previewing hundreds of videos I came to understand what worked for me and what didn’t. And thus “gay” was added to my search bar. So while other teens were getting their rocks off exploring their kinks, I was exploring how to get my rocks off without addressing any of mine.
As a woman who assumed she was straight, I was able to rationalise this preference pretty naturally. I LOVED men, and therefore I loved man meat. Double trouble man meat just meant I had elevated my heterosexuality to a new level. That’s right. My little tween brain told myself it had nothing to do with women making me want to curl up in a ball and cry, but rather that I wasn’t like the other girls. I was twice as straight.
Looking back it was clear I wasn’t aroused by the men at all, but instead, my sheer willpower for sexual exploration helped my head and downstairs heart connect the dots. And you know what, I’m not even mad. Teenage me was having a blast.
As I got older I continued to ignore that I gravitated toward a pornographic landscape that didn’t call attention to my sexuality and found other reasons for rationalising it.
“I watch gay porn because I get to see the kinks I like without the uncomfortable trauma of men hurting women,” commented @gaydaisy on Instagram.
Gay Daisy asserts an excellent point, violence against women can seem impossible to avoid in porn that stars and features female actors.
In the last decade, the journal Violence Against Women “reported physical aggression in 88.2 per cent of leading pornography scenes and verbal aggression in 48.7 per cent, with 94.4 per cent of the aggression directed towards women and girls”.
Words like forced, pounded, stretched, angry and aggressive litre mainstream porn titles, but that’s not even bordering the reality of the darker sectors of the web.
“There is clear evidence that porn makes many consumers more likely to support violence against women, [and] to believe that women secretly enjoy being raped,” reported a study from the nonprofit organisation Enough is Enough.
The point being that most heterosexual porn lacks clear and undeniable consent! As a female viewer that sucks! And can make women feel anywhere from uncomfortable to horrified.
How is a woman supposed to enjoy porn with that hanging over her head. And so gay porn as the consensual porn of choice was born.
“It’s much less likely to come across anything sketchy because men seem to be more respected and less taken advantage of in the porn industry,” said @yourlocalheretic on Instagram.”[And] unlike the majority of lesbian porn, I feel like gay porn isn’t manufactured for the hetero male gaze.”
The male gaze, which can be summed up as media that is made for the male viewer, is inflicted upon women in almost every movie, TV show, book and porn.
In porn this looks like women who focus on pleasing men during sex. These women don’t care about their own stimulation or their own orgasm and they will say and do whatever is necessary to please the “man”.
In gay porn, there are no women to gaze upon. So it’s like a male gaze allergy pill. It won’t cure the world of it, but it will sure as hell alleviate your symptoms for 12-24 hours.
No gaze, just gays.
“Men performing for and enjoying the male gaze is much more natural and thus sexually fulfilling than it is to see an obviously uncomfortable woman catering to the male gaze!” commented @skyekirstyn. “Porn is heavily dominated by one single lens so it’s more comfortable to view it through that lens than through any others.”
It’s a huge relief for me and other queer women dead set against existing for the pleasure of a sex we aren’t attracted to participate in a sector of culture that avoids it all together.
Women see male on male porn as more consensual because it does not exist in the realms of such a power dynamic. Gay male porn is versatile, equal and fun; a utopia for all our viewing pleasures.
Watching male on male porn allowed me to feel safe and be sexual without addressing my distaste for cis hetero men and my nervousness around my attraction to women. And whether you are a enby lesbian, a bisexual twink or femme queer, gay male porn will continue to offer this safe haven for many years to come.
Here’s hoping that one day the porn industry will take a lesson from intersectional feminism, but until then, watch responsibly and get your rocks off hunny.