I think this in an interesting article written by a gay man which is relevant.
http://www.xtribe.net.au/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=234&PHPSESSID=f5ef0f5501851d621588c22e54902bf0
Penetration
Lifeblood
Monday, 10 July 2006
By Colin Batrouney
Manager, Health Promotion Program
“****** me man! Oh yeah, *****my ******, oh man yeah!” So goes the dull mantra of a thousand gay porn movies. Encapsulated in its blank verse are the prescribed, manufactured fantasies of countless gay men perched in front of flickering screens, mesmerised by the rote sexual exercise that passes as gay erotica.
Pornographic isolation
In the wholesale discount of gay experience that gay porn represents, there is probably nothing that throws isolation into starker relief than the bald depiction of sex for the casual consumption of gay men. Its merit as a form of instruction notwithstanding, the fact that porn has nothing to do with connecting with another human being is precisely the point and probably the foundation of its most profound and consistent characteristic: tedium.
Gay porn is not exceptional in this sense although there are those who would argue that it is. There are those, most notably pornographers, who argue that gay porn has somehow carried on a ‘sex positive’ crusade that was begun in the early days of gay liberation, a crusade that became more urgent after the emergence of HIV. Gay pornographer Paul Morris contributed to an online discussion on barebacking (the practice of choosing to not use condoms in anal intercourse) organised by the University of Southern California. He commented on the marketing of porn that depicts unprotected anal intercourse saying, “I see the men who explore these capacities [having unprotected sex] and are willing to do it on camera for other people as heroic. I admire them and love them. And my obligation is to clearly represent precisely what they do, and release it.” Morris acquits his obligation, expressing his love at $120.00 a pop.
Exploitation
By accessing Morris’s site on the internet you can read his ‘Academic Lecture’ delivered to the World Pornography Conference in 1998. In his lecture, a spirited, self-interested defense of barebacking videos, Morris, whose titles include Knocked Up and Raw Shots, concludes that gay porn should develop “toward a greater eloquence and inclusivity [sic] – and toward possibilities more creative than worn-out concepts like ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ have allowed – the practice of porn should veer away from the directed film and toward the more straightforward and generous practice of real documentation.” The practice Morris suggests is perhaps most straightforward and generous to Morris himself who saves on the money it would take to create a ‘directed film’ thereby increasing his profit margin in his exploitation of those he ‘loves’. In his search for possibilities that are more “creative than worn out concepts like ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’” Morris is merely capitalising on another set of prohibitions to exploit in the marketplace.
Porn culture
The inflated claims that Morris and his ilk make for gay porn ignore the most profound impact pornography has in the lives of gay men and in the shaping of gay culture. Given that culture involves the training, development and refinement of mind, taste and manners there can be no denying that porn and porn imagery plays an active role in this process for gay men. Indeed the business side of porn tirelessly re-treads the tastes and manners of gay men in servicing the insatiable appetite of the market. It is perhaps the porn industry’s crowning achievement, and no small irony, that this multi-lateral exploitation is sold as sexually liberating.
Pornographic imagination
Gay social theorist Cindy Patton has posed the questions, “Is watching porn a sexual activity in itself or are porn videos an aid to the imagination, doing the work of fantasy production for the viewer?” Well, it would seem the answer to both questions is no. Watching porn is not, in itself, a sexual activity. By its bland description of sexual mechanics, pornography is dismissive of the imagination by serving up scenarios that are as formulaic as boot-scooting, but for the fact that they are not as socially interactive.
Pornographed culture
Philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault put forward the notion that the words and images, found within a culture, create that culture. If that’s the case then gay culture has been ‘pornographed’ so completely that our very sexual identities have been formularised to suit the marketplace. The prototypical gay man is built around the notion of consumption and the consumption of sexual fantasy in particular is marketed and sold as a communal norm that is then packaged as an empowering enhancement of our sexuality. But the function of gay porn is not to enhance sexuality, like other forms of prescribed fantasy it enhances masturbation. In this regard porn is truly subversive in the sense that it shifts the emphasis of sex from a complex multi-layered form of expression to nothing more than a prerequisite physical function of ejaculation. After all, what would porn be without the cum shot?
Pump and cum
As sexuality, and indeed sex, is composed of much deeper impulses and desires, gay porn (or all porn for that matter) falls short of the most profound consequence of sex: communion with another human being. The final indignity of gay porn lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with the fantasies of grind, pump and cum, but that it is essentially antithetical to the nature of situating sex within relationship to another person. Its sweaty, auto-erotic heave ignores the fact that, as people, gay men are distinguished by fellowship, fraternity, passion, sex and mutual love and are not merely a bunch of wankers.
(Quotes and ideas presented in this article were sourced from works by Paul Morris, Cindy Patton, Michael Scarce and Robert Kirsch.)
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