That's... gay?

So last night I watched a documentary on Channel 5 that had actually come out last year, called The Sex Business: Swinging Both Ways. It was very interesting, primarily due to my own fascination with gay porn. Here are my thoughts.

The show follows two people who sell sex; a straight woman who engages in lesbian acts with her platonic friend for camming, and a straight man who professionally films gay top porn. Whether rightly or wrongly, the women in this situation are a heck of a lot less taboo than the man so I’m going to be discussing him. He has a contract with a management company and normally has one week-long shoot every two months, in which he makes £5000. He only fucks guys, not the other way round, and has grown his image as being the “straight guy” with a thick scouse accent. He refuses to perform acts such as rimming and blowjobs, and instead plays the dominator, shoving guys around. He uses injections in his dick to make him hard, so he doesn’t have to think about that, rather just the acting and general performance. He is in it purely for the money, and his long-term girlfriend and family are pretty chill with it. Interestingly he is ex-Army, which he left after struggling there, and describes that gay sex was part of the culture there anyway; so maybe the stereotype is true? I dunno.

Right, so that’s him, so now you don’t have to watch the show lol, but while I was watching I was genuinely nodding along, like yeah everything he has said makes sense. He mentioned he gets told again and again that he must be a little gay to do his job, but he did raise a very good point about that; if he’s publicly having gay sex and not embarrassed by it, why would he go through the pain of “pretending” to be straight with his girlfriend. That also raises the question about whether what he is doing would be constituted as ’sex’. Yes part A is going into part B, but sex surely has to involve some enjoyment in it? The management company he is with only employs other guy men, so I assume the other actors might get some sort of enjoyment from it, but to me it still isn’t sex. Especially since throughout the whole show, there was no footage of him acting, but at the end, there is clever camera action and blurred dicks that show the man acting in a scene. Honestly, that final scene freaked me out- not the gay sex itself, but to see this man who, throughout the whole episode, proclaimed his straightness and purely financial incentive, but was pulling guys by the hair to suck on his dick with kinda no life behind the eyes.

I mean I’m not stupid, any commercially produced porn is likely to have actors who get no bodily or mental pleasure from the job and are purely there to act for money (although I also recognise, there will always be actors who enjoy the act itself). I guess it’s because the question of sexuality is thrown into the mix, specifically men’s sexuality. Perhaps it’s also that I had to hear the fake moans, which I always mute when I’m watching porn to get myself off. So, I guess this blog post is for me the figure out where I place my arbitrary line of what is an understandable job, and what freaks me the fuck out.

Personally, I can completely understand those entering the porn business. I’ve always thought, yeah I could probably do it, and to be honest get some enjoyment out of it. If the opportunity presents itself, I’m not going to baulk at it out of some sense of modesty. It also doesn’t mean I’m going to go looking now to be the next Lana Rhoades, but especially with increasing regulation and better welfare for actors, I’ll consider it. The biggest issue would probably be the opinion of my (if I had one) partner, so boys… be open-minded please?

So, porn itself isn’t my issue. In fact, of my preferred categories is Bi guys in MWM, and tbh I can also do both genders gay. So, I can get off to that, but when I hear the person’s life story, I’m disgusted? Actually, no, fuck that, I’m not like that. I support bodily autonomy, and the choice to have multiple identities, such as boyfriend, soldier and porn actor. I think, the more I think about it, is the absolute disregard the man has for the ‘sex’ or even his own body. I kind of think he doesn’t see his dick as his own anymore- it’s just a prop. I’m not saying he treats his colleagues badly either, there was no evidence of that in the episode, but there was no real interaction either and it all struck me as a little sad. I actually looked up his videos; maybe it's just not my type of fucking that's putting me off, because he barely touches anyone.

I've also realised after nearly finishing this post, I haven't used his real or stage name, have I subconsciously depersonalised him, and just thought of him as his job? God, sorry Dan. So, that's why I wanted to write this, I don't know what I thought of the show, but confronting my perceptions is one way to realise sometimes I have uninformed initial reactions and I need to consider before my opinions set in stone (this is maybe a teaching moment for all you 0-0).

Watch the episode- are you guys weirded out by any of it? Did you find it as interesting as I did??? I want opinions!

In conclusion, porn and sexuality and sex is very complicated, and yep, still hard up x