I’m a straight woman, but I like watching
gay male porn, especially where the men are
supposed to be straight.
It isn’t something I’d want to
pursue in my real sex life.
I shudder, imagining my boyfriend hooking
up with another guy. But in pure fantasy,
it turns me on like no heterosexual porn
ever has. What’s up with that? Am I a freak?
Over the last ten years, gay porn has surged
in popularity among heterosexual women.
It doesn’t stop at hardcore videos either.
There’s the thriving online world of explicit
slash fiction, in which fans of various items
of pop culture ephemera write scenes where
straight-male leads — from Star Trek’s Kirk
and Spock to Twilight’s Edward and Jacob — get it on.
In Japan, there is a comic book equivalent called yaoi
(or “boy love”) with a similarly female-dominated audience.
So, no, you are hardly a freak.
At least not in any negative sense.
Gay porn is an erotic vacation of sorts for hetero women
where the usual gender baggage is left behind.
Guy-on-guy scenes don’t automatically call to mind
real-world power dynamics between the sexes or the
social and political history of male-female roles.
However, there is plenty of masculine worship, as well as
subversion, which I gather is your thing, given the interest
in “straight” guys having gay sex.
Or maybe the popular genre where college guys
do gay things during a fraternity hazing.
It can be easier to watch gay porn without worrying
whether the stud in the assless chaps feels disempowered
or exploited, if only because of basic cultural
attitudes toward female sexuality.
Not only does it come without aesthetic offenses
like globular implants and pubescent-esque genitalia,
but the potential for female viewers to make unfavorable
comparisons to their own body virtually disappears.
It’s funny this question even has to be asked in
the first place, given that men’s interest in
pseudo-lesbian porn is taken as so obvious
as to be unworthy of explanation.
Guys are visual creatures, they love the female form,
two are better than one — what’s the question, right?
It’s true that research has found men to be more visual,
but that isn’t to say that women as a whole are not or
that some women are not just as visually oriented
as some men, if not more so.
Let me state what should be apparent.
Straight women appreciate attractive men,
and attractive men are in much greater
supply in the gay side of the porn industry.
That they are having sex with other men can be
inconsequential or especially titillating.
