GSCENE 21
An innovative new research project shows the value of
studying gay male culture’s relationship to porn. By Sharif
Mowlabocus (University of Sussex) and Justin Harbottle
(Terrence Higgins Trust)
Porn! It seems to be everywhere in gay male
culture. Flick through the back pages of many
scene magazines and you’ll find adverts for
DVD offerings from Bel Ami, Triga and Falcon.
Flyers for club nights regularly feature naked
bodies in suggestive poses and even the
advertising for sexual health services uses
porn ‘styles’ to try and catch your eye. All
this and we haven’t even mentioned what we
look at, and what we do, online.
It has been suggested that porn means
something more in gay male culture than it
does in, for instance, mainstream culture.
Professor Richard Dyer has suggested that gay
men use pornography as a way of learning
about sex and that, in a society where to be
gay is often to be considered ‘abnormal’, gay
porn asserts that gay sex is normal – natural,
even. Other commentators such as John
Burger have suggested that porn can provide
gay men living in isolated communities (and
unable to access urban gay scenes) with a
sense of identification with gay life. Porn
shows us that there are other men out there
who share similar desires to ourselves.
The internet has long been considered porn’s
playground and until recently, ‘sex’ was the
most searched for word online. This has led to
a rise in research that focuses on porn: its
uses, its impact, and its representations of
men, women and, yes, sex. Of course the
internet has been just one of the big stories
within the world of gay porn over the last ten
years. The rise of new forms of pornography,
in particular bareback porn, has also been a
cause of concern for many.
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, to
‘bareback’ means to have penetrative sex
without a condom. While the term is
occas