Gay Porn Desperately Needs a Makeover
Currents
I've been a porn star for over two years, and it’s given me a front-row seat to what goes on behind the scenes. What has stuck out most jarringly over these two years is just how painfully normative — or “basic”, as the kids say — the gay porn industry actually is. As popular culture continues to embrace queerness and individuality in a changing society, the big-budget corporate studios (unlike individual creators and indie platforms) have not kept pace. The content these studios pump out has become dated in its look, reinforcing old stereotypes about masculinity and male beauty. If they don’t want to go the way of the dodo, it's time they join the modern world.
Last year, I worked for one of the mainstream studios. My friends told me horror stories before I went in — the sleazy practices, the lack of diversity, the weirdly traditional gender roles — so I was nervous. I had three casting meetings to land my spot, one of which included having sex with the producer in his Manhattan apartment. He assured me they wanted to celebrate my individuality and have me show up as my authentic self in order to create more compelling and believable scenes. On set, it was a different story. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the only model who wasn’t white amid a cast of 20 performers. A team of assistants were instructed to straighten my hair and primp every part of my body to make me look as close to a Ken Doll as humanly possible.
Though I told the producer I preferred to top in sex, I was assigned to be the bottom in nearly every scene I shot because my appearance was not deemed “masculine” enough to warrant that role. My experience, unfortunately, is far from unusual.
The last in-person GayVN award ceremony — think the Oscars, but for gay porn — before the pandemic showed signs of progress with new and more diverse award winners. The industry seemed to be branching out and becoming more open to new things. Then COVID hit, and the bigwigs decided it was time to veer back to the ol’ reliable. As if 2019 never happened, the industry stepped through a Rocky Horror time warp this year, with a winner’s circle that resembled a porn parody of Attack of the Clones. Nearly every performer I’ve spoken to, from newbies to top-billing stars, share a sense of frustration with the direction of the business, which is one reason so many have leaned more into individual content creation, where they can be more themselves without the restrictions and limitations of studios. It’s not just the talent that’s been jumping ship, but the customers as well.
The Great Recession of the late 2000s coincided with a massive spike in online piracy thanks to the advent of “tube” sites like PornHub and XVideos, where any user could — and did — upload copyrighted porn for people to watch for free. In 2009, some studios saw a 50% drop in DVD sales. Despite industry efforts, piracy cannot be stopped or contained. The rise of content creation platforms like OnlyFans and Manyvids may end up even more devastating in time. The global porn industry is valued at about $100 billion. OnlyFans, on its own, raked in over $5.5 billion in 2022, up from $270 million in 2019. The big studios are having their lunches eaten. The freedom and flexibility performers enjoy going solo is one reason, but flexibility is all for nothing if there’s no money to be made. And a big reason consumers are flocking to individual creators, especially when it comes to gay porn, is because people are hungry for something new and different. The corporate studios are churning out videos that feel like they’re from a 1990s time warp that caters to a narrow conception of masculinity. And people are growing sick of it.
True, gay porn is a fantasy. The fantasy is one of men — hyper-sexualized, hyper-masculine, big-dicked, dudely men! As calculated as it is comical, this formula has long been predictable, safe, and algorithmically approved. Sure, there are solid performances by Cody the delivery man or Brady the Cable Guy, not to mention the truly groundbreaking cinematography. Cheekiness aside, gay porn has made some strides this millennium. Or rather, the pharmaceutical industry has. Thanks to our friendly neighborhood blue pill, I can honestly say I’ve never seen so many cummy holes. But it kind of stops there.
“The reason I stopped was because I couldn’t book a scene. I was not the ideal candidate," says Avatar Akyia, a content creator with over 250,000 followers whose look diverges from the industry's beefy, white, Brawny Paper Towel Man cliché. Is it just me, or do the guys in gay porn kind of look the same? Like estranged cousins, or brothers, or daddy and son? Sure, the faces change every couple of years or so, sort of. As a fun game, I challenge you to line up a gay porn flick cover from each year going back to ‘05. Do they look eerily similar? The guys, the poses, the narratives?
Avatar Akyia. Source: Twitter.
In a way, gay porn is like a parody of men. Everyday situations turned to lust, the boy next door, or your dad but morphed into a ripped sex doll. It’s a fantasy! Porn innovates every once in a while, but by and large, the models are going to look like sexualized, hyper-masculinized versions of whatever is hot in pop culture at the moment. We’ve had our versions of Justin Bieber or Chris Hemsworth and pretty much every Marvel or DC character, but what about homages to more gender-bending celebrities like Harry Styles or Lil Nas X?
Today, people are more open about their sexuality, gender expression, and style than ever before. Black and white have increasingly been overtaken by gray. So why must we follow such an old template? Is this gay porn’s not-so-subtle way of telling us what sells and then shoving it down our throats? I get catering to the client. I do. The older, middle-American gentlemen with fat wallets who are still actually buying porn and will pay top dollar for the full Ken doll experience and probably aren’t interested in anything beyond Brad and Chad. But they’re a dwindling demographic. There’s a new and larger generation of customers whose consumer dollars we’re leaving on the table. And the much-needed adjustments to reach those would-be consumers aren’t something studios need to seek out or invent as much as they just have to stop actively fighting change.
It’s been frustrating to experience this inertia up close. Being queer in what I thought was a queer space has proved more challenging than I would have expected. Doing porn is a choice; being myself shouldn’t have to be. Can I tone down my quirky, wild, feminine side? Of course! Can I attempt to mold myself into a more acceptable “industry standard” persona? Certainly. But to what end? At the other side of the spectrum is an endless conveyor belt of Chads with six-digit social media followings ready to hop in and take my place. It’s a flooded market in which I can’t really compete anyhow. Why should I try? Starting this journey, I truly believed — and still believe — that being original, unique, and unabashedly yourself is all you need. What’s wrong with wanting to shake things up or disrupt the stale status quo a bit?
Davin Strong, via Yup Magazine.
“At first, when I was predominantly only doing gay porn, I got a lot more work with the larger studios,” Davin Strong, a studio performer and content creator, told me.
“I was the biggest and most muscular guy, and I could be tokenized in that way. And then when I began to sort of branch out and become more authentic in the diversity of my inclinations on camera [being bisexual] and fucking trans people and cis women, I feel it limited my chances for larger gay studio stuff. That, in addition to leaning into my [very alternative] aesthetic, has definitely left me no longer cast by some studios.”
As a porn producer, bringing on new sluts can be a bad bet, but occasionally chances are taken. That’s how most performers, myself included, got their start, because someone took a chance on us. It can feel discouraging, however, when the industry feels like a club and you’re never on the guest list, which is how Ronny Mack, a queer but “passing” performer, has often felt. “They have new models that are just like me. Body, hair, size, age, etc. I’ve been trying to bulk and find studio work, and no one ever wants to help a gurl out, and the weird heteronormative vibes in gay porn are fucked up. If the other guys are all hanging and partying [and sleeping] with the staff, what can I do?”
Playing the game can be hard enough on its own — doing so while deviating from the industry’s rigid idea of manliness is even harder. The fear of embracing femininity while still holding onto masculinity is an ancient concept. We live in an era where, in the real world, there are power tops with painted nails and high-heel-wearing fisters. So why can’t we see more of this in porn and make it more accessible? Why is there so much fear and stigma around fem gods and butch queens? Why must a good chunk of popular gay porn stars, who privately embrace the queerness of our time, mask that part of themselves on set? Because the Big Brother of gay porn is watching, and he’s watching the numbers. But if we’re going by metrics, it would seem that the industry’s genitalia charcuterie board caters to what is now a much smaller demographic. Taking a peak at a company like Pornhub, one of the most widely visited porn sites in the world, it’s fairly apparent from their analytics that appetites vary both by region and age group.
Left map shows the most viewed gay porn categories by state. Right graph shows the gay category popularity by age. Source: Pornhub Insights
Given this diversity of taste, why focus on one section, group, or demographic? Millennials and Gen Z are gradually growing up and getting our shit together, and as we learn to be productive members of society, we unlearn some of our bad habits like illegal downloads or pirated torrents. We slow down with fast food and fast fashion. We are learning that when we like a product, a person, or even a feeling, it’s worth spending cold, hard cash for. The older generations have held the microphone for too long. It’s our turn. We are the new clients, and if you ask me, I’m a bit bored and quite frankly unsatisfied with what is offered — and I don’t think I’m alone. There are some studios that are creating unique content, but they are still relegated to the obscure indie fringes. I’m urging the big guns to make something new!
As part of this industry, I know that many of the people pumping out vanilla-on-repeat are often super-freaks creating fantasy worlds in their real lives. It’s time to bring that freak energy into the studios. Let’s update the dated formula we’ve been selling to an aging audience and create something that inspires us and maybe even shocks us now and then. Something that gets people to question their sexuality or expand their horizons, which is what porn did for me as a young person.
The world outside of porn is ever-evolving — why can’t we? It’s time to rewrite the fucking script. What I have learned on my journey of sex-positivity is that the spectrum of kink and pleasure is always shifting. It takes a bit of trial and error, and sure, not everything is going to work. Changing directions will always be a gamble, but the rewards could be immense. Instead of fetishizing the same tropes ad nauseam, why not explore more kinks and create new ones? Anything can be sexy if you know how to market it, and in an industry known for its marketing prowess, we can make a ham sandwich seem sexy if we want to. My goal as a performer and professional slut is to produce original scenes that actually excite people and captivate their full attention. I truly believe that a new generation of creatives and consumers can give the stagnating gay porn industry the makeover it so sorely needs.
Published Sep 25, 2023
