Queerclick Open Forum: Is Gay Porn Actually More Conservative Than Straight Porn?

In our last Open Forum, we discussed barebacking in gay porn, and the lively discussion reached a mixed consensus, with the QC Jury still out on whether barebacking in gay porn is acceptable at all, and if it influences our own sexual behavior or if it doesn’t.

This time around, we wanted to look at something that caught our eye in the UK media recently, a strange article from the UK’s Daily Mail about children and teenagers having surprisingly broad vocabularies from their exposure to porn got us thinking about this week’s discussion: is gay porn, long thought to be the apex of all that’s decadent, queer and subversive about the gays, actually far less experimental and much tamer than its straight counterpart.

If you read the Daily Mail article, you may be surprised to read that local children and teenagers appear to be very familiar with porn at such a young age. But look at the type of porn they (presumably via their parents, older siblings, or other children at school) are being exposed to: porn featuring limbless people, sex with animals, and more anal than you’d see in a Treasure Island 50,000 Load Weekend marathon. And this is all straight porn.

Haven’t you ever noticed that beyond differences in body type – fratboy porn, bear porn, muscle porn, office porn and so on – gay porn tends to be pretty formulaic. Is it that gay sexual tastes are actually quite “straight” forward? Do you ever watch gay porn that is really off the beam, featuring things that are relatively way out, even shocking?

Do you wish gay porn was a bit more experimental, and if so, what would you be curious about seeing?

And, did you watch porn when you were an early teen or child? None of us on the QC editorial staff had ever heard of such a thing until we came of age.

Let’s discuss.

(Image: Race Cooper gets in touch with his inner dog at Fetish Force).