The Gay Porn of The Pre-Internet Era
Just like any other consumers, we want our gay porn the way we want it. But how about our ancestors?
Can you just imagine how our great grandfathers got off when there was no internet? We are not sure how hard it must be for them because we were not alive when their culture was still different from ours when visuals are easily accessible in a mouse click or a finger tap. Plus the fact that there was a social stigma when it comes to homosexuality. How can they even make those postcards move in their minds just to fantasize a male physique? I can also think of how frustrating it would have been if you rented porn that’s really a big disappointment.
Choices became more abundant as time passed by where we can choose whatever genre of porn we are into. But let us get back in time with this small read for this week when the internet was not a thing or something someone was just wishing for and a name for it has not even been coined yet.
Early 20th Century
This was the time when the camera was just like how flagship phones are praised. It’s just exploring its newfound popularity amongst hobbyists and photography enthusiasts. They said that “French Postcards” are the closest thing you could get to seeing porn back in these days. For an era not as liberal as of the 80s and beyond, these “postcards” showing sexual acts are a taboo, immoral, and dangerously vulgar to the point that US government has even banned these stuff to be sent via Postal Service.
Some also fancied works of Wilhelm von Gloeden. He was known for taking nude photographs of Sicilian boys posing gracefully with props complete with artsy strategic lighting. It was just the beginning of photography but people already knew how to use these old photographs and this then-newly developed technology. It must have been difficult to obtain some pleasurable photos for yourself by that time though so it has become a booming business since these kinds of photographs were sold at soaring prices. I would have instead settled with my wild imagination when jacking off if I were born that era.
Mid 20th Century
Say hello to Bob Mizer. This great photographer produced and distributed photographs that might have become a staple necessity for gay masturbation. It was risqué for him to shoot and produce these pictures since nudity of this kind or any type of stuff that depicts male eroticism were illegal. His works mainly focus on naked bodybuilders in provocative poses enough to tingle spines of our “ancestors”. Sadly, he was imprisoned in 1947 for this artistry.
Another pioneer around late 1950s was Tom of Finland who made illustrations of hugely muscular men (most of them we can categorize today as bears and DILFs). Most of these homoerotic drawings were shown on Mizer’s “beefcake magazine” Physique Pictorial produced by his studio Athletic Model Guild which has a presence that is still very much alive today.
Hippies won’t forget how they got off to Andy Warhol‘s “Blowjob“. A silent film in 1964 where he features an uncredited model receiving a head but all you see is his orgasmic facial expression so Warhol leaves you imagining what’s really going on under the table.
Late 20th Century
This era was dubbed as “The Golden Age of Porn“. Wakefield Poole‘s Boys in the Sand made quite a buzz in the 70s. This feature film would have become a milestone for gay porn in the future. Many people lined up to see the movie because it has generated advertisements across media platforms like newsprint and even received critical reviews from magazines.
The early 70s also paved ways to gay pornographers to earn by selling their crafts via mail-order. Cameras that enabled filmmakers to make underground gay porn was on the rise and movies like masturbating men were made using them. They are being sold discreetly to clients but filmmakers relied on words of mouth to advertise their materials.
The decade has become widely known for publishing directed to women like Playgirl but these materials were also adored by gay men. Leather kink was also popularized, thanks to Peter Berlin‘s Nights in Black Leather released in 1973. It focuses on leather subculture. Gay porn has grown by this time to the point where even some established theaters that showed explicit gay movies to draw gay audiences to have sex with each other within the theater.
This was also an era where production outfits started recruiting gay men to act for their porn movies. Life was becoming a little bit easier for gay porn fans but it’s still hardly accessible due to technology constraints and public risks.
The 1980s
The drastic increase of VCR productions made way of watching porn in the comfort of everyone’s private spaces in the 1980s. Gay men were also afraid to have sex because of the HIV/AIDS crisis when it was newly discovered. This has led to closures of several theaters aimed for gay audiences and also made profits from home video releases because gay men would rather get off by themselves watching porno in their homes rather than having real-life sex which they feared might expose them HIV/AIDS.
Anyways, it’s been observed that cliches in gay porn started in this era where conventionally, the movie would start with dialogues followed by foreplay and of course the climax. This device is still being widely used as of today and it never goes out of fashion. This was when our grandfathers were able to see video recordings of close-up penises being jacked-off and sucked and also the cum shot! Who knew that this was also the birth of multiple camera angles when it comes to showing the money shot for ejaculating penis because they did not really want to see the explosion in just one perspective.
William Higgins is a name that is still relevant up to now since he’s one of the major directors who set standards for gay film models in the 80s. They preferred men who were smooth and muscular athletic type in contrast of bears and DILFs in the 70s.
The decade was also an advent for Gay-for-Pay actors since some directors preferred heterosexual men to perform as “tops” in their films for some reason. And yes, the 80s was high time for tribal positions when it comes to gay sex roles. Many gay porn models, especially the ones with large cocks and muscular built, were tops when most bottoms can be tops too sometimes like Joey Stefano. Jeff Stryker was also a big name in the late 80s up to the early 90s.
The 1990s
VHS tapes were a dying star in this decade and laser discs became more prominent along with gay men with particular preferences when it comes to gay porn watching. Niches became strategic for gay porn categorization so there’s porn for everybody’s taste. Do not forget getting inside the adult shop or video rentals feeling hurried and sweaty just to get gay porn. It was really hard in the pre-internet era so some students relied on naked men from anatomy books in the library or tear up pages from Nat Geo Magazines of naked tribal males with exposed dongs.
Beyond this point, the internet access developed and VOD became a thing. Consumers became more and more demanding especially when it comes to re-imagining their fantasies. Just imagine how easy for us to reach out to porn studios thru social media. We can even voice out our collective demands thru forums so we can get our requests granted as fans such as linking up two or more models in one scene. It has never been easier to have stimuli to get us all horned up compared to how it was before.
Do you have any fond memories of your first ever gay porn? Was it hard to get them in your decade? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
