How gay porn is superior to straight porn

A lot of ink and bytes have been expended in recent days on the link between pornography and sexual violence. Part of this debate stems from the belief that pornography, in bringing to vivid visual representation our most intimate, and perhaps repressed, desires, can let loose an aspirational simulacrum of reality even as it is purely fictive. What effect this might have on vulnerable minds is open to question.

I am not sure where to stand on this debate. I am a consumer of gay pornography, and the dynamics of gay porn are entirely different from straight pornography. First off, the idea that porn can be misogynistic does not, obviously, apply to gay pornography. (I refer here to gay porn as porn involving men. I am entirely unqualified to present a political critique of lesbian porn.) Besides, porn, in general, is looked upon solely as a graphic representation of sexual desire, brought to the screen. Gay porn is not nearly the same, or not restricted to the same.

Let me explain. Some porn has storylines. In a memorable video from Helix Studios, a gay porn company, a couple fights and breaks up. One of them is a painter who puts up a show. The other turns up, unknowingly. He finds a painting of himself, asks who the painter is. They meet, go into a room and make out. In a non-porno, this would make for a beautiful scene. Imagine coming across your own painting and discovering that the painter is your ex. What could be more romantic? In the porno, though, things escalate quickly and the moment of sex arrives before the romantic ramifications can fully play themselves out. Does that make it dirty? No. It's still love, except there are no dialogues, or only the most cursory kind. It's as if the lovers' bodies and desires were on a continuum and now that the interim marked by separation is over they can begin where they left off. Remember, they are not that horny. Their meeting in no way presages the sexual act. If this were not a porno they could still kiss and make out -- without the sight of their dicks and butts -- and the scene would benefit from the heightened power of their longing finding a channel. But they are, of course, in a porno. So they start by kissing before they start stroking one another, and so on. In that respect alone, what they are doing is porn. But the storyline on its own has enough merit, and in that respect is more respectable than the definition of porn allows.

Conventional gay movies and pornography differ in not merely what is shown and what is left out. There is also the subliminal undercurrent targeted at the viewer. Beauty does not excite as much as the situation. Between two videos, one of which has two dreamy-looking men and the other has a situation where the act of sex is sudden and unexpected, the latter is always sexier.

In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist are cowboys who spend secluded months ranching on the Wyoming mountains. One night, Twist makes a sexual move towards del Mar who until then has shown no homosexual inclinations. Yet, del Mar responds, not tentatively but with such organic force that the scene burns in the viewer's mind.

The slide into sex at the painting exhibition in the Helix Studios video is, to the gay viewer, as natural as any ordinary scene. This viewer's sexual drive may not merely be about coming to two men making out. It might be about more, much more. The scene at the exhibition goes inside him and from there emerges something only part of which is the sex. It is as much about seeing come to life a world so completely homosexual that it jolts him the way the best drama or the most tender song does. This is not to be taken lightly. One might even go so far as to mistake porn for love. That, again, may not be a bad thing. For gay men, used as they are to leading a lot of their love lives in their minds, the very obvious, the very definitive act of making love, brought to the screen in a porno, can provide a welcome relief from the imagination. The fact of it being staged can be deliciously overlooked. Apart from real life, then, pornography would be the closest representation of love.

Porn is not celebrated. Pornstars are not well-known figures. This is a travesty. It is foolish to assume a hierarchy between other art forms and porn. To say that porn is not art is to put other considerations before aesthetics. Yes, other art forms are expressions, porn mere representation. But if art is about satisfying the soul, porn comes out right on top with the others.