Gay male pornography’s “actors”: When “fantasy” isn’t

Gay male pornography harms men. It harms some of the men who are used to perform in it and more broadly, men in general once used and distributed. It is, at its core, harmful to the movement for social, sexual, gender, and racial justice. In this article, we examine gay male pornography under the lens developed by over twenty years of feminist scholarship and activism relative to heterosexual pornography. We find that, like heterosexual pornography, gay male pornography uses real people, many vulnerable and easily exploited, to sexualize racism and promote both homophobia and sexism. Rather than being a tool for liberation, as some gay and bisexual men have argued, we conclude that gay male pornography promotes degradation, violence and harm–and as such, is degradation, violence, and harm