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Published in the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, Ed. Wayne Dynes, New York:
Garland, 1990. This is the text as submitted; some editing was done to the
submitted text
Pornography, sexually explicit cultural artifacts intended to produce immediate sexual
arousal. The term first appeared in eighteenth-century France, and is a modern Greek
coining from “pornegraphos,” writing about prostitutes. It is documented in English
from the mid-nineteenth century.
Definition. Considerable thought has been devoted to the definition of pornography.
Proposed definitions are of three types. The first is by content: the portrayal or
discussion of genitalia or specific sexual acts is pornographic; this definition fails
because sexual acts and genitalia may be portrayed for medical purposes, or in
educational material, without the intent to arouse. A second approach is by the
observer’s use of the materials: those materials which produce sexual arousal are
pornographic. This approach fails because images not intended for arousal, and not
found arousing by most, can be used to produce sexual arousal; conversely, some are
not stimulated by scenes which the majority finds intensely erotic. Finally, there is the
intent of the producer: those materials which are intended to arouse the viewer,
reader, or listener are pornographic. As a legal criterion this approach also fails,
because intent can be disguised or denied, and can never be established directly or
with absolute certainty. However, it is sufficient for critical purposes and is the
definition used in this article.
Value of Pornography. Pornography has often been considered a symptom of societal
illness, and its demise predicted. That the gradual removal of restrictions on sexual
activities has not produced a parallel decline in pornography, but rather the reverse,
suggests that it satisfies a deep need. While animal sexual excitement is produced by
odors, a consequence of the estrus cycle, humans use our minds. The separation of
sexuality from reproduction, the increased lifespan civilization has brought, and the
anti-erotic trends in modern society mean that glandular impulses toward sexual
activity are insufficient. Thus the production and consumption of pornography as a
stimulant of sexual activity.
The production of pornography, then, is a naturally human activity, stemming
from the same sort of inner drives that lead to the production of music, art, and
literature. It has been found among many primitive peoples. That sexual excitement,
like laughter, is contagious lies at the root of pornography’s power.
Pornography is, for many people, pleasurable, directly and indirectly
producing orgasm, and that alone is a powerful argument for it. It relieves guilt over
sexuality, encourages masturbation and fantasy, and is a substitute for risky sexual
encounters; as such, it can be relationship-enhancing. Through pornography the
creator and consumer can explore and accept aspects of their sexuality which cannot
be acted upon. Although some pornography transmits misinformation, on the whole
it provides education about sex and contributes to public acceptance of sexuality.
Through pornography society does its thinking about sex and to some extent about
relationships. Pornographers and the legal struggles they have fought have made it
possible for non-pornographic sex education materials to circulate freely.
Pornography also provides the historian and anthropologist with evidence of sexual
activities and attitudes.
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Homosexual Pornography. It has been argued that almost all pornography is
homosexual. Save for those small portions consumed by women, or created by
women for consumption by men, pornography has been created by men in order to
stimulate other men. Even if heterosexual activities are described or portrayed, even
if the producer and consumer are heterosexually identified, the intent and, in some
way, the true nature of such pornography is homosexual. That homosexuality and
pornography tend to be accepted or condemned together gives further support to a
probable deep relationship, perhaps that they both encourage and require societal
tolerance of non-procreative sexuality. There has also been significant involvement
of homosexuals in the production and sale of materials directed to the heterosexual
public.
However, pornography is usually considered homosexual if it has homosexual
content or subject matter. While erotic portrayals of men, and descriptions or
expressions of homosexual love, are widely found, homosexual pornography is much
more restricted. Where it exists it shows an acceptance by society, however
begrudging and limited, of homosexuality and homosexual sexual relations. The
occasional exposure of non-homosexuals to it has in turn contributed to further
societal acceptance of homosexuality.
History. Pornography is exceptionally subject to destruction, homosexual
pornography doubly so, and the following is presumably incomplete. The earliest
homosexual pornography is found in Greek vases, on which much sexually explicit
homosexual activity (oral, anal, and intercrural intercourse) is found. Primarily
pederastic, they constitute a body of work unequaled in artistic value and positive
attitude towards sex.
Little is known in the West about the homosexual pornographic poetry of the
classical Islamic cultures or the paintings of Persia. Further homosexual pornography
in the West, until the nineteenth century, is combined with defenses of sodomy. Such
works include Alicibiade fanciullo a scola, from seventeenth-century Italy, an erotic
defense of pederastic love, taking that of Socrates with his pupil Alcibiades as subject;
the bisexual, philosophical fiction of the Marquis de Sade; and The Sins of the Cities of
the Plain, or the Recollections of a Mary-Anne (1881), the earliest such work in English and
the first that is unabashed masturbatory fiction, with brief appended essays on
“Sodomy” and “Tribadism.” Pornographic scenes are found in the famous Teleny. The
number of published works, however, was small. Well into the twentieth century
pornographic stories, such as Seven in a Barn, circulated in typewritten form.
The invention of photography in the nineteenth century provided a new
medium for the pornographer (*photography). The best-known creator of sexually
stimulating male portraits was the Baron von Gloeden, although there were others
in both England and Germany. Sexual activity was often the subject of photographs,
though legal restrictions kept them underground.
Twentieth-century homosexual pornography in the United States and
Germany, other than that which was underground, began as an offshoot of the
naturist and physical culture movements. Erotic “physique” magazines, picture sets,
and films were published under the pretense of non-sexual interest in body
development. The devastation of German culture by the Nazis and Second World
War left the United States as the principal center of gay erotica. 8 and 16mm
homosexual films, progressively more straightforward in subject matter and more
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open in their circulation, were made and screened in large cities. A major figure is Bob
Mizer, who founded Athletic Model Guild in 1945.
The last two generations have seen a continual attack through the courts on
censorship of pornography. Supported by an ever more tolerant public, these efforts
have gradually brought upholdable convictions for publication or distribution of
pornography to an end in most of the U.S. (except for child pornography). However,
legal harassment and prosecutions have continued, and increased towards the end
of the Reagan years. The freeing of the mails to pornography in the 1970’s was an
influential step; another was the Danish decision, in the late 60’s, to end all legal
restrictions on pornography.
Since 1970. Increased gay self-awareness and self-acceptance, greater public
acceptance of homosexuality, and the dropping of most legal barriers to the
publication and circulation of pornography have all helped homosexual pornography
to grow explosively. It has today a major role in the gay male world, in which it is not
controversial; few legal cases have involved homosexual pornography. While figures
are unavailable, anecdotal evidence suggests that per capita consumption is higher
in the gay than in the straight community. To a considerable extent it has replaced the
gay bar as a means of socialization. It has shown a classic sign of economic health, the
division into specialties, and the conservatism which has come to characterize part of
the pornographic industry is also a sign that it is well-established. Inexpensive video
equipment has made it easier for new pornographers to enter the field, although to
date there has been more straight amateur pornography than gay. A number of glossy
monthly magazines, following the model of Playboy and its successors, have strong
pornographic components in pictures and text (Blueboy, Honcho, In Touch, etc.), and
Stroke proclaims openly that it is and wants to be pornographic and masturbatory. In
the 1980’s there has been a renewed interest in written and drawn pornography, in
which fantasies are not limited by what models can actually do and in which laws, as
on inter-generational sex, can be broken without consequence. The new *phone sex
industry offers personalized, oral pornography. The division between pornography
and high art loses its rigidity as painters, photographers, and authors of fiction and
poetry produce works which stimulate sexually, and pornographers exceed the limits
of popular art.
Leading recent gay pornographers of films and videos include Jean-Daniel
Cadinot, Jack Deveau (Hand in Hand Films), Joe Gage, Sal Grasso (“Steve Scott”), Fred
Halsted, William Higgins, Christopher Rage, and Peter de Rome. Boyd McDonald
pioneered the collection, for pornographic ends, of confessional, reader-written
material, an undeterminable but large proportion of which is not fantasy but reports
of true sexual adventures; his magazine Straight to Hell has been succeeded by First
Hand and Friction. Most of McDonald’s magazine material has been reprinted in book
form by Gay Sunshine Press (now Leyland Publications), and there are original books
of the same type from that publisher, from Gay Presses of New York, and from Bright
Tyger Press. John Preston, Samuel Steward (“Phil Andros”), and Larry Townsend
have written pornographic novels. Jack Fritscher, before turning to “documentary”
erotic videos (Palm Drive Video), wrote and edited stories and confessions (Man2Man
magazine). Among the other pornographic titles published by Leyland Publications
is Mike Shearer’s Great American Gay Porno Novel (1984). David Hurles (“Old Reliable”)
has recorded, first on audio and then on video tape, hustlers and ex-convicts, often
filled with anger. Two leading pornographic visual artists are Tom of Finland and Rex.
Pornographic comics have been collected and reprinted by Leyland Publications. In
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the 1980’s a gay pornographic industry emerged outside the U.S., first in France, then
in Japan and on a smaller scale, for export only, in Thailand, Brazil, and Mexico. Just
as American pornography has had considerable influence in the spreading and
homogenization of gay male culture, foreign pornography has the potential for
broadening American gay eroticism.
Women’s pornography. Most allegedly Lesbian pornography has consisted of fantasies
for heterosexual male consumption, and Playguy, ostensibly for heterosexual women,
has always had a large male readership. As a genre of sexual fantasy women have had
romances, abundant pulp fiction with a strong sexual component. A development of
the 1980’s is the birth of a true women’s pornographic movement, in which women
create and market erotic materials for female consumption, both homosexual and
heterosexual. A precedent is the feminist erotica of Anaïs Nin.
There are now published anthologies of women’s erotica (Herotica, edited by
Susie Bright, The Leading Edge, edited by Lady Winston, and several other collections),
magazines both Lesbian (Bad Attitude, On Our Backs, Outrageous Women, Yoni) and
heterosexual (Eidos, Libido, Yellow Silk), a major novelist, Anne Rice (“A. N.
Roquelaure,” “Anne Rampling”), and filmmakers (Fatale Video; the heterosexual
Candida Royalle). Lace Publications has published several volumes of Lesbian erotica,
including the adventure fantasies of Artemis OakGrove and Cappy Kotz’ The First
Stroke. Pat Califia’s Macho Sluts appeared in 1988 (Alyson Publications). In comparison
with men’s, women’s pornography is less visual, and includes more emotional context
for the sexual acts. While pornography has been controversial in the feminist
movement, and fantasies of violence or domination especially so, the emergence of
women’s erotica has helped to defuse the issue. Its continued strong growth seems
very likely.
Bisexual pornography. As many men find Lesbian lovemaking stimulating to watch, and
the division between homosexual and heterosexual women has not been as rigid as
the modern dichotomy between gay and straight men, much pornography has
presented women bisexually. The mid-1980’s saw the emergence of pornography
portraying men bisexually, usually using sexual trios consisting of two men and one
woman. Not of “grass-roots” origin, as other forms of pornography have been, it has
been a successful creation of the pornographic film industry, with only trivial written
precedents. Although a product of the homosexual rather than the heterosexual
branch of the industry, it seems to appeal more to heterosexual men than to the gayidentified.
Daniel Eisenberg
Bibliography: the historical movie Erotikus; John W. Rowberry, Gay Video: A Guide to
Erotica (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1986); the magazine Studflix, edited by
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Wrangler and Carl Jones, The Jack Wrangler Story (New York: St. Martin’s, 1984); The
Erotic World of Peter de Rome (London: Gay Men’s Press, 1984); Physique. A Pictorial
History of the Athletic Model Guild, ed. Winston Leyland (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine,
1982); Tom Waugh, “A Heritage of Pornography,” The Body Politic, January 1983, pp.
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