Gay Porn 101: The 4 Cs

I am a gay man with too much time on my hands right now and bored with everything so I’ve been overdosing in gay porn and have become disturbed by the gay4pay takeover. I have been coming to terms with my feelings about it and have decided to share what I have learned with others in hopes that they will find their own resolutions or join me in mine. From this experience, I have ascertained the four elements of quality gay porn and the issues and concerns around them.  I have only seen one or two, if any, provider that does all of it well, but that depends on each viewer’s perspectives.   So to begin the discussion, let's lay some groundwork as I define the four qualities that I have discovered –the four “Cs” of gay porn:

1) Cocks –Everyone loves a hot looking guy with a big cock.  We each have our own opinions on what we like but there is a general concept of what is hot.  Most of the big studio productions focus their efforts on finding great looking performers, sometimes at the expense of their performances.  I call them the fantasy providers.  I have fallen in love with some of their models even before I saw them perform like Tayte Hanson from Cockyboys.  I haven’t seen his scenes yet, but he takes my breath away with his beauty.  Even if the sex isn’t great we don’t care, we get off on the guys just seeing them naked and aroused.   The performers don’t even have to be gay to some fans.  They can fake it all they want, as long as they look hot doing it. 

As much as the industry claims to see past one’s sexual identify differences, it doesn’t see past skin color as much, but that’s probably due to fan preferences.  Black cocks are most often delegated to black porn productions and Spanish speaking performers work for Latino sites or don’t speak much in American gay porn. Asian guys are the rarest.  I, myself, am not as familiar with these performers and their sites because I am one of those fans who prefers white guys which is the largest market. And the porn press covers foreign based white porn well, especially that of European producers. 

Large size men (bears) have a place in porn, but only a small place unique to their own sites.  The same for older models in their senior years, but younger models, twinks, are hugely popular and the concern over some of them still being in high school has raised some eyebrows.  Hairy performers are common but overall used less, but there are sites dedicated to them.  Both cut and uncut models are used extensively.  I know of no American website that favors one over the other.

Some performers, usually the gay ones, develop relationships with their fans through social media, like Twitter.  They know that it brings them loyalty and popularity which helps when they aren’t on an exclusive contract with a particular company.  Then there are producers like Sean Cody who forbids his performers from any contact with them. Others like Randy Blue and Corbin Fisher encourage them to go on cam sites and interact with fans.   Some of the performers also escort through sites like Rentboy.com.  The porn is a marketing tool for the escorting. 

2) Cumshots- Where the cum ends up has always been the central question of gay porn.  Many of us often just fast-forward to the cumshots.  The action is so defined by it, I find myself mentally checking off which performers in a scene have cum or not.  Even kinkier scenes, with fisting and torture, usually bring it home somewhere with a cumshot.

Many porn producers, like Treasure Island Media, focus more on reality sex than fantasy sex.  TIM gives us realistic uninterrupted fucking even if the cameraman gets in the shot.  Who cares as long as the sex is scorching.  They don’t promote their models like stars and some of them wouldn’t win beauty contests, but they know how to make it real.  Let’s face it bareback is more realistic.  It’s sex natural as it was meant to be. The magical condom doesn’t suddenly appear.

Committed to Treasure Island Media.

Many fans prefer amateur porn, like those personal sex tapes loaded up to X-tube because they want to see real sex, not choreographed sex with bad music.  Often, you don't see the actual cumshot in them, you see the facial expression or the top's physical reaction, because true amateurs don’t pull out.

Unknown to us consumers is exactly how much of the fucking is faked in porn.  Occasionally, a scene will be exposed for trickery or the use of fake cum. Performer Cody Cummings is said to have faked most of his scenes.  Nothing gets a fan angrier than this deception.  Real fucking is core to porn.  The betrayal would be comparable to watching swimming competitions on TV and then finding out that the cool underwater footage was pre-taped. 

3) Commerce –From the provider’s perspective, their porn has to be in demand so that they can make a profit.   To the consumer, the amount of money invested in the product, its promotion and distribution shows.  Smart providers distribute the product through multiple channels –their own websites, DVD orders, and through porn streaming sites like AEBN. They give us high quality video at websites that are easily navigated and easy to join. They promote their content through trailers and samples at various industry blogs and through on site tours that show you what you will get with your subscription.  They make it easy for you cancel your subscription and communicate with the webmaster.  Content is updated frequently and the price is reasonable for the quality and amount of content.  A good porn website will release two-three scenes per week and charge no more than $30 per month.  Lucas Entertainment is probably the best example at doing all of this well.   

The piracy of porn is having a major effect on the entire porn industry –gay or straight.  There is exaggerated talk of it eroding the industry completely.  Producers like Corbin Fisher have taken consumers to court and companies spend ample resources trying to keep websites from stealing it and redistributing it.  In any case, it gives producers justification for paying performers less, even though they themselves are living rich.  Whether performers are paid fairly is an issue of discussion, that producers don’t like discussed.

4) Community –The messages that gay porn delivers about and to the LGBT community are the most often disregarded by the makers of gay porn or more accurately called –all male porn. It’s hard to balance community concerns and commerce concerns at the same time, but expert producers can make it work.  They know that history will reflect on them poorly if they don’t.  The porn industry has successfully kept the talk low on one issue –that of drug use on porn sets.  But the two biggest issues that affect the gay porn industry that they cannot keep quiet are whether performers use condoms or not and the sexual orientation of performers.

Loyal to bareback.  Is it going away?

Barebacking in gay porn, though common in straight porn, is seen by many as the wrong message to send out, but it is becoming more and more popular with fans –outselling condom porn even though there are less providers of it.  With new laws being made that forbid barebacking in porn in California –the capital of the porn industry- some companies are moving their shops to Vegas.   The laws are futile.  Barebacking will thrive and expand, and it won’t have to go underground to do so.  There are negatives to bareback porn makers.  The Grabbys awards for the gay porn industry excludes them and so does the IML.  Many community publications and media won’t promote them.   But the increased access to the drug Truvada will ultimately re-shape this issue, as more companies give up the condoms trading them for HIV testing.  Testing brings with it issues of privacy and discrimination, which relates to the other big issue of using straight guys over gay guys – gay4pay.

The gay porn industry is overrun by gay4pay performers these days creating concerns of how it negatively impacts the gay community.  Only a handful of companies use few or no straight performers –Lucas, Men at Play, Jake Cruise/Cocksure Men, Jason Sparks are the most noticeable, but not always for the community reason but because the action is better performed by true gay or bisexual men.  There are some companies that pride themselves on using primarily straight men –Corbin Fisher, Sean Cody, and Broke Straight Boys to name a few, and some that don’t advertise it like MenDotCom, Sketchy Sex, and Dallas Reeves.  Many performers have wives and kids.  Some of the straightness is just false marketing, while some of the performers are confused about their own sexuality. Some gay performers have recently started to come out with their dislike of the practice -Brandon Jones and Diesel Washington to name two. This issue and its impact I will be exploring extensively in my next writings.  It is the focus of my efforts.