This paper draws on a piece of wide-scale mixed-methods research that examines the motivations behind women who watch gay male pornography. To date there has been very little interdisciplinary research investigating this phenomenon, despite a recent survey by PornHub (one of the largest online porn sites in the world) showing that gay male porn is the second most popular choice for women porn users out of 25+ possible genre choices. While both academic literature and popular culture have looked at the interest that (heterosexual) men have in lesbian pornography, considerably less attention has been paid to the consumption of gay male pornography by women. Research looking at women's consumption of pornography from within the Social Sciences is very focused around heterosexual (and, to a lesser extent, lesbian) pornography. Research looking more generally at gay pornography/erotica (and the subversion of the ‘male gaze’/concept of ‘male as erotic object’) often makes mention of female interest in this area, but only briefly, and often relies on anecdotal or observational evidence. Research looking at women's involvement in slashfic (primarily from within media studies), while very thorough and rich, tends to view slash writing as a somewhat isolated phenomenon (indeed, in her influential article on women's involvement in slash, Bacon-Smith talks about how ‘only a small number’ of female slash writers and readers have any interest in gay literature or pornography more generally, and this phenomenon is not often discussed in more recent analyses of slash); so while there has been a great deal of very interesting research done in this field, little attempt has been made to couch it more generally within women's consumption and use of pornography and erotica or to explore what women enjoy about watching gay male pornography. Through a series of focus groups, interviews, and an online questionnaire (n = 275), this exploratory piece of work looks at what women enjoy about gay male pornography, and how it sits within their consumption of erotica/pornography more generally. The article investigates what this has to say about the existence and nature of a ‘female gaze’.
Keywords:
pornography gay female gaze women male/male pornography
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Many women described the experience of watching gay male porn as "empowering" and "exciting."
https://www.businessinsider.com/women-watching-gay-male-porn-study-2018-7
"Some of the reasons are pretty self-evident: it probably shouldn’t be surprising that a good number of women like looking at naked men," she says in an article
Women reported feeling guilty about the female actors in straight porn — something they don't have to worry about for a scene starring only men. For some, this had a distressingly personal meaning — "For a subset of women who are rape and abuse survivors, m/m is one of the few types of sexually explicit media they can enjoy without feeling triggered or re-traumatized,"
...over half of the women watching m/m porn also imagine themselves as a man while masturbating...
we probably shouldn't think women watching gay male porn is so unusual
Each year that Pornhub puts out user data, we’re reminded that women make up a substantial 37 percent chunk of the company’s gay male porn viewers. According to 2016 findings, gay male porn is the second-most viewed category by women on the site—“lesbian" is the first but only by a small margin. It is also revealed in this study that 18 to 24-year-old women are 24 percent more likely to watch gay male porn than other age groups.https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kgdwy/women-tell-us-why-they-prefer-porn-with-no-women
Women consuming male-on-male erotica is far from a new phenomenon. The traditions go far back in Japanese and Chinese culture in a genre known as “boys love.” This genre of fiction can take the form of manga comics, film, literature, internet forums, and TV series and generally depicts androgynous boys being gay together. It has a huge following and is primarily written by and marketed toward young women. The same can be seen in modern fan fiction where male-on-male slash pairings are by far the most common, and again predominantly written and read by young women.
When you’re watching, do you imagine yourself as part of the scene or as separate to it?
Definitely, separate to it, and it’s this separation that I like. It makes it more taboo and exciting to watch because it’s so separate from anything I’ve ever experienced.
The women also said that they felt they shared a more common gaze with the target audience as opposed to heterosexual and lesbian porn, which is predominantly made for heterosexual men, and they felt gay men's point of view was more in line with their personal preferences and desires.
https://www.advocate.com/love-and-sex/2018/7/18/study-many-women-prefer-gay-male-porn-because-its-authentic
The overwhelming reason the women watched gay male porn was that they felt it was more authentic than other genres. "Respondents were more able to believe that both actors were enjoying the experience and that the sexual desire and pleasure between them, therefore, felt more ‘authentic,’" according to the research.
Most women who watch gay male porn 'imagine themselves' as men during their sexual fantasies, according to new research.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5966155/More-half-women-watch-gay-porn-imagine-MEN-erotic-sexual-fantasies.html
I enjoyed reading your ppost
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