I saw the link to Indy‘s thought-provoking article on twitter this morning, but didn’t have a chance to read it until I took a break from work at lunchtime. In the meantime, however, my brain was already firing up with my own thoughts on this topic – many of which you are already familiar with. Indy writes,
Most of the guys I know in the scene are utterly uninterested in M/M scenes of any kind, and would at a very minimum walk away if they saw one. The less tolerant among those men would be threatened by it and perhaps refuse to attend events sponsored by the organization. F/F scenes, though, are welcome, as these same men are quite happy to watch two women doing almost anything.
This question has been at the front of my mind lately. My original ambition for my new site was to publish high-quality M/m and M/mf spanking porn on the same site as all other orientations, in an attempt to appeal to the female and queer male audience which is so often invisibled by the industry. I have received a lot of strongly-worded advice from people who run their own sites, telling me that this will amount to a death sentence for my project unless the M/m material is partitioned off into its own site. Although it is my aim to produce female-gaze porn, realistically, the majority of paying customers are likely to still be male, and many of them will be put off for good by any whiff of M/m on a site they are browsing.
The tricky balance between idealism and realism is, until I launch and start seeing sales stats, purely speculative. However, my friends seemed likely enough to be correct that I started mentally preparing to separate my boysub material off into a separate site. However strong my ideal of a gender-egalitarian spanking site may be, if necessity dictates it become a gender-egalitarian network of sites instead, that’s a compromise I can probably live with.
I am, however, acutely aware of the inequality and homophobia in this industry. I am currently trying to find a youngish, good looking male dominant actor who is willing to work with male subs, to help me realise some of my long-cherished M/m public school prefect fantasies. My first choice, of course, would be Tom – but topping, even on camera, is closely connected to his sexuality, and given he’s straight, he’s not comfortable working with another man, to my lasting regret.
Here’s what I think:
- Most spanking producers do not pay their male actors. I am a strong advocate of the idea that if you do not treat someone like a professional, you cannot expect professionalism from them (although you may get it anyway, if you have a good working relationship). Men are not paid for their work in spanking films because there is an expectation that they are motivated by personal gratification. Kinky men, statistically, have a far lower chance of finding a play partner than kinky women; men pay spanking professionals for sessions far more than women do. Appearing in a spanking film, it seems, is seen by many of an extension of the same trend. This attitude results in the perceived implication that a man spanking another man in porn must have personal reasons to do so – they must be sexually motivated.
Or course, women often have personal/sexual motivations for appearing in porn, and everyone has different boundaries. But if most women only wanted to appear in films with people they fancied the industry would grind to a halt, and the women in question would be condemned for their unprofessionalism. There is a clear double standard here, and I think it’s bollocks. Acting with someone doesn’t mean you fancy them – that’s why it’s called acting.
Also, I resent the implication that the men who have topped me on camera did so because it was the only way they’d get to spank me. That is really quite seriously creepy. I like to credit my toppy friends with a little more professionalism than that. I have this crazy idea that people make spanking porn because they are creatively motivated – they want to make something awesome. Most people get something personal out of it as well, but if sexual gratification is your only reason for being involved, you’re going wrong somewhere.
- Straight women are expected, throughout every sector of the adult industry, to act out sexual encounters with other women without this being seen to imply anything about their personal preferences. Why not men?
- Female/female sex is included in anthologies of “straight” porn. In mainstream porn as in the rest of society, female queer experience is appropriated by straight men. I know when I’m out with a female partner, if we ever dare kiss in public we are likely to attract lecherous men asking if they can join in, or rudely taking photos on their cameras. Ironically, the same men who fetishise male-gaze lesbianism are usually opposed to equal rights and gay marriage.
The reverse is true in some media, such as fanfiction, where mostly female authors write male/male sex for their own enjoyment. (Although it’s uncertain whether this counts as ‘appropriation’ in the same way; firstly, appropriation implies a position of privilege, which is less clearcut between straight women and gay men than between straight men and gay women. Secondly, about 50% of fanfic writers identify as queer.) Fanfiction is still marginalised; the female gaze is not yet mainstream in visual erotica. While most women enjoy watching M/m, most porn does not yet cater to women.
- As long as men do most of the buying, the market has no choice but to cater to them. Women are still mostly content to get their online porn for free – a trend no doubt affected by the high proportion of women who prefer written erotica, which is very hard to charge for online. I’ve heard of a few lesbian or female gaze sites which carefully catered to the demands of their female audience, but struggled when that audience proved unwilling in practice to cough up and pay for the kind of porn they wanted. This leaves sites with a choice between going under, or catering to men. A lot of men are still violently put off by M/m, due to embedded homophobia and lack of understanding in our society – which the porn industry contributes to by expecting men to react homophobically. There is no reason why straight men shouldn’t enjoy M/m in the same way that straight women enjoy F/f – identifying as one participant in a non-sexual punishment scenario, or enjoying the scenario in the abstract – but our culture teaches men to close their minds at an early age.
- One area of crossover which could appeal to both women and men is gay porn. However, in the spanking scene, M/m when produced by and for men often takes on an extreme macho style, with minimal reactions from the spankee. This instantly makes the content less appealing to many women, who are more likely to seek out emotional expression, intimacy and vulnerability in erotica. This means that the M/m content which is out there is unappealing to women, and no-one is producing M/m for women because not enough women are willing to pay for it, and not enough men are willing to do it.
- Our culture teaches both men and women that looking at female bodies is erotic. Women are taught to find female bodies visually stimulating and desirable regardless of their sexual orientation (consider, for example, the use of female bodies in adverts directed at women). The idea that no-one likes looking at male bodies is a deeply rooted cultural prejudice. It is also clearly bollocks because hello, male bodies can be gorgeous and most women enjoy looking at them in the flesh.
Many progressive individuals are working to change these factors, from talking to people about their ideas, to developing new ways of producing erotica. However, we are still in a minority even within our mostly-liberal little scene. Social inertia is very powerful; even if we are all working together to challenge received ideology and lazy or ignorant industry standards, it is likely to be a couple of generations before we can see true gender equality in visual erotica.
(Many thanks to CP Services London for the images. And a point to whoever recognises the cutie with the freckles in the third picture…)
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Why don't you run a survey addressed at hetero men pre-launch? Something like, "would you subscribe to a spanking site that contains M/M material in addition to the usual offerings?"
Obviously, an answer in a survey isn't the same as typing in your payment details, but it would give you a view of where you want to head with your site.
Alternatively, have an entry page with tick boxes: "show me M/F, F/F, F/M, M/M,"
Interesting post. I applaud your ideals – there should be equal opportunity porn available. But I have to be honest and say that M/m spanking porn isn't something I'd seek out. I'd like to think that's simply a matter of personal taste, but there probably is some element of deeply ingrained homophobia. I was, after all, brought up as a straight male in middle-class Britain, so it would be foolish to deny that I'm capable of unthinkingly holding homophobic attitudes (though I'd hope that I'd acknowledge, apologise for and correct them if pointed out).
What this post has made me think about is why I like F/f spanking scenes, generally in preference to M/f. Part of it, of course, is the general male appropriation of lesbian porn. But part of it, I think, is that I identify with the spankee, in that I'd like to be topped by a dominant woman. The reason why I prefer F/f, rather than F/m, is, I suspect, that I'm conditioned not to enjoy looking at naked males (though I am finding that Cutiepie's "Girls Smacking Boys" blog is more interesting than I had at first thought it would be).
One final point (at the risk of diverting the discussion) – when did looking at the male body become something men were not supposed to do? Clearly it is now, but it seems a fairly recent phenomenon. Neoclassical art seems quite happy with the idea (have a look at the most prominent male figures in David's Intervention of the Sabine Women). And there are some Hollywood movies that are very much about gazing at the male body – Joel Schumacher's Batman films and Wolfgang Petersen's Troy come to mind.
Very interesting post! It made me think about my preferences and why they are. I certainly like all kind of x/f stuff. I like F/fm too. In fact, most of my bottom fantasies are F/fm and these kind of movies are very rare, so I believe there is a market out here for these movies.
But do I like M/fm or M/m movies? I think, as long the scenes are strict discipline and not linked to other (m/m) sexual activities, I probably would. I don't seek it as much as x/f scenes but once in a while, why not! For me, spanking movies have to show discipline scenes, that's most important. I still would sign up for your site…
Well, like others I applaud your aim to educate and broaden the male palette and to counter the asymmetry in this genre by appealing to women as well. Also, like others, I don’t believe showing M/m pictures will achieve that. The reason is (I merely theorise) that people only look at these images to get turned on and the way that happens is different between women and men (in general). A man’s sexual interest is stimulated directly by what he senses, the fantasy is only that – suspending belief – he can have a bit of what he sees too. Only if he is gay, will the site of an obviously male body interest him, otherwise it will disgust. In contrast, I tentatively suggest that women process the images cognitively, using them as a starting point for their imagination – the image rapidly looses its power as they imagine themselves in the depicted situation. This would be a reasonable explanation for the relative success of genre literature among females compared to males.
Sexual interest is very hard to change because it is imprinted by reinforcement (almost hard wired in the end), which is probably why spanking fanatics cannot drop it even if they desperately want to. As someone positively reinforces their sexuality tastes by repeating a fantasy, they narrow their palette to that fantasy. This process seems to be stronger in males. One, little recognised, result of it is that there are very many sub-genres within the overall theme – spanking sexuality branches into myriad ramifications.
For example some would prefer the takers to be wilful participants leading a prospective disciplinarian into action, or deliberately escalating their dose – not a common theme in the mainstream. Indeed the mainstream seems unthinkingly oriented towards the spanker, rather than the spankee. The latter is, I think, more likely to indulge in cognitive processing (using the images as a starting point for a private fantasy), whether male or female. Straight male spankees often enjoy imagining that they are the gorgeous female bending over – a process called projection which changes ‘having’ into ‘being’ – a way of identifying sympathetically with the depicted spankee.
This suggests that there are finer and more incremental ways to broaden and enrich spanking porn and direct it more positively away from lustful basic ‘wanting the girl’.
I think the mainstream is over-worked, tired and repetitive. It could do with some creative broadening. But if you are really dedicated to your cause, perhaps you should ignore the commercial pressures and just do it anyway.
Jimmy's befreckled and spankable hotbot.
And on another slight tangent … You mention it not being clear that women writing m/m fanfiction is appropriation – I've just found out that there's a big argument going on in the fanfic communities about whether straight women writing gay fiction is appropriation.
Some late-night (and probably ill-thought-through) ramblings.
Recognising that this isn't a great analogy, here it is all the same: Whenever I'm in Vegas, I find myself refusing to believe that the customers the casinos would lose by getting rid of smoking, wouldn't be easily outnumbered by the customers they'd gain. But because the customers they'd lose are far more visible – they're right there, right now, sitting in front of the fruit machines dragging hungrily on cigarettes – they tend to be given more weight, and the *potential* customers are much more nebulous.
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I can't help believing that there'd have to be more people attracted by well-made M/M(m) spanking porn on a gender-neutral site, than would be deterred by it.
I'm not a very useful data point here, because although I'm a user of porn, I'm not really a purchaser of it, but what I *am* is a het man who is plenty attracted to certain types of M/M(m) porn – notably exactly the sort of formal school stuff that you've described wanting to make. I suppose the point I'd make here is not to assume that the only consumers of M/M(m) spanking porn are women or gay men. Maybe I'm in a small minority, but – again – I'd hope not. Even if I wasn't a paid member (though I realise that's really the point here), I'd *love* to see a really good entirely gender-neutral spanking site out there.
YES YES YES
I do hope that you do manage to incorporate M/m* in to your site, I for one would love a site that ticks all the boxes for me.
For me a large part of the kick I get from spanking is from the ‘embarrassment’ side particularly from nakedness; that works really well (for me at least) when the top is Male.
Anyway I hope this encourages you !
Almost forgot – the 'point' – is it Jimmy in the pics ?
Hi, being a long time lurker at least on your pages, German/Austrian activist, avid fan however and subscriber to some sites where you appeared, I want to say:
Go for it. With your high quality, feminist approach you can't expect to reap big sums anyway. You will most likely attract a small but faithfull group of smart customers bored with garish silly pornstars in pigtails.
I suspect they will be adult enough simply not to watch something they don't want to see.
I for one will try it out and I do like male spankees occasionally, if they appear boyish enough
Good luck
Sven
I cant even begin to describe how much this whole subject irritates me. The reason it does so is that, it SHOULDNT have to be discussed at all. Its those who think that having M/m material would "be a death sentence to your site" are a HUGE part of the problem as it stands in the World of kink. I will fly the "I wont attend parties or buy material from organizations that have clearly homophobic statements in their advertisements or party rules" Flag alone if I have to, and be DAMN happy to do so. I promise you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if you create the site, I will pay to join it, and I am NOT one who pays for internet sites. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh do I wish I was in the UK, you would have a very willing participant/actor for your films/photoshoots as either a Top or bottom.
Nick
First off, this is a remarkable post. The combination of your knowledge of the business, your artistic goals, and your intelligent analysis really come together to create something special, and I suspect your site, in whatever form it takes, will do the same.
Several points strike me particularly. First is the idea that simply having M/M or M/MF material on the site would be enough to discourage people who prefer other genres from subscribing to watch the clips they like. I have no problem with not liking all genres. I myself dislike what you might call "male gaze" F/F scenes. However, nowhere in your post do you even imply that the majority of your material would be M/M. Nonetheless, most of the men who have responded seem to come to that conclusion.
So would they see a single M/M clip and bail? It strikes me as an extreme overreaction. If that's the case, though, I like Adele's suggestion of genre tick boxes on the opening page.
The second point I find interesting is the idea that men are supposed to be doing spanking films out of true love, women for money. That sounds like a reasonable description to me of the current state of the spanking film world, but how about vanilla porn? Surely the men get paid there, but as you point out, girl-on-girl is somehow viewed as straight, boy-on-boy as gay.
The issue of the audience is also an interesting one. I like Paul's analogy of smokers in Vegas quite a bit. Banning smoking everywhere might be tough, but I bet a lone casino that did would make a hell of a lot of money. Given your artistic ideals, I suspect your projects won't be on the cheaper end of the industry. So in the end, it will depend a lot on what people– male or female– are willing to pay for freshness and quality.
I'll definitely pay for it, and would be willing to pay extra. But I can see that might not be the best business plan in the world, especially as I'm really only an occasional consumer of visual porn.
On a perhaps lighter note, that second photo is extremely hot!
I have quite a bit to say about this post – and I agree with the Indy that this is a great post.
However, my comment is on the business side of things, and I admit that it is just a tad off-topic, so sorry in advance for that.
There are far too many spanking porn sites out there already, and the proliferation of advertising content makes it extremely easy for surfers to simply gobble up freebies and never open their wallets. Although none of the producers are publicly listed, it appears that many are having difficulties in the current economic climate. There was even a rumour going around that SOL Digital Limited (Xerotics) had gone into voluntary administration.
Outside our little niche, the “mainstream” porn world is reeling from the twin curses of too much affiliate marketing and rampant piracy. In fact, I have heard it said that the last thing a new (mainstream) producer should be doing is starting a paysite. Instead, producers are counselled to use their content to attract potential customers to products that they are still prepared to pay for, such as online gambling. For better or worse, this development has yet to filter down into the spanking niche, but it will no doubt come, sooner rather than later.
Back in the spanking world now, I think that yet another new F/F and M/F paysite (however well crafted) is probably not needed – it might attract a small core audience devoted to you personally, but as you allude to in your post, any successful site must have mass appeal. Think Conan O'Brien vs Jay Leno (at 11:35pm) and also Jay Leno vs anything else (at 10pm). And in fact, some of the traits that make your world-view and content attractive to me personally (the intelligence, the intuitive grasp of human nature etc.) are likely to be overlooked by your stereotypical surfer.
The good news is that you can try to break out of the financial doldrums, and your ideas regarding a combined X/F and X/M paysite are an ideal place to start. Any site with a unique approach is far more likely to stay solvent than one that is merely a clone. Except for one scene produced by RealSpankings last year (and not repeated since), as far as I am aware combined X/F,X/M spanking is an entirely new, unexplored niche. Is it financially sustainable? There are large numbers of bisexual adults – notionally about 3% of women and 2% of men, but those statistics are very, very fuzzy – so on a worldwide basis the answer is likely to be “yes”. One has to remember that the fact nobody has done it successfully before does not mean the entire concept is pointless; chances are that those who have previously dabbled had existing customers that were not interested in the experimental content.
Anyway, my point is that this is worth exploring, and good luck with your venture.
I hope I’m not too late to the party here. I have no interest in M/M spanking, but if a site that had other things that interested me had it I certainly would not boycott it. (BTW, there are M/M sites, for those that want it.)
My own orientation is switch/sub. (I’m a man.) I like strong no nonsense women that show a bit (or more than a bit) of caring for the person they are spanking. I tend to shy away from M/F spanking (preferring F/F) because most of the men doing it are brutes, and I like to see people care for one another.
Where I’m going with this is, while I rarely join any site anymore (I have tons, tons of this stuff, how much does one person need?) I would join a site that had F/M spanking of the type I mentioned above. I don’t mean the punishments should not be strict and sound, but I don’t care for the dudgeon slave stuff.
I must say your scene with Jimmy interests me greatly. Put lots of that sort of stuff up and I will join.
OK, I have now read all I can find on your blog relating to this. Since I seem to have a difficult time expressing myself in a way that is understood I will try to do it this way:
I want to see character development in my F/M videos. No “sack of potatoes” for me. I would go as far as to say there should be as much non spanking time as spanking, and it should be both before and after the spanking.
I don’t mind naked men, it’s part of what’s going on. I do hope there bodies are as good looking as your’s is.
I do think you should pay your male models.
I don’t mind younger women/older men, I think age should not be a factor in determining whether or not a women is an authority figure. In fact I think it has a certain appeal once in a while.
There does not have to be a women getting it at the same time the man does. In other words the whole scene could be F/M. Or more Fs and/or more Ms.
I lived for ten years in what we called a “matriarchal” (even though she was ten years younger ) relationship, and it was some of the most content years of my life. We had a number of like minded friends, and at the parties the women got spanked too, although not nearly as much as the men. I mention that to try to point out that there was no boot licking mistress slave stuff going on. Except for the spanking (a lot of it) we looked like any other group of people having a party.
I disagree with this statement: ". A lot of men are still violently put off by M/m, due to embedded homophobia and lack of understanding in our society – which the porn industry contributes to by expecting men to react homophobically. There is no reason why straight men shouldn't enjoy M/m in the same way that straight women enjoy F/f – identifying as one participant in a non-sexual punishment scenario, or enjoying the scenario in the abstract – but our culture teaches men to close their minds at an early age."
I have a lot of gay friends, male and female, and resent being categorised as 'homophobic' just because I do not get turned on by male gay porn/erotica. And dont give me that 'spanking is not sexual' hypocracy!
Kink.com has M/m bdsm sites.
They are big enough to find their special clientel. I will never join those sites.
Huzzah and Kudos. i found your post enlightening and quite insightful. you are obviously a very intelligent woman and i applaud your intent. i've had many similar thoughts on this subject. i only say this because to me the disbalance is so blatantly obvious even the casual viewer of any type of or level of spanking material should notice it straightaway. But that is not my point today. today i wish to encourage and applaud you.
well done. i find your intelligence to be most attractive feature.
I really wish you'd stop dissing biology. I find it very likely that while most people are neurochemically attracted to members of the opposite sex and that to an extent men's and women's preferences (as a group) tend to be different.
I wouldn't be threatened by M/M stuff, but it wouldn't interest me very much. I like F/M best followed by M/F and F/F. I could do without F/F entirely as well, you should know.
I'm not saying no M/M stuff could ever appeal to me, but I think I've seen all of two M/M videos in my 14 years on the net that didn't cause me to wretch. Where I admired the technique or the physiques of the actors. But it didn't "do it" for me- no sexual attraction at all. And most of this is about my sexual gratification. You'll get me there through the first 3 categories, but never the forth. I wonder if it's my fault for being heterosexual?
Clarence
This is a great post. I love M/M spanking, gay or not, but my attraction to it is the intense power exchange. I just shot my first MM/M scene last weekend, and it was (to me) breathtaking!
I'd love to see more of this from you, too!
Audrey Knight
I'm a bit jimmy-come-lately to this topic, but wonder what your current thinking is on the proposed website?
Your article certainly made me think a great deal. I find M/M pictures do little for me. Curiously, though, I am stimulated by literary reminiscenses of M/M school canings. I think that might be because my taste for corporal punishment developed in such an environment. I always identify with the recepient when reading such accounts of school beatings; and of course that was the reality of my position, back then. The psychodynamics of male adolesence barred that position to me. The phallic power of the cane was now in my hands, rather than across my bum.
My experience is that most women choose to be fucked hard, and decline to be caned hard (if at all). Fortunately, I found it a simple matter to transfer phallic power back-and-forth, from cane to cock. I suspect that that is the position of most male dominants. The cane is our flexible friend, always reliably hard.
The chosen object of both modes of my phallic wrath is the "hymen" I put that word in scare quotes because it is meant to refer not only to the physiological barrier that affords some protection to the womb, but also to the more stubborn psychological obstruction which finds embodiment in the female buttocks. What the latter are obstructing is reproductive penetration. They are saying: 'Stick it up here instead.'
The male buttocks make the same statement, but the cases differ in the result of their eventual capitulation. Fucking a male might be fun, but for me: fucking a female is far more satisfying because it has the potential of providing the longer-term fufilments of fatherhood (even though modern contraception gives us the happy option of deferring that goal.)
I'm a confirmed heterosexual; but though I said earlier 'M/M pictures do little for me' they DO do a little—especially if both recepient and dominant are physically attractive to me.
There are no specific criteria for that attractiveness–they either are or they aren't. What I do find interesting, though, is that my identification is exclusively with the recepient—which is exactly my pre-adolescent position.
Switching has lately become a pleasure for me. It has taken me years to acquire the confidence to brave the vulnerablities of the male recepient. I present my stubborn buttocks to my wife's phallic wrath as invested in the cane; and she beats me until my prostate capitulates and yields a stupendous orgasm which is phenomenologically different from those that accompany genital congress:
Fucking my wife energises me along all the dimensions of masculinity that the culture affirms, supports, and ultimately requires.
Being caned to orgasm by my wife energises me along qualitatively different dimensions—ones that, I suspect, are similar (if not identical to those experienced by men fucked by their male lovers.
So my "masculinity" is a fragile thing, just like the cultural studies courses suggest. I had the potential to become a gay man, but didn't experience the necessary triggers. (I acknowledge that statement as controversial, to all those, both straight and gay, who reject psychodynamic theories of sexuality.)
So would I subscribe to a paysite with M/M material? I certainly would if it was run by a intelligent woman called Pandora. My predominant interest, by a vast margin, would remain: images showing at least some female attire.
jim x