Porn: Classic or Dud?

In respect to trans porn specifically, I interviewed a trans porn performer about a decade ago and she had interesting thoughts about her audience and how they saw her. She made the point that her fans were almost all men who identified as straight, she didn't really see it as a queer niche per se (unlike gay porn e.g.).

This may have changed a bit over the last 10 years - the trans porn audience may be more relaxed now in identifying as queer rather than straight ?

This may have changed a bit over the last 10 years - the trans porn audience may be more relaxed now in identifying as queer rather than straight ?

― Dr Drudge (Bob Six)

i don't personally see it as a matter of "relaxation"

i'm gonna be blunt, most of the audience for transfem porn, that i can tell, are chasers who fetishize us and are really only interested in our thick, hard, cocks. anybody who associates trans women with thick, hard cocks might perhaps might have the most accurate or empathetic understanding of trans women.

they also might not have the most accurate or empathetic understanding of themselves. there's, for instance, some chasers for whom it's really important to not be gay, but who at the same time, really like dick, dick that's as much like guy dick as possible. these people are not going to identify as "queer". there's this simultaneous attraction and repulsion a lot of consumers of transfem porn have, and you know, whatever shit they have going on, that's their thing. it just doesn't tend to translate into a lot of respect for trans women.

when it comes to transfem t4t porn, i run into a _lot_ more GoneWildAudio stuff than visual stuff. which makes a lot of sense to me, personally!

i have no clue re: trans men in porn. i guess buck angel has an audience, but i don't know who his audience is. i'd prefer to think about him as little as possible.

Blunt is good… There’s a lot to think about here.

I think that sadly the average t girl porn viewer's no more likely to identify as queer than the average lesbian porn viewer is likely to be a queer ally.

FWIW here's that Bree Mills interview I was talking about: https://avn.com/business/articles/video/bree-mills-on-transfixed-and-the-trans-tipping-point-828592.html

interesting interview. i figured i'd go see what mills has been up to since then. looks like she's now with an all-male company called disruptive films, which released one film in 2021. i'm not inclined to read anything into that. a lot of times people try things that don't work out, and i think it's cool that mills gave it a shot. and, i mean, porn keeps changing... even 2019 was a long time ago!

oh just to be clear the term "t-girl" is taken by a lot of people, including myself, as being a slur... a lot of trans porn does get called "t-girl" porn and honestly quite a lot worse, but anybody who calls me a "t-girl" will _not_ get a warm response from me :)

She actually runs a whole porn network, AdultTime. She's certainly not the be-all of woke porn, but she's an interesting figure and a lot different than the sleazelords of old.

She actually runs a whole porn network, AdultTime. She's certainly not the be-all of woke porn, but she's an interesting figure and a lot different than the sleazelords of old.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

see, _that's_ the interesting thing, is the business model at all. i dimly recall there being a porn issue of (academic trans studies publication) TSQ that had some interesting observations in it - the history of trans performers in porn, sissy hypno, stuff like that. anyway i think some of that got into the old-school sleazelord stuff, and... ok, my understanding of this stuff is sketchy, but pornhub kind of killed the california porn industry with easy access to piracy, right? and then once the people running pornhub had done that they used their platform to create a monopoly on porn based out of quebec? and that's where a lot of the incest stuff comes from? although there's a _lot_ of incest anime out there right now as well. particularly incest isekai, because hey, why not hit everything at once.

which was something else that i've seen observed about mass-market porn... as there are more and more fetishes, the pressure to incorporate as many as possible into a single 10-minute clip intensifies. why do a spanking clip when you can do a monsterfucker pissplay breeding fetish (it makes me howl with glee to think of how the "virility" advocates think of BREEDING FETISHES, which are, yes, particularly popular with queers... because if you're not queer, it's not a fetish, right?) spanking clip?

well because of course then you risk losing the people who aren't into all of those things. mass-market porn just doesn't adapt well to the... long tail, as they say.

i don't know what role pornhub plays in the online sex work economy these days. it's not a site i've spent a lot of time around. most of the people i know who do sex work focus it around onlyfans, and really, i feel like that model is just a better fit than the porn industry of old. because that's the other thing... monetization. people who do sex work want to get paid for it. pornhub, in its piracy years, tended to undermine that.

the main problem in doing sex work is something mentioned only in passing in the article - _collecting payment_. most of the online payment processors _won't_ handle sites associated with adult activities, and there's constant, constant financial pressure on the ones that do. so the people who do provide third-party financial processing charge a pretty high overhead. there's ways to get around it, if you operate at a big enough scale, but people trying to work individually...

i know FOSTA/SESTA did the exact opposite of what it was trying to do, it made sex work far more difficult for the people trying to do it, and the people doing that work far more vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking. that's kind of the outcome i expect from this sort of legislation.

Oddly PayPal work with some of the bigger porn companies, despite being generally antiporn.

There's a pretty good interview with Dian Hanson on youtube, she was an influential porn magazine editor and for the last 2 decades she's been editing a large chunk of Taschen's sex books and some of their art books. She said that the male porn editors she taken over from tended to resent the audience and be completely uncomfortable with the fact that people were masturbating to the magazines, which is bizarre and funny/sad.

I've generally heard these new laws are going to make everyone more vulnerable, including politicians and I thought they probably wouldn't have gone down this route because it could cause a lot of political scandals, but it's happening and we'll see how it goes.

tell that to Matt Gaetz, sad lol

completely uncomfortable with the fact that people were masturbating to the magazines, which is bizarre and funny/sad.

They sounded like a bunch of jerks who worked for magazine companies and weren't thrilled about working on those particular ones, but I'm not sure. There was something that seemed similar to me when Jon Ronson interviewed a man from Pornhub who seemed offended when Ronson said he worked in porn.

Is there still a magazine market out there? I admit I haven't been to a shady newsstand in decades. I get the New Yorker and I have an Atlantic online subscription but I do not know about the print porn scene.

So, like, is there still a Chic? Or Playgirl, Penthouse, Oui? This was the stuff of distant fantasy when I was perhaps 13 in 1984.

There's a pretty good interview with Dian Hanson on youtube, she was an influential porn magazine editor and for the last 2 decades she's been editing a large chunk of Taschen's sex books and some of their art books. She said that the male porn editors she taken over from tended to resent the audience and be completely uncomfortable with the fact that people were masturbating to the magazines, which is bizarre and funny/sad.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

honestly being in denial about the actual effects of what they're being paid to do sounds really on-brand for cis dudes

So, like, is there still a Chic? Or Playgirl, Penthouse, Oui? This was the stuff of distant fantasy when I was perhaps 13 in 1984.

― The Royal House of Hangover (Ye Mad Puffin)

no idea, but the fetish mags all shut down ages ago afaik. everything is online now.

The corner store nearest me has old school porn mags on a rack behind the counter - the old titles like Juggs and Barely Legal. Don't know if they're new and in print or just from a warehouse somewhere.

I think the magazine I edited from 2000-2005 (yes, I was making pornography on 9/11) is still extant. But I haven't been in a Hudson News in a while so I'm not 100% sure.

I just checked and the magazines I stopped paying attention to almost a decade ago are still going, maybe on a less frequent basis. I'm really surprised.

Don't know if they're new and in print or just from a warehouse somewhere.

probably AI-generated

I think the magazine I edited from 2000-2005 (yes, I was making pornography on 9/11) is still extant. But I haven't been in a Hudson News in a while so I'm not 100% sure.

"... They hate our freedom to splooge in the privacy of our homes, whenever we want."

https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy

That would mean not only sites like Reddit and Twitter would have to verify everyone’s age and identity, and expose visitors to government surveillance, but also sites like Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon and Google.

But consumers hate it, and it’s wildly expensive. So the end result pic.twitter.com/ezKyO4J91U

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile) March 26, 2024

Gonna need some First Amendment cases to go the right way.

That tweet assumes that the value of Reddit/Twitter/etc. aren’t tied so heavily to porn that they’ll acquiesce and not fight back. Reddit just went public, the executives have a duty to shareholders keep it filled with boobs.

They all saw what happened to Tumblr.

first they came be(for)e the porn aficionados

Here's where AI can fill in the gap. "Chat GTPorn, gimme Trent Lott getting rimmed by Benito Mussolini."

I'm curious how successful even authoritarian states are at keeping out porn. Or maybe they don't really care, as long as it's not subversive. But, like, Iran must devote some effort to blocking porn, right?

(per some quick googling, yes, Iran is apparently quite good at keeping out porn)

the porn is coming from within the house