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In the days before the Internet, one could forgiven for not believing
in the existence of male bisexuality. To be fair, there were some men
who openly called themselves bi, but they were usually regarded as
freaks, or “really” gay. Elton John, of course, first came of as
bi,unwittingly perpetuating a stereotype of bisexuality as a “phase” before one settles down to their “true” orientation.
The other notable bisexual male star of the 70s, David Bowie, settled
into a nice straight life with a supermodel wife (although who could
blame him?) and gave a series of interviews which implied that the
whole queer thing was just trolling.
Bi male invisibility was equally true in porn. The female variety was
as common as water (not out of any queer positivity on the part of the
pornographers, but because every straight dude wants two girls,
amirite?), but even in situations involving two men and a woman
contact between the guys was verboten. Gay porn was its own other
universe, out there if you looked for it, but anyone wanting a
representation of male bisexuality would have to dig pretty deep.
Things got a little better in the late 80s, but bi, like transgender, remained a niche market, a novelty at best.
I can still remember the first time I encountered a depiction of male
bisexuality, in a story in an issue Penthouse Forum that i managed to
sneak a look at. In the story, a man surprises his wife with group sex
(this happens all the time, right?)
There was a single sentence in which the husband performs oral on one
if the other guys and likes it.
That single sentence sent my mind reeling with the possibilities. It
wasn’t so much an awakening as a realization that I didn’t have to
choose, that I could be sexual with both men and women.
The obvious reason for the lack of bi porn is commercial. There are
simply more straight and gay consumers of porn out there. However,
with the explosion of porn available on the Internet I was pleased to
see more options out there.
However, the bi porn on the net is a mixed blessing. In practice, “bi”
often translates to “gay with a woman joining in;” it’s not that the
woman is ignored completely, but she’s kind if superfluous.
Yet there’s an uglier form of porn that is dominating “bi” scenarios
these days: cuckold porn. The scenario is almost always the same: the
bi married man is humiliated into servicing the better-endowed lover
if his wife, or even “cleaning up” after him. Often there’s a racial
component, with the bi male being dominated by the superior black
penis.
As someone who tries to be as sex-positive as possible, I shouldn’t
object to what other people like. Some people like to be dominated, so
why deny them their pleasure?
Well, it can be wearying for a bi man, just as the fetishization of
“chicks with dicks” can be for trans women. It’s also part of the
larger coarsening of porn on the net in which degradation, both
physical and emotional, is becoming more mainstream.
I think at least part of this comes from an anxiety about bisexuality
on general and male bisexuality in particular. For a straight man, gay
sex is alien but tolerable probably because they can see themselves in
the role of a Top. To be fair the increasing visibility of pegging
shows that a least a few otherwise straight men want to be Bottoms.
Pegging can be quite arousing, as it shows women being intimate with
men in a new way, but even then there is often the sense that to be
penetrated makes one inferior.
Male bisexuality seems strange to the straight or gay outsider because
it so obviously plays with notions of Top and Bottom. Egalitarian
sexual activities, thanks to decades of porn, looks weird. Same gender
tenderness is accepted among two women but is scary between men unless
some power relationship is involved. I’m not a psychologist, but I
think it’s because this particular kind of vulnerability us considered
“queer” in more ways than one. As well, bisexuality challenges boundaries and brings up tricky questions about “choice” (Cynthia Nixon, for example, got grief from many sides when she said she chose to be with her female spouse)
I try to remain optimistic, looking for that rarest of porn scenarios,
the egalitarian group sex scene, in which no one is dominated.
Ironically, I’ve found it in two extremely different forms: in the
slick pro porn starring out bi males like Ken Ryker, and on the
opposite end of amateur porn that shows married couples simply
enjoying being with each other. In these there us no judgement and very little angst over power roles.
I know this is rare, but why does it
have to be?
Straight, gay or lying is far too common. Even right now my current workplace assumes I am gay simply because I’ll agree/disagree on good looking male customers or remark on particularly nice suits, even though I come into the store *with* my girlfriend. Bi just never enters the equation.
Bi male invisibility was equally true in porn. The female variety was
as common as water (not out of any queer positivity on the part of the
pornographers, but because every straight dude wants two girls,
amirite?), but even in situations involving two men and a woman
contact between the guys was verboten.
I’ve always been of the mind that the only difference between at MMF bi scene and a MMF threesome is that the two males actually touch each other.
@Josh: Yep. Most likely they think that you are gay and are just using your girlfriend as a front to pretend you’re hetero. (I think a common term for a woman in that capacity is “beard”.)
All of the bi men I know feel pretty well served by the current porn market – they can watch straight porn, they can watch queer porn, they don’t often seem to feel the need for specifically bi porn.
Why this is, I don’t know.
Thanks for mentioning the growth of degradation and forceful power dynamics in much of new porn. As a straight guy in search of egalitarian sex (in bed/on screen), it’d be great to see a lower-power niche (if that’s the word) served regularly. I’m fine with bi-male scenes in porn–just wonder why one side lording over the other seems so emergent, when fun is a big part of real sex. (Or am I getting hung up on the “real sex” part?)
Absolutely fun should be part of sex! I think too often porn assumes that smiling people are not “passionate.”
“Mainstream” porn has, IMHO, become meaner in the last ten years or so. Choking, slapping – I don’t want to shame people who like that, but Damn if it doesn’t seem like it’s crowding out everything else.
“just wonder why one side lording over the other seems so emergent, when fun is a big part of real sex.”
Some people find lording over, or being lorded over by, their sexual partner(s) to be fun.
There are some straight women with cuckolding fantasies too. (They want to see their man have sex with another woman.) Jealousy can be an aphrodisiac.
Encouraging egalitarian sex while implying that supermodels are the ideals females should live up to? Nice.
I remember when I first joined university, and were a member of a “klubbmästeri” (I suppose it’s sort of like a fraternity or sorority, except with both men and women in the same organisation): Once a male american exchange student joined the group. He pretty much looked and acted like your stereotypical picture of a gay man, and everyone just assumed he was gay without asking. One girl in the gang started hanging out with him a lot, which including going shopping with him, and doing things like trying out different bras in front of him (flashing her boobs in between) asking him advice for which was the prettier one – since he was gay, you know, so flashing your boobs to him would be no more embarressing than flashing them to one of your girlfriends.
Eventually it turned out that he was bi. The previously boob-flashing girl was all like “BUT WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?” and he just said “Well, you never ASKED”.
That is an Interesting dynamic you are describing Dvärghundspossen. I’ve also seen it with a more sexualized and even aggressive angle from the women. One gay guy I often meet at parties at my wifes best friend often eggs this behaviour on and gets the women to become more racy and daring. His partner on the other hands is visibly uncomfortable whenever a woman is acting sexual against him. I have wondered if the first guy is acting as a lightning rod for his partner. I’ve heard gay guys say that such behaviour can be annoying, but that it is difficult to fend off at times.
Surely a case of confirmation bias as I know a lot more gay men, than lesbians and bi-people, but I wonder if this dynamic is a common in other configurations of orientations.
No: I was referring specifically to Iman; perhaps I should have mentioned her by name. I tend to find many people attractive, but I don’t see any point in denying her beauty.
Monkey!!! I actually watch those interminable QVC presentations by Iman, where she is selling those African-print scarves and purses and shit. I find myself unable to stop watching her once I start–she is stunningly awesome.. her voice too!
I know I can’t be the *only* person watching who is not the least bit interested in shopping.
Long time lurker, first time commenter. Also a bi dude (although kind of gray-asexual, its complicated). I disagree with some of the things on this site but I find it is often very enlightening, levelheaded and sensible.
Anyway, has the whole D/s thing become more common in porn? I don’t think it has. Its pretty common across all forms of porn. Perhaps it is merely porn as a whole becoming more mainstream, and thus the more adventurous kinds of porn are becoming more accessible.
The idea of sex-as-conquest is a pretty old one. It’s both misandrist and misogynist (and in my opinion anti-sex). It is misandrist in that it treats male sexuality as a vile/debased/animalistic/bestial/subhuman phenomenon with no relationship to actually, y’know, liking someone…. It is misogynist in that it makes the female role into that of a conquered degraded victim, who is made weaker and worthless by embracing her sexual nature (hence the whole My Girl Is Not A Slut, and Red Sonja type things). I like to nickname this meme complex “Sexual Hobbesianism” (Nasty, Brutish and Short, indeed).
I know some people would strongly disagree here and possibly accuse me of kink-shaming, but in my opinion (and my opinion only, which no one should feel obliged to agree with), the D/s thing which monkey finds frustrating is simply the logical conclusion of Sexual Hobbesianism.
But unfortunately, our culture’s understanding of sexuality is very screwed up. People are basically given two choices: “sex is nasty evil debasing brutish sticky dirty and disgusting and degrading, so we can’t have it” vs. “sex is nasty evil debasing brutish sticky dirty and disgusting and degrading, but I really want to have it anyway!”
Look at most porn going on about how “filthy” and “depraved” and “twisted” it is. You see my point.
Both “sides” accept some variant of Sexual Hobbesianism, they merely offer different solutions to the false dichotomy; deny the flesh and be ‘pure,’ or accept one is just an animal so one should start acting like one (this false dichotomy is a product of the mind (or spirit) vs. body dichotomy from (broadly speaking) Platonic and Ascetic philosophies).
Anyway, rant over. Why is non-D/s sex in porn so rare? My answer: because much of how our culture has characterized sex as an act which intrinsically involves power differentials.
What we need is more porn that fetishizes the EQUALIZATION of power differentials.
Lol. Sexual Hobbesianism.
That’s an interesting point about bi male fetishization in porn, and it’s something I wasn’t aware of at all. My SO’s mentioned running into some weird fetishization for being bi, but it’s always been from disrespectful yaoi fangirls.
I definitely agree with your point about egalitarian sex and tenderness, but I think your statement that male bisexuality in particular messes with top/bottom norms is making some assumptions about the way all bisexual men have sex. Unless you just meant in mainstream porn? I think the need for a more egalitarian, less top/bottom-scripted kind of sex applies to gay men and straight men and women as much as it does to bisexuals. And I think making space for this kind of sex is going to mean wider acceptance of straight pegging and of submissive men and dominant women, more social validity given to non-penetrative sex acts, and the separation of penetration from domination and envelopment from submission in the cultural narrative.
Also, not sure what the context of this scenario is or how you’re supposed to read it, but it seems like you’re ignoring the fact that the dominating man in the cuckold scenario is also participating in bi behavior.
Interesting point about the dominating men, but I’ve noticed a bit of a sentiment among men who call themselves straight that if you’re the one penetrating you’re not “as gay.” At the very least, I’m noticed that the cuckold/bottom is often called “sissy.”
I’ve put more thought into cuckolding than I have into any niche sexual interest that doesn’t actually turn me on, and I think that the driving psychology behind it is really interesting. It’s a pretty common fetish, but there are different ways to approach it.
In the first variety, it doesn’t strike me as a “bisexual experience.” In this case, the husband’s enjoyment of being cuckolded is focused on his wife: either her enjoyment of the other men, the change in the power dynamic of their relationship, feeling challenged to show her that he’s better than the other men, whatever. In many if not most cases, the wife’s extramarital sex happens without her husband present, and she just tells him about it later.
The second variety, though, does have a bisexual element to it, and that’s where the experience is focused not on the wife but on the other man/men, how much better looking/better endowed/whatever they are. The husband may be “forced” to “service” the other man, or the wife may just tell him at length about how much better the other man is. In the former case the husband has to be there of course, in the latter he doesn’t have to be but often is. I think this comes from these men being ashamed of their attraction to men, so much so that the only way they can feel capable of sexualizing or being sexual with men is when they’re “forced” into it by their wives. It’s a lot like a rape fantasy, but with humiliation replacing fear as the driving emotion.
The porn usually tends toward the second scenario because it’s easier to play out on screen, but a quick search for “wife” on any porn tube site will bring back plenty of supposed cuckold scenarios with no husband present (along with plenty of supposedly married couples getting it on, which I find quite endearing).
@monkey: I think that line of thinking is about as old as dirt. Or at least… as old as war.