As I have stated here in the past, I am a switch. This means many things to many people, but for me it means I can play both the traditional binary D/s or top/bottom roles, and enjoy them both. If anything, I tend to be more comfortable in the submissive role, and get a ton out of it, particularly with male dominants. And this, as I have discussed ad nauseam in this space, can be problematic in all kinds of ways.
It’s been a long time since I’ve found those desires problematic for myself in particular; I’m pretty well settled on the fact that being dominated by a (right) man in particular ways is one of the most loving and fulfilling ways I experience sex, and it doesn’t make me uncomfortable with my identity or doubt my power or agency as a woman. But I do notice this one annoying thing:
Where the hell is all the good porn at?
My longtime girlfriend and I were discussing the magnificant John Preston (RIP) the other night, as I had just recently finished I Once Had A Master (which I’d started years ago) and gone on to the gay leather classic, Mr. Benson. We were sharing our undying love for gay leather porn, how unapologetic it is, how raw, how rich in enthusiastic consent and unabashed, rough desire. Preston’s work paints a generation of gay life that literally no longer exists: the magnificent black knights of Folsom Street and Christopher Street, the Mine Shaft, the sex clubs that saw the wildest nights of an era passed by gruff men in boots and harnesses, worshipping and fisting and pissing on and fucking each other in acts of such profound intimacy and freedom that the earmarks of their slavery were worn as marks of pride. All of it wiped out, vaguely reflected today in a leather culture that is straighter, narrower, smaller.
And we realized together that the thing we both so love about this stuff is the ease of it all: the removal of the need to describe every negotiation in painstaking detail, the way the straightforward maleness of it all takes questions of patriarchy out of the power dynamics, the way two characters in this world can come together and be absolutely clear that they both want to be there, more than they want anything else in the world.
Which is not to say that Preston’s characters never experience self-doubt. Hell, the hottest and sweetest stories always involve someone feeling unsure, scared that they’ll scare the bottom away, or that they won’t be good enough, or any of a number of poignant human moments that make the encounters that much more real.
But rarely in gay leather porn do you find, say, an elaborately constructed fantasy in which the submissive must be captured, groomed, and “tamed” (read: raped) in order to become a “true slave.” Or stories in which a dominant man is the way he is because of his abuse history and must ultimately be “saved” by the submissive. Or in which the dominant likes beating up and treating submissives badly because he has some other axe to grind – or worse, because the author does.
My girlfriend points out that much writing about and for submissive women who like dominant men – Anne Rice’s extremely silly Beauty books come to mind – has built into it a component of nonconsent because women feel they need some excuse to surrender. And I get this, I do: it’s really hard to deliberately give over power to a man in a society that still demads that we do so in every other way, which simultaneously telling us that we must under no circumstances do that. When it comes to stroke fiction, it’s not surprising to me that many women need an “out” in order to safely explore their desires.
But my gods, is it exhausting. Also, to me at least, super not-hot. I would much rather read a negotiation, complete with nervousness and all the little things a dominant can do to make a negotiation hotter, than read a story in which the scene happens because of kidnapping, abuse, rape, or Stockholm syndrome.
Still more than that, though, I’d like to read a scene like some of the ones in Preston’s work, where two people see each other across the bar and then the dominant tests to see if the sub is what he wants that night. Those squeezes and looks, orders and countermands, the dance of seduction – it’s hot, and it’s a lost art, sacrificed to rape culture. And that fucking sucks.
If anyone knows of any male dom / female sub porn that actually makes this work in a way that is both pantsfeelings-inducing and clearly consensual, please send it my way. Until then, I’ll be in the bathtub with Mr. Benson.
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Advice and Consent: Delilah Wood's Blog 
Whence the good M/f porn?
Posted in Media Commentary, Sexuality, Smut, tagged erotica, feminist, gay leather, john preston, negotiation, nonconsent, porn on October 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »
As I have stated here in the past, I am a switch. This means many things to many people, but for me it means I can play both the traditional binary D/s or top/bottom roles, and enjoy them both. If anything, I tend to be more comfortable in the submissive role, and get a ton out of it, particularly with male dominants. And this, as I have discussed ad nauseam in this space, can be problematic in all kinds of ways.
It’s been a long time since I’ve found those desires problematic for myself in particular; I’m pretty well settled on the fact that being dominated by a (right) man in particular ways is one of the most loving and fulfilling ways I experience sex, and it doesn’t make me uncomfortable with my identity or doubt my power or agency as a woman. But I do notice this one annoying thing:
Where the hell is all the good porn at?
My longtime girlfriend and I were discussing the magnificant John Preston (RIP) the other night, as I had just recently finished I Once Had A Master (which I’d started years ago) and gone on to the gay leather classic, Mr. Benson. We were sharing our undying love for gay leather porn, how unapologetic it is, how raw, how rich in enthusiastic consent and unabashed, rough desire. Preston’s work paints a generation of gay life that literally no longer exists: the magnificent black knights of Folsom Street and Christopher Street, the Mine Shaft, the sex clubs that saw the wildest nights of an era passed by gruff men in boots and harnesses, worshipping and fisting and pissing on and fucking each other in acts of such profound intimacy and freedom that the earmarks of their slavery were worn as marks of pride. All of it wiped out, vaguely reflected today in a leather culture that is straighter, narrower, smaller.
And we realized together that the thing we both so love about this stuff is the ease of it all: the removal of the need to describe every negotiation in painstaking detail, the way the straightforward maleness of it all takes questions of patriarchy out of the power dynamics, the way two characters in this world can come together and be absolutely clear that they both want to be there, more than they want anything else in the world.
Which is not to say that Preston’s characters never experience self-doubt. Hell, the hottest and sweetest stories always involve someone feeling unsure, scared that they’ll scare the bottom away, or that they won’t be good enough, or any of a number of poignant human moments that make the encounters that much more real.
But rarely in gay leather porn do you find, say, an elaborately constructed fantasy in which the submissive must be captured, groomed, and “tamed” (read: raped) in order to become a “true slave.” Or stories in which a dominant man is the way he is because of his abuse history and must ultimately be “saved” by the submissive. Or in which the dominant likes beating up and treating submissives badly because he has some other axe to grind – or worse, because the author does.
My girlfriend points out that much writing about and for submissive women who like dominant men – Anne Rice’s extremely silly Beauty books come to mind – has built into it a component of nonconsent because women feel they need some excuse to surrender. And I get this, I do: it’s really hard to deliberately give over power to a man in a society that still demads that we do so in every other way, which simultaneously telling us that we must under no circumstances do that. When it comes to stroke fiction, it’s not surprising to me that many women need an “out” in order to safely explore their desires.
But my gods, is it exhausting. Also, to me at least, super not-hot. I would much rather read a negotiation, complete with nervousness and all the little things a dominant can do to make a negotiation hotter, than read a story in which the scene happens because of kidnapping, abuse, rape, or Stockholm syndrome.
Still more than that, though, I’d like to read a scene like some of the ones in Preston’s work, where two people see each other across the bar and then the dominant tests to see if the sub is what he wants that night. Those squeezes and looks, orders and countermands, the dance of seduction – it’s hot, and it’s a lost art, sacrificed to rape culture. And that fucking sucks.
If anyone knows of any male dom / female sub porn that actually makes this work in a way that is both pantsfeelings-inducing and clearly consensual, please send it my way. Until then, I’ll be in the bathtub with Mr. Benson.
Read Full Post »