'Broke Straight Boys' and the Complited World of Gay-For-Pay Porn

Contents:

• SEAN CODY’S SEAN/MTV TE LIFE’S BEN: THE GAY-FOR-PAY PORN STAR’S BT SCEN
• GAY FOR PAY PORN STARS: ARE THEY REALLY GAY?
• THEY GET HARD FOR THE MONEY: 25 GAY-FOR-PAY PORN S
• STRAIGHT AND GAY-FOR-PAY PORNSTARS
• HERE ARE SOME GAY-FOR-PAYERS TALKG ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY HATE GAY SEX
• GAY PORN PERFORMERS ARE SHARG HOW MUCH MONEY THEY MAKE PER SCENE
• GAY FOR PAY GAY PORN VIOS
• DOCUMENTARY PROFIL ‘100% STRAIGHT’ GAY-FOR-PAY PERFORMERS
• FOR PAY ACTORS GAY PORN VIOS
• ‘BROKE STRAIGHT BOYS’ REALY SHOW TRAILER EXAM THE WORLD OF ‘GAY-FOR-PAY’ PORN
• I'M A PORNSTAR: GAY4PAY
• TOP 20 MOST POPULAR GAY PORN STARS OF 2022
• GOG BAREBACK: TIME AND AGG A GAY-FOR-PAY PORN CAREER

SEAN CODY’S SEAN/MTV TE LIFE’S BEN: THE GAY-FOR-PAY PORN STAR’S BT SCEN

End they go home to their wiv and male adult performers who go "gay for pay, " a term ed to scribe gay porn which two (or more) otherwise straight dus have sex on mera, the above scenar is jt another day at the Male Porn Stars Are Straight — But They Have Sex Wh Men for a LivgSource: YouTubeThis week, MTV is airg an episo of Te Life explorg the liv of two such performers, and their stggl to balance the seemgly nflictg mands of their profsnal and personal liv. In straight porn, the pay for men is notorly lower than the pay for women, so "gay porn [actors] general make a lot more than straight porn, " Damian McKnight, the CEO and producer of the succsful gay-for-pay se Broke Straight Boys, told the Daily Dot last year.

" she prevly told said, adult entertament publicist Mike Stabile told Mic that he believ the sexualy of a gay-for-pay porn star is likely to be a b more flexible than your average joe.

GAY FOR PAY PORN STARS: ARE THEY REALLY GAY?

"They seemed to have more of a fluid sexualy, or were jt extremely sexual, even if they intified as straight their private liv, " he said of the gay-for-pay actors he's worked wh the past. "Bee of ternalized homophobia (which typilly looms large before and durg the early g-out procs), they're more often lookg for men who act mascule, " thor Joe Kort wrote 2013 for the Huffgton Post.

Ben) makg his big MTV but tonight on Te Life: I’m A Gay For Pay Porn Star, here is a quick rep of all his Sean Cody gay porn scen, for those who are jt disverg the gay-for-pay star’s work for the first time. Ocsnally do still happen that a porn performer will self-intify as straight and then later e out as beg gay or bisexual – but this is ually a se of the mol havg learned somethg about himself as a rult of dog porn work (as opposed to beg an tentnal ce.

In addn, Pk News terviewed straight Chaos Men star Gav Sev, The Advote spoke to Ree Riout and his wife Becki, and The Village Voice spoke to three different gay-for-pay performers. Here are the gay-for-pay performers (spoiler alert, some of them are really hot, passnate performers, and some are straight, alt-right, relig nutjobs, I'll let you cipher which is which haha). “Gay4pay” is mostly ed for marketg, or to make easier to transn to hetero porn, or for hetero-leang dus to ward off beg viewed as “gay”, or for guys who jt ntend wh a lot of ternalized phobias, gay rentments, queer securi.

THEY GET HARD FOR THE MONEY: 25 GAY-FOR-PAY PORN S

Most of the porn performers (and that clus gay-prentg peformers) are the bi/pan spectm, or ntend wh stuff like fluidy, ntradictns, paraphiliacs, or are the general genr, sexual, affectn, romantic, emotn, mment spectm. If the MTV Te Life episo wh Vadim “I Hate Fags” Black and Watermelon Sean wasn’t enough, Mdgeek (the parent pany of Sean Cody and) has given another productn pany accs to s sets, directors, and mols for some more publicy disguised as an “exploratn” of the gay-for-pay phenomenon, which has already been done lerally eighty billn tim.

Porn star Joey Mills has started a nversatn about pay the gay adult film dtry, specifilly when to how studs treat experienced performers, who are often paid far ls than what Mills believ to be a fair standard, creatg a precent for others.

Jt two days before, gay porn star Armond Rizzo lled out a stud for payg s sexually submissive performers ls than their domant scene partners, sentially creatg a wage gap between tops and ntent is imported om twter. Although the porn world has as many kks, fetish, and nich as there are stars the sky, there are perhaps few as perplexg as “gay-for-pay, ” an extremely lucrative and popular gay porn genre that’s exactly what sounds like: straight men havg sex wh each other or other gay men for a hetero perspective, ’s a b difficult to unrstand the appeal of gay-for-pay, part bee there’s really nothg analogo to straight porn: While straight men might have a spicn that the two bored, long-taloned lbian porn stars half-heartedly strokg each other’s breasts might not actually be lbians, the fact that ’s two women havg sex superses how nvcg their performanc are.

STRAIGHT AND GAY-FOR-PAY PORNSTARS

For gay-for-pay fans, the appeal li at least part the fact that the men’s performanc aren’t nvcg; they’re turned on both by the fact that they’re watchg two men havg sex, and by the fact that those two men aren’t actually turned on by each this reason, gay-for-pay prompts a lot of qutns om people outsi the dtry: Why are the ostensibly straight men havg sex wh each other? Created by the folks behd the eponymo, hugely popular gay-for-pay porn se (if I have to type “NSFW, ” you’re not dog the Inter right), Broke Straight Boys claims to liver all the romance, trigue, and ebriated emotnal breakdowns of The Real World or The Bachelor—except stead of tryg to have sex wh one eligible suor, the boys are all havg sex wh each other. Here’s the (mostly SFW) trailer:Set CEO Mark Erickson’s mansn Colorado, where gay-for-pay performers fly out at least once a month to shoot ntent, Broke Straight Boys offers a behd-the-scen look at the liv of straight men who do gay porn, as they stggle to navigate their relatnships wh their fai, their wiv and girliends, and each other.

HERE ARE SOME GAY-FOR-PAYERS TALKG ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY HATE GAY SEX

The Daily Dot ught up wh McKnight and Erickson to learn more about the seri, s stars, and the phenomenon of gay-for-pay terview has been nnsed and eded for why a realy show for straight men who do gay porn? Some of the guys’ iends will say, “Oh, you’re not really straight bee you do gay porn, ” but we don’t say to gay men, “Oh, jt bee you slept wh a woman once don’t mean you’re straight now. They get the stud, they’re erect right away, they’re erect through the whole scene, and they know how to give a great performance and turn on and mak sense, bee straight performers might not be attracted to their scene partner eher, but if they’re good performers they n turn on and off, and ’s tertg, bee we fd that our gay performers on our gay s are a b more picky about their scene partners.

Some of them e as a hook to pick up women, but some of them who want to have a relatnship, ’s really hard for the women volved wh the guys, bee of what they ’ve talked about why the guys do gay-for-pay porn, but what is the appeal of gay-for-pay om the perspective of gay dienc?

GAY PORN PERFORMERS ARE SHARG HOW MUCH MONEY THEY MAKE PER SCENE

There’s always those hot football players, those hot baseball players, you’re attracted to, and then real life, the gay world, they’re a ltle b harr to fd, bee I believe as gay be more OK I’ve seen a lot more guys not actg as mascule as what our fantasy guy may be. Durg a given shootg week, you uld shoot anywhere between three to six scen, so this is their chance to feel out and see if beg gay is for them, and sometim they’ll be like, “I’m still straight, but I do enjoy havg sex wh men. There have been tim where we’ve had the gay performers and the straight performers the hoe at the same time, and we’ve seen our gay performers h on our straight performers, and jt don’t happen for them (lghs).

She knew what her boyiend did, but her fay always asked her what he did, and when she fally me clean wh them they ma her break up wh aware of they are the potential nsequenc of dog gay-for-pay porn before they shoot? Footnote 1 He was also named as the send most searched for gay porn star Pornhub’s 2017 “Year Review” annual analytics report (beaten to the top spot by relative new-er William Seed, also a Men exclive)Footnote 2 and was the 2017 recipient of Str8UpGayPorn’s Bt Gay-4-Pay Performer award. Through reflectn, I arrive at the ncln that the time was right for an agg twk performer to be hened-up by a transn to bareback; siar transns of which have bee wispread across the gay porn landspe the years that have ticked over sce the 2015 Johnny Rapid Go Bareback event and our prent day (see Brennan, 2020a)—due to the wispread mastreamg of bareback mercial gay porn, which has been buoyed no small part by advancements HIV preventn technologi.

Johnny Rapid’s bareback but served as the lnch event for Bromo; a se that shared a parent pany (MdGeek) wh Sean Cody and Men, the latter two s that 2018 held the distctn of beg the first and send most equented sourc of gay porn on the web, rpectively (Brennan, 2018).

GAY FOR PAY GAY PORN VIOS

I observe that while Rapid’s first-time bareback performance is marketed as a up for viewers, the general nsens among Str8UpGayPorn’s rearship is more my readg of the disurse will show, the largt proportn of those mentg on the mpaign exprsed a cidly negative viewpot. Especially as this trend relat to the Johnny Rapid Go Bareback Barebackg CoupAnalysis of viewer receptivens to the Johnny Rapid Go Bareback mpaign offers particular sights to the functn of ‘bareback event marketg, ’ and wh the impact that the movement towards a “state of ndomlsns” (Brennan, 2020a, 131) gay porn has had on dience expectatns around what nstut a newsworthy performance—together wh dience views on the ethics of ndomls promotn self.

Jt as the 2010s hered the equent prentatns of acts that would have been nsired extreme pornography a earlier—such as anal creampi—on s that are generally nsired “vanilla” gay porn (Kiss Nielsen & Kiss, 2015, 132), Morris has himself been forced to gravate towards more extreme portrayals orr to mata his radil reputatn. This hook is employed pecially by gay-for-pay (see Mercer, 2011) s such as Broke Straight Boys and Ba B, together wh virgal twk properti such as Boys First Time (which is among Rapid’s first creds). The ‘hook’ the se of Bromo’s lnch (and Morris’ attempts at ntued relevance an era where ndomls gay porn is the norm once more) is to be able to make some claim that what viewers are seeg is new.

DOCUMENTARY PROFIL ‘100% STRAIGHT’ GAY-FOR-PAY PERFORMERS

The novelty of the Johnny Rapid Go Bareback mpaign, therefore, through the prentatn of a sue of scen pictg a prolific, yet still young, gay-for-pay performer beg perated ‘raw, ’ and perhaps ‘seed’ for the first time on screen. ” (see Florênc, 2018) Also, as John Mercer (2017) not, the “first time” vice is “one of the key disurs of youth that is summoned up gay porn, ” (89) which is an unrstandg of the genre that helps expla the stg of Rapid for this particular re of passage. Consirg first the reactns to the news of Rapid’s bareback performance, the failure of Bromo to stir up tert—and for s tend msage to land wh Str8UpGayPorn rears—is surmised by two them; namely: bareback as self now mundane, and Rapid’s bareback but as dangero.

’” (C55) The more plited of the two them that emerged the wake of the announcement is the healthism 2: As DangeroOf urse, bareback sex was once the norm gay pornography—before the HIV/AIDS era—, and was mpaigns of another kd—namely for safer sex—that have created the opportuni for harsh judgement, even censure, here and more broadly. A perhaps more nuanced view is that barebackg as a practice and (as of 2021) a now domant ndn of gay pornography, as nsumed and experienced the 21th century, is a se of creasg negotiatn and tst.

Weeks wr that sexual inti are “necsary fictns” (1995, 98) shaped by historil circumstanc: the spread of HIV wh Wtern gay and queer male muni of which is a se pot, and a circumstance om which we vised a “grammar for safer sex. Footnote 21 We turn now to viewer asssment of the scen of Rapid’s barebackg but, such asssments that were thored the ments sectns of Str8UpGayPorn’s of the Johnny Rapid Go Bareback CampaignFour scen were released as part of the Johnny Rapid Go Bareback mpaign—one per week begng on Augt 6, 2015. It lks the populary of barebackg gay pornography at the time—and mpaigns that promote (such as Johnny Rapid Go Bareback)—wh the glamoro advertisements of big tobac pani of yteryear.

FOR PAY ACTORS GAY PORN VIOS

It is a view that regniz the potential of the ter promotg certa sexual practic (see Rosenberger et al., 2011); but also, pots to the “risky bs” of a regrsive trajectory followg a perceived cle the threat of HIV—whereby “agast all good medil advice, ” the porn dtry is puttg profs ahead of muny health by “showg healthy lookg people engagg unhealthy behavr, ” and “sendg a bad msage, pecially to young gay men, ” for many of whom porn, is assumed, plays an important role their inty formatn. Not only do nfirm abundant e of pornography by gay men (also see Duggan & McCreary, 2004), but also, of the 20 participants who took part the study, three quarters of those terviewed attributed gay pornography as their primary means of learng about gay sex durg adolcence (Elr et al., 2015, 951) foregog viewer ment is ak to what Alex Carballo-Diéguez and José Bermeister (2004) found their paratively early ntent analysis of ments for and agast barebackg.

‘BROKE STRAIGHT BOYS’ REALY SHOW TRAILER EXAM THE WORLD OF ‘GAY-FOR-PAY’ PORN

Mercer mak the pot that while a theme of homophobia may be seen to unrsre certa scenars—such as sex prison (and perhaps hazg and gay-for-pay narrative settgs as well)—, to label such scenars as homophobic is “far too simplistic and rctive to acunt for the relatively plex range of disurs at play. In addn to offensive signifieds that adjo the performers’ off-screen liv, one mentator also labels the men as probable racists, prumably le wh the whe-washed nature of much of gay porn:Footnote 33 “As much as I dislike both of their personali, and that they both might be potentially racist as well, I’m watchg this maly for Vadim. ” (56; also see Mercer, 2003, for a discsn of gay porn prototyp) A tailed discsn of Rapid and class would be worthwhile as part of a star study, somethg that is outsi the spe of the prent argument.

I'M A PORNSTAR: GAY4PAY

However, what n be gleamed om the disurse regardg class is that Rapid’s gay-for-pay porn inty, bed wh his reputed treatment of women, merg wh his “power bottom” performanc to create a distctly workg-class nstctn that was central to his narrative at the time. ” (C5) Yet the nsens seems to be that Rapid’s bareback but as an ‘event’ is the scene self together wh the promotnal imag that acpany are cricized as overly staged—“There’s some[thg] cidly unsexy about a group of guys stoppg to pose for the mera mid-fuck” (C14)—, unr erotic—“he’s the most borg and passnls gay porn performer I’ve ever seen, no matter how many dicks he n take at the same time.

For Mark Kiss ( Nielsen & Kiss, 2015) the performance of “double anal peratns, ” and even “graphic cream pi, ” while once an ditor of “‘extreme’ gay pornography” and “relegated to shady, dim backrooms studs” such as TIM, “are now somewhat mon place; perhaps even yawn worthy to pecially jad gay porn nnoissrs. ” ( Nielsen & Kiss, 2015, 126) In other words, for many there is a sire for specific and personally-practised gay sex acts to be exaggerated follows that if bareback is sirable, or perhaps practised as part of a nsumer’s sex life—as recent advanc HIV preventative technologi have ma possible whout beg necsarily acts of ristance—then there is an expectatn that pornography will take this portrayal further.

TOP 20 MOST POPULAR GAY PORN STARS OF 2022

Crsey was g the se of female “taxi hall” dancers to set out the term, which Jefey Esffier (2007) later appli to male sex workers, cludg gay porn is an apt monstratn of the retrogrsive dynamic. In fact, Mercer (2017) nomat Rapid as one of three performers who typify “the specific physily and athetic of the boy-next-door and the sexy kid” (85) his monograph on gay porn, which serv to illtrate how Rapid, aged c25 at time of Mercer’s monograph, ntu to enjoy “kid”-oriented appreciatns, spe his age. I acknowledge that the reason Rapid’s reer survived while Lyons’ flounred and soon ceased is likely attributable to a number of factors—cludg a ntued fatuatn wh “straight-actg” performers over more gay-intifiable/effemate on such as Lyons and Lyons’ movement to watersports—erotic ure play—around the same time (an area of gay porn need of greater rearch).

As another study of me—to the bareback transns of the most popular sourc of gay porn (see Brennan, 2020a, 131)—reveals, 2010 falls jt shy of a number of high profile bareback adoptns that would e between the Lyons and Rapid buts: late 2011 (Sean Cody and Corb Fisher) and late 2013 (Lus Entertament and Next Door Studs).

Those who objected to the practice on ethil grounds viewed as ak to celebry endorsements of potentially harmful practic (such as smokg or alhol nsumptn), th nnectg wh a health disurse that is pecially potent given the historilly-charged nnectn between the gay muny and HIV/AIDS. Rather than rcg this to an example of reckls abandon—a posn wh s own pleasur —, I believe that unrstandg n be reached through ntextualizatn and acunt for the cultural formatns and practic that have bee embedd gay culture, and which were shaped by so-lled unsafe sexual practic of the past. Mowlaboc, for example, argued 2007—a time when risk bareback was perceived by gay men as much more real than is today—for the importance of a “fully ntextualized” (218) unrstandg of disurs on bareback—both the hedonistic eedoms felt by proponents and practners of , as well as the rhetoric of s tractors.

GOG BAREBACK: TIME AND AGG A GAY-FOR-PAY PORN CAREER

” (218)The succs—and srs—rema today  my native Atralia of other ‘event marketg’—the public service mpaigns particularly, such as the 1987 Natnal Advisory Commtee on AIDS’ Grim ReaperFootnote 39—that, my readg, bled gay men-as-origal-disease-rriers wh reapers strikg at the heart of everyday cizens—children clud. Ltle wonr, therefore, that the apparent vanquishg of HIV via pre- and post-exposure technologi has served as a rapture event; one that, but sign, keeps lser risks the shadow of public enemy number one—for gay men’s health and their standg the muny at large. Rapid’s ntued populary at time of wrg (and ls so, but still popular, at time of publitn) is signifint bee bucks received wisdom on the reer trajectory of bottom twks—who tend to retire or fa to obscury by their mid-twenti, pecially when they reprent a certa workg classns (as opposed to performers like Brent Corrigan, whose dtry savvy and nnectedns wh gay culture has assured his ntued relevance).

The perspectiv of this paper pot to how cultural shifts and prsur fluence and impact the directn of pornography, particularly gay pornography—as a reprentatn of what may be happeng sexual practic. As HIV and AIDS has bee more of a ‘chronic’ health ndn, and as meditns that seemgly prevent HIV have bee more available and popular, gay men may have re-claimed bareback sex as a sexual practice—certaly, gay pornography has [see, for example, my (Brennan, 2020a) discsn of the change-of-heart, return-to-beg-a-bareback-stud progrsn of dtry heavyweights like Michael Lus, of Lus Entertament (143–145)].

The prent article offers rears some sight to how the reer of a popular performer gay pornography ed ‘gog bareback’ as a means of (re)lnchg a new phase of his reer, particularly as he was begng to ‘age out’ of his ial porn inty as a ‘twk’ performer. Audience disurse and cril receptn of Rapid’s performance self proffer opn that is weighted toward the latter, as do a nsiratn of his reer trajectory the six years sce his bareback but—and his gay-for-pay stat. Lookg beyond 2015, exampl of a revalized reer n be found Rapid’s leadg role ‘mastream’ gay porn parody films released the wake of his bareback turn—cludg parodi of PokémonFootnote 42 and Jt BieberFootnote 43 2016, and Pirat of the CaribbeanFootnote 44 and Jtice LeagueFootnote 45 2017, for example (for a readg of Rapid’s portrayal of the Flash the last of the parodi, see Brennan, 2020b, 279–281).