The obligatory lesbian scene

re: the question...because most men enjoy lesbian sex scenes, but for most of them it's just a minor kink, not something they wanna see an entire movie of?

I only enjoy watching exclusively lesbian movies anyway (too much information, I know); the lesbian scenes in straight porn are almost always pretty dire (gangbusters is right!)

(Dan, that's a much more interesting topic; let's run with it.)

uh, what?

Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Calista Flockhart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Neve Campbell, Meg Ryan, Nicole Kidman, Mena Suvari, Drew Barrymore, Liv Tyler, Winona Ryder, Brittany Murphy, Selma Blair, Kate Hudson, Chrsitina Ricci, Jennifer Aniston, Rebecca Romijn Stamos, Angelina Jolie, the list goes on and on...it's quite stunning when you think about it.

I'm not against it, for obvious reasons, but I am quite aware that in most of the cases it's pandering on a very clear level...you get to perv on hawt girl-on-girl action and fancy yourself a Gay Rights Activist at the same time (wonder how much of "The L Word"'s core viewership are straight males?)

Stating the obvious, I don't think you could come up with a similairly long list of homosexual actors who've played gay roles.

anyway, more broadly, I'm inclined to think the 'lesbian thing' in porn, while seeminly harmless, is based on a rather nasty set of problems. I hate to quote Bill Maher -- "[men] agree with both of them" -- but I think he's more or less otm.

theory: porn-lesbianism is a way of creating women who think and fuck not like real actual lesbians but like men... there's no possibility for male EMPATHY (secret currency of porn) with the women bcz all they want to do is FUCK MEN (ew gay ew!) so, w lesbo pR0n, male viewer is allowed to think: "impossibly remote and unlike-any-woman-I-know overdone and enhanced blonde, on this we can FINALLY UNDERSTAND each other: we both want to fuck the overdone and enhanced brunette"

-- g--ff c-nn-n (misterhungr...), September 7th, 2003 11:32 AM.

from here:

Why do men fetishize lesbians?

Male sexuality MUST be more complex than "Two breasts good/FOUR BREASTS AWESOME" otherwise I'm going to go drown myself.

(xpost: Who started namecalling threads, you massive self-important tool?)

(how long have you been building up this resentment? What did I do to piss you off *before* that thread? Cos it seems to have exploded from nowhere. Evidently I'm a bad judge of who my friends are)

OK, OK, I'm going.

And for the record, saying "What kind of sick fuck starts a thread like this?" is not really a great way of:

a) showing that you like or respect someone
b) showing that you're worried about someone
c) making the person you're talking about think you're really interested in anything but unprovoked character assassination

Sorry, Dan.

I didn't have any resentment towards you which factored very heavily into the massively negative reaction I had to the moderator board thread.

All of my previous ILX joking aside, it is seriously depressing to think that male sexuality is that easy to figure out. Only I don't know why I care. (Actually I do know why but it's really sad and stupid so I'm pretending I don't.)

(xpost: Ha, I like the implication that gay scenes between guys with tiny penises would be okay.)

With all lesbian movies it's a different sort of thing: I mean, it's a common argument from ppl who watch that sort of stuff that the male body is *simply a turn-off*. I share that view, too. I guess on some level it has to have to do with a certain amount of sexual insecurity, a certain level of prudishness even? Plus the fact that male porn stars are almost always portrayed as macho jerks doesn't exactly help, in my experience.

Mind you, as always with this stuff there's a gigantic level of variety and it's unfair to dump it all in the same category. I mean, I've seen some lesbian porn that was just hateful, stupid shit, and some that (as far as this is possible in the medium) were actually quite inoffensive (as far as that is possible in this medium); I mean, of course I rationalize this stuff, otherwise I'd be wallowing in self-loathing, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that, at its best, the male infatuation with lesbianism can contribute to helping them understand feminine sensibilities, as opposed to trying to transform them into male ones.

Hahaha, of course this is all from a total het viewpoint, but then that's what the great majority of this stuff seems to be geared towards.

tons and tons of xposts

(obviously identical twin porn would be the exception that proves the rule)

This may be somewhat obvious, but there's a kind of virgin/whore thing going on with male attraction to lesbian sex - we get to see them all naked and sexin' it up, but no penetration (at least in softcore porn/mainstream films) and no semen makes it somewhat "clean"/virginal/innocent. We get to see a sexual side of the women without them being "sluts."

Yup, this OTM also. Mind you, when most of the rest of the porn one is exposed to is "ANAL SLUTS LUV IT WHORES GIANT COCK CUNT CUM HOORAY!" type stuff, it feels like a kind of healthy reaction, almost.

(answer: oh, just about a century or two, probably.)

And what about one female equivalent of the genre, which might be the women who write and read slash, which focuses on gay male sex/relationships?

(I fully acknowledge that looking at porn to find representation of a "respectful" sexual relationship is not necessarily going into a situation with realistic expectations.)

Also, while I do take on board the "virgin/whore" argument as valid, a large part of me is scoffing at some of the multiple girl pile scenes I've seen and reconciling those scenes with that argument.

(xpost Dan, that day is now; most of the viewers of "Queer As Folk" I know are straight women.)

True, but just because it isn't doesn't mean that it shouldn't be, or that it's not something worth working towards.

Yeah, "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy", "Queer As Folk", "Will & Grace", etc - but I don't think that those are comparable to the male thing about lesbians, they might be the first steps towards that but it's hardly as prevalent and nonchalant. Sort of asexual, too (well, two out of those three shows are.) Of course that was a trick question, as it basically boils down to "when will porn (and society in general) cater to the whims and desires, sexual or otherwise, of women as much as it does for men?"

xpost

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw/features/n_8815/

That's assuming that any medium of sexual stimulation *can* be made to equally cater to men's and women's sexual whims. You might as well say: "when will prostitution cater to the whims and desires of women as much as for men?" The answer: probably never, because women don't seem so interested in the very idea of using prostitutes to satiate sexual desire. Maybe the male ability to compartmentalize sex more easily than women means it's simply harder to "commercialize" female sexual desire.

That's a chicken and egg type of question, tho - does porn not cater to women because they don't enjoy it, or do they not enjoy it because it doesn't cater to them? But that's a different discussion, I'd say.

xpost Jeanne will do!

"Dear Reader -

Do you get cold looks at four-star restaurants when you pull out Hustler's June centerfold over a 12-year-old post-prandial cognac? Then this magazine is for you."

By a woman being with another woman (assuming she's bi and not totally homosexual), it lets me know that that woman REALLY likes sexual pleasure. She's willing to do something relatively taboo (compared to hetero sex) and is sexually imaginative, ie she can get off in more ways than one.
And, of course, it's step one in getting her to engage in a threesome.

- How do you reconcile the "virgin/whore" argument with the "she's REALLY into sexual pleasure" argument?
- This argument doesn't work the other way for women, does it? Are women turned on by bisexual men becausetheir sexual boundaries are "broader" and they might get a threesome?

I don't know if I agree with the virgin/whore thing w/r/t porn cause HELLO they're in a porno flick. The virgin part of the equation is pretty much flies outta the window from the first frame.

I think my argument can work the other way and somewhat explain why some women dig bisexual male action, but I'm, like, not a woman so maybe we should get one of them here to back me up.

- How do you reconcile the "virgin/whore" argument with the "she's REALLY into sexual pleasure" argument?

Not talking about this specific argument, but maybe it's worth pointing out that diferent men find lesbian sex scenes attractive for diferent reasons, some of which contradict each other. Jus' sayin'.

note the part in parentheses.

I do understand why a promiscous bisexual woman would be more of a turn-on than a promiscous heterosexual woman to yr average straight male, but I think that the promiscous part is where "she REALLY likes sexual pleasure" comes from, not the bisexual one.

There are multiple reasons for engaging in bisexual activities. You seem to be saying that people just *are* bi-sexual, in the same way that someone just *is* diabetic. The true nature of bisexuality is really beside the point here, anyway. The question here is about the mind of the heterosexual male and how he views things, why he's turned on by certain things. To me, a male viewer of porn, a woman engaging in bisexual acts signals that she loves sexual pleasure, and obv that is quite a turn on.

That doesn't make any sense. Both are promiscuous. The difference between the two is that one is bisexual, and therefore any difference in their sexual allure should be attributed to that difference.

xpost Jeanne OTM. Most of the scenes don't do anything for me either. However, if done right...

xpost oops "sexual allure" wtf? I just said that I can see why a promiscous bisexual woman could be seen as more attractive; you were claiming bisexuality as an indication that the woman's really into sex. The two factors are not the same thing.

I don't think you or anyone else here really know what my viewpoints on the matter are, so kindly do not make assumptions. However, I don't think any absolute statement (such as the one you made, ie they just *are*) accurately describes every person who engages in homo or bisexual acts.

I don't know if there are many women that I have personally known who have not engaged in at least one 'bisexual' act - no matter what orientation they profess now.

those who felt the need to put me in my place.

Haha, dude, I wasn't trying to put you in your place (in fact, I don't think I even know my place! HAW!); I just thought your comment was kinda odd and decided to enagage in some spirited debating. Or maybe the weed's fucking with my short term memory, and I really was being an awful, awful asshole - it happens sometimes. In any case, peace d00d. *hugglez*

hstencil, can the same statement be applied to your male acquaintances? I mean, I live in a severely homophobic place, so that kinda situation is very alien to me. Have heard stuff from my scandinavian friend, tho.

Yeah! Because lesbians aren't gay.

Oh I wasn't referring to you. Don't worry bout it.

I think Andrew's otm -- sexy is sexy, and sexy stuff provokes sexual responses. Straight guys can admit to getting off on two women without threatening their own sexual identity. We could also get off on two men, but we mostly won't let ourselves. Also, I think whoever said straight guys would be shocked by real lesbian sex is 100 percent wrong; I think plenty of straight guys would totally dig real lesbian sex. Go film some and put it up online and see how you do.

"Wide areas of Tokyo now sit below sea level, protected by aging dikes."

Frank Miller to thread

File under 'Threads that have not aged well'

Why does most otherwise heterosexual pr0n contain at least one scene

One can only imagine the extensive research behind this observation.

I initially interpreted the thread title as being a complaint about some kind of club or party scene.

Ah yes the burgeoning scene of obligatory lesbians

I also read it that way. Like "man, I got to quit this scene"

In every town, there's an obligatory lesbian scene.