He added that true feminine beauty can only be appreciated by men. But on my birthday, he crossed that boundary and gifted me a card that had his thesis on lesbian women – how they must be “fixed,” the ways in which they can destabilise the human population, how being a lesbian was a disrespect to the nature of a womb. As long as he remained at a distance, it was okay. But after that encounter, I’d find him outside my building, brooding on his scooter, always with an old novel in hand. For the longest time, I wanted to empathise with him. From what I’d heard, he was widowed and lived a rather dreary life. But one of my former school teachers was certainly taken aback by it when he ran into me after nine years. I don’t know if it was my butch appearance that made me seem exotic.
VICE spoke to lesbian women to understand just how dangerously obsessed some straight men might get with them, and the many misconceptions they harbour. In her statement to the media, she said that though she’d accepted homophobia and violence as a part of her life, it continued to give her panic attacks and triggered her anxiety. In 2020, a lesbian woman was punched in the face in the city of Sunderland in England. When the couple refused, they were viciously beaten up. In 2019, four male teenagers forced a lesbian couple to kiss on a London bus after figuring out they were queer.
In the real world, the price that lesbian women often end up paying when faced by men who solely view them in a fantastical, voyeuristic light can be near-fatal.
“So it has this voyeuristic, naughty, fantastical element.” “They (straight men) are desiring a view of a sexual experience in which they cannot, by definition, take part,” Timaree Schmit, a sexuality researcher, told NBC News. According to data released by PornHub and YouPorn, lesbian porn remains the most searched category globally. The sex scenes in Blue is the Warmest Colour, which won best picture at Cannes in 2013, were criticised by the film’s own lead actors who “ felt like prostitutes” shooting sex scenes directed from a male gaze. Looks like barrier methods aren’t as big a barrier to dudes’ porn enjoyment as we thought.For lesbian women, fetishisation takes on a different, darker hue altogether. Of gay men viewing anal sex, 64.4% preferred it condomless, 29.2% didn’t care, and 6.4% preferred condoms of gay men viewing vaginal sex, those numbers were 50.5%, 45.1%, and 4.3%. Of straight guys viewing vaginal sex, 65% liked it condomless, 31.7% didn’t care, and 3.3% safety-loving guys actually preferred condoms, with similar numbers for anal sex. (The pressure many gay men feel to perform "masculinity" to attract a partner is real.) As for the straight men into gay porn, Downing notes that substantial research reveals that it’s not uncommon for men who identify as heterosexual to be attracted to or even hook up with other men (a reminder that "never ever in a million years feeling an ounce of attraction for the same sex" is not a prerequisite for being, and identifying as, straight).Īnd when it comes to safe sex in porn, while the majority of guys do prefer their porn condom-free, a sizable minority don’t care one way or the other. " Research has shown that some gay men are attracted to or find heterosexual and masculine men more attractive," a preference Downing believes gay men to enjoy watching porn performers in straight sex scenes. "Sexual attractions and behaviors are more than just identity," he tells. While the rate of straight men watching gay porn may seem unexpected to those outside of the research world, Downing says that his team wasn’t surprised. Bi men, meanwhile, reported watching gay porn at a rate of 96% (nearly as much as the 98.3% of gay men who reported watching gay porn) and straight porn at a rate of 88.3% (a little lower than the 98.5% of straight men who reported watching straight porn). Downing, PhD surveyed 821 men about their porn-viewing habits, they found that 55% of gay men reported watching opposite-gender-oriented porn in the previous six months, while 21% of straight men reported watching same-sex porn in that time frame. Gay men watch men having sex with men, and straight men just want to see naked women, right? A study on gay, straight, and bi men’s porn preferences published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior is newly challenging this notion, as well as helping to answer the question of how men really feel about seeing condom use in their adult entertainment. A common belief about gender and porn is that while women of all sexual identities can get turned on by people of all genders, men only like to watch stuff that aligns with their stated orientation.