The new academic porn journal sensation Porn Studies announces a special editorial issue focusing on gay male porn. Fans of Shine Louise Houston’s “masculine beauty” project Heavenly Spire and other cinematic reflections of male sexuality will rejoice with the recent call for papers.

It is now approaching 30 years since Jump Cut published the essay Men’s Pornography Gay vs Straight in which Tom Waugh was to attempt (perhaps for the first time) a systematic analysis and comparison of the representations and conditions of production, exhibition and consumption of straight and gay male pornography. In the wake of (and in the spirit of) Waugh’s intervention, a generation of scholars across Film, Media and Cultural Studies have been inspired to conduct their own studies of gay male pornography, its textual contours and its significances.

In the intervening years a great deal has changed in the media landscape and as a consequence the porn industry, gay and straight has a visibility that was inconceivable when Waugh wrote his essay in the middle of the 1980s. It’s in this radically changed context that this special edition of Porn Studies aims to take stock of the current state of scholarship that takes gay male pornography as its object of study.

From new formats and new modes of access, to new research avenues and new ways to make sense of what gay male porn means for its audience, the special edition will map the current terrain and indicate the direction for future research.

Submission Details

Submissions of particular interest are not limited to but may address:

• New formats/new platforms
• Amateur gay porn/User generated content
• Bareback porn
• Niche and fetish gay porn
• The gay porn industry
• Gay porn stars
• Gay porn audiences and porn fandom
• Discussion forums and gay porn blogs

This special edition of Porn Studies will be edited by Dr John Mercer.

Please send abstracts of 300 words and a short biographical note to john.mercer@bcu.ac.uk

Note: as creators and digital distributors of queer content, topics of queer and trans sexuality are especially pertinent. Topics include lesbian attraction to gay pornography, FTM inclusion in gay porn, the history of gay FTM porn, and analysis of studios such as Bonus Hole Boys, FTM Fucker, and Heavenly Spire by Shine Louise Houston).