I Am A Girl Who Likes Boys Who Like Boys

For years I masturbated to male gay erotica without telling anyone, it was my own dirty little secret.

I started discovering my sexuality in the early 2000’s era, when my biggest daily struggle was who to share the love with on Bebo (very political at the time), and puberty was very much on the horizon. I’d spend my pocket money on a £4 monthly membership to HabboHotel so I could ask, only the best-dressed, avatars on the chat site for their A/S/L before preceding to *sNoG fAcE oFf*.

It was before the days of YouTubers and memes, when I’d spend my evenings talking to the boys I fancied from my class on MSN. All of their names would be listed in my status, each separated by hearts, ωяιттєи ιи α fσит ѕιмιℓαя тσ тнιѕ. And when I wasn’t flirting with boys, I kept myself entertained by watching stupid videos FunnyJunk.com. Looking back now, FunnyJunk had a real y2k aesthetic: I’m talking pixelated logo, animated background and I’m pretty sure it had a monkey’s face as the cursor. Anyway, I remember coming across a short animation in the ‘adult’ category of the site that showed two men who had snuck away from their wives to have sex with each other in a public park. I so vividly remember feeling this really odd, but commanding, thump coming from ‘down there’… That was my first exposure to gay sex. And also my earliest memory of being turned on.

At age 11, I had already almost been excluded from my Roman Catholic primary school for kissing my boyfriend in the woods. And then at around 13 years old, the ever-impending emo phase had arrived. My hair parting moved further and further over to the side, I discovered straighteners, and my fringe grew longer and sweepier. Disney princesses and the Arsenal football squad came off of my bedroom wall and Thierry Henry’s angelic face was replaced with the fit goth off Hollyoaks. I only wore strictly neon or black, cut off all my hair and started smoking Mayfair fags. I was ready to take on the world. What I wasn’t prepared for was Gerard Way kissing My Chemical Romance band-mate Frank Iero, my clit was on fire.

Men tend to tilt their heads, rather sheepishly, to one side when I tell them I get off from watching gay porn. “Is that a thing?” they’ll sometimes ask before assuming I am referring to lesbians. Women are usually more open to it, either responding with an affirmative nod of solidarity or with a curious desire to know more.

For years I masturbated to male gay erotica without telling anyone, it was my own dirty little secret. It felt rebellious and disobedient, two things that have always enticed me, and are in my nature as an Aquarian. It gave me the opportunity to appreciate male beauty, the male form and the male face while orgasming – three things that are hard to come by in hetero porn. Even today, what I still love about gay porn is its playful narrative. Straight porn can be dull in that, eventually, you know his penis will penetrate her vagina and for the next 9-13 minutes, you are guaranteed close-up shots of the female body and only her body.

It’s so predictable, and conventional gender roles have a massive part to play in it. For example, the well-endowed plumber who comes to fix the sink pipes of a skin-tight-dress-wearing-balloon-breasted “horny housewife” and is rewarded with a “thank you” blow job and the opportunity to cum on her face. Maybe it’s my feminist conscious that stops me from enjoying watching women being objectified and existing solely to fulfil the male desire, or maybe it’s just getting a bit old now?

Gay porn is less linear, it’s open to more possibilities and this makes it so much more fun to watch. It seems like an extreme alternative, but it’s one I’m willing to go to in order to cum. And quite frankly, as someone attracted to men, there’s nothing hotter than watching two of them sweat and grunt on each other.

Watching gay porn over the years has affected how I view my own role in the bedroom. Having trained myself to orgasm from watching men getting off, has forced me into an altruistic mindset during sex. Put simply, it has encouraged me to be more submissive when it comes to sex because what gets me off, is seeing him get off. That’s admittedly led to all kinds of personal insecurities when receiving oral sex or communication around consent. I mean I wouldn’t only blame porn for that, I think that also probably comes from some fucked up gender expectation that I subconsciously adhere to.

But it’s not all negative, I find gay porn can be surreal in some ways. When watching man-on-man action, I have sometimes imagined myself as a man or someone who is gender fluid. I’ve had intense sensory dreams of putting my rock-hard veiny dick inside a tight pink hole and being sucked in by its warmth and moisture. Admittedly, that sound’s fucking weird (Freud would have a field day), but I do find it really liberating and I’m not the only one. Cue: Dr Lucy Neville, a cool af British Lecturer specialising in women’s engagement with sex and porn.

She spoke to 500 cis-hetero women, from all over the world, to investigate what exactly women enjoy about gay porn. In her book, ‘Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys’, she reveals that “a lot of the problem they have with heterosexual porn is that they focus on the female body” without paying enough attention to men. She adds, “a lot of ways it can play out with men is more exciting, more experimentation, more open to negotiation”. Of the women she spoke to, 55% admitted to having imagined themselves as men whilst consuming gay porn. Turns out I’m not the only weirdo.

I don’t solely watch gay porn, but I would confidently say it would be an 80/20 split between man-on-man and Owen Gray’s videos. What arouses me so much about Owen Gray is his perfect balance between intimacy and dominance. He’s gentle but hard, caring but powerful. Girls if you’ve never come across Owen, before continuing to read this… please, please, watch one of his videos immediately. You’re welcome.

I know this type of erotica exists elsewhere, on platforms like ErikaLust or Bellesa, but it’s normally side-lined as ‘feminist’ porn, which even as a feminist myself, makes my eyes roll.

To further evaluate my weirdo potential I turned to PornHub. Their 2019 insights show that the most popular category amongst women was Lesbian, with Gay porn being a close second. And interestingly, women were 260% more likely to view ‘Pussy Licking’ videos, 222% more into ‘Solo Male’, 183% more into ‘Fingering’ and 130% more into ‘Romantic’ videos.

Earlier insights showed that four of the top 10 pornstars most often searched by women were strictly gay male performers, which came as no surprise when I read that 37% of gay porn was watched by women.

I’m going to end this by concluding that, women watching gay porn is most definitely a “thing”. And it’s most certainly not “weird” because mainstream hetero-porn tends to present one worldview. Cindy Gallop, a 60-something-year old entrepreneur who proudly sleeps with men in their twenties, quite rightly says the porn industry is:

  • Driven by men
  • Funded by men
  • Managed by men
  • Directed by men
  • Targeted at men

We continue to see the same balloon-breasted horny housewives because men (or chauvinists) STILL dominate the discourse around porn. But hasn’t the role of women changed in our society – politically, at work, at home, and in bed? The role of women in these areas has developed and progressed over the years, but not so much in porn. Don’t get me wrong, let’s keep porn sexy, filthy and hardcore – but let’s keep the morals clean.

It’s weird that as a hetero woman, I can’t relate to hetero porn. I’d like to see more mainstream female directors, producers and scriptwriters, more praise and rights for female sex workers. We need more women behind the camera – more of the female gaze in widely available, free, mainstream porn. Until then, I’ll remain a girl who likes boys who like boys.

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