Hegemonic masculinity at work in the gay adult film industry

Abstract

This article discusses how staff at a gay adult film studio produce a local form of hegemonic masculinity to which adult film performers are held accountable, requiring performers to orient their gender strategies in specific ways to obtain employment. These findings contribute to understandings of how hegemonic masculinity is embodied, racialized, and sexualized at work in ways that subordinate femininity while affording privileges to those who meet these criteria. I conclude with a discussion of how this local form relates to regional hegemonic forms, implications for the workplace experiences of marginalized men, and how gay adult film studios may be complicit in the domination of gay and effeminate men.

Keywords

Gender masculinity pornography sexuality work

At the height of its success, the combined revenue of the adult film industry has been estimated at close to 14 billion dollars annually (L Williams, 2004), a sum greater than the combined revenue of major league baseball, football, and basketball. More recent estimates place it closer to 6 billion dollars annually – an approximately 30–50% reduction (Fritz, 2009) – though even at this more conservative estimate, the adult industry still has a tremendous societal presence. Scholarship on pornography generally falls into one of three broad categories: studies that explore films’ content (e.g. textual or content analysis of meaning), those that investigate audience reception, and studies of the industry itself, its means of production, and the patterns of labor and power. The majority of academic research in the adult film industry has historically been feminist scholarship which fell into one of the first two categories, and often debated whether the industry and its content may exploit and perpetuate a subordinate image of women (Dworkin, 1985, 1987; Kipnis, 1996; MacKinnon, 1989; MacKinnon and Dworkin, 1998) while others emphasized the complexities of pleasure and agency obtained from or displayed in adult content (Echols, 1984; Rubin, 1993; Vance, 1984).

While the debates over the morality and effects of pornography still occupy a great deal of academic discussion, what has received comparably little attention are studies of the industry as a workplace. This is understandable given the challenges of entering a very private and often stigmatized industry, as well as the modest academic aversion toward studying sex for sale. The fact that gay pornography, however, has received comparably little scholarly attention is surprising given that it is estimated to account for a disproportionately large amount of the industry’s revenue at approximately 25% (Thomas, 2000) and approximately 10% of web traffic on popular content sharing sites (Reddit, 2013). The adult industry not only reaches mass amounts of consumers, but employs countless people whose labor is insufficiently understood, and occurs within patterns of labor that remain unexplored. Studying the adult industry can therefore tell us a great deal not only about desire, but also about the social structures which generate the products of consumption, and how sexuality, race, class, gender, and the body are mechanisms of organizing power in their creation.

The high rates of employment and attrition in the adult film industry call for greater attention to the hierarchies of power and privilege that may influence its workings (Williams, 2004). This study draws on eleven months of participant observation in a gay adult film studio to provide a window into the labor aspects of the industry, their relation to overarching patterns of hegemonic masculinity, race, and gender and their connection to systems of inequality. Through analysis of discourses that police the boundaries of masculinity, I offer an outline of a local hegemonic masculinity produced within the gay adult film industry that continues to legitimate the subordination of femininity, and discuss this local form’s relationship to regional hegemonic masculinity. Through this discussion, I suggest a more nuanced approach to applications and understandings of regional hegemonic masculinity.

Theoretical framing

In the past 30 years, gender scholars have engaged in tremendous theoretical and methodological development of the study of masculinities, arguing that we cannot speak of ‘masculinity’ in the singular form as masculinities are not essential, but are instead socially constructed and plural (Connell, 1987; Kimmel, 2004; Kimmel and Messner, 2012). A significant portion of the work on masculinities has utilized the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity, which Connell defines as the practices that ‘institutionalize men’s dominance over women’ and men of subordinated masculinities (1987: 185). Drawing upon Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (1971), this framework acknowledges that domination is perpetuated not only by force, but also by consent with, and the perpetuation of the values and ideals of those in privileged positions. Hegemonic masculinity is reinforced through the embeddedness of practices, beliefs, and values in the given society, and simultaneously affords dominant groups numerous privileges while constituting subordinated groups as less or non-masculine, thereby partitioning their social access.

Masculinities scholars have employed Connell’s theory in order to outline the practices that constitute hegemonic masculinities at local, regional, and global levels (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Messerschmidt, 2012), and to explore its relation to subordinated masculinities. For example, masculinities scholars have noted that flexible, hybrid formations of hegemonic masculinity emerge through appropriations of select attributes of subordinated masculinities (Arxer, 2011; Bridges, 2013; Burke, 2009; Demetriou, 2001; Messerschmidt, 2010; Messner, 1993). While such processes might be seen as valuing the attributes of subordinated groups and the softening or inclusiveness of masculinity, many argue that hybridization is simply ‘the best possible strategy for the reproduction of patriarchy,’ and as a theoretical framework allows us to see the ways in which hegemonic masculinity adapts to change and historic specificities (Demetriou, 2001: 348).

While most men do not meet the ‘ideals’ of hegemonic masculinity, many, including women and subordinated men – whether by race, class, sexuality, or ability – are complicit in sustaining it (Chen, 1999; Wingfield, 2009; Yeung et al., 2006). Within the broader gender order, gay men may be targeted because of stereotyped feminine behavior (Lusher and Robins, 2007), yet even within gay male settings, studies have demonstrated gay men’s adherence to practices that reinforce men’s superiority over women (Johnson and Samdahl, 2005; Lanzieri and Hildebrandt, 2011) and the devaluation and abjection of femininity in other gay men (Levine, 1998; Lewis, 2009; Mercer, 2012; Taywaditep, 2001). Within the framework of hegemonic masculinity, these two processes have been formulated as ‘external hegemony’ – that which reinforces men’s superiority over women – and ‘internal hegemony,’ power over subordinated masculinities (Demetriou, 2001). This dynamic approach to hegemonic masculinity acknowledges that it is not only practices by those who hold positions of power that bolster patriarchy; diverse and marginalized persons or groups may also engage in practices that reinforce hierarchies of masculinities (Yeung et al., 2006). Indeed, it is within such settings that hegemonic masculinity may prove a valuable framework to understand the maintenance of patriarchy, as marginalized men may deceptively present what appears to be counter-hegemonic, but is actually ‘an instrument of … patriarchal reproduction’ (Demetriou, 2001: 355). Thus, in a setting in which a group of men – in this study, gay men who produce homosexual erotic content – do not ‘measure up’ to hegemonically masculine ideals, we might expect to see processes which actively challenge the existing gender order, yet may in fact bolster it (Chen, 1999).

The maintenance of the existing gender order, and support of hegemonic masculinity occurs through a diverse body of practices. Drawing upon Kristeva’s (1982) notion of the abject, queer theorists such as Butler (1993) argue that gender and gender hierarchies are created and maintained through the repudiation of a failed gender, namely that which is not socially acceptable, recognizable, or intelligible. This othering manifests in the daily practices of symbolic boundary making or borderwork (Gerson and Peiss, 1985) in that it creates social, collective and individual identity as well as cultural membership through this process of exclusion/abjection. Gendered mechanisms of borderwork have been documented as occurring through discourse (Pascoe, 2005, 2007, 2012), through the management of physical space (Thorne, 1993), occupational segregation and hiring practices (Pettit and Hook, 2012; Schilt, 2006; CL Williams, 1992), and representations in media (Gamson, 1998) among others (for a review, see Lamont and Molnár, 2002). Studies of borderwork in the construction of masculinity have noted the centrality of homophobia to these processes (Kimmel, 2004; Lehne, 1989; Pascoe, 2005, 2007, 2012), as it exposes men’s anxieties regarding gender’s fluidity, and the disquiet over the fact that men may renounce masculine privilege and ‘move down the gender ladder’ (Annes and Redlin, 2012: 281), even among gay men who may stigmatize other men for being ‘too gay,’ effeminate or desiring penetration (Nguyen, 2014; Robinson and Vidal-Ortiz, 2013; Sycamore, 2012; Ward, 2008). These practices are not only gendered, but racialized; Asian men are often emasculated or desexualized (Fung, 1999; Phua, 2007; Poon and Ho, 2008; Taywaditep, 2001) while Black men are hypersexualized (Collins, 2004; Ferber, 2007; Majied, 2010; Miller-Young, 2008; Wilkins, 2012). These depictions serve to maintain a racialized hierarchy of masculinities that privileges whiteness and heterosexuality, even within non-white and non-heterosexual contexts (Ferber, 2007; Yeung et al., 2006).

How these elements play out in a market-driven industry – in this case the adult film industry – and how this valuation reflects and (re)constitutes the desires of presumably gay men consumers¹ requires further exploration. Gay men view pornographic content at over twice the rate of heterosexual men (Thomas, 2000), and because of its prevalence and legitimation of homoeroticism, pornography has become a vehicle through which a gay personal identity can be asserted (Escoffier, 2009). This study does not directly investigate the impact that images in gay pornographic film have upon consumers, but instead explores the connection between labor practices and the products of the gay adult film industry to elucidate the relationship between local and regional hegemonic masculinities.

Masculinities, (sex) work, and pornography

Because workplaces are not neutral in terms of gender, race, class, or sexuality, identity categories are often utilized to legitimate organizational structures and hierarchical inequalities (Acker, 1990, 2006). Incorporating sociological analyses of labor into the study of sex work, however, requires that we first understand sex work as work. The literature on sex work and labor insufficiently intersect, in part because of the ‘precarious’ nature of sex work – its unpredictable and risky nature (Kalleberg, 2009). As part of the informal economy (Ferman, 1990), sex work is often without benefits or unionization and is positioned as non-valuable work; legalized forms are therefore embroiled within insufficiently examined organizational structures (Parreñas, 2011; Weitzer, 2009). Thus the hierarchies, wage discrimination, hiring practices, and labor experiences of individuals in sex work require further exploration (Weitzer, 2009).

The structural factors that segregate the broader labor market (such as gender, race, class-via-education, and sexuality) positions sex work as a field that may offer disadvantaged groups more economic opportunities than other forms of work (Bernstein, 2007; Collins, 2006; Farley, 2004; Nussbaum, 1998). Research on non-sexual labor has demonstrated white men’s greater rates of hirability than Black men (Pager et al., 2009) and has argued that this pattern is a result of the fear of violence and criminality associated with Black men. How these patterns appear in organized sexual labor, such as that of the gay adult film industry, remain unexplored. How, for example, do the inequality regimes (Acker, 2006) within the industry constitute gendered and raced hegemonic forms toward which performers² must orient their gender strategies in order to obtain and retain employment?

By utilizing a framework of hegemonic masculinity to explore men’s labor-force experience, we can attend to the dynamics of racial, class, and sexual inequalities, and their interconnections. Studies of the workplace have demonstrated that workers who best exemplify valued traits are likely to receive greater organizational rewards (Hodges and Budig, 2010). Male sex workers, for example, have a great deal to gain by advertising qualities associated with hegemonic masculinity. Logan (2010) finds that men who advertise stereotypical masculine attributes are able to charge significantly more than those with less masculine attributes (at a differential of approximately 17%). The racialized nature of masculinity again emerges and complicates these dynamics – Black, Latino and white men each receive substantial pay increases for ‘top’³ attributes, while Asian men do not. Conversely, the penalty for ‘bottom’ attributes is significantly greater for Black men (at 30% income reduction), indicating that failing to conform to racialized stereotypes of masculinity incurs significant penalties.

The impact of the political natures of desire (i.e. the hierarchical presence of race, class, and gender performance) upon the adult film industry continues to emphasize the privileging of hegemonic forms of beauty, for instance, the labor marginalization of Black women performers in pornography (Miller-Young, 2010). While there is a wealth of research on the relationship between race and sexuality in adult film (Bernardi, 2006; Forna, 2001; Gardener, 1980; Shimizu, 2007), such research that explores the politics of desire with regard to labor in adult film is sparse. This study addresses this deficiency through the exploration of labor practices in gay adult film, and connects it with the literature on hegemonic masculinity. By doing so, this work contributes to better understandings of how the structural gender order is upheld by marginalized men through the relationship between local hegemonic masculine forms and the cultural products that are taken up in the construction of regional hegemonic masculinities.

Methodology

Fieldsite selection

The findings from this study are drawn from participant-observation over the period of 11 months during 2012 and 2013 at From Behind Films,⁴ a gay adult film studio located on the West Coast of the USA. At the time of my study, From Behind Films had been in business for approximately 15 years and employed some of the most prominent, award-winning performers in the gay adult film industry. While staff reported that the studio was relatively well known due to its longevity and presence in the industry, the owner described it as a ‘pop and pop’ operation because of the small amount of staff and efficient production. From Behind Films produces online and DVD video content for three websites: The first website, which I refer to as Bottoms Up, features a single performer who is featured in all of the films produced for that website, and engages in sexual activity with an assortment of other models. The second website provides what the staff refer to as ‘mainstream’⁵ gay adult films, in that they feature primarily young (18 to roughly 30-year-old), muscular, well-endowed, and primarily white performers, a subsidiary which I term Stock Cocks. From Behind Films’ third website, Boi Toys, features an older/younger scene partner pairing. Each website costs consumers approximately US$35 for a 30-day subscription, with a discount offered to those who sign up for automatic monthly membership renewal.

The physical space that I observed serves as both From Behind Films’ office and their studio. The studio is located in an upscale suburban residential neighborhood in a large, six-bedroom home, some of which serve as offices, with four primary filming sites: a bedroom set, a living room set, a kitchen set, and a set in the backyard.

From Behind Films employs six full-time staff: the owner (Steve), his partner who manages financial aspects of the business, a web designer, a video editor, a casting director (Samuel), and a video director (Bobby). All staff were between the ages of 25 and 50 at the time of my fieldwork, self-identified as gay men, and white, with the exception of Samuel who is Latino. My primary interactions were with Bobby, Samuel, and Steve, in addition to many adult film models hired by the studio for shoots. The studio has employed ‘exclusive’ contracted performers in the past, though at the time of my observation there were no contracted performers, but instead a pool of 10 to 20 models who appeared every few months for the websites, while the remaining positions were filled by a cadre of approximately 200 performers, many of whom were employed 1–3 times on average by my estimation. As the majority of models were also white, race often went interactionally ‘unmarked’ during my time at From Behind Films.

Data collection

I gained access to the studio by requesting an interview with the owner, during which I offered my administrative assistance in exchange for spending time with them during casting and filming. My role at the studio varied from visit to visit; periodically I was purely an observer, mostly during non-filming days, where I observed Samuel and Bobby in the casting office. When filming occurred, I often assumed the role of intern, in that I operated secondary video cameras, provided behind-the-scenes photography, fetched drinks, lubricant, condoms and other items for the models, and organized sets at the direction of the video director. Assuming the role of intern allowed me to directly participate in and observe the processes of casting, directing and filming. I believe that my identity as a PhD student and as a white-presenting gay man were key factors in gaining access and shaping the interactions I had with the staff. It was assumed, for example, that I was personally familiar with the world of gay adult film and gay subcultures, while my position as a student and intern allowed the staff to ‘educate’ me in the workings of the industry.

Utilizing Glaser and Strauss’s constant-comparative method (1967), I coded my first set of fieldnotes for emergent concepts, formed initial field hypotheses about these processes, and investigated the veracity of these hypotheses in future visits. In this study I was initially interested in constructions of masculinity in the gay adult film industry, and thus paid particular attention to how the studio staff selected models to cast, the ways in which they discussed the bodies and behavior of performers, and the kinds of directions they gave them during filming. Periods in the field lasted on average three hours per week, though visits lasted up to seven hours during filming.

Hegemonic masculinity in gay adult film production

This study illuminates how staff and casting agents construct a local, profitable form of hegemonic masculinity for the gay adult film industry, which is constructed in relation to shared understandings of regional hegemonic masculinities. This happens through two processes: employers’ discussions of attractive bodies that are appropriate and employable for gay pornography, and through a femiphobic discourse that polices its bodily and performative borders as a form of internal hegemony (Demetriou, 2001).

The discussions of appropriate porn bodies and the simultaneous femiphobic discourse serve as social boundary-making processes whereby the category of a valued and employable masculinity for the gay adult film industry is defined. Further, these processes uncover racialized tropes of masculinity and their place in ‘mainstream’ gay adult film. Thus, these processes serve to further our understanding of the ways in which sexuality, race, class, gender performance and the body intersect in the construction of masculinity – and by understanding this contextually situated hegemony – illuminating the relationships between local and regional hegemonic masculinities.

I first outline the ways in which the staff at the studio discuss performers’ masculinity and body, and categorize them as hirable or as not suitable for the adult film industry. This process occurs most frequently as they review submissions for potential performers submitted from agents and the models themselves. These are received electronically via emails from agents, or reviewed in a database of those submitted directly to the studio. Submissions include a laundry list of performer demographics, such as age, height, weight, skin color, ethnicity, sexuality, erect penis size, HIV status, a list of sexual acts they will or will not perform, and comments as to the types of other models they prefer to work with or will not work with. Submissions also require pictures taken within the last 12 months, including a picture that shows the performer’s face when smiling, a photograph of their chest and abdominals, an erect penis photograph with an object for size comparison, and a photograph of their backside. The process of reviewing submissions centers upon a discourse of the body that draws on common physical understandings of hegemonic masculinity in order to define the local form of hegemonic masculinity. I then discuss the second process, where the staff at the studio utilize femiphobic language in order to police the borders of this masculinity, a process that not only delineates who is not employable or valuable to the industry, but also further defines the category of performers who are desired. This primarily occurs through gendered pronoun usage such ‘she’ or ‘her’ to disparage performers who possess undesirable attributes or behaviors.

Defining local hegemonic masculinity in gay adult film

The ways in which the staff at From Behind Films construct desirable masculinity for the gay adult film industry occur both in discussions during casting and through the direction given to performers during filming. In casting, the staff primarily discuss the bodies of the models that they employ or plan to employ. While Samuel, the casting director, and I were reviewing submissions together during a visit, he pulled up a photograph of a relatively lithe, young white man, and stated, ‘He doesn’t really have much muscle mass, and that’s the thing, he’s really cute, but he’s not like … porn.’ The ability to say that one is not porn relies on the premise that they know what porn is. Samuel, Bobby, and Steve all routinely agreed on who was hirable and desirable for gay pornography, indicating a shared understanding of the requirements for this category of masculinity.

During one field visit, the owner, Steve, described to me a performer who was coming in later that day for a shoot:

Today’s shoot is a performer named Griffin who they had shot content with for a straight website a number of years ago. Steve goes on to say that back then, he was ‘fine, nothing special,’ that he was ‘kind of slim,’ but that he has since put on a lot of muscle and is ‘6’4”, with a shaved head [pauses] Really hot.’

From this excerpt, we can see that being considered valuable enough to hire is contingent upon a certain amount of muscle mass; models need to be ‘jockish’ to be considered for hire, even when they are looking for performers for Boi Toys, as Samuel educated me through the review of two performers’ submissions which were rejected:

Samuel continued reviewing performer submissions, and said, ‘ Nineteen, so that’s good he’s young … 5’7, 125 pounds … really skinny … even if we’re looking for Bois, we want them to be a little built.’ Bobby added, ‘more jockish,’ to which Samuel replied, ‘that’s the perfect word.’ Later during the visit, Samuel pulled up a submission and said, ‘See, this guy, he’s kinda just skinny … he’s got no body …’ and closed out the submission.

These kinds of conversation begin to elucidate what is appropriate, desirable and employable masculinity for the gay adult film industry, but it is through discussion of the penis that the necessary attributes become overt. During one visit, I observed the casting director, Samuel, ‘pull cumshots,’ which consisted of viewing previous videos and taking static screenshots for website content. We were viewing a video, and Samuel pointed at one of the models in the scene and stated, ‘It’s such a waste. He’s got one of the best dicks I’ve ever seen and he’s a total bottom.’ In this, there is an inverse association between ‘best dick’ and being a ‘total bottom,’ resulting in being labeled a ‘waste.’ I interpret this to mean that the studio perceives large penises to be good or of social value, and that the value can only be expressed when it serves the purpose of insertion. Otherwise, this value is lost or ‘wasted.’ It should be noted that the studio does cast men as bottoms, so bottoms do contain value, but these statements imply that there is a greater amount of social value and desirability embodied within endowed men who play the role of ‘top.’

The value of a large penis became evident during casting sessions, and is explicitly evident in the following fieldnote excerpt that describes an interaction between the casting director and studio owner:

Steve entered the casting office and he and Samuel began discussing a model for an upcoming scene. Steve instructed Samuel to negotiate with the performer. Samuel replied, ‘He’s gonna want like $1400 for that,’ and Steve said, ‘Yeah he’s not getting that.’ Samuel replied, ‘The thing is for that scene he’s gonna get notoriety. Those are two well known guys.’ Steve said, ‘I don’t know that he wants that,’ and explained that his manager just wants him to get work and nothing more. Samuel asked, ‘So where can I go? Like what’s my ceiling? [for negotiating].’ Steve replied, ‘I don’t even know … He’s got a huge dick … remember it’s a three-way, he is going to be doing more work, he is going to be sucking two dicks … I don’t know, maybe it shouldn’t be a three-way … $1200 … if he wants more, come talk to me.’

In this interaction, Steve, the owner, is taking the size of the model’s penis into consideration when determining how much money they are willing to offer him for the scene. Both the amount of work he will have to do during the scene as well as his body are monetized by the studio, and in turn serve as bargaining chips for the performer. In another visit, toward the end of the year when business is slowest and Samuel had some free time, I had the opportunity to ask him to train me in the process of casting models. I asked questions about what they were looking for while reviewing submissions, and he stated:

‘This guy is 23, but he looks a little old for [Boi Toys] … he could work for Stock Cocks … he’s got a nice thick dick, that always helps. A big dick is always a plus, never a negative, it’s never a point against someone.’

The size of a model’s penis is routinely used to determine the appropriate sexual role in the films (either insertive or receptive). When reviewing performer submissions, statements about performers such as ‘he has a huge one’ or ‘he’s got a huge cock’ are made specifically in reference to performers that they want to bring in for filming. A large penis, as Samuel had informed me, is best used for insertive purposes; a model with a large penis who bottoms is seen as ‘a waste.’ When contrasted with an example where a model was cast as a bottom, we can see that this logic also impacts the model’s agency.

When Samuel and I reviewed model submissions, he showed Bobby a photograph of a potential performer and said, ‘Oh he’s a bottom,’ Bobby replied, ‘Yeah, he doesn't have much of a cock.’ Samuel paused and then said, in a somewhat derisive tone, ‘Oh yeah, there it is.’

Here we can again see the association between penis size, attractiveness, and appropriate role on the part of the performer. The performer’s penis was judged to be rather small, and therefore the appropriate role for him was that of bottom. This is in contrast to models with large penises who possess the agency to elect their desired role. It is also worth noting that the lines of valuation go beyond penis size and also have racial components:

Samuel and I returned to reviewing submissions and Samuel pulled up a submission from an Asian performer, and said, ‘Asians don’t do well, they’re not big sellers … Asians, Black guys, they do better in niche sites.’

And on another visit, Bobby discusses this with Keith, a model:

The model described how he had worked with Jason Stone, a well-known Asian bondage porn star, and how he had been ‘nervous about getting fucked, because [he] had only recently started’ and that Jason Stone had replied harshly, ‘You’ve had four weeks to prepare!’ Bobby expressed annoyance that someone would be that harsh as opposed to being comforting and supportive. Keith said, ‘I think that’s his thing, to be dominant.’ Bobby replied, ‘You can’t be Asian and dominant, it just doesn’t work, it can’t happen.’

The reliance on racialized tropes in the casting process makes explicit the racialized nature of desirable gay masculinity for the adult film industry. Asian performers are feminized and rendered undesirable as they cannot ‘be dominant’ and it is assumed that they will be anally receptive, and therefore do not ‘sell well.’ By contrast, the racial component of this masculinity requires that Black men be dominant and anally penetrative, underlined for me when Samuel then showed me a photograph of a Black former ‘studio exclusive’ they had employed, who was very large, muscular, and well-endowed. The racialized elements of this local form of hegemonic masculinity within the gay adult film industry rest on tropes of Black hypermasculinity and hypersexuality as well as the emasculation of Asian men. Thus, because Black men are able to be seen or portrayed as ‘dominant’ in a way that Asian men are not, Black men appear to be moderately less disadvantaged within the gay adult film industry.

Policing the borders – the femiphobic discourse

All of the performers employed by From Behind Films are male, however the use of female gender pronouns such as ‘she’ and ‘her’ are key mechanisms by which the staff police the borders of the local form of hegemonic masculinity they seek to produce. Female gender pronouns are often utilized when a model causes difficulty for the studio staff. In the studio there is a corkboard, which I refer to as ‘the casting board,’ on which the staff post 4 × 6 photographs of the performers for scheduled scenes. During one visit to the studio, I noticed that a photograph that had previously been paired with another performer’s 4 × 6 was suddenly absent from beside a scene partner.

I asked, ‘Did you lose a scene partner for Eli?’ Bobby replied that they didn’t have one, but Samuel corrected, ‘No we lost him.’ Bobby turned around and asked who the partner was, and Samuel responded, ‘Trevor Smith, but he suddenly retired.’ Bobby replied, ‘Yeah, she’s retired, until her rent’s due.’

In this situation, the porn star had suddenly decided to leave the industry only days before the scheduled shoot, creating the challenge for the studio to scramble to find a new scene partner for the shoot. The subject of retired porn stars had come up in previous visits, but the use of a female gender pronoun had not been used until this point. The male pronoun in the foregoing interaction between Bobby and Samuel was used when it was stated that they had ‘lost him,’ but once it was revealed that the model had suddenly decided to retire and that this had impacted the studio, the model was feminized (‘she’s retired, until her rent’s due’). The use of female gender pronouns in this situation is connected with the dependability of the performer, thus while there are explicit bodily requirements for desirable masculinity, there are performative and interactive attributes, such as dependability, that are required as well. The model must also be polite and respectful, as indicated during another visit when Samuel said that he did not want to hire a performer again because ‘she yelled at me on the phone.’

When the studio staff wishes to disparage a performer or their actions, they utilize female gender pronouns in order to do so. The aforementioned acts of disparagement occurred specifically when the model had caused difficulty for the studio or to the staff, but this is not the only instance in which female gender pronouns are utilized. In cases where a performer is viewed simply as not a good fit because of his appearance, he is frequently feminized by the staff:

Samuel was reviewing 4×6 photographs for potential scene partners and suggested a pairing to Bobby, who stated that the model was too old. Samuel asked, ‘Well, he can’t be for Stock Cocks?’ Bobby replied ‘He’s 45.’ and Samuel asked, ‘She’s got some city miles on her?’

This example highlights how the femiphobic discourse is deployed not only to police a performer’s behavior, but also his body. It is implied that the model is ‘rough’ or ‘overused’ for his age – in the manner of a car only driven in the city – and thus is undesirable for employment. The use of a female gender pronoun in this instance implies a negative, ageist connotation of undesirability. During my time at From Behind Films, the staff did not ever use ‘she’ or ‘her’ in a positive manner, it was always associated with the negative: too old, too difficult, unattractive (too skinny, too small, not sufficiently endowed), or too demanding.

If the female gender pronoun is used in relation to a performer and it is only used to disparage, then there is a femiphobic, misogynistic connotation to its usage. At one fieldsite visit I had the opportunity to assist with filming by operating ‘Camera B,’ which is the backup camera. During this field visit, we filmed a scene between two real-life boyfriends, Andras and César, where Andras was ‘topping,’ or anally penetrating César.

During a break in filming, Bobby asked Andras, ‘Where are you taking her [César] for dinner?’ and after discussing a few options, Andras proposed a Mexican restaurant. Bobby contends, ‘Just ‘cause she’s Mexican doesn’t mean she wants tortillas.’

In this instance, the use of the female gender pronoun by the director, Bobby, is used specifically to refer to the performer [César] who identifies as a bottom or is bottoming. While this specific use of female gender pronouns was directed in this case at a Latino performer, the larger context suggests that this was not meant to disparage him on account of his race, as I did not observe the staff use ‘she’ or ‘her’ in reference to other Latino performers when reviewing performer submissions or during production during my period of fieldwork. Thus, given the negative connotations of female gender pronouns (Fair, 2011), I argue that this act of labeling the model who is anally penetrated ‘she,’ uses the femiphobic discourse to devalue the receptive performer. In other words, to be anally penetrated is to be feminine or female, and to be female is to be devalued (Bersani, 2010; Nguyen, 2014; Pascoe, 2007). In applying the association between female gender pronouns and disparagement, both previous and subsequent visits to the fieldsite elucidated these actions as constructing a gender hierarchy.

Through the use of female gender pronouns, the staff at From Behind Films define models who are of no value or lesser value to the studio: those who are difficult to work with, those who are too old or unattractive, and while ‘bottom’ performers are employable, my observations suggest they are less valuable than penetrative performers. In all instances, with the exception of the filming of the scene with Andras and César, the model was dismissed as unemployable.

Discussion – from local to regional

Mechanisms of gender policing are nuanced, historically and geographically specific, and diverse in the ways that they define hegemonic and subordinated masculinities (Messerschmidt, 2012). The use of a femiphobic discourse at From Behind Films indicates that it is the spectre of femininity that regulates the local hegemonic masculinity constructed through their production of gay adult film. These adult film producers, during both casting and directing, engage in symbolic boundary work (Lamont and Molnár, 2002) through discussion of ‘appropriate’ masculine bodies for gay pornography and the deployment of a femiphobic discourse. These mechanisms construct a local hegemonic masculinity that privileges professionalism, reliability, dominance, muscularity, men between 20 and 35 years of age who are ‘jockish,’ well-endowed, and white. These processes determine who gets hired as a performer, who receives more work, and who gets paid more money. Men who are viewed as conventionally masculine and as tops receive the benefits of this gender hierarchy, while those who do not are devalued or precluded from hire.⁶ This is racialized in complicated but demonstrable ways. White performers experience the most workplace privilege as they are the clear first choice during casting. Latino men occupy a secondary position, though they are routinely considered for hire. Black men may very rarely be considered, while Asian performers are categorically excluded.

Because these practices occur at a site which has a direct hand in creating products for a marketplace and is a site of employment, the economic implications of these practices warrants consideration. Samuel and I discussed model pay rates during one visit:

Samuel asked me again if I had any questions, and I asked, ‘so how does pay work? Is it based on what kind of sex they’re going to have to do during the scene?’ Samuel replied that it was not based on the sex but that ‘pay works based on stardom.’

Though he did not explicitly connect pay to sexual roles, race, or body, it is likely that those with greater bodily capital (Bridges, 2009; Monaghan, 1999, 2002) may be able to negotiate for employment and higher pay than those outside the borders. Considering these trends relative to findings from other studies of workplaces and the ‘ideal’ employee, it is unsurprising to find the privileging of whiteness in hiring (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2003; Pager et al., 2009), masculinity in workplace interaction (Henson and Rogers, 2001; CL Williams, 1992, 2013) or the complicated and often precarious nature of ‘outness’ at work and its interconnectedness with masculinity (Giuffre et al., 2008; Tilcsik, 2012; Ward and Winstanley, 2005; Williams et al., 1999).

Where Pascoe’s (2005) high school boys used the fag discourse to reinforce their own masculine identity at the expense of another’s, the staff at From Behind Films use female gender pronouns to construct the category of a devalued, or unhirable performer. This symbolic boundary work of exclusion at the interactional level ultimately results in social boundaries that maintain unequal access to material resources and opportunities for those who work in the gay adult film industry. This devaluation occurs not only to models who cause difficulty for the studio, but along lines of race and of sexual role. Asian men are feminized, they ‘cannot be dominant,’ and are rarely considered for hire, and then only as bottoms. While the studio does not consider Asian men for hire, Black men appear to marginally profit from hypersexual tropes to obtain work. Through these symbolic and social boundaries the staff create hierarchical categories of difference, resulting in discriminatory hiring practices which are then justified as a result of ‘market demand.’ Steve explained to me during one fieldsite visit that they ‘know what sells’ through metrics that track view counts on specific videos, the number of times people list a video as a favorite or download it, and through comments they submit. They use these metrics to justify the gender and racial hierarchy constructed through their hiring practices.

The findings in this study continue to provide support for the arguments of previous researchers who identify homophobia as an essential mechanism for defining contemporary masculinity (Burn, 2000; Kimmel, 2003; Pascoe, 2005, 2007; Plummer, 2001) yet the complexities of how gender is regulated in all-gay contexts complicates this framework. The femiphobic discourses in homosocial and homosexual spaces extends theories of the homophobic ‘fag’ discourse by pulling apart the stratum of meanings and mechanisms that can be deployed in abjection; men of subordinated masculinities (in this instance, the producers in the gay adult film industry) further ‘other’ those already scorned by the larger cultural fag discourse. Through this discourse the gender hierarchy is reconstituted; feminine men (and by extension, women) are devalued in much the same way that they are in heterosexual contexts.

The studio staff construct a local form of hegemonic masculinity by drawing upon the gender and racial tropes of regional hegemonic masculinities. They pull from these tropes in the service of ‘capital logic’ (Hossfeld, 1992), that is, strategies to increase profit maximization, and enforce these tropes in ways that privilege and reward certain bodies and peoples. This includes specific requirements of a masculine body, including youth, musculature, height, and a large penis. Performers, in turn, can use these attributes as bodily capital to obtain employment and potentially negotiate for higher pay. What, however, are the implications of these practices and the characteristics that they privilege beyond the local? From Behind Films produces adult entertainment that is distributed to – given their longevity and presence in the industry – a reasonably large consumer base (and even larger when pirated content is taken into consideration). Is this, then, productive of a regional form of hegemonic masculinity? Connell and Messerschmidt’s (2005) original formulation of regional hegemonic masculinities contends that it is those masculinities that are ‘constructed at the society-wide level of culture,’ yet little work has expanded upon this definition which can assume a cultural singularity of which all members in a society are aware (e.g. feature film actors, professional athletes, and politicians). I argue, however, that regional hegemonic masculinities do not have to be produced through and represented within cultural images targeting all members of a society or nation-state, but can also exist within cultural products aimed at subordinated groups. The masculinity tropes produced by From Behind Films are drawn from regional forms and reconstituted at the local level, where they construct local gender and racial hierarchies that in turn circulate back to targeted regional markets of sexual, racial, and class minorities.

I suggest that researchers interested in explicating the mutually constitutive nature of regional and local hegemonic masculinities would be well served by studying not only the local forms, as this study has done, but also by incorporating content analysis of products once disseminated, and examining audience reception that looks not only at the multiple meanings consumers pull from the product and the product’s position relative to similar products consumed by consumers (Hall, 2010). Combining each of these perspectives offers the most theoretical insight into the mutually constitutive nature of local and regional gender hegemonies. At From Behind Films, for example, not all of the elements present in the local hegemonic masculinity they produce transfer to the product they disseminate (e.g. punctuality and a professional demeanor). Thus, understanding local hegemonic masculinities’ reciprocal relation to regional hegemonies would be improved by a systematic analysis of how themes in their products reinforce a hierarchical structure between masculinity and femininity. The practices in which From Behind Films engage produce a product which privileges a specific form of masculinity over others and over femininity. In this regard, I argue that the local hegemonic masculinity constructed by From Behind Films may influence regional forms of hegemonic masculinity in how it is taken up by consumers. This, in turn, becomes material from which other future local forms can be constructed. As demonstrated by this study, these practices reproduce gender and racial hierarchies that have direct material and labor consequences. This calls us to consider how the differential appraisal of performers according to their approximation of regional hegemonic masculinity fosters both sexist and racist practices in the adult film industry, the subsequent economic impacts for performers who do not closely approximate these qualities, and the ramifications this may have upon consumers.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Michael Messner, Paul Lichterman, Stephanie Canizales, Michela Musto, and Chelsea Johnson for their feedback and invaluable insights on previous versions of this article.

Notes

Nathaniel B Burke is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Southern California, completing a dissertation titled, Inequality regimes in the gay adult film industry, which explores how race, masculinity, and sexuality stratify and organize the labor experiences of men working in adult film.

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