The history of gay porn cinema.

[haiducii]

gorgik9 sent me a PM: ''In the next-to-last paragraph you talk about a writer named Owen Jones and his book on chavs - but I don't see any book title... So,please, Owen Jones book was....?''

Sorry guys..My mistake...The title is: Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones (2012)

 

[gorgik9]

gorgik9 sent me a PM: ''In the next-to-last paragraph you talk about a writer named Owen Jones and his book on chavs - but I don't see any book title... So,please, Owen Jones book was....?''

Sorry guys..My mistake...The title is: Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones (2012)

Thanks for the info!!! I think I'm gonna order Owen Jones book...

 

[dargelos]

For those who dont get to read the book this comment on its launch will do instead;
"I am working class, I'm educated but I'll always be working class but many of my peers from the same greated glasgow housing estate as me now consider themselves middle class even though the are only a wage away from destitution at any time because they hold a faux managment position (while earning far below the average income). I think both Thatcher in the 80's and the past Labour government are both responsible for eroding class identity. In this void we have "aspiration" and despair and very little solidarity. Scottish Socialist John Mclean proclaimed "Rise with your class, not out of it" but what about those who have been left to sink to the bottom without any hope of a lifeline? It is these people the chav sterotype does the most damage to and I'm very please to see the tide however subtley at first seems to be turning."

 

[gorgik9]

Black & White: Racism in gay porn, part 1.

This is the first of two posts on racism in gay porn, of which haiducii will write the second next weekend. You could wonder if I really think, that the US is the only country with race issues but of course thats not the case - this first post rather mirrors the dominance of the American gay porn industry. I'm so glad that haiducii agreed to take on a second post since this is a vast, complex and difficult subject.

I also decided to merge a purely gay porno + history of racism-post with a second chapter on some of the controversies surrounding photographer/artist Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989).

Two versions of Biggus Dickus!

First meet a friend of mine from Rome....



Everybody knows that John C. Holmes (1944-1988) had a really big dick (14 inches according to some, 13.5 says others)...http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=505453
...but as far as I know the word "white" was non-existent in the rhetoric of the titles of his porn movies, at least not in the 20 pages filmography in Jennifer Sugar's and Jill C. Nelson's 580+ pages biography John Holmes: A life measured in inches. (2008).

We've got many examples of bigness rhetoric in movie and loops titles ("Big Bad John", "Big John", "14 Inches Deep", "Super Cock", "Big Dick" etc), but the whiteness rhetoric is nowhere to find, and the same goes for all the other pages of the biography.

Considering the brutal fact, that Holmes - who at the time was a drug addict in deep shit - was closely connected to the drug dealer who most probably concieved of the attac on Wonderland Avenue, Los Angeles, on 1 July 1981, where four persons were savagely murdered Anon URL
...it's quite strange that the rhetoric surrounding Holmes doesn't contain "violence", "brutality", "monstrosity" or "pain".




The same goes for other famous white brothers of Biggus Dickus. Let's take Matt Hughes/Danny D as an example http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=500166
His dick is of course said to be "big", "very big", "gigantic" etc etc etc, but neither WHITE nor VIOLENT or MONSTROUS.

But if we look at the porno rhetoric of the black dick, we get something completely different in American gay porn: The big black dick isn't just much BLACKER than big, it's also a dangerous, brutal, violent and monstrous fuckin' cock who'll make you really HURT and cause PAIN : http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=505454
http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=505457

(I've got a bit of a bad concious that I haven't been able to make some kind of systematic comparison between black actors in productions from companies with black owners and producers, and black actors in productions from white owned mainstream companies.)

I think it's necessary to try to give an explanation to how and why the rhetoric of the Bad Black Dick came about. It's a long and very bloody story...

White Europeans and Americans denigrating Black Africans.

It started very early on with the Greek historian Herodotos in the early 5th century BC describing "Ethiopians" (which is a greek word meaning "burnt by the sun") as monsters with human bodies but the head of a dog, eating grasshoppers, screaming like bats and relentlessly fucking.

We get the rationalized version of the greek put-down-ethiopians story from the medic and philosopher Claudios Galenos, who in the 2nd century AD said, that all Ethiopians have 10 traits in common: black skin, curly hair, broad nostrils, thick lips, perly white teeths, rough hands, big black pupils, unpleasant smell and - an overdimensioned penis.

Herodotos and Galenos didn't think in terms of religious sin or biological race, but used the ancient greek theory that traits of the human body (like skin color, eye color, hair structure, anatomical proportions etc) for large measures were determined by the physical climate where people lived.

They also thought in status dichotomies, among which one of the most important was greek versus barbarian : barbarian actually was an ancient greek onomatopoetic nonsense word; bar-bar-bar is the greek version of bla-bla-bla, i.e. one who speeks incomprehensible or in other words - one who doesn't speek greek...

The problematic story of Noah and his sons (Genesis 9).

It gets more vicious in Biblical literature and christian theology. In Genesis chapter 9 we get the story of Noah and his three sons Sem. Ham and Japhet. It's a story about what happened when Noah was drunk, Ham forgot to uncover his fathers crotch and the boy started staring at his dads private parts.

When Noah woke up from his slumber, his eldest son Sem and the youngest Japhet told their dad what Ham had done : "- Ham did it, not us - he started oogling your cock and balls, daddy!"

Noah got furious and cursed Ham and all his descendants. According to some ancient commentaries one side of Ham's curse was that he got black skin, while the other side was that he got a donkey schlong and became erotomaniac. So the bigness and blackness of the cock became immediate symbols for black men as a people accursed by Noah and Jahve.

St. Augustin, the Fall and it's penile consequences.

Maybe it wasn't particularly the fate of the BLACK penis, but rather of EVERY penis, including the black, that worsened in the most influential of all of St. Augustin's texts, De Civitate Dei (On the city of God) 410 AD, book XIV, which talks about the human consequences of that most fatal happening in the Garden of Eden - the Fall from Grace.

Why did it happen? Because Adam and St/Eve thought they could put their own human will up against God, but the consequence was, that the man after the Fall had become incapable of having voluntary control over his own body. The most clearcut symptom of this fundamental incapacity was - of course - the involuntary nature of the male erection: Sometimes I want to fuck, but "it/he" doesn't want to give me an erection, and sometimes I don't wanna have sex, but "it/he" gives me an erection all day long.

After the Fall humans started putting on fig leaves because they were so ashamed of their own lack of control over their body, and in particular lack of control over the schlong.

The Triangulated Atlantic and the American hatred of the black cock.

The Portuguese and Spaniards started the Transatlantic slave trade inthe early 16th century as soon as they found out, that Ameirican indians were of very little use as plantation labourers, since the Indians were already dying in millions from European viral and/or bacterial diseases, and the English, French and Dutch colonialists became hangers on to the already established trade.

What happened was the Transatlantic Triangular Trade: 1) Cotton, tobacco, rum and sugar from America to Europe; 2) manufacture goods (glass, iron bars, guns, cotton cloth) from Europe to Africa (mainly meaning areas of central and southern West Africa); 3) black slaves from Africa to South America, the West Indies and North America (the Middle Passage).

We can't divide the moral blame along skin color line. Many indeginous African rulers sold their own people as slaves to the Western merchants, got very wealthy, bought guns from European traders so they could sell more and more Africans to the slave merchants etc etc etc...

Even if already ancient greek philosophy and tradional christian and jewish Bible interpretation legitimated a condescending view of African, the level of hatred toward black men in general and the black penis in particular took on atronomic proportions on American soil.

This hatred emerged in a social context, where the hated was a - sometimes rebellious - slave, and the hater his owner and master. But when American writers from late 18th century and into the 20th century continued repeating their hateful descriptions of donkey sized black rape weapons, the legitimy of the Biblical traditions as the canonic description of the earth, nature, animals and humans had been waning for a long time.

What we got was "scientific racism", and so the lady had reason keep on singing the blues....



The new secularized ways of describing the world, nature and human kind.

Of the early pioneers of articulating a new description of the world, the first was Swedish botanist Carl von Linné (1707-1778) and the other the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788):

Let's focus on the most controversial of the questions Linné, Buffon and their students started looking into : should we believe in a single unitary human kind with a single common origin (monogenism), or should we believe that humanity actually consists of several different species with different origins (polygenism)?

The traditional biblical point of view definitely implied monogenism, and monogenism was by far the most common position among scientists and scholars from the 18th century on; polygenism was clearly a minority position - but it existed! It wasn't just a purely logical possibility that no one actually believed in.

A more complex position was constructed by the German medic, naturalist, anthropologist and comparative anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), who was a monogenist but at the same time in 1779 came up with the theory of the five human races: Caucasian, Mongol, Ethiopian, American and Malayan.

Another important point in Blumenbach's thinking was. that he adhered to the "degenerative hypothesis" (as did Buffon), meaning that "in the beginning" there were only caucasians and the differentiation of several different races must have been something occuring "later" and "for some reason".

As soon as Blumenbach had published his theory we got an army of scientific busy bees publishing their own ideas on many different questions:

How many races really? Five said Blumenbach, but French anatomist Cuvier said three. Why not 2 or 7? Or 19.5 races?

According to which criteria? The most well known is of course skin color, but it's far from the only criteria that has been widely used in western history. I'll talk a bit extra about a criterion with a specific Swedish connection that I'm aquainted with enough to actually show you how the racist metodology crumbles and comes tumbeling down.

Cranial angle (or facial angle) was a method (craniometry) and criterion for differentiating the human races invented by the Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper in 1794 and further developed by the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius J:r (1796-1860) particularly in series of articles, books and lectures from the 1840s on.

Retzius developed a set of cranial measurements baptized Brachycephalic versus Dolicocephalic (short scull versus long scull) and Prognat versus Orthognat (protruding jaw versus non-protruding jaw), wich gave four logical possibilities:

Brachycephalic prognat ; Brachycephalic orthognat
Dolicocephalic prognat ; Dolicocephalic orthognat.

Well, you can measure sculls untill your eyes bleed and still be totally subjective and as un-scientific as ever. The important question is this:

How short can a long scull be, and STILL be considered a "long scull"?
How long can a short scull be, and STILL be considered a "short scull"?

The borders between the categories are totally fuzzy, ad lib and subjective, and of course the same goes with prognate and orthognate.

Human value: At rock bottom racism isn't a question about empiric facts or about natural causes. It's an axiologic question, a question about human value.

So called "scientific racism" is nothing but pseudo-rationalizations to cover up your own value judgment.

About Robert Mapplethorpe and "Man in Polyester Suit", 1980.

I think it was about 5 years ago that I engaged in a long email conversation with African artist Orokie Okoth, who is a gay young man born 1979, a spectacular penman and a wonderful water colorist. (Here's a link to Orokie's site :Anon URL
We talked about so many different things, but when I wanted to talk about artist Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) and in particular some of his pictures of black men, I got a fierce scolding. I don't regret that we talked about Mapplethorpes's art, on the contrary - Orokie's reaction was important to me, though it doesn't mean that I've stopped admiring Mapplethorpe's art, but I hope it meant Orokie helped me achieve a better understanding of the picture down below and of myself.

So let's look at one of Mapplethorpe's most well known AND controversial images - Man in Polyester Suit, made in 1980 and published in The Black Book 1986.

Orokie's words echoed the words of another black intellectual, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) : In racist colonial society, a black man isn't allowed to be anything but a violent and stupid big black dick, which according to Orokie was what Mapplethorpe projected onto the world.

In this post I will actually try to be the lawyer for Mapplethorpe's defense and starting with the question: - Who was Robert Mapplethorpe?

Let's start with a few facts : he was the youngest son in a catholic working class family from Queens, New York, who entered the prestigious Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn at 17 to become a visual artist, and who then - at about 20 - moved to Manhattan making different kinds of artistic necklaces, bracelets, colliers and assamblages, trying to sell his thing and hanging out with the Warhol crowd at Max's Kansas City - the hottest place to be for young up and coming artists in the late 60s. And he met a girl named Patti Smith. If you're gonna read one single book about Mapplethorpe it has to be Patti Smith's wonderful Just Kids.

Two clips: the first short about Mapplethorpe's photography, the second an interwiew with Patti Smith.





But I don't think it's too unfair to say, that it was Mapplethorpe's second great love, his big gay love, who kickstarted his artistic career in ways that probably no one else could have. We're talking about art historian, curator and very wealthy art collector Sam Wagstaff (1921-1987). Wagstaff had all the connections to the American and international art world, all the wealth needed to but Robert a big studio loft in Bond Street, Manhattan. He re-directed Robert's art toward photography. They transformed each other. More than that : together they basically transformed the international art world by putting photography at its center.

Two clips about Sam and Robert: the first is a short trailer about James Crump's Wagstaff-docu from 2008, the second is a public lecture on the recently published Wagstaff biography by its writer Philip Gefter :




You can also talk about other things which philosopher Arthur C. Danto pointed to in his essey Playing with the edge, published in 1992, three years after Mapplethorpe's death: In the mid-80s Mapplethorpe had become the kid everybody loved to hate, and that - if anything - is a very precarious position.

One the one hand : the gay movement was more and more getting into becoming oh-so-respectable and taking quasi neo-stalinist positions on the political instrumentality of art and literature. Everything must be "Good for the Gay's" and the Gay Politbureau is to declare good in what way and to whom. Mapplethorpe's imagery wasn't "respectable" at all and , hence, very "baaaaaaaaaaad for the gay's".

On the other hand: even if Mapplethorpe had been pretty successful during the proceeding 10 years, his aesthetics weren't particularly well liked by influential art critics and bureucrats of the art world, and Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff in tandem trying to push photography to the center of the art world rendered them shiploads of Evil Eyes.

But it was more than that. Anyone could notice that beauty was Mapplethorpe's central aesthetic value, which in the eyes of the dominating Neo-Expressionist aesthetic was a much to frivolous value. Art should be stern and serious, not beautiful. Mapplethorpe didn't fare a bit better when the notion of quality in art started to be considered as kind of oppressive in it self. Mapplethorpe's nude studies or flower studies could be considered canonic examples of artistic quality, so if quality as such was oppressive then - Mapplethorpe was oppressive.

What "saved" Mapplethorpe was - as improbable as it may sound - when dye-in-the-wool Southern racist senator Jesse "The Saviour" Helms started thrashing Mapplethorpe on the floor of the US Senate on Capitol Hill, since then it became utterly nutterly impossible for anyone from the American art world and gay community to side with Helms. They all started re-siding...but the problem of course was, that Mapplethorpe was totally dead of AIDS...

*****************************************
My own position is almost identical with Dave Hickey's in his essey The Invisible Dragon from 1993: Mapplethorpe praised the socially marginal - in particular gay men into S/M and well endowed black men - with a visual rhetoric of the utmost perfect beauty, sometimes mixed up with wit and humour. Mapplethorpe didn't show us gods of icecold Carrara marbles, but warmblooded living humans. Hickey points to the fact that it was Mapplethorpe's audacity praise the margin and NOT the so much more common ambition to criticise the almighty mainstream that painted the town red.

So much negative criticism of Mapplethorpe in general and "Man in Polyester Suit" in particular ultimately resides in having looked into to few of his images to hastily.

One of the common negative comments is, that he "reduced" black men to being nothing but big dicks with no brains, and of course it's true that in this particular and several other pictures we only see cock but no human face since the head is cropped. But the image doesn't say - since images are voiceless and can not speak - "this man is nothing buta big black stupid cock".

To generalize on Mapplethorpe and big dicked black men will soon lead us into lots of errors : There are many full body images of black men with big cocks AND faces in Mapplethorpe.

And to turn the flip side: there are white men with big dicks but without face in Mapplethorpe.

Black and gay in America is a very thorny issue. The best exordium to this post I could think of is the wonderful 2004 movie "Brother to brother": http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=504978

Nighty-nighty dear friends...

 

[Shelter]

My dear God, Gorgik - what an article, what a knowledge! So very interesting! Thank you, as well as Haiducii, that you have hauled out porn from the figurative place for all that is considered dirty and taboo!

 

[mikk33]

thx gorgik9, lots to think about here.
So Mapplethorpe adopts the punk aesthetic and creates provocative and explicit images of black men, to display in white folks art galleries, and his model/muse dresses like a professional middle class person/white-collar worker.
the 'man in suit' is a brilliant subversive image, that celebrates masculinity in a provocative and erotic way. Its as beautiful as the flowers, but is uncontrolled and is more than phallo-centric. It challenges white visual orthodoxy about what's acceptable or not. I love the idea that a single image is so threatening to the gay art establishment that it causes a virulent reaction. IT WORKED!!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and remember, the 'revolution will not be televised'.

 

[gorgik9]

thx gorgik9, lots to think about here.
So Mapplethorpe adopts the punk aesthetic and creates provocative and explicit images of black men, to display in white folks art galleries, and his model/muse dresses like a professional middle class person/white-collar worker.
the 'man in suit' is a brilliant subversive image, that celebrates masculinity in a provocative and erotic way. Its as beautiful as the flowers, but is uncontrolled and is more than phallo-centric. It challenges white visual orthodoxy about what's acceptable or not. I love the idea that a single image is so threatening to the gay art establishment that it causes a virulent reaction. IT WORKED!!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and remember, the 'revolution will not be televised'.

Thanks mikk33!

I've ordered a copy of Philip Gefter's biography of Sam Wagstaff and I'll probably have it at my flat on monday 4 may. When I'm finished reading it's quite probable that I'll start a new thread in some other area on GH - sooner or later - about Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff and centered on Mapplethorpes photography.

But we've still got much to do in the History of gay porn cinema-thread and I'm definitely not planning to stop it - just so you won't misunderstand what I'm saying.

 

[haiducii]

Black & White: Racism in gay porn, part 2.

Has anyone here read Pornland by Gail Dines? I just read an excerpt and chapter seven, and I'm finding it extremely ''funny''. Pornland is now available to all GH members! Click HERE to download the book. WARNING: Read at your own risk!

Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston, an internationally acclaimed speaker and author, and an anti-porn feminist activist. Her website is stoppornculture.org. In 2007 Gail helped form the activist group, Stop Porn Culture. One of the goals of this organization is to develop educational materials that raise awareness about the effects of living in a porn culture. BTW, she's called for Playboy to be banned and for BDSM images to be outlawed.

''In this country [the USA], racism has always been sexualized. The idea is that black women are whores and black men are animalistic ''fuckers'' who are after white women...That’s the history of racism in America – black people were defined out of humanness into animalistic sexuality and that’s what was legitimizing the lynching of black men and the raping of black women'', she says in her book Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Society.

OMG, this book is totally rubbish. Ms. Dines, who doesn’t like sexuality or understand the gay community, makes so many assertions which are unfounded, such as ''tops are masculine, and bottoms are feminine.'' It's obvious from what she said that she hasn't studied gay porn very much, because I see porn constantly that features black gay bottoms. Perhaps Ms. Dines should start watching more porn, if she expects to be an expert on this art form. Starting with this one HERE!

So is gay porn fundamentally racist, as Gail Dines says? Or are videos featuring Asian ''twinks'' and black ''fuckers'' just one sub-category in a pluralistic industry that seeks to cater for all tastes? On the forums of gay porn site Just U5 Boys, user ''Agromac'' told us: ''So long as you bear in mind what porn is then you’re alright – it’s entertainment, fantasy. If you start thinking it’s more than that, like a reality for which to strive, then you’re in trouble.''

Let’s ask ourselves the always important question of: Is gay porn racist or is it a benign form of stereotyping?

I headed over to gay porn tube GayMaleTube to do some research. In the ''Black'' category, the most popular videos are: Black gay handjob, I fucked your white boyfriend, White guy tries out huge black cock, Big dick gay black dudes fucking, Black dude nailing white guy hard, etc. So, a good number of them include the word "black" in their titles. Is this necessary? Do we have to point out that a performer is black ? Isn't it obvious? Lucas Knight from F4lcon studios has a beautiful natural face, a leanly muscled body, and a huge cock, but I've never heard for his "big white cock." Why is that?

Every culture has its potentially offensive stereotypes. Blondes are dumb. White people can't play basketball. Native Americans love to gamble. One stereotype about black males is that they are all well endowed. ''I think that goes hand in hand with the stamina stereotype and also the preconceived notion of black men generally being tops. I imagine that these stereotypes are rooted in mental images and associations that go even further back than porn... In my experience with too many non-black men abroad, being with me has been more about satisfying their curiosity than getting to know the man beyond the skin color'', says Jeremy Helligar, a journalist, author, and world traveler from NYC in his humorous travelogue and memoir about being a gay, black, American man living in self-imposed exile ''Is It True What They Say About Black Men?: Tales of Love, Lust and Language Barriers on the Other Side of the World''.

Even when presented with empirical data that blacks aren't bigger than whites - in any department - the stereotype persists. Since most white guys haven't had a wide variety of African-American partners, their perceptions are almost completely formed by porn, which only shows performers with penises so big they're mixing drinks in the next room. And to completely upend the stereotype that blacks have bigger penises, I invite you to look at the penis-size study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine from 2013, by clicking the following LINK.

Black: Mean penis length: 14.66 cm. (5.77 in.)
White: Mean penis length: 14.18 cm. (5.58 in.)

I think as human beings, we do have our preferences. Most of us have idea what body type turns us on, what age, and what body attributes. For me, race is just one of the many flavors that does or does not turn me on. Why are we bringing a race discussion into porn? Who cares who tops and who bottoms? It's porn. You know it's fake all the cash goes to a fat guy in dodgy shade. This image of black men as total tops with vivacious sexual appetites is not a porn problem. It's a people and perception problem. BTW, I go nuts for Latinos and even more crazy for hairy legs, and I like slim twinks, while Asian guys rarely turn my head. Am I racist because I prefer Russian twinks over Asian twinks? I don't think so.

Eroticizing "big black dick" or "hot white ass" aren't what I would call racist. It's more fetishism. ''Black men are presented as fetish objects for the white gaze'', says Dwight A. McBride (aka Daniel Hale Williams Professor of African American Studies, English, & Performance Studies at Northwestern University) in his book ''Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays On Race and Sexuality''. I don't deny racism exists in gay porn both on the producer and consumer side. I've heard many site owners and film producers say that membership sales fall through the floor when a black guy appears on their site; take him off and sales rebound. I've also heard that race sometimes plays a factor in how much a performer is paid, as in black guys are paid less than white guys. I suppose that happens somewhere in the gay porn world. Racism does exist in gay porn, but just because a site (studio) talks about a man's "big black cock" doesn't mean they're racist, they just want porn watchers who love black men and big penises to find their product. People who want interracial porn generally want it because it's interracial. They want the contrasts between the participants emphasised and racial stereotypes fulfilled. Sometimes we're too sensitive, too quick to jump to conclusions.

Porn plays on stereotypes, because racial stereotypes stem from a fear of the unknown, and fear and sex deliver similar adrenal responses in the brain. It’s all very Freudian. And porn studios are only catering to what the market wants. Gay porn is like any other commodity; they sell what people want to buy. There isn't some hidden agenda where they're trying to make us racist or reinforce racism. If black thugs and asian twink bottoms are what sells, then that's the kind of porn they'll make. It's all about the motherf**king money. The same is true with barebacking in porn. It's what sells the best so the porn studios have to make it in order to stay in business, otherwise their competitors who are making bareback porn will take their business. But that's another story...Maybe next time!

 

[W!nston]

Well done haiducii. One's taste in porn is first and foremost about our fantasy. We choose porn that visualizes on video or in a live sex show what we see in our mind's eye when we are rubbing out a load.

Trying to legislate what we fantasize is as Orwellian as you can get. Gail Dines and those of her ilk who want to control, ban or destroy our fantasies are to be feared more than any other threat to our freedom or equality. The Christian right who want to deny equality to us are abhorrent but this woman is insidious. She and any others like her want to control our innermost secret thoughts.

When someone or a group know they have no moral or legal argument to further their case they inevitably play the 'race' card. It's the trump suit where Europeans are concerned. Try telling an Asian who doesn't like interracial porn they are racist and see if they even give a damn. Try telling an African the same and you'll get the same reaction. Only Europeans seem to feel the need to cow-tow whenever the race card is played.

I'm part native American. My ancestors of Cherokee descent were horribly wronged by Europeans and suffer to this day because of it. But I don't feel the need to accuse anyone of racism or question why there aren't more Cherokee Americans in Gay Porn. Although I would like to see some young blood Cherokee guys fucking like wild dogs in a sweat lodge, lol. That reminds me of one scene from a vintage 1970s loop where this tall white guy with sandy blond hair, bright blue eyes and a 9 inch cock fucks a guy who was obviously a Cherokee smooth skinned, black hair, blue eyed cock-sucking expert every-which-way-but-loose. That is one of my all time favorites. I have it somewhere buried deep in one of my vault drives. I'll have to look for it sometime and I'll post it when I find it.

I got a hard on just remembering that one... I'll be back in a little while guys, got some business to take care of now... I love GAY PORN!

Thanks gorgik and haiducii for this fantastic thread

 

[W!nston]

After dinner and desert (a delicious dark chocolate cake with butter, coconut, pecan topping, mmmm) I thought I'd add to my earlier post.

Many sexual acts are unlawful already. Sex with minors, close relatives and animals for example. Another illegal case is rape.

So when I said 'trying to legislate our fantasies' I should have mentioned these illegal acts. Even though there is no law against fantasizing about them (yet)... performing them does have laws against it.

 

[gorgik9]

I think it's as it should be if crimes that really are crimes are punished, i.e. crimes with a (or several) victims and a (or several) perpetrator/s.

What is intolerable is victimless moral crimes which has been becoming more and more common during the last 30-35 years. The favourite victimeless moral crime today (at least in Sweden) is what some of my Swedish friends have started calling "crimes of blaspedy", i.e. crimes against some ideal notion of childhood.

The most famous Swedish case of blaspedy occured in late 2010 and early 2011 in the child pornography case against internationaly well known Swedish manga translator Simon Lundström, who had a big digital archive of manga pictures as a necessity in his work as a translator.

A handfull of drawings in this archive caught the eyes of the police and Lundström got convicted for child pornography crime. So now it's judicially proven, that you can commit sexual assault against children with a pen and a piece of paper and with no child what so ever involved.

Ridiculous. And scary.

 

[gorgik9]

Hello y'all but most of all to haiducii!

Let's talk about gay porn, racism and philosophical essentialism in haiducii's post "Racism in gay porn, part 2". I'll start with quoting a couple of central lines and give some comments!

Quotation nr 1 : "So is gay porn fundamentally racist, as Gail Dines says?"

No the real question - that started me seriously wondring - is rather, why haiducii opts in to essentialist philosophy at all, as all other anti-porn feminists do including Gail Dines?

The radical essentialism in all anti-porn feminism determins its total intellectual style. The ONLY kind of "analysis" in a anti-porn feminism study is the sacred PORN DEFINITION; radical essentialism means, that the only knowledge that exists and can exist is to have the true definition.

If we define, that pornography - all porn always, that's what having an essence means - is man's violence towards women ("women" including anatomical men who get ass penetrated or mouth penetrated), then that's the only true knowledge there can be.

Haiducii isn't an anti-porn feminist kind of essentialist, that should be obvious, but for some quirky reason he decides to hang on to another waggon in the essentialist train, so we sit in the essentialist waggon of negativist denial: Nothing is about anything but money...

Quotation nr 2 : "Let's ask ourselves the always important question of : Is gay porn racist or is it a benign form of stereotyping?"

This dichotomous question becomes "the always important question" ONLY as long as you hang on to the essentialist train, but as soon as you have decided to jump from the essentialist train, you'll immediately see there are other positions, other options much closer to experience and what the senses - the senses, NOT our precious thinking - can tell us.

Let's say SOME gay porn SOMETIMES can be racist.
Or in wittgensteinian words: Stop thinking - and look around instead!

That's essentially the anti-essentialist answer:cheers:

 

[haiducii]

Case #1

Pornland, by Gail Dines, was the first thing that came up when I googled ''racism in gay porn''. I thought it would be interesting to get a slightly different perspective on the question about racism in porn industry by presenting her neo-Marxist, post-modernist critiques of pornography. And I explained to you my position on this issue.

Case #2

I still think it's a good question, because I wanted to point out that porn nowadays is more about stereotyping than racism. These stereotypes, which pervade American / Western society, are entirely encapsulated by the porn industry. Stereotyped fantasies are the norm in commercial pornography.

 

[gorgik9]

Case #1

Pornland, by Gail Dines, was the first thing that came up when I googled ''racism in gay porn''. I thought it would be interesting to get a slightly different perspective on the question about racism in porn industry by presenting her neo-Marxist, post-modernist critiques of pornography. And I explained to you my position on this issue.

Case #2

I still think it's a good question, because I wanted to point out that porn nowadays is more about stereotyping than racism. These stereotypes, which pervade American / Western society, are entirely encapsulated by the porn industry. Stereotyped fantasies are the norm in commercial pornography.

Hrrrmmm...I'm thinking aloud: I've already planned my next two posts in this thread - on "Sailors, soldiers & hustlers" - but after that...maybe I should plan an "Anti-porn feminism, part 2: the queer philosophical bashing of Gail and the other Dinosaurs".

OK if y'all think that would make me too much of the academic super-bore, I'll refrain and find something else to write, but otherwise I think I'll go for it...:thinking:

 

[Shelter]

Hrrrmmm...I'm thinking aloud: I've already planned my next two posts in this thread - on "Sailors, soldiers & hustlers" - but after that...maybe I should plan an "Anti-porn feminism, part 2: the queer philosophical bashing of Gail and the other Dinosaurs".

OK if y'all think that would make me too much of the academic super-bore, I'll refrain and find something else to write, but otherwise I think I'll go for it...:thinking:

Well Gorgik, I'm very interested - so DO IT! :thumbs up:

 

[gorgik9]

Sailors, Soldiers & Hustlers, part 1: Uniformed men in Gay art.

Two gay Swedish painters of sailor and soldiers.

I'll start with Eugène Jansson (1862-1915) who was born in a middle-class family, but when his father died very early and his mother had to take care of Eugène and his kid brother Adrian on her own, life got economically very rough. It didn't get a bit better when Eugène at about age 14 was hit by scarlet fever which made him almost deaf for a couple of years and - on top of that - gave him a serious chronic kidney failure for the rest of his all to brief life.

Just like his kid bro Adrian, Eugène Jansson was a gay boy, and being obviously talented for drawing and painting he got to be an art school student and later a student in the Royal Swedish Academy of Art for a couple of years.

I think it's fair to say, that Jansson's art can be divided into three main periods: first a period of realist painting from early-to-mid 1880s to the mid 1890s;
then the "blue period" from mid 1890s to 1904 - which I think still is the most well known period in his art - with night time motives painted mainly in different nuances of medium-to-dark blue and heavily influenced by Vincent van Gogh.

The blue period ended in 1904 and he stopped painting for a couple of years, but when e showed his new work in 1906-07, we see something completely different: the nude men period, boys, men and athletes sunbathing, diving (hello Tom Daley!) and swimming in the Navy Open-air swimbath on Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, which was a place originally founded in the 1880s to cater to the sailors and soldiers in the Naval base on the Skeppsholmen island, but soon became very popular to working class men and school boys because of the very low entrance fee. It was a nice place to spend a few hours in light summer evenings - and oogling each others...

It was a place where Rudy was almost always in the Nudy (bath trunks - how totally un-necessary...).

Eugène Jansson was in particular into oogling a young handsom sailor named Knut "Knutte" Nyman who became his special intimate friend for years.

I think this is an enigmatic painting of a beautiful young man, looked upon with loving eyes by the painter. Knut Nyman stands in the doorway in classic contrapost, his arms streched out almost to form a crucifix-like figure. On the wall in the other room, behind Nyman, we see three of Jansson's paintings from the blue period and this portrait of Knutte Nyman was one of the first in the nude paintings-period showed to an audience, as if Jansson wanted to send the message: "Blue, blue, and blue - I'm definitely finished painting blue!"

Two big paintings from the Navy swimbath + two photos taken with Jansson's own camera!

And then Jansson's auto-portrait in the Navy swimbath in 1910!

Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (1884-1965)

Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (artist signature GAN) was a gay man like Jansson, but from the next generation and very different as an artist; when he visited the big posthumus exhibition after Jansson's death he explicitly articulated his profound dislike of the older artists "bath paintings"...

GAN started off as a romantic symbolist...

...and had Bengt Lidforss (1868-1913) as his mentor and probably closest friend in the early 1900s. He was a botanist and a well known figure in the august university town of Lund who became an university professor of Botany, but at the same time a poet and an influential literary critic.

Lidforss was a socialist and regularly wrote in socialist newspapers, but at the same time he was well known as an anti-semite. And he was homosexual just like his young friend GAN.

In 1908 - the same year GAN painted his self-portrait - he also met a 16 year old factory worker named Karl Edvard Holmström with whom GAN fell madly in love and was called "Ilja" in GAN's diaries. But the love story got a tragic ending - GAN moved to Berlin in 1913 and stayed there for a couple of years to meet artists - like Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky - and gallerist Herwarth Walden and his Swedish wife Nell to become a part of the German expressionist movement.

But in 1914 GAN got a dreadful letter from Sweden: Young Karl Edvard was dead, just 22 years old.

I've read a few published lines from GAN's diary that makes up very painful reading. GAN himself wasn't more than 30 years old in 1914, but life suddenly felt meaningless.

We've got several beautiful portraits of Ilja, painted in 1911-12. Here's one of them!

When GAN came back to Sweden and settled in Stockholm he was a very different painter - a colorful exponent of cubo-futurist-expressionist art, but maybe the most correct description of GAN's art after Ilja's death and up until the mid 1920's would be to say, that his new radical modernist style was a visual code for showing and at the same time NOT showing his homosexuality.

All the sailors, all the soldiers, all the phallic symbolism, all the half-opened trousers and opened belts...and sometimes a male face pressed closely to the crotch...

Sailors and soldiers: Male prostitution in Stockholm 1880-1965.

GAN talked a lot in his diaries about how he met young men in Stockholm - most often soldiers and sailors - who would sell their juicy cocks for wanking and sucking. He wrote in an entrance about a beautiful soldier who knew how attractive he was to other men, and GAN commented:

"-So many men must have come to him for Holy Communion!"

Of course meaning, that someone came up to the soldier, bowed down, stood on his knees, un-buttoned the soldiers trousers, took out the soldier's cock and started sucking. And then you get the flesh and blood of our Saviour in your mouth, i.e. Holy Communion. Let's face it - GAN was my brother in the noble art of boycocksuckology...

Then of course there was the beautiful, blond, muscular, very strong and very sexy sailor Edvin Andersson, who made his military service on the Naval base on Skeppsholmen, and who probably became GAN's first big love after Ilja.

Edvin moved back to his old home town Norrköping after military service, married a woman and got two kids, but some years later GAN got in touch with Edvin and they became pen pals. Then something special happened: Edvin Andersson changed his and his family's last name to Ganborg and became GAN's agent selling his art in Norrköping for a couple of decades. I think this is a love story out of the ordinary...

Military life

Let's look at the bigger picture in Stockholm, Sweden & Europe!

Stockholm at the turn of the century 1900 was a heavily militarized city with no less than five military regiments residing in the central parts of the city: two infantry guards regiments ( Svea Livgarde & Göta Livgarde); cavallery regiment (K1); artillery regiment (A1); the Naval base on Skeppsholmen.

The guards regiments moved from the city center further out in the 1930s-40s, but the city after WWII still had three regiments lodged in the center and thus still was a city where soldiers in uniform was a very common sight in the cityscape.

Soldier prostitution in Stockholm has been doented at least since the 1880s and it's a phenomenon that seems to have disappeared quite abruptly in the mid-1960s, so it existed as a regular phenomenon for - let's say - about 5-6 generations.

I was born in 1960, which is to say at a time when young guys doing their military service still went out into the Stockholm night cruising for horny johns to attack the cockbait.

If you keep an open mind, I don't think it's particularly difficult to understand why it became so popular - relatively speaking - among young guys doing their military service to sell their schlong to other men.

Besides the natural presuppositions that young guys are almost constantly horny and want to get their rocks off as often as possible, there were two historical presuppositions :

First: the daily pay rate for soldiers doing military service was extremely low until the mid-1960s. If you were a young man with a fiancé and wanted to treat her to a ticket to the movies and a visit to a café with coffee and cinnamon rolls, you were in deep shit since your daily pay was so short you probably couldn't afford it. You had to get some income from elsewhere... Guess what the monymaking method was?

Second: using your uniform was compulsory for guys doing their service even on evening and weekend leave. This meant that a soldier or group of soldiers always were easily recognised by others in the city, and everybody knew that soldiers always were almost totally broke.

A soldier was a guy who would say "-Yes thanks!" if I asked him to follow me up to my flat and have a beer, sandwiches, coffee and a Schnaps or two or three... And maybe he would offer something juicy in return or for some money...

In the mid-1960s, two things happened almost at the same tiome that dramatically changed the situation: First the daily pay heavily increased, so much it totally changed the soldiers financial situation.

Then the use of uniform on evening and weekend leave wasn't compulsory anymore. You could change from uniform to civil clothes, meaning that others couldn't be sure to recognize you as a soldier anymore.

The soldier prostitution in Stockholm disappeared rapidly and almost totally. So sure, Bob Dylan was right - the times were a-changing...

Montague Glover: an officer and a horny photographer...

The military prostitution wasn't something unique for Stockholm or Sweden, by no means. It happened in other Swedish cities (Göteborg, Malmö) and in European cities like Berlin and London.

The role of the Royal Guards soldiers in London gay sex life is well known and got its literary description by JR Ackerley and its visual story in photos by Montague Glover (1898-1983), who served in the British Army during WWI and later on became an architect and a very prolific amateur photographer with young men and groups of young men in varying conditions of clothedness and nudity as by far his favourite motive.

In 1930 Glover met the fifteen year younger love of his life, Ralph Hall (1913-1987), who was described by friends as an "outgoing, cheerful Cockney". And - looking at Glover's photos we may add - a very handsome young man with a really big fat juicy schlong who obviously often didn't have any underwear under his trousers. And if Ralph was Glover's motive no 1...

...then soldiers, sailors and working class men was no 2...

Let's also look at a few pornographic drawings from Britain about 1930s, made by the anonymous artist baptized "Bellhops" by Thomas Waugh about 11 years ago!

Sailors and soldiers and sailors amd soldiers and...

The fundamental point of this post is not only, that soldiers and sailors has been among the most frequent motives and symbols in all kinds of visual culture during the entire 20th century - from oil paintings and drawings to photos and movies - in art made by gay artists, which of course also means
that there has been lots of gay porn movies with sailors in them...
http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=506764
...but the point is also, that gay artists from Eugène Jansson and GAN to Pierre et Gilles didn't like soldiers & sailors just as imaginary figures. They were parts of their socio-sexual world.

In my next post - the part 2 of this double post - will be about hustlers in 1950s-60s New York.

 

[W!nston]

Magnificent post, Gorgik my friend!

Thank you

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks a lot for the appreciation Sniffit!!!

 

[haiducii]

Magnificent post, Gorgik my friend!

:agree:

If you're looking for a great read now, try "Sailors, Soldiers & Hustlers, part 1" by gorgik9. It's one of the best written posts we've read in a long time. :thumbs up:

 

[haiducii]

Media Representation Of Homosexuality In Slovenia

Slovenia – my native country - is Tina Maze-land, it's alpine skiing country. If Slovenia had it's own gay porn industry, it would turn out alpine skiiers fucking like mad dogs, like in THESE video clips. But we don't have any gay porn industry of our own (our market is TOO small), though we have gay boys and girls, and I thought to tell you a bit about homosexuality in Slovenia through the eye of the media.

The first newspaper article that touched upon the issue of homosexuality appeared as early as 1921 in the Njiva (Field) magazine. In it the anonymous author urged the repeal of an article of the then law penalizing ''every act by which the offender sought or found sexual satisfaction in the body of a person of the same sex''.

This first reference to homosexuality was followed by a samizdat publication five years later, an essay entitled Homoseksualnost (Homosexuality), more than 30 pages in length and signed by Ivan Podlesnik writing under the pseudonym Vindex. His pioneering work, which mainly draws on the ideas and writings of the German author Magnus Hirschfeld, was written in support of homosexuality and people of this kind of sexual orientation: ''Before the supreme judge – their conscience – they are innocent, and the more others consider them guilty, the more innocent they are. Above all, they should not overlook the fact that their properly understood homosexual love may reward them with the purest kind of happiness, just like any other love, despite the fact that many people disdain it. By making others happy through their homosexual love, they become happy themselves.''

After the Second World War the issue of homosexuality continued to be primarily the subject of psychological and psychiatric studies. For example, in a book entitled Pastoralna psihologija (Pastoral Psychology), published in 1946, Anton Trstenjak referred to homosexuals as ''sexual psychopaths''. In his opinion, a homosexual person was a representative of ''the psychopath of the fanatic type dangerous to humankind''.

The 70's were characterized by the silence of the print media on this issue. They were only interrupted by sporadic personal ads that began to appear in the ''Nedeljski dnevnik'' daily and the ''Antena'' weekly towards the end of the 60's, from men seeking male friends. Somewhat more media space was dedicated to the discussion about the second paragraph of Article 168 of the Penal Code, according to which every ''unnatural act of unchastity between persons of the male sex'' was a criminal offense. When the penal code was changed in 1959, the punishment was reduced to one year of imprisonment. With the introduction of a new Slovenian penal code in 1976, which replaced the former Yugoslav code, homosexuality was decriminalized.

The number of texts touching upon homosexuality began to increase on a yearly basis in the 80's. This sudden increase was provoked by the first Magnus festival in 1984, which not only laid the foundation for the organized gay and lesbian movement in Slovenia, but also placed homosexual issues on the agenda of the mass media in Slovenia (and Yugoslavia). Another important achievement of the Magnus festival was the demedicalization of homosexuality in the media discourse.

The first Magnus festival (European and American gay films, exhibition of gay publishing over the world, lectures about gay culture: F. Arnal, A. Avanzo and G. Hockquenghem, discussions about gay culture and organisations, video ''Framed Youth'' with author’s presentation from London, social contacts) was held in CD (Cankarjev Dom, Slovenian Cultural and Congress Centre) between April 24–29, 1984.

What is Magnus? Magnus is gay section at ŠKUC (Students Cultural Centre). It was founded in 1984 as Cultural Organisation for Socialisation of Homosexuality. Its first and most important roles were organising Magnus Festival with a wide variety of activities to propagate homosexual life style. Magnus organised a Week of Gay Films Festival on which most of the important international gay films were shown. In 1984, Magnus also organized the first gay club nights at the newly established students' alternative club K4 in the centre of Ljubljana. Gay Saturday nights became an important part of Ljubljana's alternative scene. At its beginning Magnus was tightly connected to alternative scene in Slovenia. From founding Roza klub (Pink Club) as a political organisation Magnus headed for cultural activities. In 1993 with new policy in homosexual movement Magnus renewed its activities with the aim to invite students' population to participate in building homosexual lobby in Slovenia.

Media attention in Slovenia peaked for the second time in 1987, the year of the first bona fide political scandal related to homosexuality. The fourth Magnus festival was scheduled to start on May 25, the late Marshal Tito's birthday, and to present a Dutch gay and lesbian production. May 25 was the Day of Youth. It was an annual ''sacred'' celebration of Tito’s birthday ''in which the flower of Yugoslav youth'' would participate in a relay around the country. Young people all over the country had to carry around a phallic symbol to celebrate Tito’s birthday, similar to the carrying of an Olympic fire around the world. The ritual symbolized the Yugoslav official ideology of ''Brotherhood and Unity''.

As this was the year of the events known as the ''Slovene syndrome'' - scandals related to posters and ceremonies at Tito’s birthday - the Belgrade and Sarajevo media interpreted the scheduled start date of the Magnus festival as still another provocation coming from Slovenia. On March 6th, the Belgrade daily, ''Politika ekspres'', wrote: ''Ljubljana will not be hosting the dirty festival...The provocation won’t work''. Yugoslav political leaders put pressure on the republic government in Slovenia, which eventually decided that organization of such a festival in Ljubljana would represent a threat to the healthy part of society.

Fearing that Yugoslavia could become a ''promised land for fags'', the Sarajevo weekly,''As'', suggested that every straight Yugoslav citizen should wear a tag reading ''Faggots? No, thanks!''. The article was supported by a picture showing three men naked from the waist up and hugging. The caption read: ''Far away from us: taken at some meeting of American homosexuals''. The connotative part of this message is clear: homosexuals are promiscuous and carriers of HIV, therefore dangerous. In other words, homosexuality was sexualized and at the same time presented as something limited to foreign, western countries, and alien to us.

Slovenian media used the scandal to show that Slovenia indeed does not belong to the Yugoslav federation anymore. In other words: the scandal can be seen as a cultural war between allegedly progressed and westernized Slovenia and the backward Balkan nations, which do not ''understand'' homosexuality and condemn it.

With the diversification and pluralization of the media in the 90's, homosexuality was in many respects re-introduced into the media and often laced with sensationalism. In addition to the general increase in volume, another interesting feature of the 90's was an increase in texts belonging in the category of ''curiosities'' (short notices). In the 90's homosexuality as a different sexual practice was turned into a fad, a peculiarity, once again highly stereotyped and in many ways confined to the same frame of reference as in the past, but with one significant change: it was increasingly demedicalized. For example, in 1996 the Delo (Labour) daily, wrote: ''Since homosexuals don't have children they are not very thrifty and like to spend money on most diverse pleasures; they are fervent visitors of cultural events and, as a rule, spend a lot of money on home decoration''.

The new Slovenian Penal Code of 1995 introduced a groundbreaking change in the law's treatment of homosexuality. Article 141 explicitly prohibits any kind of dicrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians are also protected by the new Slovenian constitution. Article 14 states that ''everyone shall be guaranteed equal human rights and fundamental freedoms irrespective of national origin, race, sex, language, religion, political or other conviction, material standing, birth, education, social status or any other personal cirstance''.

The 90's witnessed several initiatives to change family law to include homosexual marriages. A bill on registered same-sex partnerships was prepared in 1998 by the Ministry of Family Affairs, but it was never submitted to Parliament. After 5 years, when the measure was due to be brought before Parliament, the move was blocked by the Slovenian People's Party, which argued that ''the formation of same-sex partnerships is not a human right''. The legislation was finally passed on 22 June 2005. It gives partners in same-sex relationships a say in each other's medical care and grants limited inheritance rights. No social, pension, and similar rights are granted, and adoption or parenting rights are not adressed. Slovenia is the only European country, where legislation on same-sex partnerships was adopted by a right-of-center government. The debate in Parliament and before was quite homophobic. For example, one member of Parliament demanded that teh pubic region of two left-wing female MPs, who were agitating for the inclusion of more rights in the bill, should be checked because he doubted that they were really women. LGBT organizations in Slovenia were not satisfied with the ''discriminatory law''.

Although the Ljubljana Gay and Lesbian Film Festival dates in 1984, credited with being Europe's oldest event of its kind, the first pride parade was only organized in 2001 as a result of an incident in a Ljubljana cafe where a gay couple was asked to leave for being homosexual. Ljubljana pride is traditionally supported by the mayor of Ljubljana and left-wing politicians.

In December 2014, the opposition party United Left (ZL) introduced a bill into Parliament that would legalise same-sex marriage. The sponsors of the bill say the goal is to provide equal rights to all members of society. On 3 March 2015, the Assembly passed the bill in the third reading, in a 51-28 vote. Homosexual couples can now get married and enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of marriage. That means all the legal, economic and social rights which up to now could only be enjoyed by heterosexual couples in marriage or in an extramarital relationship. One of the rights homosexual couples have gained is also the right to adopt children. Marriage is defined as a union between two persons regardless of gender.

Several civil groups, joined in the "It's about Children" coalition, also oppose the new definition of marriage. The above-mentioned immediately started with collecting signatures for a referendum. On 26 March 2015, the National Assembly voted 53–21 to block the referendum on the ground that it would violate the constitutional provision which prohibits popular votes on laws eliminating an unconstitutionality in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The proponents of the referendum, who had announced that they have collected 48,146 signatures before the Assembly's vote, said they would appeal the decision to the Constitutional Court, which they did on 2 April 2015. The Court may declare the referendum unconstitutional, otherwise the referendum will take place. For a law to be annulled at least a fifth of the around 1.7 million eligible voters has to vote in support of the referendum. That means around 340 thousand people. If the pending law is implemented Slovenia will become the first country in Central Europe, the first country in Post-communist Europe and the first Slavic country to allow same-sex couples to marry.

In March 2015, a poll conducted by the Delo (Labour) daily showed that majority of respondents think that the Constitutional Court should not allow referendum on the subject. Of those who said they would participate in a possible referendum, 36% said they would support the law, and 50% said they would vote against it.

''Slovenia is – as in many other aspects (e.g., the economy) – in the middle of the European scale; it is not the most tolerant society for homosexuals; at the same time, it is not the most hostile, either. It lies somewhere on the way toward the postmodern value system, between the new democratic European societies and the old Western European democracies, where various value surveys generally find more tolernace toward sexual minorities'', Sabrina P. Ramet evaluates the social acceptance of homosexuality in Slovenia in her book Democratic Transition in Slovenia: Value Transformation, Education, and Media.

Since I've been discussing in my post about media representation of homosexuality in Slovenia, I decided to finish my post with one of the world's biggest mass media conglomerates, called a movie, to be more specific: a gay themed movie. A Trip (orig. Izlet) is a 2011 Slovenian movie directed by Nejc Gazvoda. It was Slovenia's official submission to the 2013 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Three young friends: college dropout Andrej, enlisted soldier Gregor, and the female of the group, Ziva who has plans to study abroad, decide to take one last road trip to the sea like they used to do in highschool.

Some words from the director, Nejc Gazvoda: ''In filmmaking I am not interested in the stories of common people, as common people do not exist – there exist only people worth telling about and the three characters in A Trip are like that. Although seemingly problematic, bored youths, they are really persons with real-life problems, a lost generation of the 1980s that distrustful of everything occupies its own frolicking world and fosters the illusion that it would always stay young and untouchable.”

Not quite an award winner, and nothing we haven't seen before either, but it's an impressive first feature by writer-director Nejc Gazvoda that hopefully opens some doors for the talented cast and crew. Click HERE to downlaod the movie! I really enjoyed the movie. Did you?