Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 2
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Hong Kong Women's Queer Porn Tastes and Twink Fantasies / Katrien Jacobs
Abstract
This essay examines how Hong Kong Chinese women respond to representations of sexuality and the sex act in mainstream and alternative pornography. A cross‐cultural research study was carried out in Hong Kong, Japan and the USA to analyze women's reactions to screened porn segments. By outlining a cultural boom in Trans‐Asian women's pornographies and how they are perceived in Hong Kong, the article defends women's drifting gaze as one that projects intimacy as well as discomfort onto mainstream and "female‐friendly" pornographies.
Keywords: hard‐core porn, female‐friendly porn, taste, twink fantasies, Hong Kong
<1> In this essay I will first focus on Hong Kong women's general reactions toward Japanese hard‐core and female‐friendly pornography. Then, I discuss how women viewed queer pornography and a commercial gay film produced in the USA. Since Hong Kong itself (like many other cultures) lacks a confident commercial and alternative porn industry, I wanted to observe how women would react to a wide range of mainstream and feminist pornographies produced in different cultures. The selected queer segment is from the Crashpad Series (2005), directed and produced by Shine Louise Houston, and showcases a sex scene between two mature‐aged lesbians. The gay segment, a mainstream film by the company Bare Twinks, features two young men having vigorous bareback (unprotected) sex. I decided to include the gay movie based on previous experiences where I had interviewed Chinese women who are ardent fans of "Boys' Love" and who adore gay bodies and depictions of homosexual sex acts in manga, anime, movies and literature.
Designing Women's Pornography Workshops
<2> The essay is part of an ongoing government‐funded research project, entitled Trans‐Asian Women's Forum on Erotic/Pornographic Media and Cultural Affect (GRF 14404514). In this study, heterosexual, lesbian and sexually "undefined" women across diverse cultures are invited to participate in workshops that include screenings and discussions. In Hong Kong, I collaborated with small groups of lesbian and "sexually undecided" women who gathered in the community spaces of the lesbian organizations G‐Spot and Women's Coalition of Hong Kong. Workshops were conducted in Cantonese with the help of simultaneous translators, and participants were asked to share reactions at different intervals throughout the workshops. Before starting the video screenings, a 20‐minute introductory discussion set out the topic of women and pornography. Then, a handout was distributed with basic notes about each of the video clips. Participants were encouraged to write or voice reactions during screenings and then verbally discuss feelings and reactions after each screening. While some audiences ignored the handouts and easily chatted with us and with each other, others were quiet and meticulously followed our handouts while writing extensive comments. Some of the sessions were loud and "resonant" throughout the screenings, while others were quiet and more analytically focused.
<3> The women who decided to participate in our workshops were aged 22‐35 and were briefed about the goals of the project in advance. They also signed a release form stating that their anonymity would be preserved. Since the workshops invited participants on a voluntary basis and were intended as small group gatherings, it is fair to say that they did not survey a majority of women or female consumers. For instance, the project did not attract women from different socio‐economic layers of society, nor those who would have negative associations with or moral objections to pornography. Rather, the project focused on recruitment within porn‐tolerant student groups and lesbian groups, comprised mostly educated middle‐class women, but nonetheless with divergent attitudes towards pornography. Most were sexually active and were active or tentative consumers of pornography. A smaller number of women were sexually inexperienced and had rarely or never viewed pornography. Needless to say, it would have been difficult to recruit more widely across different age groups or socio‐economic classes of society, as it is not a common activity for women or men publically to watch and debate sexually explicit media within these social and cultural settings.
Transcultural Female Porn Cultures
<4> Cultures as far apart as Australia, the UK and China have seen a dramatic increase in the number of female consumers of pornography. A 2011 survey of five thousand people, carried out in the United Kingdom, reported about 31.6 % of porn users were female and specifically noted that younger women in the age group 18‐25 showed more interest in pornography when compared to older women (Smith, Attwood and Barker 2012). At the same time statistics about porn usage in China in 2011, compiled by sex researcher Pan Suiming, suggest a similar trend that women and men of the post "'80s and '90s generations" (those born after 1980 and 1990) have testified to watching porn in almost equal numbers (Lin 2011). Although these statistics are rudimentary and specify neither women's class background nor sexual orientations, they indicate that proliferating pornographies go hand in hand with a feminizing of tastes.
<5> Feminist and queer porn styles in the USA have also solidified into alternative websites that can be accessed through niche‐porn producers. There is a new wave of producer-Courtney Trouble, Madison Young and Shine Louise Houston, for example-who attract performers and audiences from within local sex‐positive queer communities and appeal to wider audiences by uploading porn movies on designated portals such as crashpadseries.com. [1] The queer community that surrounds Houston's Crashpad series enjoys watching and/or performing in porn sessions that are documented and uploaded onto the website. This means that they are mostly, but not solely, amateur performers who are invited to perform in pornography shoots. They act in sex scenes in collaboration with the director, and these are later edited together by the post‐production team.
<6> But rather than following any predetermined formulas in how these scenes are acted out, Houston believes that the camera should follow and trust of performing individuals and couples who have volunteered to be filmed. As she explained in a 2009 interview in a feminist on‐line magazine:
We don't have the same formula that the mainstream has. There's definitely a set formula in the mainstream that's like "We want to see some oral, we want to see this, yadda yadda yadda." And there's a whole lot of direction in mainstream porn. Basically our formula is just do what you want to do and our cameras will follow you. We've worked out a pretty decent system that allows us to shoot continuously and just follow the couple and their natural progression. And then through the magic of editing putting it all together to make coherent sense. But really our formula is we follow the couple and we match our camera work to the couple, we're not telling the couple what to do. (2009)
<7> In terms of gender identity, these performers do not adhere to hegemonic notions of gender but are "gender queer"-performing as "tops" and "bottoms" or "femmes" or "butches" and often as gender‐fluid or post‐operational transsexuals (most often FTM transmen). Queer pornography is defined by Houston as diverging body types and sex roles for her performers who represent "queer women (cis and trans) as well as trans men, cisgender men, genderqueer and other gender‐variant people; performers who are femme, butch, or other gender expressions; people of color; people of differing abilities; people who are fat, thin, athletic, and/or otherwise; people aged 18 to over 50; people with and without tattoos or piercings; and more." [2] Looking at the profiles of these performers, one can see that they indeed include non‐mainstream bodies as well as BBWs (Big Beautiful Women) and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. These performers are radically different from the streamlined and toned female bodies of commercial pornography.
<8> As some of these American sex/porn cultures are gaining notice within East Asian regions, there is a concomitant movement of Japanese and Korean sex products that are gingerly spreading to the West. For instance, the Japanese porn companies Silk Labo and Love Cosmetic have made efforts to produce female‐friendly porn films that are popular in East‐Asian and amongst Japan fans globally. Silk Labo makes efforts to challenge the goals of Japanese male‐oriented pornography and offers a kind of commercial alternative that can easily attract Japanese women. One of the important objectives of the company is to present attractive and gentle male models or "eromen," a portmanteau of erotic and ikumen, or beautiful males. Since male‐oriented pornography sets up a binary between stunning females and average‐looking roughneck males, they make efforts to tip the balance. A Silk Labo company representative explains the mission in the documentary Japorn, Porn That Makes Girls Wet: "The videos fulfill women's desire to be treated lovingly by the men of their dreams. Women can enter a kind of pseudo‐relationship by looking at pornography and we also pay attention to emotional satisfaction." One of the best‐known actors, Ittetsu Suzuki, explains that in these sex sessions, more attention is paid to flirting and foreplay before going onto the sex act. The mission works well, as fans of the videos are quick to explain: "It is completely different from regular pornography. They are just so gentle. They look like normal guys but they are actually porn actors. It is that gap that I like exactly." [3]
<9> The most salient feature of the gentle porn star is that he is fully idolized and presented as a celebrity by the company, although he creates an "average boyfriend" appearance and suggests a kind of relationship that can be readily attained. On the Silk Labo web site there is a blog to promote these models, to advertise their new releases as well as events where fans can meet and interact with them.
<10> In her article, "When Women Watch: The Subversive Potential of Female Friendly Pornography in Japan," Hambleton describes how the female fans of these stars attend striptease parties organized by the company, in which the stars first engage in a cooking contest and then slowly take off their clothes accompanied by the eager and enthusiastic shouts from the all‐female audience (2015).
<11> Japanese women are coached to adore these eromen but are also reminded that they have to do so in order to learn sexual techniques so they might better know how to "suit their male sex partners." [4] The female gaze is encouraged to take a peek, but eventually experience needs to be applied to and be useful within the heterosexual domestic bedroom. Hambleton points out that the company came up with their uniquely Japanese feminist mission after they organized a series of "porn complaint conventions" in which women were encouraged to discuss average sex experiences with their male partners. Time and again, they testified that their lovers and husbands were unfamiliar with female sexuality and mimicked or adhered to the scripted pornography far too closely. As she describes,
Overenthusiastic fingering, rough penetration, lack of time or care put into foreplay, and a lack of bodily contact (influenced by pornography's choice of sexual positions, necessitated by the medium's requirement to "show" penetration) were common complaints. (2015)
Hence the company came up with a reversal of male‐oriented hardcore aesthetics and began eroticizing male models who, in turn, would be better able to show sensitivity towards women's bodies and sexual needs.
<12> This "reversal ideal" is an important feminist value, but it is also constructed as another kind of female essentialism suggesting that "feminine" sexuality is slow, decent, well‐behaved and romantic. In my own workshops, when I showed an example of this type of female‐friendly porn, Hong Kong women overall were not much impressed. Since they did not like the gentle male star at all, and even made fun of him during screenings, the movie was seen as "too slow," "too fake" and "too educational" to trigger their arousal and desire. In response to this aesthetic, they expressed a desire for pornography that would be more honest and could make them feel more aroused.
<13> At the same time, these women also had a difficult time accepting the unbridled sex scenes and gender norms espoused in Japanese hard‐core pornography. Rachael Liberman has argued in her study of American female porn audiences that women have largely embraced the newer taste cultures such as queer and feminist pornography while showing resistance to clichéd representations of gender in mainstream pornography (2015: 176). But indeed, as she points out, the resistance to clichés is not absolute, for women have "split" or "torn" reactions to some of the common misogynistic tropes of pornography also common to commercial ads or Hollywood movies. I noticed similar reactions by Hong Kong women who wavered between love and hatred of the female porn models. For instance, in my workshops I showed an example of a typical male‐oriented Japanese Adult Video featuring the stunning mega‐star Sola Aoi. The movie shows the female star non‐consensually being pleasured into orgasm by means of various types of physical and emotional torture.
<14> Many women voted down this movie based on ideological grounds, yet some also testified that they were "secretly turned on by it." Some women stated they hated and denounced the selected scene because they found it very "androcentric," "disrespectful to women" or because it "showed women in a weak position." These women expressed a dislike of Japanese mainstream pornography in general. The selected clip simultaneously evoked feelings of resentment towards the dominant male actor and empathy with the suffering female, as shown in the following statements:
She does have a nice body, but I really want to punch the guy. When I watched the porn, I told her quietly that when the guy put the penis in her mouth, she should just bite it. And I think she agrees with me.
<15> Yet, in each of the workshops, some women stood up for this type of scenario-showing male domination of the female-either because it aroused them or because they admired the female porn star. They mentioned adoring her body, her cute "anime‐type" facial expressions and her general acting talent. They specifically admired her ability to simulate contradictory emotions: "Her eyes are saying 'yes' while her mouth is begging 'no, no, please don't do this to me." In short, the reactions wavered between dismissive attitudes and "torn" feelings of arousal. While understanding that such porn movies can be highly reductive, some women still wanted to tap into them when trying to enjoy pornography and feeling sexualized.
American Queer and Twink Pornography
<16> Houston's company Pink and White is located in San Francisco and comes out of a long‐standing tradition of American sex‐positive feminism that is largely absent in East‐Asian media cultures. In the selected queer porn movie featured in Houston's Crashpad (DVD version produced in 2005), we follow a promiscuously bonded queer community who share an apartment and pass on a key so that lovers might go and "crash" for the night. The selected scene shows sex between two lesbians who are amateur performers, the femme Roxy Ryder and her butch partner Dusty Ryder. Roxy is shown urinating in the bathroom while Dusty puts on a black dildo. Roxy then takes off her skirt and starts touching her vagina, while Dusty approaches her and performs an extensive type of cunnilingus. Shot in extreme close‐up, Dusty leads to her orgasm.
<17> When screening this movie, it seemed that the participants were unfamiliar with this type of pornography and, as a result, remained very quiet afterwards. One of the founders of the Women's Coalition of Hong Kong, who is also a self‐identified porn aficionado and who did offer some comments, broke the silence as she shared a story. She told us that she screened this movie for a group of lesbian friends and that she had observed a similar lack of reactions in the end. When asked to interpret this incident, she ventured that it perhaps had to do with disapproval of the frequent use of dildos in the different episodes. But she admitted that she could not exactly point out why her lesbian friends were reacting as they did.
<18> Another participant then stated that she was very confused as this is not exactly a "porn" movie but more like a "regular" movie:
I think this clip is real atypical. It's not like a porn. It's more like a movie. The use of the camera and shots are very movie‐like. Since it is too different from the conventional porn which we can find in the market, it's really hard to response to this clip. The close‐up and the angles taken are very strange to me.
At this point, other women stated that they were not familiar with this type of pornography either and that they did not know very well how to react to it.
<19> When I later read women's written reactions, I noticed that the clip had simply caused discomfort. Some women had objected to the extreme close‐up of the vagina, seen as "just a reversal of the male principle." Several others had scribbled that they just found it "too dirty." The term dirty referred specifically to the urination scene, having touched upon a taboo across Chinese cultures of urinating in front of another person:
Because I find it very dirty. The girl just went to the toilet and had oral sex later.
<20> In our second workshop, women were more forthcoming following the screening and stated that they did like this clip because they could see it as "realistic sex" and chemistry between the women. But overall, there was again a sense of unfamiliarity and discomfort associated with thus type of queer porn.
<21> In contrast with these reactions to queer porn, the women were unanimously enamored by my example of commercial gay pornography. I selected a segment produced by the company Bare Twinks with the youthful actors, Miles Pride and Kyler Moss. In the selected segment, Pride and Moss act out a horny underage schoolboy scenario, their outfits and hairstyles reminiscent of the American alt/goth subculture. The movie unveils a traditional hard‐core narrative that moves from kissing and mutual masturbation to anal penetration. The opening shot zooms in on Pride's slender tattooed body and erect penis. He is graceful and much involved as he seduces Moss by kissing him and licking his cock. Moss then takes over as they switch positions, and Moss prepares to penetrate Pride. The camera alternates between Miles' facial expression and close‐up shots of the "bareback" penis penetrating the anus. The two actors appear deeply aroused, and the chemistry between them flows naturally towards deep kissing, mutual masturbation and ultimately ejaculation on Miles' stomach.
<22> The general assessment of this video clip in the two workshops was very high. Women generally identified with the balanced and authentic sexual chemistry between the two actors (my italics). They also found that the sexual scenario conveyed "true intimacy," a quality which they overall found very rare in pornography. The following reactions suggest as much:
I can feel the kissing…. I can feel the tension between them…. I think those boys are quite attractive, and we can follow their interactions. It is not too fake.
We can see them interacting; it is not too fake.
I find it very realistic. Two guys being together like that, very realistic. A lot of times straight porn is just too fake. This one is more real. The lesbian we saw was also really, but it just makes me think….
I am a BL fan and I love it, even though I feel a little bit guilty to watch this. These two guys are so young. They look like teenagers and [are] just so smooth.
It reminds me of the film of Happy Together.
I watch a lot of gay porn. I think the actors in this one are more realistic. It's (sic) more interactions between two. I am not man, so it's less …sort of like… I have some distance. Purely fantasy but great.
<23> Several of the younger Hong Kong women and specifically those who were fans of Japanese Boys' Love animations (homo‐erotic narratives made by and for women) were specifically into those models with a bishōnen (a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth") appearance-feminine facial features and slender bodies. But for some of the older women, these standards of beauty failed to arouse interest. Just the opposite, women complained of being "turned‐off":
I don't want to watch something like this because they are two little children…. I don't want to watch high school children have sex.
When asking why they could identify well with gay porn, some woman explained that they found it relaxing as it allows them more easily to realize their fantasies:
In gay porn we have less pressure. We are not in it. Maybe we can observe some rough or forceful actions that would not be appealing to us. But it is a fantasy so we have a distance. Or we don't have to worry about the male‐female power dynamic in it.
There is less gender dynamic for us to enjoy without feeling it's politically incorrect. We have less pressure as we are not in it. I know some lesbians who don't like male genital at all, but I see it as fantasy.
<24> Most women suggested that they enjoy the scene showing male‐to‐male sex and anal intercourse while recognizing the fact that the sex workers were able to portray love and intimacy in front of the camera. As a matter of fact, this particular porn clip was most frequently selected as the best porn clip presented, since it revealed the most authentic and vigorous chemistry between actors.
Conclusion
<25> Judging from these examples of Hong Kong women's reactions to pornography, we can see that women harbored wavering responses to hard‐core and feminist pornography. Additionally, sexual orientation is not the guiding principle governing how they identified with queer porn scenes. Most of the participants identified as queer but felt alienated by the diverse bodies and sex acts found in American queer pornography. They were willing to review a sample of it but could not easily get aroused by the images or actions; they felt discomfort and did not sense any cultural affinity with the models themselves.
<26> While Hong Kong women did not identify with queer pornography, they did react well to the perceived intimacy and love portrayed between two young gay actors. Some of them were enamored by the bravado sexual performance of these "sinewy" boys, while others saw them as an extension of their interest in the beautiful men and romance scenes depicted in Boys' Love subcultures. These women were able to appreciate the homosexual hard‐core sex acts as long as they felt a sense of cultural affinity and could project fantasies onto the youthful bodies. This does not mean that this type of porn would become their ideal porn genre, as it also became clear that they endlessly wavered between straight and queer product, between Japanese and Western‐style pornographies in which cultural contexts are decidedly different from their own.
Acknowledgments: The research of this article was generously funded by a General Research Fund Grant "Trans‐Asian Women's Forum on Erotic/Pornographic Media and Cultural Affect" (CUHK 14404514). Other aspects of the study have been analyzed in Transnational Chinese Cinemas (Bridge21, 2014) and The Afterglow of Women's Pornography in Post‐Digital China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Notes
[1] The QueerpornTV channel is located at youtube.com‐MA (accessed 10 August 2015).
[2] The website is available at http://crashpadseries.com. The website of Jiz Lee can be found on jizlee.com (accessed 8 July 2014).
[3] The documentary was produced by Vice Japan and can be found at https://youtu.be/TrNAPBnR1Dw (accessed 10 July 2015).
[4] The company's mission statement is available at http://www.silklabo.com (accessed 15 February 2013).
Works Cited
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Hambleton, Alexandra. "When Women Watch: The Subversive Feminist Potential of Female‐Friendly Pornography in Japan." (Unpublished Manuscript).
Jacobs, Katrien. People's Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2012.
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Liberman, Rachael. "'It's a Really Great Tool': Feminist Pornography and the Promotion of Sexual Subjectivity." Porn Studies 2.2‐3 (2015): 174‐191.
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